Dear Community what even holds you in this game

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Originally Posted by TheDustyOne

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.

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Thank you. Exactly this. And why PvP in this game is far superior to PvE.

I'm sure everyone agrees.

i stay because i like the game not because people who do not pay my sub ask me why i stay this is all up to me and not them.

My main anchor is the story.
7.2 was good and showed me that they still can tell a good story if they get slapped in the face a bit and get down of their high horse. A good story makes me want to do quest and all to find out more and keeps me interested.
I also like things like mining to calm down, doing my roulette and just pushing my BLM gameplay even though I have fallen out of love with the raid design.
Then there is my character who after so many years is just important to me and I spend way too much time with glamour.

The game itself is mostly still the old one minus a good amount of the charm points sacrificed for streamlining and over reliance on DDR gameplay as well as an overbearing amount of raiding at the cost of other things right now.

The biggest reason for my dissatisfaction is actually how the community has changed and the devs respond to it.
Instant pulling tanks, a far more arrogant attitude in high end raids or the overly annoying guide war in PF to a point where even blind runs devolve into guide raiding after a few tries because the raids are designed with statics and guides in mind it seems.
Content creators who are so outside of normal reality in their static bubble they have no idea what they are talking about in parts minus a few and the devs completely catering and only listening to them.

Times have changed I guess where streaming and content that is marketable in videos is the most important thing nowadays.
I have honestly fallen out of love with video games as a whole only playing this one and some few others that are not AAA nowadays.

Also hot take but Hrothgar we’re a mistake and should have never been implemented.

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Originally Posted by Gwenkatsu

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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Did you do the alchemist quests? Those are Emotional Damage the Questline.

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Originally Posted by TheDustyOne

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.

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I also suspect that in their systematic attempt to dramatically reduce or outright remove buffs and debuffs and other rpg elements from encounters, jobs and the game in general, they genuinely think that going for the "action/reaction" type of gameplay will reach more people and a bigger audience than things that actually require players to think actively. Ultimately I don't know whether it's true or not, but it's also betraying their core audience in the process and throwing the baby with the bathwater.

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

Did you do the alchemist quests? Those are Emotional Damage the Questline.

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Ohh, now that you say it... the guy that needs to have one last word with their lost love.
Somehow I seem to have forgotten all the good quests lines, and only remember the bad ones.
Maybe it's time to create another char and take a look at all the stuff I forgot. Hey, seems like I found another thing that will hold me in this game for a while :)

Have you SEEN Aymeric? That is all

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

Did you do the alchemist quests? Those are Emotional Damage the Questline.

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Comments like these made me expect too much from the Alch quests. I found it to be nowhere near the tearjerker so many people say it is. All the effusive praise has honestly soured me a bit on the community lol. Like, it was okay, but the idea of someone literally sobbing over it is beyond me. If I want to be cynical, then I'd even suggest that those people are being intentionally misleading about how emotionally potent the questline is. Kinda like how when my gf calls some girls pretty, when we both know they're not. Why she and other girls do that, I have no clue.

I also see a lot of people gushing over it saying "OMG Ishikawa lives off our tears!" But Ishikawa wasn't even the writer for the emotional part of the series — levels 60-70. Ishikawa only wrote levels 1-50.

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Originally Posted by ViinaS

My house,
the friends that are still playing
....
sunk cost fallacy.

That's pretty much it tbh and its rather sad.

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This, pretty much.

I only log in to water the plants in my FC's garden and send our subs out.

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Originally Posted by JohnLakeside

Comments like these made me expect too much from the Alch quests. I found it to be nowhere near the tearjerker so many people say it is. All the effusive praise has honestly soured me a bit on the community lol. Like, it was okay, but the idea of someone literally sobbing over it is beyond me. If I want to be cynical, then I'd even suggest that those people are being intentionally misleading about how emotionally potent the questline is. Kinda like how when my gf calls some girls pretty, when we both know they're not. Why she and other girls do that, I have no clue.

I also see a lot of people gushing over it saying "OMG Ishikawa lives off our tears!" But Ishikawa wasn't even the writer for the emotional part of the series — levels 60-70. Ishikawa only wrote levels 1-50.

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Or it's just possible these stories resonate more with some people in ways different than you. Which is fine.

People can say Hildebrand is hilarious all they want, I just won't see it.

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Originally Posted by ZephyrMenodora

People can say Hildebrand is hilarious all they want, I just won't see it.

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Hildibrand is... special. Except when you like to hear the same lame joke 29478 times in a row, in which case it is peak comedy :D

Hildebrand was amusing the first time around. Then it got super old real fast.
But it was missed enough in shb that it was brought back by popular demand. Not for me but I guess others liked it.

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Originally Posted by Thurmnmurmn

Hildebrand was amusing the first time around. Then it got super old real fast.
But it was missed enough in shb that it was brought back by popular demand. Not for me but I guess others liked it.

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I just hope they never get lazy with Relic weapons in the future and end up having to do another 6 years of those quests in a row. Oof!

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Originally Posted by Valence

I also suspect that in their systematic attempt to dramatically reduce or outright remove buffs and debuffs and other rpg elements from encounters, jobs and the game in general, they genuinely think that going for the "action/reaction" type of gameplay will reach more people and a bigger audience than things that actually require players to think actively. Ultimately I don't know whether it's true or not, but it's also betraying their core audience in the process and throwing the baby with the bathwater.

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Those RPG elements were a decently big part of what I derived enjoyment from when I first started playing back in Stormblood. The fact that they're now gone is definitely a factor in why I feel combat isn't as fun as it used to be.

I remember Yoshi-P talking about debuffs that affect movement like heavy and bind sometime around EW launch, and how they were "unfun", especially when applied to the player (I could very well be misremembering such a conversation, it can be very hard to keep track of what he says sometimes). I get the sentiment when it comes to more annoying dungeon designs like old thousand maws, but sometimes those "unfun" elements are there BECAUSE they're something we want to avoid; don't want your casts getting interrupted? Don't stand in the AoE that would silence or paralyze you.

The "unfun" elements are there to make the fun elements more rewarding, stripping those away makes playing incorrectly only a minor inconvenience to playing correctly, and sometimes leads to better outcomes than playing correctly because the consequence is minimal and the gains may be more than worth it; why bother moving out of an AoE that'll only tickle you when you could get that Flare cast off instead? If that AoE was to silence the player however, now it's a threat, time to move.

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Originally Posted by Gwenkatsu

Ohh, now that you say it... the guy that needs to have one last word with their lost love.
Somehow I seem to have forgotten all the good quests lines, and only remember the bad ones.
Maybe it's time to create another char and take a look at all the stuff I forgot. Hey, seems like I found another thing that will hold me in this game for a while :)

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Not just Severian, either, but the one with F'lhaminn was good and also the mystery in Mor Dhona.

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Originally Posted by JohnLakeside

Comments like these made me expect too much from the Alch quests. I found it to be nowhere near the tearjerker so many people say it is. All the effusive praise has honestly soured me a bit on the community lol. Like, it was okay, but the idea of someone literally sobbing over it is beyond me. If I want to be cynical, then I'd even suggest that those people are being intentionally misleading about how emotionally potent the questline is. Kinda like how when my gf calls some girls pretty, when we both know they're not. Why she and other girls do that, I have no clue.

I also see a lot of people gushing over it saying "OMG Ishikawa lives off our tears!" But Ishikawa wasn't even the writer for the emotional part of the series — levels 60-70. Ishikawa only wrote levels 1-50.

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Uh, never said I cried over anything, but go off, dude. If you've ever lost anyone then there some things that resonate in both Severian and F'lhaminn's questlines.

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Originally Posted by TheDustyOne

I remember Yoshi-P talking about debuffs that affect movement like heavy and bind sometime around EW launch, and how they were "unfun", especially when applied to the player (I could very well be misremembering such a conversation, it can be very hard to keep track of what he says sometimes). I get the sentiment when it comes to more annoying dungeon designs like old thousand maws, but sometimes those "unfun" elements are there BECAUSE they're something we want to avoid; don't want your casts getting interrupted? Don't stand in the AoE that would silence or paralyze you.

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Funny thing to me about that is such debuffs are very much at the heart of current PvP. In Frontline we argue whether there should be a cap on the number of targets getting debuffed, but overall such elements are one reason PvP combat is far more interesting than PvE.

In PvP you can inflict these debuffs on the enemies you are trying to kill! In PvE, what actions do you perform on the boss? Inflict damage while avoiding damage. The poverty of thought that goes into current PvE is frankly shocking.

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Originally Posted by Mawlzy

Funny thing to me about that is such debuffs are very much at the heart of current PvP. In Frontline we argue whether there should be a cap on the number of targets getting debuffed, but overall such elements are one reason PvP combat is far more interesting than PvE.

In PvP you can inflict these debuffs on the enemies you are trying to kill! In PvE, what actions do you perform on the boss? Inflict damage while avoiding damage. The poverty of thought that goes into current PvE is frankly shocking.

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The more I look at PvP kits for jobs, the more I wonder why they don't show that kind of creativity in PvE. I know they can't just import them one-to-one, but the jobs each have a solid core theme and mechanic, and they're far less homogenous amongst the roles. SCH being able to use Deployment for either spreading their shields or their DoTs is something I'd take in PvE in a heartbeat, if only to relive the glory days of Bane existing.

It's rather interesting how back when I first started playing, no one took PvP in this game all that seriously; you play XIV for the PvE and just ignore PvP unless you wanted cosmetics. Nowadays I think the opposite is true. It just annoys me that in order to play the jobs I find interesting, I have to play them in a game mode I've never been fully fond of; I prefer fighting bosses rather than players.

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Originally Posted by TheDustyOne

The more I look at PvP kits for jobs, the more I wonder why they don't show that kind of creativity in PvE. I know they can't just import them one-to-one, but the jobs each have a solid core theme and mechanic, and they're far less homogenous amongst the roles. SCH being able to use Deployment for either spreading their shields or their DoTs is something I'd take in PvE in a heartbeat, if only to relive the glory days of Bane existing.

It's rather interesting how back when I first started playing, no one took PvP in this game all that seriously; you play XIV for the PvE and just ignore PvP unless you wanted cosmetics. Nowadays I think the opposite is true. It just annoys me that in order to play the jobs I find interesting, I have to play them in a game mode I've never been fully fond of; I prefer fighting bosses rather than players.

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Yeah, I'd love to know what is going on behind the scenes.

My guess is that, because PvP has been a niche mode as you say, PvP devs are under fewer constraints and oversight. And when they have made mistakes over the last year, they appear to have listened to player feedback and corrected them.

I'd love to see more players give it a go. And for PvE to incorporate some of the design philosophy.

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

Not just Severian, either, but the one with F'lhaminn was good and also the mystery in Mor Dhona.



Uh, never said I cried over anything, but go off, dude. If you've ever lost anyone then there some things that resonate in both Severian and F'lhaminn's questlines.

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You called it "Emotional Damage the questline." I'm just saying those are some pretty emphatic words.

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Originally Posted by TheDustyOne

Those RPG elements were a decently big part of what I derived enjoyment from when I first started playing back in Stormblood. The fact that they're now gone is definitely a factor in why I feel combat isn't as fun as it used to be.

I remember Yoshi-P talking about debuffs that affect movement like heavy and bind sometime around EW launch, and how they were "unfun", especially when applied to the player (I could very well be misremembering such a conversation, it can be very hard to keep track of what he says sometimes).

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If you're not already aware you may be pleased to learn that gameplay like that has returned in the most recent raid tier. For example, during the M6S add phase a mob spawns and starts running at a healer. The melee have to rotate their stuns to slow it down long enough to kill it before it reaches the healer and one shots them.

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Originally Posted by TheDustyOne

The "unfun" elements are there to make the fun elements more rewarding, stripping those away makes playing incorrectly only a minor inconvenience to playing correctly, and sometimes leads to better outcomes than playing correctly because the consequence is minimal and the gains may be more than worth it; why bother moving out of an AoE that'll only tickle you when you could get that Flare cast off instead? If that AoE was to silence the player however, now it's a threat, time to move.

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AOEs in harder content usually either kill you outright or hit you with a damage down which will make you fail the enrage check, so I'm assuming you're referring to normal difficulty. I don't disagree that they could slap a little harder but it's a fine line the devs have to walk. I think for the most part normal difficulty stuff is in a decent spot between requiring you to be awake to win and not brick walling casual players. The FFXI alliance raid was pleasantly spicy compared to the EW series.

Nothing, my sub is expired and now I'm just watching from the sidelines.

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Originally Posted by TheDustyOne

Those RPG elements were a decently big part of what I derived enjoyment from when I first started playing back in Stormblood. The fact that they're now gone is definitely a factor in why I feel combat isn't as fun as it used to be.

I remember Yoshi-P talking about debuffs that affect movement like heavy and bind sometime around EW launch, and how they were "unfun", especially when applied to the player (I could very well be misremembering such a conversation, it can be very hard to keep track of what he says sometimes). I get the sentiment when it comes to more annoying dungeon designs like old thousand maws, but sometimes those "unfun" elements are there BECAUSE they're something we want to avoid; don't want your casts getting interrupted? Don't stand in the AoE that would silence or paralyze you.

The "unfun" elements are there to make the fun elements more rewarding, stripping those away makes playing incorrectly only a minor inconvenience to playing correctly, and sometimes leads to better outcomes than playing correctly because the consequence is minimal and the gains may be more than worth it; why bother moving out of an AoE that'll only tickle you when you could get that Flare cast off instead? If that AoE was to silence the player however, now it's a threat, time to move.

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Curious how unfun is in the eye of the beholder, does it?
And suddenly all those elements are back in force in pvp, so what is it? Surely new pvp would be widely unpopular if said elements were unfun? Yet it's been consistently the most praised part of the game's combat systems right now, especially in terms of job identity and intricacies.

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Originally Posted by Mawlzy

Yeah, I'd love to know what is going on behind the scenes.

My guess is that, because PvP has been a niche mode as you say, PvP devs are under fewer constraints and oversight. And when they have made mistakes over the last year, they appear to have listened to player feedback and corrected them.

I'd love to see more players give it a go. And for PvE to incorporate some of the design philosophy.

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It's possible pvp is the new retirement home they designed for all those pesky vets whining about the game and getting in the way of their glorious new reactionary based pve where every job can be played by an automated macro.

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Originally Posted by CidHeiral

If you're not already aware you may be pleased to learn that gameplay like that has returned in the most recent raid tier. For example, during the M6S add phase a mob spawns and starts running at a healer. The melee have to rotate their stuns to slow it down long enough to kill it before it reaches the healer and one shots them.

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I'm happy about it, but it ain't gonna bring me back if the 3 other fights are just more of the same DDR garbage. Not gonna bother trudging through this just to experience M6S, and that's not even the whole of the fight either. It's just there as an experiment, and seeing how it's been received, I'm not even sure they're going to consider it a success. They do too little too late.

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Originally Posted by CidHeiral

The FFXI alliance raid was pleasantly spicy compared to the EW series.

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Felt pretty much the same to me but your mileage may vary. I'll give bonus points for the 3rd boss that had some manner of lukewarm (and arbitrarily scripted) multitargeting.

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Originally Posted by Rolder50

Nothing, my sub is expired and now I'm just watching from the sidelines.

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About to join you in about 20 day I think are left on my account. Only think left for me to do is help a Friend Powerlevel through Eureka.

ff14 fans told us to play other games now we are playing other games to realise how empty ff14 is.

At least from my perspective, I fell in love with ff14 because theirs so much to do it felt big open (yes I know better now), such a nice friendly environment, raiding seemed cool ect.

But now that I've done a lot of everything I realise how hollow ff14 is when it tries to spread itself in so many different directions the game feels pretty bland, that along with it's outdated laggy netcode making something like pvp not fun for me. (which would have a lot of replay value) Raiding on the surface is fun, but I feel like it's pretty hollow and empty when the jobs themselves that are meant to interact with that content are all a samey bland copy of each other... The "open world" has nothing to actually explore, no challenges to overcome or anything remotely fun to do.

I think the biggest problem plaguing this game is that it was successful, but now they're so scared of losing that success (which they are) so they are afraid to make actual fun and risky changes, when they really need to actually start taking risks and seeing what works.

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Originally Posted by Valence

I'm happy about it, but it ain't gonna bring me back if the 3 other fights are just more of the same DDR garbage. Not gonna bother trudging through this just to experience M6S, and that's not even the whole of the fight either. It's just there as an experiment, and seeing how it's been received, I'm not even sure they're going to consider it a success. They do too little too late.

Felt pretty much the same to me but your mileage may vary. I'll give bonus points for the 3rd boss that had some manner of lukewarm (and arbitrarily scripted) multitargeting.

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Fair enough. You hate the "DDR" fight design at a very core level and I'm fine with it so I don't think we're ever going to see eye to eye here. :p We'll just have to wait and see how fights continue to evolve I suppose.

I think its kinda fun
My FC likes to run cool content like Eureka and Level Synced EX trials

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Originally Posted by Valence

It's possible pvp is the new retirement home they designed for all those pesky vets whining about the game and getting in the way of their glorious new reactionary based pve where every job can be played by an automated macro.

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Then I will happily continue to ignore PvE, play my assigned mode, and take afternoon naps.

Hopefully there'll be lemoncakes.

Honestly I really enjoyed the current Cruiserweight Savage raid tier and that's held my attention in game for a good while, it felt like the devs really took the gloves off again and weren't afraid to be more experimental with the fights... it's definitely the toughest Savage tier in a while, but for all the right reasons, I hope we see this design philosophy transfer over to the next Ultimate as FRU was slightly pedestrian for my tastes and I'd like to see something refereshing - a proper Ultimate add phase would be interesting considering what they cooked up with M6S...

Aside from that I've had my hands full going for Necromancer trying to solo POTD and I'm really looking forward to delving into Occult Crescent with my static, FC and other friends... There's definitely content to keep me playing, but I have to agree that it would nice to see a lot of this stuff sooner, especially Field Exploration/Operations, I feel that's like the MMO lifeblood of the game where the casual and hardcore crowd and everyone in between can buddy up for really cool content...

Played from 2.0 onwards, got attached to my chara and I find the lore very interesting. Biggest mistake I made was buying 6 mo sub at a time which makes me feel obligated to log in

Also MINE community is fun and frankly that's what I like most besides pvp and deep dungeons.

To the op who made....

Honestly my house, hilde brand, friends, fc, and just the odds and ends stuff u can do outside dawntrail....

Copium that it will get better again.

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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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S ranks and friends, mainly.

I've found I really can't take my friends with me when I switch games, and that has been a thing for years. When I take a long break from an MMO to go play another, the friendships built thereupon so often turn out to be tied to the common ground of playing that particular game that they atrophy fairly rapidly (maybe because I don't use social media anymore and Discords tend to get annoyed if you talk too much about competing games? Sometimes I wonder if I should've, er, Zucked it up and kept Facebook around after all, bad as it is, and knowing I didn't use it for like 5 years before I finally deleted it anyway lol).

And in today's world it's steadily harder to find new friends when your old ones drift away.

Meanwhile, I haven't really seen any other game that has the rush of spawning S ranks, which is one of the few sources of happy I still find in this fading star. BDO had spawn scrolls but they got rid of them during a QOL update (because they unified certain reward materials from those bosses - which had previously been separate per boss - and felt the spawn scrolls allowed people to farm the overall resource too easily). WoW has the very occasional world rare that required special engagement to spawn (like that one mob you need the item for in Zereth Mortis) or make fightable (like the one cloud serpent in the Vale in MoP) and that is about it.

TBQH I haven't bought this month's sub Crysta yet and I'm still on the fence if I'm going to, fwiw.

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Originally Posted by DeathNoodles

Played from 2.0 onwards, got attached to my chara and I find the lore very interesting.

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Yeah getting attached to your character is something I can relate to. The Hours I sunk into working on Glams to express her personalety for all the different jobs... will probably be the only thing I lock sadly back on once my sube runs out for good.

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Originally Posted by Araxes

Copium that it will get better again.

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Same... every time Patches washed another job blank of personalety I believed/hoped that down the road they would finaly walk back... I remember that Yoshida acknowledged that people were complaining about the homogenization of jobs... so I either missremember it or he was simply lying to us.

Fakt is 7.2 broke the last hope I had and I see that they will now walk back on there design decisions any complaining in the Forum is outright ignored which leaves me with the only way to make my voice heard... walking away and taking my money with me.

Roleplay, to be honest the rest sucks.

- I am on Chaos so cannot raid unless i travel to Light DC.
- PF is a mess and you waste hours waiting just to have a chance to play.
- The healers gameplay won't be fixed / made fun until 8.0.
- Theres internet routing issues with some ISP and FFXIV ISP, and SQE refuse to do anything beside saying "sorry".
- Everything seems low effort or barely made with any care.

So yeah, roleplay keeps me around, without that i would be gone since a long time.

Having and not wanting to lose a house, basically gun to head kind of situatiom

Playing with my brother mostly. It's the game we've played together for years.

I do miss the old Bard gameplay though. Now I just feel like a high level archer when playing.

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Originally Posted by LilaIronman

Having and not wanting to lose a house, basically gun to head kind of situatiom

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https://i.imgflip.com/47p08b.jpg

Came back to the game a couple of weeks ago after a bit of a break to play other games and decided to check the forums. Happy to see it's still consumed by nihilism, bringing a bit of comfort in an ever-changing world.

Now on to the thing that keeps me playing. I actually enjoy the gameplay and story, minority opinion I know.

My 4 houses.

I'm subscribed to keep in contact with friends. FFXIV's direction has been revolutionary, really... An MMO that treats interaction like a bug.