Is there a point in caring about the game?

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Originally Posted by Kandraxx

They don't care, they are already in the process of transitioning out of this game. Their gacha games like the Saga ones are reeling in more cash in Japan than they know what to do with and the FF14 mobile game will likely kill it in China and elsewhere in Asia specifically.

This doesn't mean that the servers will be shut down anytime soon but it means that the game will go into sort of a low-effort maintenance mode just like Guild Wars 2, with scraps of content here and there and most importantly an elaborate cash shop laid out as a convenient trap for any ambitious, dopamine-pumped newcomers who might think the game is still in it's glory days.

No point in dealing with a bunch of disgruntled gaijin in their 40s when you can just sell chances to obtain virtual figurines $5 a pop.

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They're probably pouring all their resources into FF9 remake or FF17 or something too :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by Fagotura

Casual (in terms of raiding) players definitely had a great option in crafting if they didn't want to raid. It took so much time and was so rewarding. You could unironically be a crafter main in HW and maybe SB. It's a whole stream of content that they just gutted completely.

Not everyone wanted to raid and it's OK. I had fun just making Ironworks gear to sell back then because it was so rewarding for the effort you put in. And the system had so much depth that it feels like there is always something new to learn right around the corner.

Even if we reverted back to HW systems I think it's already too late. There are not just crafting simulators now but fully optimal crafting solvers that will find the minimum step rotation.

https://www.raphael-xiv.com/

With some little extra effort you could also easily alter the code to take into account conditions and use that to solve expert recipes for every proc you get.

The sense of discovery is just completely gone now from all the game's content, and it's not just SE's fault but also because the community has grown so reliant on third party tools. There is a counter to this and it's to produce innovative content that people don't know how to optimize yet. But that's probably something you can't expect from SE.

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You're hitting a really good point as well. The game in it's infancy didn't even have a party finder yet and it caused people to spend time socially building a reliable party to clear a trial for a relic weapon that only a max level crafter could meld for you. In our tools for convenience, we've become more self reliant and maybe that's not such a good thing.

I'm completely apathetic towards this live letter. I was almost excited, but waiting another 2 months until occult crescent and that being the *only* zone until 7.55... nah. Just... nah. Dunno why I'd bother logging in for that when I can just do it next year, if I haven't finally gotten rid of my houses and moved on completely by then.

A good friend of mine bought me a 60 day gametime card because he wanted me to go get the Inferno Jacket and such. So I did. But I find myself struggling to care.

I first posted on this forum nearly 6 years ago now. I mained Bard. That was when they introduced the Bard that didn't do *any* buffs to the world, and, you know, it was Shadowbringers. And although Shadowbringers had a good story, I never latched onto another job as hard as I did Stormblood's Bard. I dabbled, leveled *all* my jobs and eventually found my footing on the Red Mage I only casually played. Raided with it a bit, but it never felt right.

And with every job they added and reworked, we strayed further away from the jobs I enjoyed.

I skipped out on playing during most of Shadowbringers. I played during maybe... two patches of Endwalker. All the while still keeping up with the game hoping that it'd one day come back to life.

I found myself unreasonably excited for Dawntrail. I got caught up again. I made new friends on Light in the process of doing ex farms and such.

Then they decided to lock it down for release. Sure, understandable.
Then the lock was extended to a new permanent travel inhibition system. oh.

At this point, most of the people I know are barely logging in. Some have statics, but one just unceremoniously forgot to update their payment details and said "eh. fuck it." gone.
Then they deleted what made my Dragoon friend's job tick for him, ensuring he'd most likely never play again. gone.
Now they're deleting what makes Black Mage tick, ensuring my caster friend probably won't come back again either.

Logging in is difficult. There's nobody waiting on the other side, and no content I want to engage with. I don't have time to spend hours in pf, but I also don't want to be railroaded into the same 3 dungeons for months, the same 3 alliance raids I've seen since they made the roulette, the same event quest copied over and over...

Crafting is boring. PvE is boring. PvP just isn't my cup of tea. The social part isn't there unless I seek out the clubbing community and quite frankly I'm not a clubbing type of guy.

I was angry before. Saddened. Now... it's been so many years and so long, I've mostly moved on. I just don't care that much anymore.

I'll still keep up with developments, atleast until WoW's housing drops. And if that's even half as good as XIV's housing, then I think I have a new place to stay.

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Originally Posted by kajv95

I'm completely apathetic towards this live letter.

I was angry before. Saddened. Now... it's been so many years and so long, I've mostly moved on. I just don't care that much anymore.

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Honestly I feel you. I've been so apathetic to this game since EW, but right now I'm surprised to see so many people wishing to burn it down in the LuckyBancho thread. Right now it isn't even about the game anymore to me but about gaming in general, and it seems to me this hobby has been completely screwed over by business calculus and gone are the days when AAA games (barring very few) were always exciting and something people looked forward to.

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Originally Posted by Fagotura

Frankly you could probably just take advantage of the free login periods to do the MSQ, try out the exploratory zone, and do the raids. Unless you do Savage/Ultimate I'm not sure there is enough content to last more than a couple free login periods anyways!

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The irony is you could have waited until 7.2 drops to purchase Dawntrail, which is currently on sale, and still had enough time to catch up on everything from 7.0 to Crescent's release in 7.25. Excluding raids, of course. That's how shallow the casual content has been. And yet if you look at Xeno or Zepla's video or comb through XIV's subreddit, you'll still found people staunchly defending this game. Heck, I've been arguing with someone today who insisted it's impossible to have finished all the casual content in Dawntrail specifically by now. Which is downright laughable, especially when they added "even if you played for 10 hours a day."

It's remarkable the lengths people will go to defend this game.

So this is my thought process and this is a layered over several things on top of each other. Lets start where we came from, Endwalker. That was to be the conclusion of the original 1.0 story, ARR for most people. It was to be a climactic conclusion to this 10+ year journey. After EW we got the 5 part mini story of Zero and the 13th while we for the next expansion. What we have is a fragile emotional anchor that was freed, we had our character's main journey end and we as players were looking to the next journey the next big boss.

That is an issue the problem is most if not all story hooks were resolved or finished, Dawntrail doesn't have anything to attach to continue on plot-wise, and the ends are all tied up. So a new story and foundation needs to be made to keep us the players entertained and interested. This is where Dawntrail gets shaky and it isn't 100% the writing's fault, it can also be the mental state of players at the moment and time. We had the anticipation that Dawntrail would be better than Endwalker and some even said Shadowbringers. So we got a buildup to disaster, where we got the game slowing down to build the start for the next ten years, writing that doesn't live up to expectations, and we got players who wanted something better than Endwalker/ Shadowbringers

So we got the Dawntrail reception, which is lackluster to the community that spoke up and it has a mental cascade effect when people begin to agree. So we start to latch on to things that is bad about the game or don't like, we as humans are attached to negative things a lot more than positive ones. The small issues become big issues, and repeated complaints become being ignored. We then try to shift the blame, and the one in the crossfire is Yoshi-p, who is the face of FFXIV, so we have people take their anger on him. Some even targeting voice actors with hate and negativity, or even characters that are probably not that bad are now big issues.

As of now, the community that uses these forums it does feel they are on a warpath, believing the game is unfixable and wanting to nitpick everything. We have those who are "quitting" the game or unsubing but are still active on the forums. And we got those who just string up things to cause heat or fire in the community. I will say there are some good criticisms but we also get baited posts to cause fire and problems. The Black mage changes are the newest topic to latch on to, but im not a black mage player so I don't have the passion compared to others. all I will say is, i will wait to see how it fully plays out in 7.2 and post-patch. It might just be a temporary thing till 8.0, I don't know.

I have played this game since 2.0 I have seen this game go through the good, bad, and ugly. When players are angry, it is because they care and are passionate about the game. They will nitpick, and point out things that are grinding their gears because they want change.

The game feels like my old MMO anarchy online as it approached maintenance mode and basically a coma death. Still alive but zzzzzzz.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

The irony is you could have waited until 7.2 drops to purchase Dawntrail, which is currently on sale, and still had enough time to catch up on everything from 7.0 to Crescent's release in 7.25. Excluding raids, of course. That's how shallow the casual content has been. And yet if you look at Xeno or Zepla's video or comb through XIV's subreddit, you'll still found people staunchly defending this game. Heck, I've been arguing with someone today who insisted it's impossible to have finished all the casual content in Dawntrail specifically by now. Which is downright laughable, especially when they added "even if you played for 10 hours a day."

It's remarkable the lengths people will go to defend this game.

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10 hours a day could probably have done it, but there is a lot of 7.0 specific stuff I still didn't accomplish, because I took my time and got all my classes to level 100 first.

Ugh, I really need to go back and finish those FATES..... the bicolor gem grind is real.

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Originally Posted by Astronema

The game feels like my old MMO anarchy online as it approached maintenance mode and basically a coma death. Still alive but zzzzzzz.

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When they basically just sent all the senior devs off to other projects and staff this game with junior devs. That's pretty much what it is. A glorified maintenance mode.

The purpose of FF14 isn't to deliver a great game. It's to train the junior devs at Square Enix so they can then move on to projects SE cares more about.

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Originally Posted by SWATomega

That is an issue the problem is most if not all story hooks were resolved or finished, Dawntrail doesn't have anything to attach to continue on plot-wise, and the ends are all tied up. So a new story and foundation needs to be made to keep us the players entertained and interested.

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The biggest hook they rushed to resolve was Garlemald. That is the biggest travesty. It retroactively made Bozja completely pointless and also made ARR-SB feel like it didn't amount to much.

And the souljacking idea? Used for a cool instance and just suddenly forgotten.

They're probably doing the same to Mhach next :rolleyes:

Why so Doomy, take snicker of content.

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Originally Posted by Astronema

The game feels like my old MMO anarchy online as it approached maintenance mode and basically a coma death. Still alive but zzzzzzz.

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Even the QoL shit is basically gone nowadays. Remember when you get multiple significant QoL updates every patch back in ARR and HW? Yeah there's none of that now lmfao.

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Originally Posted by SWATomega

So this is my thought process

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I would say not everything is resolved, still plenty on the map that we never got to go there as of yet.

Heck we didn't go to Koshu in Hingashi during Stormblood (which was odd) and among other odd places that was locked off to us.

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Originally Posted by Kaliesto

I would say not everything is resolved, still plenty on the map that we never got to go there as of yet.

Heck we didn't go to Koshu in Hingashi during Stormblood (which was odd) and among other odd places that was locked off to us.

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They'll just find the cheapest way of resolving these plot threads which is dump it into a Variant dungeon LMAO

The "you can go play other games" sentiment is tiring, especially when you lose your house if you don't actively visit it once a month. YoshiP, I don't want to go play other games, I wanted to keep playing FFXIV.

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Originally Posted by Bekuta

The "you can go play other games" sentiment is tiring, especially when you lose your house if you don't actively visit it once a month. YoshiP, I don't want to go play other games, I wanted to keep playing FFXIV.

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Honestly I am starting to think I should ONLY go play other games and not bother caring about FF14.

But yes this sentiment is really tiring I want ff14 to be a better game, playing other games doesn't make ff14 better, I've invested time into the game, I used to enjoy it quite a lot, I've played other games and come back and theirs still nothing to do, nothing to be invested in.

As it have been said many time, unsub when you feel you need a break or to terminate this relationship.

Is the house really worth it if you are not enjoying the game at all

This is just like an unhealthy relationship, keep clinging on it because something you do not have joy it in yet it holding you back, it is not the house that holding you hostage but yourself

What makes ANYONE think this PATHETIC company is capable of ANYTHING in 2025?

https://bsky.app/profile/notnite.com/post/3lladdcxq5s2h

Seriously lmao, there's no point in caring about the game. Even when the devs WANT to fix issues, they literally don't know how to. LOL

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Originally Posted by Kazuke_Miso

What makes ANYONE think this PATHETIC company is capable of ANYTHING in 2025?

https://bsky.app/profile/notnite.com/post/3lladdcxq5s2h

Seriously lmao, there's no point in caring about the game. Even when the devs WANT to fix issues, they literally don't know how to. LOL

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Then stop caring about this game.

Just leave.

It would also be better for your mental health.

But no, you have to show the world how cool you are by playing a game you actually don't like playing. And for what? To insult people who say they have fun?

I'm honestly not sure. I'm only around for my friends and FC, even though their numbers decline more and more lately. I remember going through the 7.0 MSQ and the only feeling I had was "why should I care about any of this"? I have enjoyed Savage with my static but that's about it. Haven't touched the MSQ since 7.0. The new Bozja won't let me level my jobs, so I see very little reason to do it. A couple glams and mounts just aren't worth it. I was hoping the crafter and gatherer content would be Garlean restoration. Something that would make sense with the lore. That would make me feel like I'm part of Eorzea, doing something for it. Instead, it's an asset flip of the Moon. Dawntrail also took away my favourite job from me in nuking everything I liked about Astrologian. I just see no hope for the future at this point after all the disappointments.

Epic bump!!

Like many people said: Take breaks, play for so long then stop, hell cancel your unsub, uninstall the game if you don't care but you keep posting on teh forums. Hell i even took a year and a halff off the game so i can do other things i needed to do. Game isn't going anywhere if you decide to stop playing FFXIV for a couple of months or even a year

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Originally Posted by Mercury_Grey

Like many people said: Take breaks, play for so long then stop, hell cancel your unsub, uninstall the game if you don't care but you keep posting on teh forums. Hell i even took a year and a halff off the game so i can do other things i needed to do. Game isn't going anywhere if you decide to stop playing FFXIV for a couple of months or even a year

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The game is indeed lacking in direction.

I just signed into the game, did some gathering dailies, called out in the FC if anyone was there, nobody responded for a half hour, and I just signed off.

I genuinely wonder if the game will ever recover from this. It's such an uphill battle when more and more players are leaving.

I think there is certainly a migration of crystal players going off elsewhere to say the least. Tried to get an alt through the thordan normal fight trial, 30 mins and no queue pop as warrior.

I mean. What's to care about at this point?
Your now empty friends list? Your fc struggling to get new people? The queue timers getting longer and longer and longer? The lack of people participating in party finder? The lack of content meant to tide us over another 1.5 to 2 years till next expansion? The single worst VA in a video game since the playstation 2 era? The wondering what you are even logging in for, running circles for half an hour and logging out bored out of your mind?
The constant bombardment of "WE CANT DO THAT. ITS LITERALLY NOT POSSIBLE!!" and then WoW doing it like it's no big deal?
"MUH SPAGHETTI CODE!!!!" for years and years and years as an excuse to change absolutely nothing for the better?

They counted on the players to just sit here quietly and eat slop. They counted wrong.

Is there a point to enjoying ice cream?
Is there a point to laughing at a joke?
It's such a weird question.

Honestly?

No.

The MMO genre as a whole is just screwed. Rotted from the inside out by terrible developers, greedy corporate decisions, and stupid short sighted players who wouldn't boycott the bad shit when there was still a chance to turn it around.
For XIV in particular, it's truly dire, because it offers nothing particularly exceptional anymore. If you want a good story, you won't find it here; you're better off opening literally any book, or just blindly opening some slop on Netflix. If you want engaging gameplay, you're better off playing a single player game. If you want a community, you're better off helping your local crackhead with his dailies in real life, because at least he won't report you for being like "aw, shit" when things go wrong.
The parallels to when Blizzard was screwing up WoW are pretty interesting. In both cases, we have developers sort of resting on their laurels and thinking they can slack but keep their numbers up based on past success. If Yoshida gets caught with a bottle of breastmilk like that Blizzard exec a while back, we'll basically be proving that time is a loop.

But yeah. I like this game because I don't mind running the same slop over and over again, and I enjoy being a bizarre gremlin, but I don't "care about" this game anymore like I used to. When it goes down for maintenance, I'm not jonesing to log back in. When I'm at work, I'm not wanting to go home to play more XIV. And I'm like that about all MMOs now, where before I used to be quite addicted. But once you see how content sooooooooo many mmo studios are to just take advantage of player trust, it becomes difficult to invest into the genre. In my first MMO, maplestory, I played the crap out of it and spent a worrying amount of time in it. Probably addicted. But the company running it made a ton of greedy decisions and ruined the game over time. The next one was tera. Great gameplay loop. Fun hard mode content. I actually progged in that game, even helped build a guild where we taught newer folks that game's savage equivalent and got them into raiding. I hate raiding in this game and don't do it, so people tell me I'm a casual, but I used to do that shit all the time. I just don't in this game, because raiding in XIV is shit. Anyway, Tera fell apart for the same old reasons. Shitdevs and bad corporate decisions chipping away at a game we all loved. then came bdo, which -- LOL. If you know, you know. That game promised to be a fair experience since it was b2p, but then they had p2w shit on day 1. That was the real unveiling moment for me, idk. There are only so many times you can dive into something and be ripped off/cheated before you just stop caring. Then came XIV, which I enjoy casually, because I genuinely don't have the time or the patience or the inclination at this point to dive any deeper into something that, ultimately, doesn't even matter at the end of the day. Every expac I thank god that the savage glams don't appeal to me, because it means I won't feel compelled to dredge up old habits and actually build a small group to prog with in a game with a boring combat loop, scripted fights, and mechanics that penalize the shit out of you because one guy in your team is blind and dumb as hell.

But man I'm digressing hard. MMOs are screwed. Every studio realizes that it's easier to just half ass a mobile game and make way more money. Enjoy what you will, but there's no future here. Even WoW, on a long enough scale, will get comfy again and start sipping breastmilk like nothing happened.

Not really, no...

Far too much in the game is devalued and abandoned for it to feel either fun or meaningful in any capacity whatsoever.

Even some of the grinder stuff I've done in the game, e.g., Pteranodon... It just feels like a shallow experience/achievement, because it's like... Cool, I have 1 mount among 196 others which cannot really be shown off or showcased because the overworld is utterly barren. I have 22,300 or so achievement points, and it's like, so what? Game has no means of showcasing it, the rewards suck, and the achievement tokens are just 1 of many many abandoned systems, only introduced as a substitute for veteran rewards, or in the case of many other systems only there to serve as a feature quota and not to actually enhance or complement gameplay like they used to.

The list goes on and on..

Coming from someone who began in ARR alpha, quit before 2.2, returned sometime in 6.0~, and I doesn't even own EW or DT... and has just finished Shadowbringers...

Yeah this game has gone in the opposite direction of up.


More fanservice and weeb-favoring than actual worthwhile content the last so many years.

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Originally Posted by Avoidy

The MMO genre as a whole is just screwed. Rotted from the inside out by terrible developers, greedy corporate decisions, and stupid short sighted players who wouldn't boycott the bad shit when there was still a chance to turn it around.

But man I'm digressing hard. MMOs are screwed. Every studio realizes that it's easier to just half ass a mobile game and make way more money. Enjoy what you will, but there's no future here. Even WoW, on a long enough scale, will get comfy again and start sipping breastmilk like nothing happened.

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While that is quite true, the whole MMO genre is in decline, partly because social media has supplanted MMO as the primary place of social interaction. Initially, MMOs were the only places where one could virtually interact with each other, because there were no other avenues. Nowadays, with the widespread use of platforms like Facebook and Twitter, the importance of MMOs has substantially shifted and reduced. MMOs these days focus more on gameplay and story than the social aspect it once championed.

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Originally Posted by TeresaFortell

While that is quite true, the whole MMO genre is in decline, partly because social media has supplanted MMO as the primary place of social interaction. Initially, MMOs were the only places where one could virtually interact with each other, because there were no other avenues. Nowadays, with the widespread use of platforms like Facebook and Twitter, the importance of MMOs has substantially shifted and reduced. MMOs these days focus more on gameplay and story than the social aspect it once championed.

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Yeah I could sit here and talk everyone's ear off about how things have changed since 2004 or whatever. You're right about that part though, absolutely. Back in the day, MMOs felt really exciting because online communication was still very novel and fresh. Now, though, we just sort of take it for granted. Hell, we do it for our jobs. It feels like work.
There are probably 1000 reasons the genre is cooked. We could make a whole new thread about just that. I'd be down for it tbh. I love this kind of discussion. MMOs are my favorite genre of video game, so it makes me sad to say it, but I've gotta just call it what it is: Absolutely doomed.

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Originally Posted by TeresaFortell

While that is quite true, the whole MMO genre is in decline, partly because social media has supplanted MMO as the primary place of social interaction. Initially, MMOs were the only places where one could virtually interact with each other, because there were no other avenues. Nowadays, with the widespread use of platforms like Facebook and Twitter, the importance of MMOs has substantially shifted and reduced. MMOs these days focus more on gameplay and story than the social aspect it once championed.

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The thing about MMOs is that it's a nice place to enjoy the feeling of successful teamwork. That's just been shredded over the last decade.

There is a video with a guy who goes to Yoshi and thanks him for the game and the ultimates etc. content because it helped him get back on his feet after a difficult situation in his normal life. Imagine how many others there are out there who might have approached Yoshi at some event and told him the same thing. That is, from the above alone, he doesn't see, he doesn't feel,What good has the game done for anyone out there and then comes back and tells you to go play other games? Very selfish of him.
I left WoW 5 years ago because I was tired of the same old thing and nothing changed, and I came to FF because I found a game that improved my psychology (I should note here that I suffer from generalized anxiety disorder) and calmed me down without medication. Then came Dawntrail and I was blown away because I felt like I was playing WoW in an anime version.

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Originally Posted by AshtonCrowe

7.2 is the last chance i'm giving the game till 8.0 and if 8.0 is bad i'm not coming back.

Already at point where i'm gunna be watching 8.0 instead of playing cause they ain't seeing a dime till i know it's good after the rugpull of dawntrail.

Those 7.2 new contents better be SSS tier, Especially since my server already dead so even less incentive to stay if its garbo

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Yeah, I promised myself that I wasn't going to preorder 8.0. This is going to be one that I am actually going to watch and get reviews of first before I buy it. I refuse to support something that is simply looking to extract from me with the bare bones investment, or if it's simply not worth the value. I've put a lot of time and money into this game, and i'm not letting it take anymore unless I see a major change. Maybe ill give the .5 or .55 patches a try depending on if they try to stagger content again, but its time the message is sent the only way companies understand.