The slow decline of FFXIV, a summary.

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Originally Posted by Mawlzy

A critical point that is understood by the majority of the player base and a minority on these boards.

This puzzles me because, outside of the MSQ, there is plenty of challenging content.

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This is a false dichotomy. Encounter difficulty will definitely raise the bar on every level. Job complexity, as long as they remain accessible, will do less so, for example. Raising only the ceiling, in a perfect world I do agree there, would leave enough wiggle room for the baseline casual difficulty not to change too much. Game didn't crater or failed spectacularly back in HW even with the most complex version of jobs in XIV history. Casuals just went by just fine. If anything, the game grew a lot from ARR which was piss easy in comparison.

The problem with encounter difficulty is that it tends to act in a very binary way: you either succeed or fail mechanics. Jobs and the battle system though? You can add enough depth that a player that wants a bit more out of the system can actually play with levers that are totally optional for clearance otherwise.

Also, I do think that players need to learn to fail again, even in casual content. There is literally no feeling of accomplishment is there is nothing at stake, because yes of course we lost friction everywhere.

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Originally Posted by Kandraxx

FFXIV pros: (or what's better than compared to WoW as the gold standard)

Character design/customization
Side content
Minigames
Farming content
NPCs/big ticket characters -might be a personal preference
housing -but WoW is getting it soon and it's gonna be better so...

FFXIV cons:

Gameplay
Inbuilt execution and interaction lag
Garbage PvE
Garbage PvP
(mostly due to the first 2 factors)
Spaghetti engine -can't do this while that, everything needs confirmation like it's a toddler playing

So? Just address the cons while building on the pros? A complete gameplay and class overhaul is inevitable if they want to save this game. FFXIV is the only game that makes me fully aware and conscious about the fact that I'm pressing the same damn button sequence over and over and over. Start with that first, then do real PvE mechanics.

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I wouldn't say FFXIV customisation is a pro because it's extremely limited. Most races have one, maybe two good faces, a handful of hairstyles. I play a male Duskwight, which is a very rare combiantion, and even still I have run into basically indentical characters twice now. Your regular catgirl/bunny characters have thousands of clones in the playerbase.

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Originally Posted by Wilford111

You misinterpreted my post. These types of threads have been happening for as long as I have been playing, which I started in early Heavensward. People have always been saying "the game is dying", when in reality, it hasn't. Just a funny observation from someone who's been playing for a long time :D

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And as a funny observation from someone who has been playing longer than you it’s funny that this is the first time they can actually back up that claim with dropping population numbers

FFXIV customization is definitely an acquired taste... but it really is lacking the flexibilities & options. Do they exist? Yeah... Acceptable? Debatable.

Like, what do you mean I can't make an old af character if I play female character? What do you mean I can't make a mid-thirty/forty male midlanders when the option really only offer me young adults or 'yoshi-p'-old? Why do they shove all male middies into "meteor"-code? And the list goes on...

Also don't even get people started with those two discounted races in the game.. lol. They might as well get a discount on their sub at this point.

The video said it: the game in many facets are lacking the passion and love that used to be poured into. It shows. Don't have to look farther than the very character we play as of DT release. You should be giving more options, not replacing them. You don't change players' characters. You just don't, period.

EDIT: you’re also stuck with said customizability for like what, over 10 years? Over a decade of profit, and yet not enough can be given to invest their character creator system? Really? Not even a way to preview… say, hairstyle? One has to be content with consuming half a$$ed slops they’re churning out to remain stunted for this long & getting away with it.

Demand for better, gdi.

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Originally Posted by Valence

This is a false dichotomy. Encounter difficulty will definitely raise the bar on every level. Job complexity, as long as they remain accessible, will do less so, for example. Raising only the ceiling, in a perfect world I do agree there, would leave enough wiggle room for the baseline casual difficulty not to change too much. Game didn't crater or failed spectacularly back in HW even with the most complex version of jobs in XIV history. Casuals just went by just fine. If anything, the game grew a lot from ARR which was piss easy in comparison.

The problem with encounter difficulty is that it tends to act in a very binary way: you either succeed or fail mechanics. Jobs and the battle system though? You can add enough depth that a player that wants a bit more out of the system can actually play with levers that are totally optional for clearance otherwise.

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Perfect example of this in action: Look at the first 24man of DT, and the first 24man of HW. Apples to Apples comparison of the last bosses, you've got Echidna in Void Ark, versus Shadowlord in Jeuno. It should go without saying, that Shadowlord is many times more complex to execute than Echidna ever was . For example, I'd say the bit where you have to remember 3 cleave positions on the boss, then 2 from an add, then an Implosion from the boss, then an Implosion from another add, that sequence is more 'complex to execute' than the entire Void Ark raid put together. But unlike HW, the 'complexity' of Shadowlord isn't in the job, it's in the Shadowlord encounter itself. If a Healer player is less skilled now, tough, they're getting hit by the constant 270degree cleaves and dying after the second (due to the vuln). If a player was less skilled in HW, they'd... drop their DOTs, but they'd still be alive, and able to heal the team, and complete the content.

The 'complexity' hasn't been reduced per se, it's been shifted from a source where it was 'optional' in most content (you didn't have to be optimal to clear EX roulette or 24man or NM raids or EX trials, you could 'choose to focus on mechanics execution' and take more time to clear, but still clear), to a source where it's no longer 'optional'. You either interact with the complexity provided by 'the mechanics of the fight', or you die. No longer can a Healer player say 'I'm not so confident in my abilities, so I'm gonna focus on staying alive, and keeping my team alive, rather than trying to push for maximum DPS', because 'focus on staying alive and keep the team alive' is 80% of the challenge of the content. The skill floor has been raised, and the skill ceiling has been reduced, so now instead of a range of 1-100 in terms of 'player skill expression', we're now at a range of, say, 45-55. Which just results in anyone below the 45 mark feeling like they're not able to keep up, and anyone above the 55 mark feeling like they have to look to alternative places (ie other games) for a challenge

And somehow, SE's solution to this is 'make it so that if the Healer IS below the 45 mark, can't keep up with the mechanics vomit, and does die, don't worry because the Tanks have enough selfsustain to just power through the fight anyway!' How does that help the casual player? How does the lower skill ceiling help retain the Hardcore player who is always looking for the next big challenge? It's like SE wanted to insulate players who are not as skilled from the realization that there's players who are better at the game than them... But then they don't do anything to help those less-skilled players gain the skills to grow and become the high-skilled player themselves

Edit: It's even funnier, thinking about it. Previously, in HW, say an AST wasn't using their DOTs at all, preferring instead to focus on cards, healing, and the occasional Malefic when they had time to. They lost some damage, from not using their DOT. But now, consider an AST who cannot keep up with the mechanical complexity of the Shadowlord. They're going to be at 25%/50% damage lost, even if they were doing their rotation perfectly, because they've got Weakness/Brink of Death. SE hasn't solved a damn thing, they've just moved the issue to a different source! And even worse, it's so much more visible when someone's having trouble keeping up, because everyone in the party can see the Weakness/Brink of Death debuff icon!

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Originally Posted by Gurgeh

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First of all you should finally start to stop with splitting between "Hardcore and Casuals" i know many really many many Casuals who even raid are they now hardcore?

And no casuals are the issues for the easy job design and im not talking about the standard casual which even does extreme trials or huh even savage? IMAGINE WHICH BLASPHEMY CASUALS DOING SAVAGE HOW DARE THEY ARE, im talking about the hardcore casuals which are to dumb to even press 2 buttons in a raw and refuse to do content where you have to follow a set mechanics, people which even called dungeons like alexandria TOO HARD, so even with dungeons staying the way it is and improving the class difficultiy these kind of player couldnt even press 1-2-3 without a 10s delay between each skill, so pls even when i would love to see more challenging classes, with that kind of playerbase here its not possible

Hey you wanna know something funny? I even do Ultimates with my Main and still say "NO" to easy Extremes like the Dancing Plaque

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Originally Posted by Red-thunder

You were fun to rile up for a while but this is just getting sad. I honestly did not imagine questioning why someone who didn't clear UCOB would jump into a conversation about UCOB would provoke such a long-lasting fixation. Actual rent-free lmao. I honestly think I hit a nerve there.

Keep it up bud, you're not the first reply guy I had, and you won't be the last.

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Oh look everyone, he has just enough awareness to know that he's irritating like a fruit fly.
In the near future someone will reply to one of my posts. It could be this one or a different one.

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Originally Posted by Valence

Also, I do think that players need to learn to fail again, even in casual content. There is literally no feeling of accomplishment is there is nothing at stake, because yes of course we lost friction everywhere.

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I'd suggest that for many players, clearing MSQ combat content doesn't produce a sense of accomplishment, merely one of relief that another impediment to them enjoying the story has been overcome.

It's conceivable this may change for some if the fights were actually interesting.

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Originally Posted by Valence

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I mostly agree about introducing more failure and raising the skill ceiling of the game overall, but I wanna point out that casuals didn't "went by just fine" during HW. HW was the period where, to my experience, the playerbase was at its most toxic because of the job design. Job design was convoluted, complex and satisfying to optimize maybe, but also unintuitive for most jobs, and a time where balance was at its most out of wack. It made it so casual players were scorned by midcore/regular players and some hardcore players for not mastering what they thought should be the baseline of job usage. It's one of the many reasons for the simplification that started in Stormblood (notably the cross-class skills system, remember that casuals were supposed to "know" they had to level up Thaumaturge for Swiftcast or Lancer for Invigorate).

And yes the game didn't exactly crater, but it was also maybe it's most dire moment since 1.0 too at the beginning of the expansion. Gordias remains the most ill-received raid tier in the game's history and almost killed its raiding scene, Diadem which was supposed to be the expansion's major feature failed catastrophically 3 times in a row. The game took a better turn in 3.2 but raiding remained unappealing not only because of the sheer difficulty of Midas, but also how gatekeepy the difficulty of both job design and encounter design made this side of the game (both in terms of investment required and community behavior towards "less skilled" players). Even the first release of Deep Dungeon 1-50 was poorly received. That's why we got the new raid design we still have now starting from 3.4.

So yes, I do agree about introducing more failure and raising the skill ceiling. I'd add also skills that are more interactive than "fancy animation + x potency". But HW was way dire for casuals than people seem to remember, if the main story didn't hit as much as it did, it would be treated worse than Dawntrail currently is.

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Originally Posted by AvoSturmfaust

First of all you should finally start to stop with splitting between "Hardcore and Casuals" i know many really many many Casuals who even raid are they now hardcore?

And no casuals are the issues for the easy job design and im not talking about the standard casual which even does extreme trials or huh even savage? IMAGINE WHICH BLASPHEMY CASUALS DOING SAVAGE HOW DARE THEY ARE, im talking about the hardcore casuals which are to dumb to even press 2 buttons in a raw and refuse to do content where you have to follow a set mechanics, people which even called dungeons like alexandria TOO HARD, so even with dungeons staying the way it is and improving the class difficultiy these kind of player couldnt even press 1-2-3 without a 10s delay between each skill, so pls even when i would love to see more challenging classes, with that kind of playerbase here its not possible

Hey you wanna know something funny? I even do Ultimates with my Main and still say "NO" to easy Extremes like the Dancing Plaque

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Oh we have a badass over here.
I've never seen a casual complain about the complexity of a job. I've seen them complain plenty about the difficulty of encounters though.
I think this should tell us something there.

Especially since casuals coasted by just fine when jobs were a lot harder to play at a decent level. I still remember ice mages and the likes. They cleared content just fine. They didn't complain about anything. The team sure complained about them but it's not exactly something that's disappeared today (cf your post).

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Originally Posted by Sekundessounet

I mostly agree about introducing more failure and raising the skill ceiling of the game overall, but I wanna point out that casuals didn't "went by just fine" during HW. HW was the period where, to my experience, the playerbase was at its most toxic because of the job design. Job design was convoluted, complex and satisfying to optimize maybe, but also unintuitive for most jobs, and a time where balance was at its most out of wack. It made it so casual players were scorned by midcore/regular players and some hardcore players for not mastering what they thought should be the baseline of job usage. It's one of the many reasons for the simplification that started in Stormblood (notably the cross-class skills system, remember that casuals were supposed to "know" they had to level up Thaumaturge for Swiftcast or Lancer for Invigorate).

And yes the game didn't exactly crater, but it was also maybe it's most dire moment since 1.0 too at the beginning of the expansion. Gordias remains the most ill-received raid tier in the game's history and almost killed its raiding scene, Diadem which was supposed to be the expansion's major feature failed catastrophically 3 times in a row. The game took a better turn in 3.2 but raiding remained unappealing not only because of the sheer difficulty of Midas, but also how gatekeepy the difficulty of both job design and encounter design made this side of the game (both in terms of investment required and community behavior towards "less skilled" players). Even the first release of Deep Dungeon 1-50 was poorly received. That's why we got the new raid design we still have now starting from 3.4.

So yes, I do agree about introducing more failure and raising the skill ceiling. I'd add also skills that are more interactive than "fancy animation + x potency". But HW was way dire for casuals than people seem to remember, if the main story didn't hit as much as it did, it would be treated worse than Dawntrail currently is.

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I do not have that recollection from casual content. Hardcore players have always crapped on less skilled players, it's a universal constant no matter the game nor its complexity. They still do today. I've spent most of HW doing casual stuff (unlike later expansions), played a ton of roulettes and casual content, and I can safely say that casuals went by just fine. The big difference was the skill gap and skill expression showing, when today it just barely does in comparison. But obviously you'll get less skill expression gap if there is less depth and skill ceiling to jobs, when the floor hasn't changed that much except for support jobs that have become literally braindead.
HW job balance was all over the place but it mattered in savage, not in casual dungeons and whatnot.

I really don't see what Gordias/Midas savage or Diadem have to do with casuals vs complexity though? Savage is by definition not casual, and Diadem failed not because casuals couldn't cope with its difficulty (it was all but hard, and a lot less grindy than eureka), but for other reasons.

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Originally Posted by Valence

I do not have that recollection from casual content. Hardcore players have always crapped on less skilled players, it's a universal constant no matter the game nor its complexity. They still do today. I've spent most of HW doing casual stuff (unlike later expansions), played a ton of roulettes and casual content, and I can safely say that casuals went by just fine. The big difference was the skill gap and skill expression showing, when today it just barely does in comparison. But obviously you'll get less skill expression gap if there is less depth and skill ceiling to jobs, when the floor hasn't changed that much except for support jobs that have become literally braindead.
HW job balance was all over the place but it mattered in savage, not in casual dungeons and whatnot.
I really don't see what Gordias/Midas savage or Diadem have to do with casuals vs complexity though? Savage is by definition not casual, and Diadem failed not because casuals couldn't cope with its difficulty (it was all but hard, and a lot less grindy than eureka), but for other reasons.

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Opposite experiences and bubbles i suppose haha, I remember the toxicity against casuals clear as day. Of course hardcore players have always been somewhat elitist, but the game-design during Heavensward favored this kind of behavior, which is not so much the case today. I was mostly midcore/casual during HW (Only cleared up to A2, then carried on A6, then A11), and playing on EU, so maybe different expositions to people.

I mentionned these contents first because I was answering to the idea of "casuals went on just fine", but also because they were thought of along the job philosophy of HW. Back in ARR, the community was priding itself on beating complex challenges like T9, and the game direction moved to an overall complexification of the game because the vocal playerbase was asking for that kind of stuff, which left casuals in the dust in most endgame content. Even back in ARR, casuals at least tried out the first two fights of a raid tier just for fun, but the focus on complexity, be it on job or encounter design, made Gordias and Midas a pain to play for casual audiences, hence Creator catering back to them more, making raiding more accessible (also, Gordias was also kinda shit altogether).

And then Diadem, which was supposed to be a more casual experience and the focus of the expansion, also shit the bed. For a good while, the only decent content you could really do casually in XIV were EXs and dungeons.

All in all I wanted to say that I agree with your overall point, but wanted to clarify that HW really was a rough time for the first 3 patches, and while I think casual content needs more opportunities for failure to keep being engaging and job design needs to be more interactive, I also think we shouldn't look back to HW for that.

Thanks for the video. I don't like her presentation style, But the content was fun nonetheless. Well, we are definitely seeing shrinkflation. I always find it absurd that past seasonal foods have to be obtained in cashshop and are gone are 10 uses... It really should be obtainable in corresponding season through special fate grind Or something. I feel se putting oast seasonal item in cashshop can only be rivaled by activision putting ai generated bundles in shop and selling them for 20 dollars. But l still want to play this game because l find the pvp fun and doesn't have the enormous skill Gap gw2's pvp have.

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Originally Posted by Sekundessounet

I mostly agree about introducing more failure and raising the skill ceiling of the game overall, but I wanna point out that casuals didn't "went by just fine" during HW. HW was the period where, to my experience, the playerbase was at its most toxic because of the job design. Job design was convoluted, complex and satisfying to optimize maybe, but also unintuitive for most jobs, and a time where balance was at its most out of wack. It made it so casual players were scorned by midcore/regular players and some hardcore players for not mastering what they thought should be the baseline of job usage. It's one of the many reasons for the simplification that started in Stormblood (notably the cross-class skills system, remember that casuals were supposed to "know" they had to level up Thaumaturge for Swiftcast or Lancer for Invigorate).

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So, rather than, idk... teach the casual players how to play their jobs with ingame resources (Hall of the Novice, Stone Sky Sea giving, to practice, the rotation the devs used for coming up with the potency balance values for the job, etc), SE threw out the baby, the bathwater, and most of the bathroom, and instead just said 'reduce the skill ceiling of the jobs, so it's easier for the learning player to reach the 'acceptable performance level' for their Job'. Issue is, they STILL don't tell the casual player HOW to get to that level, you STILL have to go on external sites like IcyVeins or The Balance to learn your rotation. So they haven't solved anything, and gave up a massive portion of the skill ceiling to achieve that 'nothing'.

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Originally Posted by Sekundessounet

Opposite experiences and bubbles i suppose haha, I remember the toxicity against casuals clear as day. Of course hardcore players have always been somewhat elitist, but the game-design during Heavensward favored this kind of behavior, which is not so much the case today.

Even back in ARR, casuals at least tried out the first two fights of a raid tier just for fun, but the focus on complexity, be it on job or encounter design, made Gordias and Midas a pain to play for casual audiences, hence Creator catering back to them more, making raiding more accessible (also, Gordias was also kinda shit altogether).

And then Diadem, which was supposed to be a more casual experience and the focus of the expansion, also shit the bed. For a good while, the only decent content you could really do casually in XIV were EXs and dungeons.

All in all I wanted to say that I agree with your overall point, but wanted to clarify that HW really was a rough time for the first 3 patches, and while I think casual content needs more opportunities for failure to keep being engaging and job design needs to be more interactive, I also think we shouldn't look back to HW for that.

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Lets take these in turn:

- Hardcore Toxic players will always be toxic to players they deem to be 'substandard'. This has nothing to do with 'casual vs hardcore', you can very easily be a 'toxic casual'. Or a 'toxic low-skilled player' , Dunning-Kruger effect exists for this very reason. This is not a reason to reduce the complexity of the Jobs as far as SE did, however. A toxic player will be toxic, regardless of how easy/hard the Jobs are to play. SE could make SMN's rotation all auto-swap in the next 'optimal button' on one hotbar slot, akin to using the onebutton macro, and a toxic player would still find a way to tell the SMN they're playing wrong (for example, by saying 'why are you playing SMN when PCT exists', as seems to happen now occasionally). The TOS exists for this reason, to protect casual players from this toxicity. We didn't need to have SCH lose all of its DOTS going from SB to SHB to 'prevent toxicity', because I've seen plenty of toxicity regardless. In fact, I remember a SCH telling me that I was trolling by using SGE, because 'its less damage'. So I checked. It was SIXTY less DPS than SCH at the time (P8S, week 1 prog). So, SE's not solved the 'toxicity' issues, and in fact, with the constant shifting of potency into less and less buttons, the filler spell is now so vital to your damage output, that losing a single cast is far more punishing to the damage output than it used to be. In ARR, when we had... 4? DOTS to juggle as SCH (Bio, Bio2, Miasma, Shadowflare), Ruin's potency was 80. Broil is now 310. Every time you lose a Broil now due to needing to Succor, or Adlo, or because you are moving, you're losing 4 ARR Ruin casts. The 'reduced punishment factor' of the current design is literally skin deep, look below the surface for even a moment and you quickly realize that SE hasn't solved anything, they've just moved the problem, and slightly obscured it to make it look like they 'solved' it

- Yeh, and Creator was well received by the more casual side of the playerbase. But, they were still using the HW 'complicated rotations' that were apparently so divisive. So, maybe it wasn't the rotations that were the issue. Or, more accurately, it was most likely the combination of 'complex encounter', and 'complex job rotation', together, that made Gordias so unapproachable. But, as we've now seen, Encounter design can't necessarily carry a fight. Look at P7S, absolutely awful fight, 6 minutes of bugger all and then BOOM, Inviolate Purgation, everyone's dead. Strap in for 6 more minutes of bugger all, to get back to the prog point and try to see 'what just happened' again. On the flip side, I don't recall anyone complaining about the EX roulette being boring to do in HW, or SB, nearly as much as currently, and I think a lot of the reason for that, IS the Job rotations of the time. Even if you're a SCH fighting something as simple as... IDK, Mr Sloppy in Baelsar's Wall, yeh, maybe you're skilled enough to be able to handle it all with no GCD healing used. But you can still find some engagement in trying to keep your 4 different DOT timers juggled successfully

- Diadem being hot garbage has nothing to do with the Job design. The removal of 3 DOTs from SCH would not have magically made Diadem more fun to play as a SCH, for example. You're right, that at one point, the endgame was massively lacking (Gordias too hard, Thordan EX was too unapproachable to be a viable 'catchup' method). But that's my point. Look at the 'Sources of Complexity' ratio again, we have Encounter:Job as the two main sources of complexity. If the endgame is lacking in content, then everyone's doing casual content by default, such as EX roulettes. There's no avenue for Encounter to be the source of complexity in that level of content (else it'd gatekeep less skilled players out of being able to get tehir weekly tomestones), to keep the 'hardcore' players engaged in such a patch. So, the Job complexity, which is theoretically optional (you don't have to juggle all 4 DOTs as a HW SCH, and if someone tells you that you do, you can report them via TOS) helps to carry the content, regardless of how complex (or not) the fight is. Now we have the reverse, the Job complexity isn't enough to carry certain pieces of content.

- Yeh, the first 2 patches (HW itself, and 3.1) were shaky, but from what I hear, Midas was a step in the right direction in terms of difficulty, and Creator was so well received it's been the difficulty template for Savage ever since. But here's the question: If Creator was so well received in 3.4, a whole year before SB came out... Why was SE not able to recognise that, and pivot their design direction going into SB? Were they unable to see 'oh maybe the problem was we overcooked the Encounter side of the ratio, now that we toned that down, people are loving it. So, maybe we don't need to adjust the Jobs quite as hard as we originally planned'? It seems like they're locked into a certain design pipeline literally months in advance, and anything that comes up has no effect on the plans. People could have told SE, from the SB Beta/JobActionTrailer/Media Tour (and they did) that the WHM Lily system would flop, but SE insisted on barrelling ahead with it. Surprise, it was a flop, but it remained a flop for TWO YEARS. They just couldn't pivot in response to the feedback that 'WHM kinda bad' for whatever reason.


Feels like they have an idea they want to do, and they stick to it regardless of what challenges the idea's feasibility. Seraphism's VFX are so 'not-SCH-identity' that even JP was asking about it (and got told 'yeh but crazy changes like this are good sometimes right?' by YP), WHM's 'Pure Healer' identity in SB being such a catastrophe for its place in the PF that SE... lobotomized the other two healers down to WHM's level (and only relented on Energy Drain after even JP complained about it), all the tanks lost their 'maintain aggro vs maximise no-tankstance uptime' minigame and had it replaced with... nothing, leading to them feeling like 'melee DPS but you do 50% less damage', AST cards are probably going to be the subject of much arguing going into 8.0, Viper getting changed a couple weeks after release in response to... feedback we can't see as players, because it was internal I guess? And of course, PCT is still ridiculous in any fight with downtime (to the point of trivializing even the most endgame of content in terms of damage checks), and has yet to receive adjustments (though maybe 7.2 will do something about it).

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Originally Posted by Valence

I've never seen a casual complain about the complexity of a job. I've seen them complain plenty about the difficulty of encounters though.
I think this should tell us something there.

Especially since casuals coasted by just fine when jobs were a lot harder to play at a decent level...
They cleared content just fine.

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So often, when a job is made simpler there’s people who will complain that it’s made easier for casuals, but non-raiders are not the ones who are trying to do all their burst windows perfectly, and are not the ones who are complaining if their job does lower damage than others in that role.

Maybe there’s a mindset from the devs where they want to lower the skill floor of each job so getting into raiding is easier, even if that also lowers the ceiling. But it also seems like a lot of simplification and homogenization is for the sake of easier balancing and also so raiders don’t exclude certain jobs from their parties based on differences in damage or utility. We’ve had that happen before.

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Originally Posted by Sekundessounet

Opposite experiences and bubbles i suppose haha, I remember the toxicity against casuals clear as day. Of course hardcore players have always been somewhat elitist, but the game-design during Heavensward favored this kind of behavior, which is not so much the case today. I was mostly midcore/casual during HW (Only cleared up to A2, then carried on A6, then A11), and playing on EU, so maybe different expositions to people.

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It was just one static, but during Gordias, I was in a group where the raid lead tracked every wipe you caused. If you hit 10 in one night, you were out. I haven’t seen a static do that since. I don’t think them doing that was a HW-specific problem, but it certainly didn’t help either.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

And as a funny observation from someone who has been playing longer than you it’s funny that this is the first time they can actually back up that claim with dropping population numbers

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Please give me population numbers of 3.1 and 7.1.

Games ass, played since ARR, do most content, its gone to the dogs, glad people still enjoy it but for me its over and im gone when sub runs out, devs are lazy and community is worse apologizing for them constantly, you pay for this service and deserve more. Also, video was mostly right about everything, regardless of if you agree with the format

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Originally Posted by Voryn

So often, when a job is made simpler there’s people who will complain that it’s made easier for casuals, but non-raiders are not the ones who are trying to do all their burst windows perfectly, and are not the ones who are complaining if their job does lower damage than others in that role.

Maybe there’s a mindset from the devs where they want to lower the skill floor of each job so getting into raiding is easier, even if that also lowers the ceiling. But it also seems like a lot of simplification and homogenization is for the sake of easier balancing and also so raiders don’t exclude certain jobs from their parties based on differences in damage or utility. We’ve had that happen before.

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Which is pretty funny since it shows a complete misunderstanding of why many casuals play a given job in the first place. It can range from "it has the best glam" to "I like fireballs" and is a completely legitimate way to play the game.

Moreover, it's quite easy to solve the "overly complex" issue in casual content by simply not using all the buttons.[1]

The idea skill floors are being dropped to get more people into raiding is highly plausible and doomed to fail, particularly in NA/EU.

[1]Please be warned that if you do take this approach, someone on these boards will find one level 92+ fight you were compelled to play with players on fflogs, and mock you for failing to weave a low-potency AoE that slightly adds to your single-target dps. It's okay. You were probably trying to dodge a series of AoEs, and it's better to drop dps than die.

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Originally Posted by Valence

The problem with encounter difficulty is that it tends to act in a very binary way: you either succeed or fail mechanics. Jobs and the battle system though? You can add enough depth that a player that wants a bit more out of the system can actually play with levers that are totally optional for clearance otherwise.

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In my experience, this is also false. Because encounter difficulty and job complexity are not mutually exclusive. At the end of the day, cookie cutter playstyles and builds will always win out no matter how complex a class plays because the end-goal is to clear the content in the best way possible.

Builds aren’t something that really applies to this game, but the meta absolutely does.

We went through this in WoW. They used to have pretty complex and layered talent trees for each class that Blizzard gutted because raiders and PvPers had meta builds that were considered to be required to clear content or for arena comps.

They’ve since revamped the talent trees but it didn’t take long for “mandatory” builds to appear again.

What you call levers that are totally optional is the illusion of choice. There will always be levers that are mandatory. The rest will just be “Oh yeah, I forgot I had those!”

totally agree with nearly every point made

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

And as a funny observation from someone who has been playing longer than you it’s funny that this is the first time they can actually back up that claim with dropping population numbers

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Also people keep forgetting that the ShB influx was a mirage. SE didn't do anything to deserve it. It was all because WoW flopped.

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Originally Posted by Wilford111

Please give me population numbers of 3.1 and 7.1.

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It used to be that on the forums the goalpost was that player numbers are increasing.

Then last year it became that "it's still higher than Shadowbringers".

Now I guess the goalpost is "player numbers are higher than Heavensward".

Please stop own goaling lmao

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Originally Posted by Red-thunder

Also people keep forgetting that the ShB influx was a mirage. SE didn't do anything to deserve it. It was all because WoW flopped.

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I mean, the story in Shadowbringers was amazing. There’s a reason all those WoW players flooded this game which has a completely different focus than WoW. They could’ve gone to any other game, but they came here.

So, saying SE didn’t do anything to deserve it is disingenuous at best. To this day, FFXIV remains the #1 alternative game for many WoW players.

And it is still the second most popular MMO on the market.

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Originally Posted by Lium

I mean, the story in Shadowbringers was amazing. There’s a reason all those WoW players flooded this game which has a completely different focus than WoW. They could’ve gone to any other game, but they came here.

So, saying SE didn’t do anything to deserve it is disingenuous at best. To this day, FFXIV remains the #1 alternative game for many WoW players.

And it is still the second most popular MMO on the market.

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They came, and they left within one xpac. Wow what a good job.

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Originally Posted by Red-thunder

They came, and they left within one xpac. Wow what a good job.

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Which is more than you can say for every other MMO out there. And let’s not forget the primary reason they came here to begin with. It was because their game sucked.

And FFXIV remains quite popular.

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Originally Posted by Lium

let’s not forget the primary reason they came here to begin with. It was because their game sucked.

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There we go. It wasn't so hard was it?

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Originally Posted by Red-thunder

There we go. It wasn't so hard was it?

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Right. But they could've gone anywhere else. They chose to come here.

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Originally Posted by Lium

Right. But they could've gone anywhere else. They chose to come here.

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"Anywhere else" is somewhat limited, no? Like when I quit EVE Online because I hadn't been outside for 3 weeks, to me the two obvious MMO choices were WoW and 14. And I didn't like the WoW artwork.

SQEX definitely deserves credit for placing FF14 in that go-to category, but it also feels increasingly that FF14 is getting by on its reputation rather than its current content.

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Originally Posted by Lium

Right. But they could've gone anywhere else. They chose to come here.

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There arent many MMOs out there anymore with a good population so no not really, the best decision based on playerbase was literally FFXIV

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Originally Posted by AvoSturmfaust

There arent many MMOs out there anymore with a good population so no not really, the best decision based on playerbase was literally FFXIV

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Exactly. There’s a reason for that.

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Originally Posted by Red-thunder

Honestly I'm happy for you! Genuinely it looks like you got to a point where you're no longer having fun and are just grasping at chaotic raids, which I've heard is one of the last things that is fun in this game.

Unsubbing is the right choice. There are so many games out there that are just amazing. Try Split Fiction out with your boyfriend! It's actually really, really fun and I had a blast, even though it's EA lol.

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man u dont know how right u are about that chaotic stuff. im so happy i left the game., been off it for like a week now and it feels like a detox. sonic fandom has a good stranglehold on me so ill happily succumb to that for the foreseeable. just using my last *forum credit* to check around before i finally walk away (its not exactly easy)

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Originally Posted by Lium

In my experience, this is also false. Because encounter difficulty and job complexity are not mutually exclusive. At the end of the day, cookie cutter playstyles and builds will always win out no matter how complex a class plays because the end-goal is to clear the content in the best way possible.

Builds aren’t something that really applies to this game, but the meta absolutely does.

We went through this in WoW. They used to have pretty complex and layered talent trees for each class that Blizzard gutted because raiders and PvPers had meta builds that were considered to be required to clear content or for arena comps.

They’ve since revamped the talent trees but it didn’t take long for “mandatory” builds to appear again.

What you call levers that are totally optional is the illusion of choice. There will always be levers that are mandatory. The rest will just be “Oh yeah, I forgot I had those!”

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I think you misunderstand me, the levers I talk about isn't about class customization. It's simply playing your class well and making your own fun even in resident sleeper encounters because your class is engaging and has levers to play with, which hasn't truly been the case since ShB dropped.

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Originally Posted by sindriiisgaming

man u dont know how right u are about that chaotic stuff. im so happy i left the game., been off it for like a week now and it feels like a detox. sonic fandom has a good stranglehold on me so ill happily succumb to that for the foreseeable. just using my last *forum credit* to check around before i finally walk away (its not exactly easy)

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Yeah it's not easy but it's worth it. Glad you're enjoy Sonic!

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Originally Posted by Red-thunder

Yeah it's not easy but it's worth it. Glad you're enjoy Sonic!

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If only you would be able to find something more engaging to do with your limited life time. But alas, woe is us.

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Originally Posted by Lium

Exactly. There’s a reason for that.

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Yea and the Reason is NOT because Final is such a great game with insane good content, the reason is people rather play a subscription based game even with less content then a P2W F2P and sadly nearly 99% of the F2P MMOs are P2W

Thats atleast the Reason i still play Final, its not P2W i get everything i want and the Combat isnt to bad either, yea i would love more challenging classes but its still better then the rest out there

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Originally Posted by sindriiisgaming

man u dont know how right u are about that chaotic stuff. im so happy i left the game., been off it for like a week now and it feels like a detox. sonic fandom has a good stranglehold on me so ill happily succumb to that for the foreseeable. just using my last *forum credit* to check around before i finally walk away (its not exactly easy)

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I'm happy for you. I hope you will personally get to know such the best people of the Sonic community. Chris-chan for example.

/sarcasm9000

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Originally Posted by AvoSturmfaust

Yea and the Reason is NOT because Final is such a great game with insane good content, the reason is people rather play a subscription based game even with less content then a P2W F2P and sadly nearly 99% of the F2P MMOs are P2W

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I would even go that far to say, that Final is the ONLY MMORPG WITHOUT Pay2win bullsh*t, yes the Cash shop is out outrageuosly greedy, but at least we don't have battlepasses, lootboxes and stuff where you can actually pay money for character power. Anyone who ever played a Korean MMO like Blade & Soul, Lost Ark or Black Desert will know what i mean, there you must pay thousands of dollars to progress your character at some point.

About chaotic raids, i have grinded through it, i got all the mounts and hairstlye, fflogs says i got 84 kills. and it was a really frustrating experience, that fight was entirely unfun to progg.

https://i.imgur.com/Kx4IuRW.jpeg

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Originally Posted by AllenThyl

If only you would be able to find something more engaging to do with your limited life time. But alas, woe is us.

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https://files.catbox.moe/nclbeu.jpg

There is a thing called toxic positivity, and it's something where too much of it will lead to the studio being in trouble, like how it's made other studios get in trouble. Unfortunately, sticking your head in the sand and ignoring the obvious flaws that have shown up is not going to stop all the hours and money you've put into the game from being vanished when the game either goes into maintenance mode or if square outright shuts it down from not doing well.

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Originally Posted by Eastwall

Thanks for the video. I don't like her presentation style, But the content was fun nonetheless. Well, we are definitely seeing shrinkflation. I always find it absurd that past seasonal foods have to be obtained in cashshop and are gone are 10 uses...[snip]

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Don't forget how they handled their partnerships with stuff. I'm particularly looking at the Mountain Dew collab that they did. The mount is character only. The drinks are character only, and a consumable item. But hey, the character only mount would be great if you redeem the award again right? Nope, either Squenix didn't do proper due diligence or there was a breakdown in communication, because you could only redeem the reward once on the mtn dew site. Oh, but MTN's side said you could great up to 3 "alt" accounts and that would be it, so technically you could have 3 redeems. On something like the mount where it should've been account-wide instead of character only.

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Originally Posted by AvoSturmfaust

Thats atleast the Reason i still play Final, its not P2W i get everything i want and the Combat isnt to bad either, yea i would love more challenging classes but its still better then the rest out there

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There it is. It is a good game and is better than the rest out there.

Which is exactly my point.

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Originally Posted by Lium

There it is. It is a good game and is better than the rest out there.

Which is exactly my point.

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tell me one department where 14 is better then the others and i prove you wrong.

compare it to i dont know:
wow
guild wars 2
ffsk go for metin2 ( joke )