This live letter was a massive disappointment

• Trailer: neutral about it.
• New Dungeon, Trial, Raids, etc: would refrain from commenting too much until I dive into the contents myself. I am however, slightly disappointed the glamours coming from Aetherfont seems to be a recolored Deepshadow pieces with no hint of role swapping.
• V&C Dungeon: disappointed they did not expand the additional actions.
• Glams in general: glowy tomestone weapons? Great, more reason for my glamour dresser to cry lmao. Liking the upcoming crafted top for my main job, and most of the other role's looks are looking badass. But that's where the good ends for my main role. Healer's Tomestone glam is yet another hunt for st.catherine's pajama. NR/Savage is yet another tablecloth. When will we leave this 'uwufy fragile animu healer princess'-box behind? Very unlikely I guess. Pls Yoshi-P delete the glam restriction save AF pieces and let my healer wear those other role's glams.
• Isle: neutral. On paper it looks fine though.
• Frontline: I'm not liking how they're making ice tomeliths respawnable when the generic daily FL'er as of now already tries their best to avoid engaging at all in a friggin' -PvP- game mode. (Why, just why...) I'm also worried this might mean there's even more element of RNG added into the match, leading to even more frustrating streak of bad/good luck. Only one way to find out, eh?
• Raid token adjustment: It's about time, YES PLEASE.

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Originally Posted by yoshikwalla

I say we get more burgers with 4k resolution and 12,000 polygons.

But seriously, how have the forums gotten like this? Just the same group of people posting overly negative threads and arguing with people making positive ones, as if anything not overly critical of the game is "toxic positivity." These people can shove it.

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Fully agreed. They should unsub and play other games instead—wait, no! That’ll lower our sub count! Uh…they should stay subbed and just stop whining! Wait, shit, there’s no content for them to do. Uh…I guess we can just complain about the complainers? Two complaints cancel each other out, right? Great idea!

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Originally Posted by Atelier-Bagur

As a famous bald man once (every few couple of minutes on stream) said "Its is what it is". And thats how I feel about this patch. Its nothing groundbreaking, nothing offensive, just stuff weve already expected based on previous information we already knew.

So Im satisfied, I just feel sorry for the people who foolishly thought that somehow this was gonna answer all of their wishes.

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They could at least wait for a Live Letter that will Address 7.0/Next Expansion, and not a Live Letter Based around Patch 6.4
Most of us already knew what to expect. Anything NEW and "Groundbreaking" would be towards the Next Expansion.....not a Patch.

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Originally Posted by caffe_macchiato

Fully agreed. They should unsub and play other games instead—wait, no! That’ll lower our sub count! Uh…they should stay subbed and just stop whining! Wait, shit, there’s no content for them to do. Uh…I guess we can just complain about the complainers? Two complaints cancel each other out, right? Great idea!

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...You alright? Take a few chill pills, calm the hyperbole, put the straw back in that barrel. Or sack, or some such straw containment unit.

PvP updates, I can't comment until the full patch is out and I can try it out to see whether the updates were better or worse. Same with Frontlines. The new UI update looks pretty nice though.
The change to Season 7 for having a reason to climb to Diamond is a good change. I'm not sure if it's going to be enough to keep people invested in ranked after this season after unlocking the reward. Personally, I'm not really interested in this specific glow effect or design on the BLM staff, but maybe the effect would look better on another weapon? Not sure if the glow color would work on my glamour style either. I'll have to wait until the full update is out to be able to tell.

I think the Island Sanctuary update for glamour and outdoor furnishings look pretty nifty. Will have to try them out to see though.

Hopefully they add some extra rewards to incentivize doing Criterion and Criterion Savage more than once. New Mounts and minions look cool.

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Originally Posted by yoshikwalla

...You alright? Take a few chill pills, calm the hyperbole, put the straw back in that barrel. Or sack, or some such straw containment unit.

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That's just how Macchi is.

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Originally Posted by Kes13a

they have been listening, it seems, more to the people that dont want to group in an mmo, and increasing the solo content availability with things like Trrusts

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People have made this argument about MMOs that they're only for groups and can't ever have anything for soloists or duos, etc. And it's just not true. Since EverQuest (and probably Ultima Online before that but I didn't play that) people have wanted the ability to just chill by themselves doing something that gave them progress in the game. Doesn't mean they never wanted to group. They just wanted times they didn't have to. You get burned out if you can't ever have a second to yourself in a game. So it's not like wanting solo content in an MMO is any sort of new idea.

EverQuest II had solo, group, and raid questlines for this reason. Because they saw the demand. WoW did pretty much the same thing. So you could choose your level of engagement. MMO does and has always just meant that you're in online in the same dynamic world as others. There is no requirement that you always have to be doing something in a group. XIV is making the basic quest in the game something that can be done solo or with groups, and still maintaining the group content out there as options for any who want it.

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Originally Posted by EliaStormblade

That's just how Macchi is.

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Unfathomably based?

It is irrelevant. people on the forum think you can just invent entirely new worlds and raids and multiple dungeons and whatever story over a few months.... if the game is to dull for you right now play something else..

Having a semi break sort of only doing a few things I usually do in game and then I play UFO 2 Terror from the Deep... and old game from the mid 90s also known as X-Com 2.... not the new one the original one.

Play other games on the side, plenty of games out there and they don't have to be AAA games either that offer next to no content at all.

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Originally Posted by caffe_macchiato

Fully agreed. They should unsub and play other games instead—wait, no! That’ll lower our sub count! Uh…they should stay subbed and just stop whining! Wait, shit, there’s no content for them to do. Uh…I guess we can just complain about the complainers? Two complaints cancel each other out, right? Great idea!

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Just unsubscribe and don't let the door kick you on the way out <3

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Originally Posted by Themarvin

if the game is to dull for you right now play something else..

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https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/...49/566/a6a.gif

this will always be my favourite mmo even if i am feeling sad about it's current state i will still log in and do dailies at least , but ...
Y "Since I want everyone to tackle a lot of content and play other games too I just didn't want this to feel like it will take forever and you're bound to raiding in ff14. There are so many other games coming out in May and June"
it's really depressing that he have to say play other games on every live letter .
or is it their way for promoting other se games? but you know not everyone owns a ps5.

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Originally Posted by ameliaw

I didn't like that you only need 1 of a furniture item to place as many copies as you want in the IS. I know that this is very minor but did decorating the island need to be that easy? For some players, having to work for the gil to buy each item could give them something to do for a while.
As someone who enjoys selling furniture in the marketboard, that's kind of a shame.

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...Are you really disappointed because you can't get a profit from selling an outdoor furniture?

IMO, that feature of placing furniture via glamour is the best thing ever, because you don't have to purchase plenty of junk only to find out it doesn't fit to your liking, and also you can place those Cherry Blossom tree as much as you can! Much better than what current housing offered.

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Originally Posted by Knot_D

...Are you really disappointed because you can't get a profit from selling an outdoor furniture?

IMO, that feature of placing furniture via glamour is the best thing ever, because you don't have to purchase plenty of junk only to find out it doesn't fit to your liking! Much better than what current housing offered.

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Yeah it's pretty cool. Got to giggle those selling furniture have been making a killing with all the housing that's been going up recently. I think it's awesome you can use one item in Sanctuary multiple times.

Personally what I saw today was pretty neat and I suspect we'll get a house there as well although something like that is perfect for a Fanfest reveal. We'll have to wait and see but if they can do that outdoors I'm sure the possibility exists for an indoor deco phase as well. Hopefully if housing is coming I hope we will have different skin and placement in the wild options.

And the live letter was pretty special in my view lots of neat stuff coming.

They didn't talk about or at least I missed it if they did but I hope they scale the difficulty down a bit for the mid tier version of that content.

I mean nothing blew me away, but 14’s patch cycle is so formulaic that nearly everything shown could have been predicted. The new fights look cool (cept the giant hitboxes), the job changes seem to be decent, the loot changes are great. I hate how the crafted gear looks, island sanctuary is a snooze fest and most of my complains with the game are still unaddressed but expecting more than this from a patch was just unrealistic.

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Originally Posted by lalin

this will always be my favourite mmo even if i am feeling sad about it's current state i will still log in and do dailies at least , but ...
Y "Since I want everyone to tackle a lot of content and play other games too I just didn't want this to feel like it will take forever and you're bound to raiding in ff14. There are so many other games coming out in May and June"
it's really depressing that he have to say play other games on every live letter .
or is it their way for promoting other se games? but you know not everyone owns a ps5.

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Yeah, I mean I WANT to play FF14. I WANT to log on and have something to do and know I’ll have fun doing it. I don’t want to play other games. I’ve hardly played EW since 6.2 because there’s just nothing to do and most jobs are so boring it hurts. I log on, see how all there is to do is the same stuff there’s been since 2016 (yet somehow less) and log off. This game got me though a lot of hard shit and seeing it so stale and seeing so many people defend such utter mediocrity hurts.

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This game got me though a lot of hard shit and seeing it so stale and seeing so many people defend such utter mediocrity hurts.

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What you call "mediocrity" is not what others see in the game, Sarge. Each to their own. Im enjoying the hell out of myself..as far as 'mediocre" goes, I tend to disagree and find the game and its content very enjoyable.

Im curious: what is it you would see changed / included?

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Originally Posted by VelKallor

What you call "mediocrity" is not what others see in the game, Sarge. Each to their own. Im enjoying the hell out of myself..as far as 'mediocre" goes, I tend to disagree and find the game and its content very enjoyable.

Im curious: what is it you would see changed / included?

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90% of my issues with 14 are as follows: Stale job design is the biggest. Every buff being 2 minutes, tanks having identical cooldowns and similar rotations, and healers spamming 1 button and barely needing to heal. I do have specific gripes about DPS but those are relatively minor. How boring leveling is, how slowly you gain abilities on most jobs etc. The absense of midcore, repeatable content like bozja or eureka. And recent bosses just being boring like Rubicante, Agdistis, or Hegemone. The other 10% are things like how boring stats are, how dull hunts are (I mean they never even up their stats so they don’t get steamrolled after the first raid tier), how item level sync has removed most challenge (and therefore fun) from older content like old trials and a few other nitpicks.

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Originally Posted by SargeTheSeagull

Yeah, I mean I WANT to play FF14. I WANT to log on and have something to do and know I’ll have fun doing it. I don’t want to play other games. I’ve hardly played EW since 6.2 because there’s just nothing to do and most jobs are so boring it hurts. I log on, see how all there is to do is the same stuff there’s been since 2016 (yet somehow less) and log off. This game got me though a lot of hard shit and seeing it so stale and seeing so many people defend such utter mediocrity hurts.

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same here, FFXIV for me though my surgery when I was down but that was during stormblood, it's just been an IMVU chatroom since then, which is sad and just being a dress up game with housing

FFXIV is all about balance but even the devs can't get it right and we have to suffer with this homogenized carbon copy of jobs, it just not fun

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The absense of midcore, repeatable content like bozja or eureka

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The criterion and variants dont meet that need? Or is this a loot issue?

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Originally Posted by VelKallor

The criterion and variants dont meet that need? Or is this a loot issue?

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It’s a loot and difficulty issue. Variant is effortless and mainly for lore/story which I don’t mind. Criterion is as hard/harder than extreme which doesn’t fill the gulf between normal and extreme as eureka and bozja did. A massive issue with 14 is how “normal” content is so easy you basically can’t fail and the next step up, extreme/criterion, is so difficult it takes literally hours of prog for the average person to clear. Also yeah, there’s no reason criterion shouldn’t reward gear. Eureka/bozja, which criterion replaced, rewarded gear. I enjoy hard content, but criterion doesn’t fit between normal and extreme. If I do criterion, I’ve got to 100% focus. Whereas bosses in eureka/bozja (CE’s, instance raids, and certain NM’s) were hard enough you have to pay attention and try but not so hard as to command your focus for hours as you progress through.

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Originally Posted by VelKallor

The criterion and variants dont meet that need? Or is this a loot issue?

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SE puts a lot of effort into them but adds no reason to do them after you get your glam/mount/achievement whatever. If they added some sort of leaderboard for the time it takes to complete, add in a catch up mechanic for gear, random drop rewards, some sort of reason to play beyond the first week of release then it could be good midcore content. It's a shame because the new dungeon visually looks gorgeous and I hate to see it get abandoned like the previous criterion did.

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Originally Posted by Jkap_Goat

FFXIV is all about balance but even the devs can't get it right and we have to suffer with this homogenized carbon copy of jobs, it just not fun

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most developers for most games could not balance classes/jobs with two hands and a directions manual. players scream about this mythical "balance" and then complain as things all become the same.. which is actually "balanced"

it is a prime example of, "be careful what you wish for"

Hmm....the difference in the two is that the criterion instances have a longer shelf life, exploratory zones tend to be short term. Sarge, thank you for a detailed analysis..Ill have to think on this. Your raise some valid points. Im not sure I agree with job design...problem there is everyone has their own ideas on what they want the jobs to do, regardless, no one will ever be happy.

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Also yeah, there’s no reason criterion shouldn’t reward gear

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What ilevels would you think make sense, given the gradient between the base crafted and savage / extreme / unreal tiers?

Where would the gear fit in?

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SE puts a lot of effort into them but adds no reason to do them after you get your glam/mount/achievement whatever. If they added some sort of leaderboard for the time it takes to complete, add in a catch up mechanic for gear, random drop rewards, some sort of reason to play beyond the first week of release then it could be good midcore content. It's a shame because the new dungeon visually looks gorgeous and I hate to see it get abandoned like the previous criterion did.

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Agree 100%. Longevity is the key element.

It's a normal patch so I'm not more disappointed than usual. We've been taught to not expect anything out of the ordinary. The next battleground is pushing for bigger changes in 7.X series. There's still time to yell for changes before it's all set in stone. I thought 5.X is when it became overdue to break the stale formula but we blew right by that. Yoshida!

One point I do want to raise: and it goes back to "too easy" : there MUST be a distinction between things like Criterion and story content, story content by SPECIFIC design MUST be able to be completed with a view to varying levels of skills / ability. Story content should not be a brick wall.

Later content can, and should be, harder on a curve, BUT with the understanding that story content is MEANT to be completeable. Not everyone goes on to the harder content, many play for the story content alone and go on to other activities that suit them.

That should be kept very much in mind when discussing this. A while back I discussed "Feast of Lies"..what I DIDNT know back then was that the boss has his OWN enrage separate from the timer you see onscreen..which, I agree, is what threw me off and why I failed so often. it wasnt till someone TOLD ME that I realised what I had missed.

Once I knew that, I knew what to do.

There must be a balance with content difficulty levels.

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Originally Posted by Kes13a

most developers for most games could not balance classes/jobs with two hands and a directions manual. players scream about this mythical "balance" and then complain as things all become the same.. which is actually "balanced"

it is a prime example of, "be careful what you wish for"

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Everyone always has this Perfect View, and then Pickachu Face Hardcore when Reality sets in and tells them "Thats not realistic"

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Originally Posted by VelKallor

What you call "mediocrity" is not what others see in the game, Sarge. Each to their own. Im enjoying the hell out of myself..as far as 'mediocre" goes, I tend to disagree and find the game and its content very enjoyable.

Im curious: what is it you would see changed / included?

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i think you won't start seeing the issue unless you've played 3+ years or even more - you start to notice some things you haven't when you were new and of coure it's different from one person to another - to me i wish we had more content that requires you to do alot of grinding in the world , something like fates or hunts but with actual rewards and takes a long time to finish so the content does't die in few weeks from it's release date ,
i really love the areas in this game and adding content like that would make them more alive i think .
i understand people don't like to grind for things but isn't that how mmo work?

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Originally Posted by VelKallor

What ilevels would you think make sense, given the gradient between the base crafted and savage / extreme / unreal tiers?

Where would the gear fit in?

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Honestly I would love to see Savage criterion to be horizontal progression for savage gearing, ie it gives the same ilvl as savage with different stats/materia/something as there is no actual horizontal gearing in the game. That being said if the normal criterion gave ilvl in between normal and savage gear it could also be used as an alternative gearing method, or give more casual players content to get slightly better gear and do harder content without going into savage. This is all with the caveat that you are already ~8 weeks into the savage tier and alot of raiders are probably going to be fully geared or nearly there and this can provide another avenue to flesh out their gear, help them get the last little push of gear to get them through the final savage fights, or even start gearing an alternate role. Variant difficulty is honestly there for the story and you have a reason to do it 12 times if that's your thing and doesn't necessarily need gear drops or anything for longevity if the criterion difficulties exist and have it covered.

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i understand people don't like to grind for things but isn't that how mmo work

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It WAS. Ten years ago. Times change..demographics change, people change. Lalin: Ill drop this in and Id like you to go off and think on it.

The average MMO gamer these days is in their mid thirties, job, kids, commitments. A growing percentage are older..a LOT older, with the 50+ bracket slowly climbing. They are called "grey gamers", also in that bracket are a growing playerbase of women, which I am absolutely DELIGHTED to see.

The playerbase is maturing across a lot of platforms. The old MMO "grindfest" was attuned..shall we say..for a younger audience..time being for older people what it is...a premium.

Ive actually said this before: demographics drive game design.

Something to consider, no?

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Originally Posted by Amenara

Honestly I would love to see Savage criterion to be horizontal progression for savage gearing, ie it gives the same ilvl as savage with different stats/materia/something as there is no actual horizontal gearing in the game. That being said if the normal criterion gave ilvl in between normal and savage gear it could also be used as an alternative gearing method, or give more casual players content to get slightly better gear and do harder content without going into savage. This is all with the caveat that you are already ~8 weeks into the savage tier and alot of raiders are probably going to be fully geared or nearly there and this can provide another avenue to flesh out their gear, help them get the last little push of gear to get them through the final savage fights, or even start gearing an alternate role. Variant difficulty is honestly there for the story and you have a reason to do it 12 times if that's your thing and doesn't necessarily need gear drops or anything for longevity if the criterion difficulties exist and have it covered.

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Okay, THIS is the kind of answer I had hoped for. Amenara, we agree, and I can definitely get behind this.

Well put.

EDIT: Amenara: I just sent your post via the suggestions interface ingame. Lets hope they look at it.

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Originally Posted by VelKallor

It WAS. Ten years ago. Times change..demographics change, people change. Lalin: Ill drop this in and Id like you to go off and think on it.

The average MMO gamer these days is in their mid thirties, job, kids, commitments. A growing percentage are older..a LOT older, with the 50+ bracket slowly climbing. They are called "grey gamers", also in that bracket are a growing playerbase of women, which I am absolutely DELIGHTED to see.

The playerbase is maturing across a lot of platforms. The old MMO "grindfest" was attuned..shall we say..for a younger audience..time being for older people what it is...a premium.

Ive actually said this before: demographics drive game design.

Something to consider, no?

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Yes and no. Money is the driving factor, especially for MMOs which are expensive and risky. It just so happens that older folks have more disposable income.

But that's also why we have seen rises in lootboxes and P2W mechanics in various genres; because they make money, even if it's at the cost of game quality.

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Originally Posted by Zanarkand-Ronso

Everyone always has this Perfect View, and then Pickachu Face Hardcore when Reality sets in and tells them "Thats not realistic"

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I mean if that "small indie company" Blizzard could never accomplish it....

I for one would love "balance" everyone I know would... but what is "balance" varies per person, and if it was easy, game devs would done it YEARS ago. homogeneity IS balance.. but not very fun as we all know... but people still ask for it like its easy and companies just refuse to do it.

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Originally Posted by VelKallor

Okay, THIS is the kind of answer I had hoped for. Amenara, we agree, and I can definitely get behind this.

Well put.

EDIT: Amenara: I just sent your post via the suggestions interface ingame. Lets hope they look at it.

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I appreciate the sentiment and maybe it will be taken into consideration for future criterions if they keep going with it.

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Originally Posted by Kes13a

I mean if that "small indie company" Blizzard could never accomplish it....

I for one would love "balance" everyone I know would... but what is "balance" varies per person, and if it was easy, game devs would done it YEARS ago. homogeneity IS balance.. but not very fun as we all know... but people still ask for it like its easy and companies just refuse to do it.

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I'd say that perfect balance is impossible, but relatively good balance is. The problem is that the latter often comes at the cost of variety and enjoyability in class design. WoW vs FF14 is a great example of this. WoW allows for a ton of talent and gear variety. Consequently, it's nigh on impossible to have everything balanced. But when we look at FF14, all the jobs are pretty dang close within their respective roles. But as a cost, all the jobs feel pretty samey and there is literally zero customization at all.

Well next month I'll be in Diablo 4 which has been fun. Ninja should be what Rogue is in D4. Using poison skills, shadow skills instead they wanted to be like Naruto and be goofy. FFXIV decided to go take a low risk low rewards system and it's catching up quick to them. Sadly no one will call out the devs on their mediocre decisions and instead live in a drug induced haze like everything is good and not let it be fixed

So looking at the patch content for me.

MSQ: 1-2 days
Pandemonium NM: 1-2 days + weekly
Unreal: Weekly
Variant: Around 1 week for the 12 stories plus some farming for items
Bluemage: 1-2 days for leveling, then around 1 week for spells and quests
Hildibrand: 1-2 days, relic tomes slowly
Island Sanctuary: AFK for 2 weeks to get to max rank

Looks like PVP will be the thing that keeps me mostly in the game besides weekly locks I guess. Good thing FF XVI drops in june, not a lot will tie me down in 6.4 as the more "lenghty" content is in 6.45.

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Originally Posted by Kisshu

MSQ: 1-2 days
Pandemonium NM: 1-2 days + weekly
Unreal: Weekly
Variant: Around 1 week for the 12 stories plus some farming for items
Bluemage: 1-2 days for leveling, then around 1 week for spells and quests
Hildibrand: 1-2 days, relic tomes slowly
Island Sanctuary: AFK for 2 weeks to get to max rank

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This for me plus I'll also be trying ocean fishing, savage (10 weeks if I'm optimistic), extreme, criterion (about 1 month for reclears), pvp series rank 25 (150 matches) and getting+decorating a mansion if auto-demolition is back on soon and I win one. I'll also be making gil, doing some hunt trains and spawning S ranks, farming some raid+trial mounts I skipped and trying to get further solo in Orthos. Pretty excited for what's next! Especially the story.

I liked it. But I really wish they had went over criterion rewards other than the new mount. I would say the even number patches have been on point this expansion in terms of content as a whole. It is the odd number patches where we have seen content be flat.

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Originally Posted by VelKallor

It WAS. Ten years ago. Times change..demographics change, people change. Lalin: Ill drop this in and Id like you to go off and think on it.

The average MMO gamer these days is in their mid thirties, job, kids, commitments. A growing percentage are older..a LOT older, with the 50+ bracket slowly climbing. They are called "grey gamers", also in that bracket are a growing playerbase of women, which I am absolutely DELIGHTED to see.

The playerbase is maturing across a lot of platforms. The old MMO "grindfest" was attuned..shall we say..for a younger audience..time being for older people what it is...a premium.

Ive actually said this before: demographics drive game design.

Something to consider, no?

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Fully agreed <3

Seems like some people want to treat this game as a full time job. Those people should just play P2W KMMOs instead.