Dear Community what even holds you in this game

Mostly raiding. This raidtier now is imo the best since edens gate. A raidtier where every fight is at least good.

Story and PvP mostly. I used to play most of the content but have been doing it less and less while taking longer breaks lately.

Most of my friends were PvE focused and have quit the game during late Endwalker patches, most of them said they would really love to play but the game currently isn't enjoyable to them. Lots of Stormblood nostalgia.

Heared that a lot it apprears gemeplay wise FF14 peaked with Stromblood and is in a constant decline since then.

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Originally Posted by TheInsomniac13

what even holds you in the game? Because my honest answer there is nothing left for me and I am really interested to hear what other people still see in this game.

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Final Fantasy XIV is still the best MMO for user-created content, much like Skyrim is for open-world games. Square Enix lets you do things with the FFXIV engine that no other MMO company allows you to do. In WoW, for example, I have to manually play duties or craft and gather. With FFXIV, you don’t, and Square Enix lets you do it. Not to mention the tens of thousands of cosmetics made by other players. You can truly be whatever you want to be in this game. And thanks to Square Enix, many of them are completely free. You actually get more value for $13 a month than you would from Second Life or VRchat. FFXIV isn’t just a game, it’s a developer platform, and Square Enix allowed that to happen.

My 3rd six-month subscription that expires in August. I won't renew as I will have accomplished what I set out to do and that is to complete A Realm Reborn which I purchased when it was released.

I started in 2010? with beta, bought FFXIV, installed and played the first version of FFXIV for a little while but there wasn't enough "game" to keep me. FFXI started in much the same way, and I just thought to give SE some time to improve XIV, and then I would return.

I forgot about XIV until I was in a game store one day and saw FFIV: A Realm Reborn so I bought it, thinking it was an expansion, intending to pick up where I had left off 2-3 years before.

I forgot about it.

In late 2023, I was looking in my closet for some old game discs to install on my new computer and found A Realm Reborn, still wrapped in its plastic wrap; unopened - yet to be played.

I installed it, went to resub to FFXIV so I could play, and there was no option to resub FFXIV; it was no longer available, just an empty tab where XIV used to be listed. It took me until late December or early January to get resubbed to the game. I never knew that the original version had been cancelled.

I've completed the Main Story (MSQ), a lot of the little side quests, a few of the dungeons and some of the crafting stories. Finishing the Main story was all I was really after. I happened onto a npc outside the Company HQ in Ul'dah that involved a little quest that explained what happened with version 1. One of the movies you can watch on the character screen shows what happened to end version 1.

SE did a good job on the upgrades to the game from what it originally was to what if became. If I had stayed with the game from the onset, and progressed from expansion to expansion, I would probably have maintained a continuous sub, there is just that much content to participate in.

I'll tackle that Qarn place this coming weekend now that it has duty support. I have Goldsmith and Blacksmith leveled now so I can repair my Armour and Accessories after I die a whole lot. Learned that the hard way...

Happy Adventuring

For me, it's my friends - without them, I don't think I'd be playing any longer. Aside from the regular stuff (CE, Roulettes, etc) we like to shake it up a bit with our streamer friend's "Fun-chievement Fridays" where we get up to some crazy stuff from time to time (naked dungeon runs, run dungeon only using two abilities throughout, hunt down sprouts and gift them mounts/minions, etc) - little things like this keep me around.

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Originally Posted by TheInsomniac13

Honest Question not a Bait post.

I recently had to admit that the potential I saw in the game when I first started to play did not deliver in the later expansions of this game, Side Quests stayed as low effort as they started Dungeons are a linear corridor of pull all and kill it and any interesting Boss gimicks we had in the past were phased out of the game so that only DDR Remains.

The only thing that keeped me in the Game was the story making FF 14 for my basicly a Visual Novel interupted by medicore to bad gameplay.
So when Dawntrail drove the story against the wall my biggest draw to the game endet.

The other think I enjoyed was Jobidentity. I loved leveling them all learning the to play them all and then seeing them all getting more and more Braindead. Yoshida acknowledged the communeties worry about the Homoginazation and sayed it would be adressed... only for 7.2 to drop and proving... the Devs do not give a fuck about Jobs and see High end Raiding as the be all and end all of this game, and I coulden´t care less for it.

In the last view weeks I read a lot of Discords and Forum posts and... Many agree... DT was a shit show of story, Jobs dummer then ever and the majorety of the people I saw do not care for Extream, Savage and Ultimates and lament that jobs get cut down to fit this kind of content. Space Exploration is a shit show on an embaresing scale as it seems, which leaves me with this question to the community...

what even holds you in the game? Because my honest answer there is nothing left for me and I am really interested to hear what other people still see in this game.

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My fc and friends keep me in this game .that is reason enough for me

To be honest? Not very much.

I still enjoy high end raiding, but even that isn't retaining my interest despite how good the tier is. This will be the first two since Creator where I don't have the tier on farm by week 3 (usually week 1-2) simply because I'm playing other games. I poked around with Cosmic Exploration yet the obscene grind is a real put off. Especially when it's not really that engaging. I'll admit, I need to give it more time. So I guess we'll see.

Otherwise, sunken cost has a lot to do with it. I still have friends who play despite their equally dwindling interest (one already all but quit). I've mentioned it here before, but it's strange. I don't hate the game nor am I burned out with it. Heck, I even have fun to a point doing roulettes. At the same time, I'm not remotely drawn to XIV like I used to be. I'm excited to replay BG3 again. I'm even going to do two campaigns at once since a friend wants to co op. I'm looking forward to a nuzlocke challenge I want to start. Not to mention a litany of older games in my backlog. If my PC could handle it, Clair Obscur would be dominating my entire week.

XIV though? I go in spurts where I'll spend 15 hours trying to get through the abyss that was M6S than barely log in for weeks at a time beyond reclears or if someone asks me to do roulettes.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

To be honest? Not very much.

I still enjoy high end raiding, but even that isn't retaining my interest despite how good the tier is. This will be the first two since Creator where I don't have the tier on farm by week 3 (usually week 1-2) simply because I'm playing other games. I poked around with Cosmic Exploration yet the obscene grind is a real put off. Especially when it's not really that engaging. I'll admit, I need to give it more time. So I guess we'll see.

Otherwise, sunken cost has a lot to do with it. I still have friends who play despite their equally dwindling interest (one already all but quit). I've mentioned it here before, but it's strange. I don't hate the game nor am I burned out with it. Heck, I even have fun to a point doing roulettes. At the same time, I'm not remotely drawn to XIV like I used to be. I'm excited to replay BG3 again. I'm even going to do two campaigns at once since a friend wants to co op. I'm looking forward to a nuzlocke challenge I want to start. Not to mention a litany of older games in my backlog. If my PC could handle it, Clair Obscur would be dominating my entire week.

XIV though? I go in spurts where I'll spend 15 hours trying to get through the abyss that was M6S than barely log in for weeks at a time beyond reclears or if someone asks me to do roulettes.

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It is worrying how many people give sunken cost falacy as a reason they still play a game that seems to only spend there time while bearly entertaining them.
As it stands I see FF 14 right now in a similar stat as WoW was a few years ago... they are to comfortable with how the game is going and the only think that woke up Activision Blizard that things went the wrong way with WoW... were a great number of players simply leaving the game.
Which is my main hope right now for the game... if the Developers truly do not see how little players right now are invested in this game. Then they need and big exodus of players to realize it. Then again I know of confirmation biased and happy and well player are not neceserely likely to venerate the Forums so my data may be false and everything is peachy from there stadpoint.
Also I have seen the way many Japanes Buisneses operate they are usually not the ones admiting there leaders making bad calls so if an exodus happens it could also likely spell the end of the game.

I quit the game for about 6 months after DT came out and had 0 intentions of ever coming back (had given away all my gil and everything).
I came back because I legit missed the game and the friends I made in it. I was super burnt out prior to my break but since coming back, I've had a larger range of things to work towards since I missed a couple patches.
Not saying "take breaks" is the answer to all, but it worked for me in this case.

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Originally Posted by TheInsomniac13

Honest Question not a Bait post.

I recently had to admit that the potential I saw in the game when I first started to play did not deliver in the later expansions of this game, Side Quests stayed as low effort as they started Dungeons are a linear corridor of pull all and kill it and any interesting Boss gimicks we had in the past were phased out of the game so that only DDR Remains.

The only thing that keeped me in the Game was the story making FF 14 for my basicly a Visual Novel interupted by medicore to bad gameplay.
So when Dawntrail drove the story against the wall my biggest draw to the game endet.

The other think I enjoyed was Jobidentity. I loved leveling them all learning the to play them all and then seeing them all getting more and more Braindead. Yoshida acknowledged the communeties worry about the Homoginazation and sayed it would be adressed... only for 7.2 to drop and proving... the Devs do not give a fuck about Jobs and see High end Raiding as the be all and end all of this game, and I coulden´t care less for it.

In the last view weeks I read a lot of Discords and Forum posts and... Many agree... DT was a shit show of story, Jobs dummer then ever and the majorety of the people I saw do not care for Extream, Savage and Ultimates and lament that jobs get cut down to fit this kind of content. Space Exploration is a shit show on an embaresing scale as it seems, which leaves me with this question to the community...

what even holds you in the game? Because my honest answer there is nothing left for me and I am really interested to hear what other people still see in this game.

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Honestly nothing at this point. Bashing scripted enemies in raids for hours on end was never enjoyable for me in first place (in any video game), same goes for crafting/gathering - I just suffered through all of that to get specific emotes/glam items that couldn't be acquired through other means. The story was enjoyable for some time, but it got progressively worse (in my subjective opinion, which everyone is free to disagree with) with Endwalker and got really bad with Dawntrail, so I only keep up with it by watching streamers play through it (which thankfully doesn't require any monthly fees). Socializing with others (the real kind of socialization that doesn't involve bashing dumb enemies in raids) can still be nice, but I've seen a lot of them leave this game for various reasons (especially during last year or so) and socializing was made much, MUCH worse with artificial "congestion" where you can't even "visit" certain servers on certain datacenters until 3:00AM local time. And honestly many other games or "virtual worlds" like, for example, VRChat do socialization much, MUCH better in just about every aspect.

honestly just the banter in populated worlds at this point. honestly haven't been playing much since DT dropped.

The story, FC, raids, PvP, housing, field zones, side content, etc. There's lots to enjoy about the game even if the devs make some major mistakes. My main gripe currently is the abysmal job design.

Habit, new content, love for the game, Sufferhymn, Novafunbun, BeneG and Xenos.

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Originally Posted by TheInsomniac13

what even holds you in the game?

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A MMO these days is my home away from home experience. I just decide day by day what I want to do now, no stress, no meeting demands, and *no* hard content - real life has enough of that, don't need this in my spare time.
For example: When CE hit, it got obvious very fast that I have no idea of how crafting works. So I just started leveling my crafters on an alt char, to relearn what I once knew. End result - I now mostly ignore CE, and just continue leveling that char :) I will never use her as a crafter, but at the moment it's just a fun thing to do, so that's what I'm doing for now. When I finish it (or loose interest), I will just do something else.
This is my playstyle, and FF14 is a very good place to live it. Of course there are things I don't like, but these are everywhere. Story being one of them, but I got through the terribad ARR post-MSQ and the Stormblood story, so I will also get through Dawntrail :)

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Originally Posted by Gwenkatsu

A MMO these days is my home away from home experience. I just decide day by day what I want to do now, no stress, no meeting demands, and *no* hard content - real life has enough of that, don't need this in my spare time.
For example: When CE hit, it got obvious very fast that I have no idea of how crafting works. So I just started leveling my crafters on an alt char, to relearn what I once knew. End result - I now mostly ignore CE, and just continue leveling that char :) I will never use her as a crafter, but at the moment it's just a fun thing to do, so that's what I'm doing for now. When I finish it (or loose interest), I will just do something else.
This is my playstyle, and FF14 is a very good place to live it. Of course there are things I don't like, but these are everywhere. Story being one of them, but I got through the terribad ARR post-MSQ and the Stormblood story, so I will also get through Dawntrail :)

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I could relate really well with your post, back when I started playing FF 14 every streamer and YouTuber keeped telling me rush the MSQ get to the endgame and then fokus on side content... and I was just like... you know what I think I level all crafter and gatherer jobs because continiuing even ARR.
It then became my entire thing do do all the sidequest and content bevore advancing to the next expansion. Heck I made all the Relic weapons every expansion and I think Eureka Weapons permanently damaged my sanity but I still was proud on having archived it.

Which makes me now with 7300 Hours in this game... and still a sproud, so my main problem is all I right now have to look forward to is the shitshow that is the DT story and every new patch jobs beeing watered down even more. So there is no side content for me I could do hoping the Devs wake up and roll back a lot of the Job changes.
I also cannot just start a new character because the main draw to that would be to enjoy the leveling process of the jobs again... which I would really love to do if I still enjoyed playing this jobs.

Honestly when I reached Shadowbringer and noticed there are no Job Quests anymore but Role quests I was dissapointed but in retrospekt I see it as the point were the devs stoped caring for Jobidentity.

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Originally Posted by TheInsomniac13

Honestly when I reached Shadowbringer and noticed there are no Job Quests anymore but Role quests I was dissapointed but in retrospekt I see it as the point were the devs stoped caring for Jobidentity.

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I have mixed feelings on this one, as the job quest lines in FF14 often were written terribly bad. Take the Warrior quests as example:

• Level 30: This is Curious Gorge. He is a Warrior. Warriors use the Beast Within, but he cannot control it yet.
• Level 35: He still cannot control the Beast Within.
• Level 40: He still cannot control the Beast Within.
• Level 45: He still cannot control the Beast Within.
• ...
• Level 70: We have some wonderful news - Curious Gorge is now in love! Oh, and he still cannot control the Beast Within.

Or Machinist: "Hello, I'm Stephanivien, the Machinist Guild leader. Machinists do a lot of fascinating things, but unfortunately I'm the worst leader in the world. Therefore you will spent 90% of your time as a Machinist searching for the other guild members that will constantly run away from my terrible lead."

Or Bard: "These here are Sanson and Guydelot - two guys that are constantly at each others throat, for whatever reason. Oh, and Sanson also is a moron that will fall for even the most obvious and childish trap. Your job is to babysit these guys for 30 levels. Have fun!"

Or take the Alacrans, an army of ruffians that is short of overtaking Uldah. Every other jobs fights them until level 30, and then they completely disappear out of the world. Why? Nobody knows. Fun fact: when you're new, the game throws a lot of names at you. I always confused "Alacran" and "Ascian", so the whole story made even less sense :)

And so on.

Job identity through different quest lines is a good thing in my book. But I honestly felt relieved when they got rid of them, as the majority was just very bad. And I liked the Shadowbringer role quests way more; unfortunately the 90 and 100 role quests were another drop in quality.

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Originally Posted by Gwenkatsu

I have mixed feelings on this one, as the job quest lines in FF14 often were written terribly bad. Take the Warrior quests as example:

• Level 30: This is Curious Gorge. He is a Warrior. Warriors use the Beast Within, but he cannot control it yet.
• Level 35: He still cannot control the Beast Within.
• Level 40: He still cannot control the Beast Within.
• Level 45: He still cannot control the Beast Within.
• ...
• Level 70: We have some wonderful news - Curious Gorge is now in love! Oh, and he still cannot control the Beast Within.

Or Machinist: "Hello, I'm Stephanivien, the Machinist Guild leader. Machinists do a lot of fascinating things, but unfortunately I'm the worst leader in the world. Therefore you will spent 90% of your time as a Machinist searching for the other guild members that will constantly run away from my terrible lead."

Or Bard: "These here are Sanson and Guydelot - two guys that are constantly at each others throat, for whatever reason. Oh, and Sanson also is a moron that will fall for even the most obvious and childish trap. Your job is to babysit these guys for 30 levels. Have fun!"

Or take the Alacrans, an army of ruffians that is short of overtaking Uldah. Every other jobs fights them until level 30, and then they completely disappear out of the world. Why? Nobody knows. Fun fact: when you're new, the game throws a lot of names at you. I always confused "Alacran" and "Ascian", so the whole story made even less sense :)

And so on.

Job identity through different quest lines is a good thing in my book. But I honestly felt relieved when they got rid of them, as the majority was just very bad. And I liked the Shadowbringer role quests way more; unfortunately the 90 and 100 role quests were another drop in quality.

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Absolutly agree Warrior had some of the worse story writing in it´s jobquests but I rather wanted to see it betterd and not gone for good. I found the Stromblood Jobquests had some majore differences in stakes... Warrior Curios Gorge is in love!
Meanwhile Black Mage the legendary ancien Mage Shantoto transfears her mind into the body of your Black Mage companion to repel an astroid that is about to destroy Eorzea!... quite the difference if you ask me.

Heck I could probably fill entire book talking about the different Jobquests and which story lines worked well and which don´t.

pvp and lalafell. I honestly would have quit so long ago if l didn't find lalafell so adorable

I'm still enjoying myself. I've played MMOs since 1999 EverQuest. I've left many of them when they weren't what I was interested in anymore. It was hard sometimes because I used to be swayed by sunken cost fallacy. But I've moved on from so many now that that doesn't hold me.

If XIV comes to the point some day that I'm not enjoying myself, then I'll move on from it. But for now I'm enjoying what I do in the game. I have things I dislike, but they don't outweigh the likes yet. I just give feedback on those where possible and focus on what I enjoy.

I have so much to do, that i don't run out of content the next years. I started at the end of Endwalker and haven't been processed through the MSQ before DT came out. I'm constantly finding something new (for me). After nearly one year i found the Wondrous Tails thing or the weekly book to complete things. I don't read much guides or look for something in particular.

Heya - your thoughts are a common one for not just FFXIV but for many MMOs. I’ve seen similar frustrations like yours also in the WoW forums, which as a core game has added a decent amount of solo weekly progression.

What holds me/what do I find fun in FFXIV?

I like documenting my characters journey as she travels through the many lands of Eorzea and creating little ‘sub-stories’ like adding my own experiences to the white mage quest chain.

Furthermore I like the class theming a lot so I’ll make a very cool looking summoner and take more screenshots. During ‘slower’ periods I’ll stream to my friends and maybe add a documentary as a second overlay, makes for a good conversation between the tedium that MMOs tend to become. So there’s the social aspect with the unifying factor being the same game.

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Originally Posted by Gwenkatsu

I have mixed feelings on this one, as the job quest lines in FF14 often were written terribly bad. Take the Warrior quests as example:

• Level 30: This is Curious Gorge. He is a Warrior. Warriors use the Beast Within, but he cannot control it yet.
• Level 35: He still cannot control the Beast Within.
• Level 40: He still cannot control the Beast Within.
• Level 45: He still cannot control the Beast Within.
• ...
• Level 70: We have some wonderful news - Curious Gorge is now in love! Oh, and he still cannot control the Beast Within.

Or Machinist: "Hello, I'm Stephanivien, the Machinist Guild leader. Machinists do a lot of fascinating things, but unfortunately I'm the worst leader in the world. Therefore you will spent 90% of your time as a Machinist searching for the other guild members that will constantly run away from my terrible lead."

Or Bard: "These here are Sanson and Guydelot - two guys that are constantly at each others throat, for whatever reason. Oh, and Sanson also is a moron that will fall for even the most obvious and childish trap. Your job is to babysit these guys for 30 levels. Have fun!"

Or take the Alacrans, an army of ruffians that is short of overtaking Uldah. Every other jobs fights them until level 30, and then they completely disappear out of the world. Why? Nobody knows. Fun fact: when you're new, the game throws a lot of names at you. I always confused "Alacran" and "Ascian", so the whole story made even less sense :)

And so on.

Job identity through different quest lines is a good thing in my book. But I honestly felt relieved when they got rid of them, as the majority was just very bad. And I liked the Shadowbringer role quests way more; unfortunately the 90 and 100 role quests were another drop in quality.

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I'm just before SHB so yet to see jobs become role quests. But I do remember some pretty bad job quests/storylines!

Armorer: "Even though the dude you're having a contest with is 10 seconds away round the corner and could've looked at it whilst I'm still talking, I must halt the contest as this other person screwed up their work and your armour piece must immediately be sent off to replace it. But hey you agree with my position on running this guild? Shhh of course you do".

Warrior: "That kid you don't even know and couldn't care less about, I know you've been racked with rage and sorrow for them, so are you ready to avenge their family?"

Paladin: Jenylins "Get my sword from this traitor and avenge me!" Me "um can I just go fight unholy mosters in some tomb somewhere?"



But Rogue? I loved the Rogue questline and characters. The missions were even well varied. There are some other good ones too. Culinarian for HW, the ending was so random it made me laugh.

I don’t keep on subscribing though out the whole period and always take breaks when I feel burn out.

It might just be me but just simply playing catch up will be enough to keep me for few months to half a year. Take a few months breaks rinse and repeat. This is probably the main reason I keep coming back

Never in my life have a MMO I could take breaks and still able to catch up and play with my friends, many MMO I miss one day and it is a gap that would only widen and never able to keep up. XIV dungeons and raid also quite friendly where some MMO not only need to read through an essay long guide but need some external plugin. It feel like a 2nd jobs. Last time I want is a 2nd job when I finished my day job and family job,

Right now it's savage raiding in PF, I run into familiar faces often and this is the most social interaction I have in this game.

Outside that I dabble in cosmic, which finally got me a crafter high enough to do the crafter beast quests.

Eventually I'll have no motivation to do anything in FFXIV and quit to play other games, but I always come back after a time.

Though I also enjoyed Dawntrail's MSQ and the 7.X patch stories. I like them much more than the Endwalker patches which actually lowered my motivation to play, especially in 6.3

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Originally Posted by Doomed_Raven

Warrior: "That kid you don't even know and couldn't care less about, I know you've been racked with rage and sorrow for them, so are you ready to avenge their family?"

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I totally forgot about that one, the Marauder quests were even worse than the Warrior's.
"Look, this boy's family has been killed by a flesh eating buffalo and his jolly band of various predators. I'm a level 50 Warrior and could easily kill said buffalo - but it's your task to do so, for whatever reason. So please level up fast, before the flesh eating buffalo kills more people. Which I could easily prevent, but won't. Go figure"

Black Mage and Red Mage were both good in my book, while most of the DoH/DoL quest lines were horrible (can't remember the Culinarian one, it's been ages since I did them).

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Originally Posted by Gwenkatsu

I totally forgot about that one, the Marauder quests were even worse than the Warrior's.
"Look, this boy's family has been killed by a flesh eating buffalo and his jolly band of various predators. I'm a level 50 Warrior and could easily kill said buffalo - but it's your task to do so, for whatever reason. So please level up fast, before the flesh eating buffalo kills more people. Which I could easily prevent, but won't. Go figure"

Black Mage and Red Mage were both good in my book, while most of the DoH/DoL quest lines were horrible (can't remember the Culinarian one, it's been ages since I did them).

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I liked leatherworker because the guild lady is always pissed off and sarcy.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Gwenkatsu

I totally forgot about that one, the Marauder quests were even worse than the Warrior's.
"Look, this boy's family has been killed by a flesh eating buffalo and his jolly band of various predators. I'm a level 50 Warrior and could easily kill said buffalo - but it's your task to do so, for whatever reason. So please level up fast, before the flesh eating buffalo kills more people. Which I could easily prevent, but won't. Go figure"

Black Mage and Red Mage were both good in my book, while most of the DoH/DoL quest lines were horrible (can't remember the Culinarian one, it's been ages since I did them).

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HW CUL questline was pretty fun, just a big cooking competition.

Yeah it feeled often like the Jobs had different writer of obvies skill differences.
Warrior, you little Potato! This Bull is now your nemesis you have to grow strong to beat him!
Me: I am bealry above a civilian with an ax I do not feel any claim to be the one killing this beast PLEASE send a marauder out imidietly to deal with this monster!

And then we got in comparison the Pugulist questline which tells a rather good story about lost glory and working towards reclaiming it.

Or Dragoon which basicly introduces Estinien and Nidhoogs eye long bevore they became relevant in Heavensward and making you be recognized as a second Azure Dragoon in sayed expansion, again a thing I would have loved seeing more in future expansion but it feels we get less and less of it.

Roleplay and housing. If I lose my house I'm out. If WoW housing is really good and I find ways to adapt a few of my fave characters into other games, I'm out.

Attachment to my character is my primary answer. I do like visiting the world of FFXIV and I enjoy having a house.

Second was having goals. Since I ignored most classes until Endwalker came out, it took me almost 3 years to max out all jobs and crafts/gathers and that kept my interest. After that I did some old Relic weapon questlines for Glam that took up a lot of time, and then also checked out a bunch of content I ignored over the years. There is a lot of it.

Now that that's done, I am playing less. I do enough daily roulettes to hit cap on the 450 tomes and do my weekly normal raids once a week. I do enjoy the combat in this game and the jobs I like to play, which is varied since I can pick out anything and just play it as I feel like it and sometimes gearing a new job will keep my interest for a while.

Outside of that minimum time investment I'm playing other games (BG3, Clair Obsure, ESO) until the relic weapons come out, then I will play more for those.

$13 a month (bundled) still feels worth the enjoyment I get overall, but if it wasn't then I'd just unsub.

I am not subbed since some time, I used free login to play a few days PvP lol.

I think what isn't really talked about is how the game is preparing for the end of life status already. You will need trusts or squadrons to clear content. And all the dungeons that were redone, suddenly have mechanics that are solvable by NPC party members. At the same time new dungeons are made in such a way, that they are directly clearable by NPCs.
I fear it limits the creativity of devs in how to make mechanics. Like a self fulfilling prophecy that no dungeon will ever be totally different again. And this doesn't motivate as a player.

Did PvP ranked occasionally, it is no longer to my taste. And the series rewards are coming back, so it no longer matters really to participate.
Deep dungeons are nice, but hoped for something radically different from previous deep dungeons.

I also feel like it is difficult to join more difficult content, like cloud of darkness extreme or criterion dungeons hardmode, or eureka/bozja raids. Many things are organized by discords, players are scared to enter it just casually. And everything gets explained on voice chat. I just want to play the game when Im playing it - I do not want to plan my gaming time like its work. In other MMO this is more straightforward. You just login and can do whatever. You dont have to wait hours for a fate to appear - you can just directly queue into it without punishment of losing levels to grind hours again to relevel...

Game increases to be catering to casual playerbase, I think since Stormblood. I can understand why, but I am not that target group. And it was not when the game was launched.

The game is visually pleasing and has nice audio, but gameplay and system design wise it no longer grips me.

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Originally Posted by Commander_Justitia

I think what isn't really talked about is how the game is preparing for the end of life status already. You will need trusts or squadrons to clear content.

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It's not talked about because that's not their intention with it. Obviously, this was their intention with FF11, but in FF14 there were a number of other reasons for it:

• AI was being developed for the NPCs for solo duties anyway. You could already see them working on it throughout Stormblood as the NPCs became really good at mechanics such as entering stack markers, spreading, etc. This culminated in a demonstration of the soon-to-be AI in Ghimlyt Dark.
• There were so many dungeons that people were waiting ages to get a queue pop. Not due to lack of people doing roulettes, but simply the sheer amount of dungeons was making any individual one harder to pop.
• A lot of FF players just play the single player FFs, and they want to lure them in by saying they can just do the story first, which is obviously a trap because along the way many of them will end up socializing and come out of their shell. That's how socializing is for a lot of people. They're afraid of it until they get pulled into a group - such as an FC, and a significant amount of FF14 players can relate to having been shy at first and then getting dragged into the social fabric of the game. It was a smart business strategy to do this when the technology was already being made for solo duties anyways.

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And all the dungeons that were redone, suddenly have mechanics that are solvable by NPC party members. At the same time new dungeons are made in such a way, that they are directly clearable by NPCs.

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Mechanics have always been solvable by a computer in FFXIV. There are bots that clear ultimates. Most of the changes to dungeons were actually to make it intuitive/obvious to a new/returning player, whereas their old philosophy was to make it so you have to wait behind the purple line and discuss strategy, read status effects and figure out the mechanics such as untelegraphed stacks.

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Many things are organized by discords, players are scared to enter it just casually.

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Game increases to be catering to casual playerbase

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You see the contradiction in what you said, right?

My reasons:

STORY: While at times story (mainly in some side or job quests) has been irritating (or worse) for various reasons, overall I've enjoyed all the stories, and some I've absolutely loved. (Same for many NPCs.) (And yes, I do go read a lot of backstory stuff online as well, like the "Tales from ..." short stories, for instance.) There's been no expansion I "hated," but definitely I have some favorites, heh.

FAMILY AND FRIENDS: I have RL family and friends who play too, plus friends I've made in-game. It's fun doing things with them, helping each other, comparing notes, etc. Shared experiences make good times and memories!

HOUSING: I love decorating housing and creating places for people to tour, visit, enjoy. I also enjoy seeing what others have done, especially the Museums and Aquariums. (Shoutout to the Eorzean Museum Network especially, heh.)

VISUALS AND MUSIC: I'm still in awe of how beautiful so much of this game is, and how so much of the music I love. (Applauds the visual artists and the composers and musicians!)

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Originally Posted by Gwenkatsu

I totally forgot about that one, the Marauder quests were even worse than the Warrior's.
"Look, this boy's family has been killed by a flesh eating buffalo and his jolly band of various predators. I'm a level 50 Warrior and could easily kill said buffalo - but it's your task to do so, for whatever reason. So please level up fast, before the flesh eating buffalo kills more people. Which I could easily prevent, but won't. Go figure"

Black Mage and Red Mage were both good in my book, while most of the DoH/DoL quest lines were horrible (can't remember the Culinarian one, it's been ages since I did them).

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Sorry that's the one, Marauder not warrior, where you're avenging the boy you've no reason to care about. And yeah the skilled marauder's leave the bull to rampage across La noscea. I actually need to do red mage, so I'll try that next I think, I've heard form others they liked it.

The Paladin 60-70 I just did was decent, we actually get to fight in the coliseum finally (kinda funny they abandoned Jenylins and went back to the Gladiator characters)

I should probably answer this thread too.

I still have a lot for content to get through, but currently Eureka content and playing as Paladin has been good, as well as Fordola and Yotsuyu's storylines, really good characters.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

It's not talked about because that's not their intention with it. Obviously, this was their intention with FF11, but in FF14 there were a number of other reasons for it:

• AI was being developed for the NPCs for solo duties anyway. You could already see them working on it throughout Stormblood as the NPCs became really good at mechanics such as entering stack markers, spreading, etc. This culminated in a demonstration of the soon-to-be AI in Ghimlyt Dark.
• There were so many dungeons that people were waiting ages to get a queue pop. Not due to lack of people doing roulettes, but simply the sheer amount of dungeons was making any individual one harder to pop.
• A lot of FF players just play the single player FFs, and they want to lure them in by saying they can just do the story first, which is obviously a trap because along the way many of them will end up socializing and come out of their shell. That's how socializing is for a lot of people. They're afraid of it until they get pulled into a group - such as an FC, and a significant amount of FF14 players can relate to having been shy at first and then getting dragged into the social fabric of the game. It was a smart business strategy to do this when the technology was already being made for solo duties anyways.

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Not sure what you describe as "AI". To me it is just scripts. We in gaming called any NPC simulating something like intelligence as AI in the past, but nowadays, it is not real AI like a model AI that can make their own decision based on the situation. A NPC will never go to a different spot to evade, it will always be the same in my experience.

And ehh too much handholding, it is a MMORPG, it is online with other players by design, it shouldn't cater so much to players playing solo the whole time.
Ofc it is smart when you expect less players in the future. But you get less players by having uninteresting same dungeon designs.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Mechanics have always been solvable by a computer in FFXIV. There are bots that clear ultimates. Most of the changes to dungeons were actually to make it intuitive/obvious to a new/returning player, whereas their old philosophy was to make it so you have to wait behind the purple line and discuss strategy

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Yeah, they said it to make it more "intuitive for new players". I can't remember too many examples right now because I haven't played for months, but one example is copperbell mines - the slime boss mechanic is gone, it was such a simply mechanic, but "AI" anticipating where a tank brings the boss, is not reliable enough. So it got removed.
Same way the end boss used to have adds that break the wall to new adds to appear? Guess can't have that, too "dangerous" to new players. Yes, you went from using brain 10%, to mindlessly pressing buttons ignoring what ever happens, you cant die, you cant lose, just press your button like a bot.
One of my favorite bosses was the snowcloak 2nd boss. The snowball mechanic where you push it into the boss to instantly kill him more or less if executed well. Now that fight takes a few minutes, because it has become another mindless button smasher. NPCs don't know how to hit a snowball facing the boss at the right moment. They don't know if it is better to use a small or a big ball. That kind of decision making requires a human. Because SE didn't code for it. And instead of coding something so difficult, they just removed the mechanic.

Calling it more "intuitive/obvious" is really just an excuse for dumbing down dungeons for NPCs. As well as dumbing it down for casual players, who find out in a lvl80 mainstory end dungeon how to do aoe rotation, back then during shadowbringers expac...Instead of earlier.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

You see the contradiction in what you said, right?

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I noticed it when I wrote it, that it may sound that way. But still kept it. Because it doesn't contradict to me - I want the difficulty of the content and how we use skills to be higher, but I do not see a reason to make actual access to content difficult. Because that is not really a "difficulty" - it shouldn't exist once you have unlocked a duty. It is like an artificial resistance from doing it. Making players unsure if they are prepared enough, when they could just go and do it.

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Originally Posted by Doomed_Raven

(kinda funny they abandoned Jenylins and went back to the Gladiator characters)

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That's another thing I dislike about the job quests so much - they constantly loose their focus (pre 30 everyone: "The Alacran, the Alacran, oh my god the Alacran - run!", post 30 everyone: "Alacran who? Never heard of them")

Red Mage tells not only a consistent story, but also a good one, with some nice little background info of the world and all. And you even get to visit one of the mage cities of eld (they reused raid assests for this quest, which I did not know back then, as I never did these raids :) ). So I hope you enjoy it!

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Originally Posted by Commander_Justitia

Not sure what you describe as "AI".

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Let's not get too caught up in semantics over what's "real AI" or not. Jeeq is still using the term AI correctly regardless of modern computing using the term for general AI as opposed to games using scripted "AI". I wouldn't be opposed to it being called scripted intelligence (SI) instead, but everyone and their mother has been calling computer controlled characters AI for decades, so any other name for it would just be confusing at this point.

Semantics aside; I'm of the similar opinion that dungeons have less complex mechanics partly thanks to Duty Support/Trusts and their AI either not being able to handle them, or would lead to less interactive gameplay if they could. The 2nd Snowcloak boss being a good example you provided; it'd require the AI tank to decide a snowball to aim the boss at (it's not hard to decide to aim for a larger snowball, just tell the bot to aim for the snowball with the highest "size" value), and another AI bot to smack the snowball towards the boss when it's charging up its AoE (tell the bot to smack the ball with the biggest size value from an angle that aims at the boss). This isn't impossible to make, just cumbersome, and the end result really just lets the player not have to actually interact with the mechanic because the computer will do it for you.

I think Square just doesn't want to program for these unique mechanics rather than it being "impossible". Easier for them to just redesign the boss from the many design templates they probably rely on and call it a day.

The biggest problem with modern dungeon design though is just their current design directives and philosophy. They're too concerned with shoving a bunch of "think fast" AoEs where you can't stand still for 3 seconds, with which they'll justify obliterating caster design.

I'm at the Elpis portion of Endwalker and I decided to make a new character and replay everything from scratch. But this time around, I'm going to do all the side quests, all job quests, and beast tribe quests when its appropriate with respect to the main story. Doing side quests outside of their appropriate time periods really was immersion breaking and unsatisfying. I don't want to finish the Hydaelyn saga in Endwalker feeling like I still have unfinished business from the world and story as it existed in previous expansions. Doing the side quests from ARR or Stormblood, for example, just feels off when I'm already in Endwalker. It feels like I'm not really making an impact on the world because that time has passed.

I'm also curious about whether I will like Shadowbringers more on my second playthrough. I found it infuriatingly overrated when I first played it.