There's too much strawmanning people who criticize the game

When people stop criticizing or discussing a game it means game on life support and close to death, players no longer care about game most likely playing to another game and most likely will not return.
This is what happened to Aion / New World. 1-3 month total silence, only 1-2 daily complaint, suggestion or random topic.. now both games ghost town..

Reject Endwalker, return to Stormblood.

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Originally Posted by Caurcas

Reject Endwalker, return to Stormblood.

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return to stormblood in what sense? story? garbage. gameplay? nothing special, this game in general has never been special in that regard. classes? they already played the same in that expansion, playing tank wasn't very different regardless if you played PLD, WAR or DRK for example.

so return to stormblood in what sense?

no there isnt :D

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Originally Posted by Ritsuka-55

return to stormblood in what sense? story? garbage. gameplay? nothing special, this game in general has never been special in that regard. classes? they already played the same in that expansion, playing tank wasn't very different regardless if you played PLD, WAR or DRK for example.

so return to stormblood in what sense?

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Gameplay was at its most polished. Roles still had decent identity. Aggro management was still a real thing. Healers had more than 2 buttons. Story was better. Tanking and healing weren't braindead. Content variety. But go off I suppose.

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Originally Posted by Caurcas

Gameplay was at its most polished. Roles still had decent identity. Aggro management was still a real thing. Healers had more than 2 buttons. Story was better. Tanking and healing weren't braindead. Content variety. But go off I suppose.

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what aggro management? did you tank in stormblood? because I did and besides the first couple of buttons or one aoe combo was enough to be at the top of the aggro list, then you dropped your tank stance and proceeded to be a blue dps as usual, in fact the tank stance besides the first couple of seconds was just another mitigation button for the tank busters, besides that had little to no use. the issue is still the same now than it was back then, aka tanks are just blue dps. It's a core design problem.

So no, by stormblood homogenization was already there. gameplay has been the same, perhaps more creativity? sure i can conceed that, but gameplay is the same shit as it was back in that expansion.

Story, welp, guess it's okay to agree to disagree.

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Originally Posted by Ritsuka-55

what aggro management? did you tank in stormblood? because I did and besides the first couple of buttons or one aoe combo was enough to be at the top of the aggro list, then you dropped your tank stance and proceeded to be a blue dps as usual, in fact the tank stance besides the first couple of seconds was just another mitigation button for the tank busters, besides that had little to no use. the issue is still the same now than it was back then, aka tanks are just blue dps. It's a core design problem.

So no, by stormblood homogenization was already there. gameplay has been the same, perhaps more creativity? sure i can conceed that, but gameplay is the same shit as it was back in that expansion.

Story, welp, guess it's okay to agree to disagree.

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You forget after dropping tank stance in order to stay out optimally your dps and healers had to use their aggro dumps on the reg or you were forced back into stance or having to use multiple aggro combos out of stance. That's another thing, every tank still had multiple combo paths. Is it alot? No. Did it add some nuance and was it more engaging than it is now? Most definitely. You still had quite a divide between good tanks and bad tanks back then on a mechanical level.

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Originally Posted by Caurcas

You forget after dropping tank stance in order to stay out optimally your dps and healers had to use their aggro dumps on the reg or you were forced back into stance or having to use multiple aggro combos out of stance. That's another thing, every tank still had multiple combo paths. Is it alot? No. Did it add some nuance and was it more engaging than it is now? Most definitely. You still had quite a divide between good tanks and bad tanks back then on a mechanical level.

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That's the dps and healers problem, because the game is about damage, if they do their job, i don't have to activate the tank stance again and have dps loss.

perhaps it's me, but there wasn't anything special about tanking back in the day. it feelt pretty similar.

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Originally Posted by Ritsuka-55

That's the dps and healers problem, because the game is about damage, if they do their job, i don't have to activate the tank stance again and have dps loss.

perhaps it's me, but there wasn't anything special about tanking back in the day. it feelt pretty similar.

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That's the issue though. That system was straight forward and easy to understand in casual or hardcore play. They needlessly removed a layer of complexity for no reason in ShB to make it even more braindead. This is compounded by gameplay encounters not made any more difficult to compensate for the simplification. Also they removed support functions from dps, and removed synergy as well.

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Originally Posted by Caurcas

That's the issue though. That system was straight forward and easy to understand in casual or hardcore play. They needlessly removed a layer of complexity for no reason in ShB to make it even more braindead. This is compounded by gameplay encounters not made any more difficult to compensate for the simplification. Also they removed support functions from dps, and removed synergy as well.

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Again, there wasn't anything complex about it. At the end of the day what you need is damage, the problem already starts from basic core design.

gameplay would need an entire overhaul, and I don't think that's the devs priority.