If you continue to dumb down the game, you will lose half your player base

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Originally Posted by Roflcopter

How am I wrong? The majority of raiding content past T4 wasn’t experienced by a huge majority of the player base. Subs didn’t grow nearly as quickly as they did in classic. The same is true for their classic reboot. TBC just isn’t as popular. Most people in classic at least got to see up to AQ20. Most didn’t see Naxx and that was all. Very few in TBC saw beyond Kara.

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And in wrath of the lich king most people never got farther than the lootship...the expansion which had greater player numbers than any mmo before or since. What's your point?

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Originally Posted by Lord_Umbra

Except XIV so far is seeing the opposite when they reduce Tanks/Healers stances/buttons we seen only increase in numbers similar with SMN I've only seen way more summoners with it's button reduction.

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I think the only reason why we saw as many SMNs as we did is because it was practically a new job, and having actual summons is pretty badass.

I hardly see them any more, except for my buddy that uses the one button dps rotation macro so he can watch Netflix.

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Originally Posted by hagare

so what you're saying is. TBC had an increase because it was easy to get into. Hmmm

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Sure. It's a lot easier to organize 25 man raids than it was 40 man raids.

But just because the content was easier to access didn't mean the content itself was easy. Don't conflate the two.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

There is no way anyone can handle 208 buttons. Please.
And there are less for keyboard.

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First time I think we'd agree on something lol.

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Originally Posted by Lord_Umbra

Except XIV so far is seeing the opposite when they reduce Tanks/Healers stances/buttons we seen only increase in numbers similar with SMN I've only seen way more summoners with it's button reduction.

I'd further add more buttons does not = complexity, complexity is being able to completely change a role & put in multitude of inputs like a fighting game despite so few buttons they can be used in way for very complex outcomes. XIV is not you press the same buttons over & over with almost zero change fight to fight to fight XIV has never really been a complex game in it's battle system & just mostly bloated it's fine to remove the bloat. Further add Stance Dancing wasn't complex because outside of maybe Cleric it didn't matter if weren't terrible you stayed in DPS stance for 99% of the fight never needing go back to Tank stance.

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First, you are seeing more healers and tanks, because there are more players now. I know plenty of people that quit healing because of clerics stance changes, I know more healers that quit because of MP homogenization. I also know a lot of poor healers that have stuck to if with a false sense of hope that it will get better. I know ALOT of tanks that quit when stance dancing was turned to emnity on / emnity off. Cause lets be real stance dancing wasn't actually removed. we still have to dance between emnity on/ emnity off mode, it was just made less impactful as a whole. Why would a tank want to play a 4 button dps with emnity on / emnity off mode and a couple defensive CDs when they can just play a dps. I really miss emnity mechanics, it truely gave the game an extra layer IMO. You see more summoners cause it was reworked into what a lot of players wanted. I don't see many of them that have stuck with it so far. Summoner was a step in the right direction, but a bigger step in the wrong direction. I think it can be fleshed out into something awesome, but not this expansion and not with these devs. In the end, you are really just seeing what you want to see, not what is really happening.

Now you are right more buttons doesn't always mean more complex, but it also depends on what those buttons do. Remember my stance dance thing, it was one less button but it made a huge difference in tank identity and a huge cut to over all game play for tanks specifically. So yes you are right more buttons does not matter no one will argue this game just needs more buttons like why can't my combo be 18 hits instead of 3. It is more about what those buttons do and how they function in the class specifically that matters. Many of the buttons that have been getting cut have been very vital to many classes identity as a whole and that is where the problem lies. So stop talking about the amount of buttons that is not what the complaints are about, it's about the specific buttons. Maybe take a literature class, or something to help your reading comprehension during your break from telling us more buttons doesn't mean more complex.

WoW's problems started a long time ago, and it was NOT with pruning and simplification. That is but a drop of water in a nearly endless sea of design issues.

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Originally Posted by Imoye

Yoshi P said in a video that FFXIV wouldn't exist were it not for WoW. The game was a major inspirational source for this game. My question really is: Is the dev team willing to learn from the mistakes Blizzard made?

Blizzard literally went on a raging simplification spree. Notably pruning and removing tons of abilities from each class and specializations in the name of "accessibility". Shortly after the game went downhill big time. Skill expression is today completely gone in WoW. Every class plays braindead 1-2-3 button smashing that literally dulls your brain as you play.

I truly do not understand why the developers want to do the same thing to FFXIV. Heck, Blizzard even recently stated that pruning was a mistake. They're now trying to "undo" the damage, but that's likely going to take multiple expansions of work. Why on earth would you want to repeat this same mistake in FFXIV?

Having easy jobs is perfectly fine, but there needs to be jobs that offer also medium difficulty and high difficulty. Pruning and dumbing down existing jobs is not in any way acceptable, and is an insult to players who main those jobs. If you want to make something simple, then you need to create new jobs that are simple from the beginning - period. People are invested in their jobs and you're actively disrespecting their affection by making changes none of them asked for.

By all means, continue to remove abilities and make the game play itself. You will not gain more subs; but you will lose half your player base from your arrogance.

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Numbers have actually gone up as they've tried to improve quality of life. Anyone that's been around long enough speaks of when things were more punishing. That's clearly not a good direction if you want a game to have longevity and attract / keep more people around.They're not dumbing things down, but making them more consistent. It's been needed for the longest time, especially cleaning up the markers in older zones, so we remember when to stack and when not to. I'm most looking forward to that boss in Sohm Ai being corrected to stop using that red marker for a stack mech.

I get that change is difficult to accept, but it's generally been for the better. It's an MMO things are bound to change. Learn to stop taking things so personally and try to enjoy what's given to you.

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Originally Posted by Imoye

Yoshi P said in a video that FFXIV wouldn't exist were it not for WoW. The game was a major inspirational source for this game. My question really is: Is the dev team willing to learn from the mistakes Blizzard made?

Blizzard literally went on a raging simplification spree. Notably pruning and removing tons of abilities from each class and specializations in the name of "accessibility". Shortly after the game went downhill big time. Skill expression is today completely gone in WoW. Every class plays braindead 1-2-3 button smashing that literally dulls your brain as you play.

I truly do not understand why the developers want to do the same thing to FFXIV. Heck, Blizzard even recently stated that pruning was a mistake. They're now trying to "undo" the damage, but that's likely going to take multiple expansions of work. Why on earth would you want to repeat this same mistake in FFXIV?

Having easy jobs is perfectly fine, but there needs to be jobs that offer also medium difficulty and high difficulty. Pruning and dumbing down existing jobs is not in any way acceptable, and is an insult to players who main those jobs. If you want to make something simple, then you need to create new jobs that are simple from the beginning - period. People are invested in their jobs and you're actively disrespecting their affection by making changes none of them asked for.

By all means, continue to remove abilities and make the game play itself. You will not gain more subs; but you will lose half your player base from your arrogance.

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This game is not complex by design, so there's no point in showing complexity when it doesn't exist.

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Originally Posted by WhiteWitch

Honestly I would rather them condense the combos on the tank and dps classes. They already did it during the roleplay quests on MSQ. It would reduce the button bloat. pressing one button 3 times isn’t any easier than pressing 1-2-3.

it wouldn’t even matter for healers because they have two dps skills anyways

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I'm curious if 1-2-3 to 1-1-1 will affect any co-op gameplay? I don't think it will affect much in MSQ tho

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Originally Posted by Deveryn

Numbers have actually gone up as they've tried to improve quality of life. Anyone that's been around long enough speaks of when things were more punishing. That's clearly not a good direction if you want a game to have longevity and attract / keep more people around.They're not dumbing things down, but making them more consistent. It's been needed for the longest time, especially cleaning up the markers in older zones, so we remember when to stack and when not to. I'm most looking forward to that boss in Sohm Ai being corrected to stop using that red marker for a stack mech.

I get that change is difficult to accept, but it's generally been for the better. It's an MMO things are bound to change. Learn to stop taking things so personally and try to enjoy what's given to you.

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Barely any of the changes they've made to job design reflects consistency. There are still a large number of jobs that lack global quality of life and all SE does is skirt around the problems they've made themselves.

SAM has a few useless buttons caused by unnecessary additions like Shoha 2 and Senei, despite SE giving PLD an AoE upgrade that doesn't take its own slot for no reason.
DRK and MCH still lack a charge system on Blood Weapon, Hypercharge or Wildfire, despite SE doing just that for other ping dependent abilities like Delirium, Perfect Balance, Inner Release, Bunshin, etc.
GNB's Gnashing Fang combo being condensed into one button, yet not doing this for other abilities like Ikishoten -> Ogi or Iaijutsu -> Tsubame.
BRD being given charges on Bloodletter for leniency, yet doing nothing for MNK's Chakra which has been dealing with overflow since Stormblood.
WHM's MP and cure potency problems, despite SE fixing that same issue with AST.

I could go on for days about this.

Thinking about it... Rhythm, sound design and responsiveness probably play a bigger role to making a job/rotation satisfying, not the quantity of buttons.

• Least the jobs i have most problem with is those i can't get a good rhythm/pattern with their rotation, notable job being Dragoon and their 11 step base rotation which doesn't translate well over to controller.
• Sound design for skills affects just how fun it is to use an ability.
• And responsiveness... well Ninja is a good example of what can happen with poor responsiveness with their mudras, slight latency and now your rotation of messed up.

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Originally Posted by Deveryn

Numbers have actually gone up as they've tried to improve quality of life. Anyone that's been around long enough speaks of when things were more punishing. That's clearly not a good direction if you want a game to have longevity and attract / keep more people around.They're not dumbing things down, but making them more consistent. It's been needed for the longest time, especially cleaning up the markers in older zones, so we remember when to stack and when not to. I'm most looking forward to that boss in Sohm Ai being corrected to stop using that red marker for a stack mech.

I get that change is difficult to accept, but it's generally been for the better. It's an MMO things are bound to change. Learn to stop taking things so personally and try to enjoy what's given to you.

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I don’t understand how you guys can make statements like they aren’t dumbing things down when the healer situation exists and they’ve literally gone on record saying they want to streamline future dungeons…They objectively are dumbing things down.