Yoshi P's Ominous Statement About the Future of XIV

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Originally Posted by Valence

Agreed. I also want to point out that our current MP model is literally the same as what old TP was for multiple reasons:

- Regens fast
- Everybody has the same (10k instead of 1k, same round number)
- Applies to spellcasters instead of physical classes

The big difference is that they have over time made every rotation MP neutral or positive. In ShB when TP was removed and the old MP reworked into what we have now, we still had some spellcasters with negative MP rotations, and people had to meld piety. And that's my point, TP couldn't be helped with melds, and having negative rotations is what made people mad ultimately. Nobody complains about MP today because it's an afterthought and it doesn't matter for anything beyond, at best, gating raising (and even then, parties tend to snowball and wipe before anyway).

It's depressing when I think about it.

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I'm fully expecting 8.0 to just remove it entirely and implement a rez cap for all instanced content.

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Originally Posted by Valence

Agreed. I also want to point out that our current MP model is literally the same as what old TP was for multiple reasons:

- Regens fast
- Everybody has the same (10k instead of 1k, same round number)
- Applies to spellcasters instead of physical classes

The big difference is that they have over time made every rotation MP neutral or positive. In ShB when TP was removed and the old MP reworked into what we have now, we still had some spellcasters with negative MP rotations, and people had to meld piety. And that's my point, TP couldn't be helped with melds, and having negative rotations is what made people mad ultimately. Nobody complains about MP today because it's an afterthought and it doesn't matter for anything beyond, at best, gating raising (and even then, parties tend to snowball and wipe before anyway).

It's depressing when I think about it.

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It wasn't without issues, and IMO past TP was worse than current MP (at least IMO).. e.g., being that TP would drain on sprint.. MP is basically pretty much self reliant, whereas TP you would argue had dependencies, e.g., Ninja being able to throw Goad on a party member...

But setting that aside, it is a bit depressing to dwell on the fact that more oft than not, it is par the course for the developers to remove something entirely rather than finding out how to rework it, make it better or balance it out.

It is funny because individually at removing systems, you may not bat an eye too much, but when you look at the collective of things removed rather than reworked, you do quickly come to realize how little you actually have to pay attention to the bulk of the games content.. There are many things I don't agree with from ARR/HW design... But if I had to pick between this era and the old era... Honestly?? It's a no brainer.. a game that basically has me feeling so spacious that I can watch Netflix, Youtube or just do any number of things that don't involve me actually engaging with the game?

I'm personally picking the old era.. I will admit it's going to depend massively on playstyle and all. But for DoH/L? I'm always picking old era... WWYW gave a level of player agency against RNG, that many players won't know about or appreciate outside of Material Miracle and Careful Observation.. Won't know the satisfaction from pulling off a double Byregot (Byregot's Miracle > Byregot's Brow)... Won't know the satisfaction (or relief) from crafting your first set of Ironworks (Which had a myriad of challenges between sprit bonding, and levelling Desynthesis for Glass Fiber, which you would get from Void Ark gear), hell players won't even know how satisfying some people found it to craft an Astral Birch Lumber (Yes concealed nodes sucked... But a chest piece going for as much as what a full set does these days -- It was satisfying regardless)... As much as players may try to say "It was always this way"... Even the minor enjoyment from optimizing rotations in early Stormblood to try and squeeze in a reuse-reclaim combo

What am I doing now? Pretending like I am playing the game whilst running the same macro for the 236247th time to acquire Kingcraft Demimateria (Version. 12).. I do want to be clear to others that I still enjoy things about the game, but like... Even if many things back then were badly designed, unless you do very specific pieces of content (e.g., raid), then there isn't really much to feel satisfied or accomplished about, that isn't different from what you were already doing anyway 2 expansions ago.

Have you tried Final Fantasy 11?
Where there are no quest marks, TP exists, you can count the pixels, and at least in the beginning you mostly rely on auto attack. Let's not start on getting to 99.

I actually do genuinely miss one thing that was left behind in the ARR/HW era; what we call physical ranged jobs were designed as the party support role. Bard songs and Machinist turrets were party buff tools and the curious decision to give Bard the healing and raising limit breaks was because the job genuinely played back-up to healers and helped keep everyone going. Both had other buff and debuff skills that have been whittled away, especially for Machinist.

Dancer actually fits right in line with the old ideas for the role, with skills like Sheild Samba, Curing Waltz, Dance Partner, and their dances buffing the party, all at the cost of pretty meh solo damage.

As a former Machinist main, the idea it was a gunner with gadgets meant to buff and debuff is almost wholly removed from what it is at level 100. It was a moment of joy when we got Dismantle back!

I don't have hope left. So I am just going to wait and see.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

=
In that sense, we're already treating each other like NPCs, so some would make the argument of removing the pretense and make the "MMO" part optional content.

Alternately, the mentality has to change from people viewing each other as "friction and pain points" when it comes to game progress, but that's impossible with the current design where it literally only takes one person messing up to cause a domino effect of a party wipe, people don't want to put up with others having to learn a fight, and everyone is rushrushrushrush with everything else. Even basic communication is hobbled by the looming ToS or people opting to use Discord to such a degree that FF14 feels more like the "third-party app" in that relationship.

Even the realm of RP, arguably the most social element of all, is mired in its own issues with the use of frequent modding that would put even Skyrim to shame, or how they have even less wholesome ties to gambling and RMT.

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Many people I know have just accepted being treated like a NPC as the new norm and not being bothered by it but I'll die on my hill of it never being an acceptable thing to either do or have done to you.
I'll only get upset with mistakes in PF if its a farm party and its like 5 pulls in a row (I understand that if its your first party of the day or you haven't been around you might be bad a time or two) or on the other side, not a farm party and people expect everyone to know everything.
I shrunk my social circle to being my FC bar a handful of people and don't go out of my way to meet anyone new since it feels like there is no point anymore.

TOS being restrictive to the point where you cant even fully communicate in a party doesn't help at all, "It's ok", "No Problem" etc... being the only acceptable things to either say or have said to you vs actually being told somethings wrong or should be done differently, a party has to suffer in silence with resentment being built to the offending person because a simple correction to the wrong person can result in a ban to you.

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Originally Posted by TBerry

Have you tried Final Fantasy 11?

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No, but I have tried Final Fantasy XIV 3.0 and 4.0.

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Originally Posted by NaoSen

Many people I know have just accepted being treated like a NPC as the new norm and not being bothered by it but I'll die on my hill of it never being an acceptable thing to either do or have done to you.
I'll only get upset with mistakes in PF if its a farm party and its like 5 pulls in a row (I understand that if its your first party of the day or you haven't been around you might be bad a time or two) or on the other side, not a farm party and people expect everyone to know everything.
I shrunk my social circle to being my FC bar a handful of people and don't go out of my way to meet anyone new since it feels like there is no point anymore.

TOS being restrictive to the point where you cant even fully communicate in a party doesn't help at all, "It's ok", "No Problem" etc... being the only acceptable things to either say or have said to you vs actually being told somethings wrong or should be done differently, a party has to suffer in silence with resentment being built to the offending person because a simple correction to the wrong person can result in a ban to you.

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I never had much of a social circle at all since I started and played on Dynamis for so many years where the majority of people were just housing alts and anyone who WAS playing the game was always data center traveling, which I myself had to do frequently, especially for PVP.

Even when I finally got fed up and moved to Primal it wasn't with any assumption that I would make friends or get into an active FC because I'm just burnt out on the idea that this game has a community that cooperates, it merely tolerates. It only got worse after Dawntrail when hostility between players felt like it became higher and more out in the open even right here on the forums.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

I never had much of a social circle at all since I started and played on Dynamis for so many years where the majority of people were just housing alts and anyone who WAS playing the game was always data center traveling, which I myself had to do frequently, especially for PVP.

Even when I finally got fed up and moved to Primal it wasn't with any assumption that I would make friends or get into an active FC because I'm just burnt out on the idea that this game has a community that cooperates, it merely tolerates. It only got worse after Dawntrail when hostility between players felt like it became higher and more out in the open even right here on the forums.

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IMO, this game probably has one of the most insular communities I've ever come across in any game (I've obviously not played everything, but it isn't a good state regardless). It's at a point where IO genuinely view it as being much worse than many run-of-the-mil multiplayer games out there.

The game simply has developed in a state where it's almost created environments acting as the antithesis of an MMO, the game at this point has a substantive amount of content around the expectation they'll just use Discord, and then as you lean more on it, you simply find many players that will just socialize predominantly on there, versus actually interacting with players in the game, because it's just far too convenient, and the game has almost made a fairly active effort to push you in that direction. Players just simply do the content, stick to themselves, and be on their merry way.#

As an aside it's always funny when people refer to roleplay folk and the sort as being a "yOuRe JusT a sEcoND lIFe plAyER", which really just goes to show how we've devolved from a social simulator (a core part of an MMO identity, especially when you factor people trying to use it as some subversive insult) into this place where we just treat the game as a little hollow content simulator.

I know this is an off-tangent... But this is why the game desperately needs some level of resistance and contention in it, because it actually encourages collaboration with players you may never have done so otherwise.. I know it's not everyone's forte, but the game has lost far too much to mere convenience.

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Originally Posted by Kaurhz

It wasn't without issues, and IMO past TP was worse than current MP (at least IMO).. e.g., being that TP would drain on sprint.. MP is basically pretty much self reliant, whereas TP you would argue had dependencies, e.g., Ninja being able to throw Goad on a party member...

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I have to agree that TP was a half-assed attempt for a physical MP bar. But tying TP to Sprint? That was the craziest decision ever. My main was a DRK and between the stance dancing and TP and MP mitigation, it was just all over the place (and still wasn't as good as the other tanks, despite being a cluster of a job that I loved for some sado-masochism reason).

Hmmm, I've been playing this game since 2009 ... yes since before these threads can count, the state of this game is in a serious downward trend, I'm just hoping they can draw upon story tellers and game devs that can capture what they had just before Dawntrail because I am just not interested in this content... except for the "nightclub"aspect of the game at this point. so many bad changes lately, I'm a bit worried

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Originally Posted by Kaurhz

IMO, this game probably has one of the most insular communities I've ever come across in any game (I've obviously not played everything, but it isn't a good state regardless). It's at a point where IO genuinely view it as being much worse than many run-of-the-mil multiplayer games out there.

The game simply has developed in a state where it's almost created environments acting as the antithesis of an MMO, the game at this point has a substantive amount of content around the expectation they'll just use Discord, and then as you lean more on it, you simply find many players that will just socialize predominantly on there, versus actually interacting with players in the game, because it's just far too convenient, and the game has almost made a fairly active effort to push you in that direction. Players just simply do the content, stick to themselves, and be on their merry way.#

As an aside it's always funny when people refer to roleplay folk and the sort as being a "yOuRe JusT a sEcoND lIFe plAyER", which really just goes to show how we've devolved from a social simulator (a core part of an MMO identity, especially when you factor people trying to use it as some subversive insult) into this place where we just treat the game as a little hollow content simulator.

I know this is an off-tangent... But this is why the game desperately needs some level of resistance and contention in it, because it actually encourages collaboration with players you may never have done so otherwise.. I know it's not everyone's forte, but the game has lost far too much to mere convenience.

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Can't get much resistance or contention in a game where the moment anyone has any complaint about anything people brigade in and tell them "why don't you just quit then" because criticism is forbidden, or worse, they think your complaints will get THEIR complaint pushed further down the list which means you're expected to shut up for their benefit (and then when their problem is addressed and its your turn, they're naturally silent in their support or resort to mockery that you weren't the favorite). There's also the matter that the moment anyone struggles with anything in this game, people are quick to write them off as dead weight, even in normal content, to say nothing of the drama and gatekeeping that pops up in the higher-end.

With how many people treat every other player in the game as a literal enemy, I'm not surprised that Square-Enix keeps fast-tracking more content to be doable with Trusts while they simultaneously delay other updates or release them in a sorry state. They don't need to worry about players refusing to cooperate or the player count hitting the critical mark if everything can be done with NPCs anyway. Final Fantasy 14 isn't done copying Final Fantasy 11's homework just yet I feel.

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Originally Posted by Veritas-Ancora

I have to agree that TP was a half-assed attempt for a physical MP bar. But tying TP to Sprint? That was the craziest decision ever. My main was a DRK and between the stance dancing and TP and MP mitigation, it was just all over the place (and still wasn't as good as the other tanks, despite being a cluster of a job that I loved for some sado-masochism reason).

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Sprint using TP made sense to me, as sprinting was viewed as physical exhaustion in a game paradigm where sprinting in fights was a lot less prescribed than it is today. However as usual the way it was done was incredibly punishing and crazy as you say, since it removed the whole TP amount you had and gave you a proportional amount of seconds of sprint, which I find absolutely backward. There was so many solutions they could have used instead, like sprint only removing TP by increments that you could for example stack (spend 200 TP, gain 5s of sprint, spend another 200, stack 5 more seconds etc), or like pressing a specific button making you sprint as long as the button is pressed, and spending TP every second for it.

However they decided to get rid of sprint TP in SB and turned the button into the one we know today (minus the queue, which made it infuriatingly unresponsive to use back then), so TP essentially became the MP we had in ShB (minus the meld options): some TP/MP positive rotations, some neutral, some negative. A lot of healers for example back in ShB still required to reach specific piety thresholds and BiS sets often had multiple variants ranging from comfy MP to tight optimization build for reclears or good groups. Difference in ShB was that MP couldn't be recovered from party support anymore (unlike TP with Army/Promote in HW, and Tactician in SB), but only from individual sources (Lucid for MP, a worst Invigorate that TP had).

That's why ultimately I'm saying, in spite of its flaws in execution, TP and MP both had a niche, and SE chose to remove the less interesting and most controversial of the two (TP) in order to turn the most engaging and interesting of the two (MP) into the former. Like... why??

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

Can't get much resistance or contention in a game where the moment anyone has any complaint about anything people brigade in and tell them "why don't you just quit then" because criticism is forbidden, or worse, they think your complaints will get THEIR complaint pushed further down the list which means you're expected to shut up for their benefit (and then when their problem is addressed and its your turn, they're naturally silent in their support or resort to mockery that you weren't the favorite). There's also the matter that the moment anyone struggles with anything in this game, people are quick to write them off as dead weight, even in normal content, to say nothing of the drama and gatekeeping that pops up in the higher-end.

With how many people treat every other player in the game as a literal enemy, I'm not surprised that Square-Enix keeps fast-tracking more content to be doable with Trusts while they simultaneously delay other updates or release them in a sorry state. They don't need to worry about players refusing to cooperate or the player count hitting the critical mark if everything can be done with NPCs anyway. Final Fantasy 14 isn't done copying Final Fantasy 11's homework just yet I feel.

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I am not necessarily speaking exclusively in terms of difficulty here.. Partly I am, but largely the game would have small mechanics and systems in it that would actually foster collaboration with players.. Look at Ishgard Restoration versus Cosmic Exploration, where the former would encourage you to collaborate with gatherers, or with crafters to push server progression, because you had to actually gather, or have the materials gathered... By contrast, in Cosmic, the materials are largely something provided to you, or asked for you to get self-sufficiently, which does detract away from collaborating..

Same thing with specialist recipes back in HW... Sure, you can argue bad design, but it still fostered a sense of collaboration, or an actual reason to do so, now it's just far too much solo..

In terms of difficulty though, this is a hard one... Because yes, older times it was difficulty, but there's been a weird little trade off, to where they've placed difficulty from obscurity of mechanics, into the visual bloat/overdesign of making a visual spectacle out of it... So for a lot of players it's simply a sensory overload.. But I feel with respect to players acting like toxic waste, they are always going to do this regardless of the presence or absence of friction, so it's difficult for me to see this as a rationale to try and completely minimize player interaction.

The only place that actually felt like a MMORPG in this game was eureka, forming parties to grind mobs to pop fates, a shout for raise never going unanswered, it was people working together for both the world being against them and to achieve a common goal. Occult Crescent removed that by making encounters auto spawn, you dont even have to care about dying because 1 critical encounters exp will be more exp than you get for dying at max level so you'd be level 19 for at most 15 minutes anyways.

The amount of people crying in forums because they are put in a roulette with someone that they have blacklisted, that cannot share a instance for 15 minutes where you don't even talk anyways with their arch-enemy. It's ridiculous.

Hopefully SOMETHING comes into this game to let it feel like a MMORPG again and not a RPG with online mode.

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Originally Posted by NaoSen

The only place that actually felt like a MMORPG in this game was eureka, forming parties to grind mobs to pop fates, a shout for raise never going unanswered, it was people working together for both the world being against them and to achieve a common goal. Occult Crescent removed that by making encounters auto spawn, you dont even have to care about dying because 1 critical encounters exp will be more exp than you get for dying at max level so you'd be level 19 for at most 15 minutes anyways.

The amount of people crying in forums because they are put in a roulette with someone that they have blacklisted, that cannot share a instance for 15 minutes where you don't even talk anyways with their arch-enemy. It's ridiculous.

Hopefully SOMETHING comes into this game to let it feel like a MMORPG again and not a RPG with online mode.

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Tbh even as someone who loved Eureka, the fault doesn't lie entirely with OC.
If Eureka came out today it would probably fail as well.
The community itself has changed since Shb I feel sometimes. People nowadays don't want to interact outside their bubble and that bubble is mostly in Discord in the form of a chatroom (with extremely lacking privacy and data protection imo).
Even I stay away from FC's nowadays because the first thing you get is a Discord link.

No matter what they would come up with, the time of the old MMO's is kinda over or at least the definition has changed and it's not FFXIV exclusive.
Nowadays you can quickly jump into content without premades or planning and that's part of the reason why FT failed, even without the entry method.
Even I as someone who liked the old ways honestly don't want to miss that, though I agree that OC is lacking extremely in that regard where I think CE's having to be spawned or treasure chests being randomly located might help like you implied.

That said, given how OC and it's phantom jobs turned out, even as a field content fan, I wonder if it wouldn't be better for 8.0 to skip it and actually do something entirely new for a change because they seem to be out of ideas for that content. Heck, even the story in OC is lacking compared to Bozja.

In the end though my opinion is as follows.
If the entire interaction and planning is done outside the game then there is no point in putting more MMO elements into it because it will be ignored ingame anyway and the content will feel the same as now.

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Originally Posted by Kaurhz

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I remember hearing about the co-dependency of gatherers and crafters in the Firmament and actually thought it was still present in Cosmic Exploration, but that just seems like another example of Square-Enix trying to make a piece of prior group content more solo-friendly... or at least, it SOUNDS like that until you find out that entire worlds can fail on project process unless there's enough people to advance the bar. They paradoxically removed co-dependency in one area yet added a far more massive one in its place.

But then it goes back to making sense again when you remember the former method of cooperation involves direct interaction with another player to do the gathering and crafting while the latter turns them into a faceless blob doing their own thing in the corner and the key to success is making the blob big enough.

I think I have some gray slab-looking things on a retainer that had something to do with specialist stuff, incidentally, that was around the time I stopped caring about crafting because 1-50 recipes were pain enough to deal with because of timed nodes and desynthesis that I didn't want to deal with some kind of faux-talent tree too. I'm sure some people love that kind of thing, but it comes with the trade-off that it also makes some people abandon a system that may already weren't having fun with. And you're not like to find many gatherers and crafters lamenting the lack of people people getting into it because less competition is a good thing in their eyes, so the fewer people engaging with the system and growing the better. (Or at least, they thought it was great until Cosmic Exploration REQUIRED there be numerous other people who were doing DoL/DoH.)

Square-Enix knows they can't prevent toxicity in its entirety so they keep modifying things to either decrease "direct" player interaction 1-on-1 (thus preventing "he said she said" incidents), or they try to FORCE cooperation on a macro scale to create some vague sense of "it takes a village". Chaotic Raids and Forked Tower were allegedly presented as bridges between casual and hardcore, to the point Square-Enix outright admitted they designed them around the idea of one half of the team teaching and carrying the other half... and we all saw how well that worked out when most Chaotic Raiders bragged about being able to monopolize a hairstyle of all things, and Forked Tower goers were willing to "purge the undeserving" from the mode because how dare they use the entry system as intended.

I know there's people out there that have managed to find functional friend groups and FCs, but as another person said, most of them are content to remain in their bubble. Hell, even if I wanted to actively seek joining an FC now that I'm on Primal, there's not exactly an in-game catalogue of them, clicking on people often shows their recruitment as "closed" and even if you go out of the game to search the community finder on the Lodestone? 90% of them have a Discord link in the first line. Not describing themselves, not telling you what kind of content they do, not even if they're casual or hardcore, they want you to join their Discord FIRST with the free company its self more than likely only for housing and submarines while you watch "XYZ logged in, XYZ logged out" for hours with nary a word spoken because you're expected, OBLIGATED even, to keep the chat in the Discord.
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Originally Posted by NaoSen

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Can't say I was the biggest fan of Eureka (my least favorite piece of side content yet to the point I'm auto-skipping Bozja and Occult Crescent), and while someone will point out it's because I did it solo all the way to max level/finishing the initial story, I would argue that being forced to group up would not have made the mob farming any less mind-numbing or the FATEs any more engaging. Or how for all that effort there's even MORE grind if I care to do the relic weapons (and I really don't), and Baldesion Arsenal is something I'll never step foot in because even if I took leave of my senses and did the relic weapons, I ALSO have to grind for the elemental armor, grind for the last magicite slots, AND grind out the Logos Actions. And no, telling me that I can just pay millions of gil to bypass 2 out of those 3 strict requirements isn't acceptable either because lining the already fat pockets of some other person isn't the "community engagement" someone thinks it is, if anything it makes it EASIER to abandon the content as "finished" the moment I fed that surly potato to a glowing cube. Oh, and to top it all off, I would be required to join a Discord for running BA anyway because its all but impossible to do effectively outside of listening to someone over voice chat, assuming of course one can even find a BA Discord that isn't just running it for their personal group and hates the idea of bringing casuals along to help clear it... or maybe they DO like baiting casuals to come along just so they can get them killed/de-level and then have a good laugh about it. (Because goodness knows Occult Crescent taught us to trust others who can control access to hard content, right?)

Even if by some aligning of the stars a group existed out there that actually liked helping newcomers and were 100% committed to getting them all of the achievements for BA, or hell, even handed out the necessary items for a fat discount/free, it doesn't really change that I don't find Eureka to actually be fun (making the achievements meaningless, and I wouldn't even use the mount), or how I'm distrusting and avoidant of other players in general due to my experiences with the community so far between what I've seen and dealt with on the forums, social media, and even in-game. Someone else said that the presence of toxicity shouldn't be just cause to minimize options for player interaction, but all the options in the world don't matter if the game has firmly established that you're better off staying quiet and keeping your head down because the majority already sees you as a threat (either in their own progress or their wants for the game), and for the friendly harbors that exist, they keep their ports tightly shut because they remain safe havens BECAUSE they isolate themselves from the majority.

Someone will probably chalk it up to paranoia, or just a really bad first impression born in part from me starting on a dead data center, but I've been playing for over 3 years now, my impression of the game's community as a whole isn't from some one-off random encounter, it's been rather consistent and daily. The forums in particular are chock full of people that constantly demand that others quit the game if they struggle or complain about anything because they don't want to hear it or they see the other person as competition for Yoshi-P's attention when it comes to content or changes.

Hell, people STILL blame other people for every job change when it's the DEVELOPERS making those changes for reasons they BARELY EXPLAIN. But nope, even as recently as the RDM and GNB changes you had people marching in and blaming it on "filthy casuals" or "MSQ Ann & Andy" even though there's probably not one post in the entirety of the forums across any language of some casual player asking for the change because they couldn't complete a solo duty. Now, did some people AFTER the fact say they didn't mind or like the changes? Yes. But... we've had people coming in here saying they thought Forked Tower's entry system was "perfectly fine" so one should just assume that any addition or change will have its fans.

But that's not the point, the issue is that players were ALREADY blaming other players despite the fact that not a single one of us has any control on what the developers do, or that if any of us did, we have WAY more and others things we would be using are Yoshi-Privileges on than "RDM goes stabby-stabby several feet away". I don't know about you, but that's a massive waste of the genie's powers.

Even within the context of every change that has happened, we keep pinning it on each other if we don't like it. Jobs, fights, the MSQ, side content... even something as benign as glamour restrictions being lifted had people blaming others for "ruining job identity" or accusing Square-Enix of favoring "Limsa AFKers over real players".

I don't know when the community hostility started, for all I know its been here before I started playing and all the way to 1.0, but Dawntrail made people very comfortable with being out loud about it. Whether its from a culmination of problems finally boiling over or there was something in the water when we reached Tural, but I think we can retire that meme about the playerbase being "nice and welcoming" when you can't even ask for a solution for DDoS, a large scale technical issue no one here has any control of, without people showing up and accusing you of taking food from their mouths (because you're stealing away Yoshi-P when you do that you see), or inferring they don't want you here anyway because they saw you hadn't cleared a piece of content so you should just unsub.

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Originally Posted by NaoSen

The only place that actually felt like a MMORPG in this game was eureka, forming parties to grind mobs to pop fates, a shout for raise never going unanswered, it was people working together for both the world being against them and to achieve a common goal. Occult Crescent removed that by making encounters auto spawn, you dont even have to care about dying because 1 critical encounters exp will be more exp than you get for dying at max level so you'd be level 19 for at most 15 minutes anyways.

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I miss Eureka for this. There was such a strong community feel in the game when you went into Eureka.

At a guess, it's about realising that the game needs to modernise in an era where MMO's can STILL be successful if they don't demand a hardcore daily commitment. MMO's are just another Live Service now, and your competition isn't WoW or OSRS, it's the Hoyoverse games racking up monthly player counts (and earnings) that'd make WoW at it's peak look positively dead.

As to what they'll do?

More of an emphasis on customisation and self-expression (I'd expect to see animation packages start to show up on the Mog Station during 8.0), more of an emphasis on "playing the game how you want to" (so gearing outside of Savage being less of a tedious time commitment), and moving away from the trappings that define old-school MMO's as a whole.

I did play Eureka to grind for TT cards. Honestly anything else I just wouldn't do. I don't like weapon and gear grinding because it wastes too much time of yours which is insane. Eureka did indeed have nice community but I'm done with farming mobs and fates. Specially 2nd zone which is a nightmare. 3rd and 4th are thankfully much easier and faster.

Now doing Bozja and community is once again good but grind is just... not for me. Specially when you have to do same thing over and over and over again until you go insane. I don't find that fun. OC is same, finished story and never came back. It's mega boring.

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Originally Posted by ElysiumDragon

More of an emphasis on customisation and self-expression (I'd expect to see animation packages start to show up on the Mog Station during 8.0), more of an emphasis on "playing the game how you want to" (so gearing outside of Savage being less of a tedious time commitment), and moving away from the trappings that define old-school MMO's as a whole.

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To add to this, the mmo culture has dramatically changed from even a decade past. It’s less about the community and more about the self. As the individual takes centre stage, you see a lot of adjustments being made to the game surrounding that mentality. As such, there came the addition of trust and duty support in shb and the ability for dc travel in ew. It is, in a way, central to why they are pivoting the game towards more of a live service and less of an MMO, not only due to the competition, but also a change in the culture.

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Originally Posted by TeresaFortell

To add to this, the mmo culture has dramatically changed from even a decade past. It’s less about the community and more about the self. As the individual takes centre stage, you see a lot of adjustments being made to the game surrounding that mentality. As such, there came the addition of trust and duty support in shb and the ability for dc travel in ew. It is, in a way, central to why they are pivoting the game towards more of a live service and less of an MMO, not only due to the competition, but also a change in the culture.

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I don't understand. Are you saying that MMOs are now about the single-player experience?

I play an MMO to play with others. I'm not interested in content like Blue Mage unless it's farming Moogle tomestones with others.

Has the industry really fallen so far back that a Massive Multiplayer Online game is just fodder for single-player experiences?

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Originally Posted by Veritas-Ancora

Has the industry really fallen so far back that a Massive Multiplayer Online game is just fodder for single-player experiences?

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MMORPGs are expensive. Mobile gaming is easier. Just single player with fake multiplayer aspect I guess

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Originally Posted by Veritas-Ancora

I don't understand. Are you saying that MMOs are now about the single-player experience?

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Yes. The heavy focus on being solo-friendly in many MMOs has caused these games to foster a single-player experience. This focus originated from the mmo culture I described in my other post.

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Has the industry really fallen so far back that a Massive Multiplayer Online game is just fodder for single-player experiences?

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It has to adapt. Nowadays, people play games for short-term gratification, and they will not turn to MMOs because they don't want games that require parties or even socialising with others to achieve anything. As such, these games deliberately create a solo-friendly experience to reduce the barrier of entry, so that anyone can play them without these constraints.

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Originally Posted by Veritas-Ancora

I don't understand. Are you saying that MMOs are now about the single-player experience?

I play an MMO to play with others. I'm not interested in content like Blue Mage unless it's farming Moogle tomestones with others.

Has the industry really fallen so far back that a Massive Multiplayer Online game is just fodder for single-player experiences?

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MMOs have become of safe outlet for almost any form of self-expression that a player wants, and it's more enticing to do that in an environment with others in the same mindset.

FFXIV's character creator is jarringly simple compared to its peers and other games that allow customized characters because it needed to be is 2012. It's 2025.

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Originally Posted by TeresaFortell

To add to this, the mmo culture has dramatically changed from even a decade past. It’s less about the community and more about the self. As the individual takes centre stage, you see a lot of adjustments being made to the game surrounding that mentality. As such, there came the addition of trust and duty support in shb and the ability for dc travel in ew. It is, in a way, central to why they are pivoting the game towards more of a live service and less of an MMO, not only due to the competition, but also a change in the culture.

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Originally Posted by RedLolly

MMOs have become of safe outlet for almost any form of self-expression that a player wants, and it's more enticing to do that in an environment with others in the same mindset.

FFXIV's character creator is jarringly simple compared to its peers and other games that allow customized characters because it needed to be is 2012. It's 2025.

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And people wonder why the genre is dying... With players like these, who needs critics?

If any other genre of game had such a dramatic upheaval in focus, there would be mass riots. What makes MMOs so special that they are so susceptible to being boiled down like frogs?

"Whatever jargon we feed you, please look forward to it." -- Square Enix

It's pretty obvious Square Enix is tripling-down on mobile. Whether or not the statement Yoshida said on Square's behalf reflects that, I'm not sure. But I do know the company is in a very rough spot if it has shareholders preparing powerpoint presentations, detailing their misgivings about the management and why they're voluntarily capsizing. At the end of the day, we get what we get, and if we don't like it, we simply pack up and leave. I'm not going to hang on the words of a company that is abusing the nostalgia factor of its IP while listening to the skeletons it has in its closet and apologizing to the individuals that happily brought the plague into their domicile and left kicking and screaming.

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Originally Posted by NegativeS

And people wonder why the genre is dying... With players like these, who needs critics?

If any other genre of game had such a dramatic upheaval in focus, there would be mass riots. What makes MMOs so special that they are so susceptible to being boiled down like frogs?

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I theorize it's the same appeal as to why it seems like every shooter game sells skins and the rise of "cozy" games that are hyperfixated on personalization in a low stakes environment.

It's genuinely industry wide, but MMOs are for adults that want to hang out and play together.

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Originally Posted by NegativeS

And people wonder why the genre is dying... With players like these, who needs critics?

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Yet you have not provided a counterargument to what I said. If you actually think trust and duty support systems actually provide an MMO experience in the game, you would be very much wrong in that regard.

It's so bizarre to me that SE keeps straddling the line between the game being an MMO and being a single-player experience, like they can't figure out how to choose a side. I personally think it was a mistake to start converting everything to single-player modes; dungeon quality has definitely suffered thanks to both current and past dungeons needing to be dumbed down so their terrible NPC AI can manage mechanics for the single-player experience...
I mean financially it's obvious they want to tap into a previously under-tapped market in MMOs since players that are single-player rarely go for them, but you basically taint the MMO well in the process, so I feel in the long run it was a massive mistake. But it's one they're not backpedaling from any time soon.

Mobile games? Maybe this means they'll hire the Star Rail writers and give us something really cool like Amphoreus :)

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Originally Posted by Gaddes

It's so bizarre to me that SE keeps straddling the line between the game being an MMO and being a single-player experience, like they can't figure out how to choose a side. I personally think it was a mistake to start converting everything to single-player modes; dungeon quality has definitely suffered thanks to both current and past dungeons needing to be dumbed down so their terrible NPC AI can manage mechanics for the single-player experience...
I mean financially it's obvious they want to tap into a previously under-tapped market in MMOs since players that are single-player rarely go for them, but you basically taint the MMO well in the process, so I feel in the long run it was a massive mistake. But it's one they're not backpedaling from any time soon.

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Unfortunately NPCs started to become a necessity when they would have new players show up but found the number of veterans willing to run older content to help them get through the MSQ lacking (to the extent that several veterans routinely ask to be able to avoid a critical part of getting out of ARR; The Crystal Tower), and then there's the sorry state of Dynamis and Materia where low populations make it difficult to get a lot of group content done.

Even now the game is hemorrhaging players to where one wonders how far it can drop before the MMO aspect becomes disingenuous because there's not actually a massive amount of people around anymore.

There are still people everywhere, you can still interact with them and you still need them all for your roulettes and especially higher difficulty content.
The market board is still player driven as well and all that.
I am an old player who experienced GW1 or SWTOR but I don't want to go back to the old days without a duty finder or the forced need for guilds or such things even when I loved Eureka.
Most people in the game are completely happy to chat actually.

MMO's aren't dead but their definition has changed and no longing for the old ways will bring them back because even those old school MMO veterans are adults with kids and all that now.
Nowadays an MMO is a world you share with others, have an multiplayer you group up and the rest is optional and that Multiplayer aspect you simply jump in without preparation and simply...have fun.
A big reason why this game was even successful in the first place was because it wasn't as focused on the MMO aspect and the "FF first, MMO second" was a thing since I started this game. It has always been extremely single player friendly through it's narrative structure alone.
FFxiv isn't the only MMO that has changed. Others are more accessible for solo players as well, even WoW or FFXI (and those solo players have always existed "raises hand"). Elite Dangerous for example has an entire Solo Gamemode where you only share the galaxy with others.

Trusts aren't destroying the MMO aspect, the roulettes are still as active as before and they don't destroy dungeon design because they could do the old mechanics, it's a dev choice so blame them and not trusts or Duty Support.
Veterans as well are completely willing to do old content, we are simply sick of the same three raids in roulette the entire time and hate the job gameplay at low levels.
We already saw what happens when you need to coordinate to enter content and when you are inside it's simply callout following without thinking because Discord is where people nowadays go for everything. That's what a return to older MMO ways would end up.

I can understand the heartache for the old ways, I really do because I also miss the community aspect of Eureka or the community feeling of when I started but even I have to say that this thread has devolved a bit too much into nostalgia.
The old MMO's will never come back and frankly they would fail anyway. We can miss them all we want (I only do half heartedly tbh) but at some point it's time to simply accept it and go on.

I also find the heat against mobile games odd when you look at the markets in South Asia or South America. They never got to experience console or PC gaming on the same level as us if at all, and so gravitated towards mobile gaming, but still demand and expect high fidelity content just like we do. It's what everyone has access to.

They're the reason why FFXIV has a mobile remake and why we've not gotten it (yet). It's a different market but they still want good games.

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Originally Posted by Voidmage

There are still people everywhere, you can still interact with them and you still need them all for your roulettes and especially higher difficulty content.
The market board is still player driven as well and all that.
I am an old player who experienced GW1 or SWTOR but I don't want to go back to the old days without a duty finder or the forced need for guilds or such things even when I loved Eureka.
Most people in the game are completely happy to chat actually.

MMO's aren't dead but their definition has changed and no longing for the old ways will bring them back because even those old school MMO veterans are adults with kids and all that now.
Nowadays an MMO is a world you share with others, have an multiplayer you group up and the rest is optional and that Multiplayer aspect you simply jump in without preparation and simply...have fun.
A big reason why this game was even successful in the first place was because it wasn't as focused on the MMO aspect and the "FF first, MMO second" was a thing since I started this game. It has always been extremely single player friendly through it's narrative structure alone.
FFxiv isn't the only MMO that has changed. Others are more accessible for solo players as well, even WoW or FFXI (and those solo players have always existed "raises hand"). Elite Dangerous for example has an entire Solo Gamemode where you only share the galaxy with others.

Trusts aren't destroying the MMO aspect, the roulettes are still as active as before and they don't destroy dungeon design because they could do the old mechanics, it's a dev choice so blame them and not trusts or Duty Support.
Veterans as well are completely willing to do old content, we are simply sick of the same three raids in roulette the entire time and hate the job gameplay at low levels.
We already saw what happens when you need to coordinate to enter content and when you are inside it's simply callout following without thinking because Discord is where people nowadays go for everything. That's what a return to older MMO ways would end up.

I can understand the heartache for the old ways, I really do because I also miss the community aspect of Eureka or the community feeling of when I started but even I have to say that this thread has devolved a bit too much into nostalgia.
The old MMO's will never come back and frankly they would fail anyway. We can miss them all we want (I only do half heartedly tbh) but at some point it's time to simply accept it and go on.

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Admittedly, it was my own fault coming into FF14 expecting an MMO experience like I had in other games within the genre, but after my time on Dynamis, I eventually accepted that this is an ORPG and don't concern myself with trying to make friends or even getting into an FC anymore. If anything I hope they ramp up the Trust system so I can do more than just dungeons with NPCs, because aside from the forums, I've given up on the social element of this game. I'm on Primal now to get healthy PVP queue times with people that may as well be NPCs when nobody talks and just goes through the motions.

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Originally Posted by TeresaFortell

Yet you have not provided a counterargument to what I said. If you actually think trust and duty support systems actually provide an MMO experience in the game, you would be very much wrong in that regard.

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Eh... I may have misread what you said. I despise the addition of trust and duty support, subverts the entire point of the genre.

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Originally Posted by NegativeS

Eh... I may have misread what you said. I despise the addition of trust and duty support, subverts the entire point of the genre.

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I couldn't care less about trusts or duty support existing if it were just an option for solo players to use. The problem I have with that system is that it affects all content it's implemented in for non-solo players as well.
Because they're not building the dungeon first and then making trusts work within it, they're building the dungeon around the trust NPC's very limited capabilities.

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Originally Posted by RedLolly

I also find the heat against mobile games odd when you look at the markets in South Asia or South America. They never got to experience console or PC gaming on the same level as us if at all, and so gravitated towards mobile gaming, but still demand and expect high fidelity content just like we do. It's what everyone has access to.

They're the reason why FFXIV has a mobile remake and why we've not gotten it (yet). It's a different market but they still want good games.

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So because they never received the content, we shouldn't either?
I don't understand this logic.

I bought this game because this is the content I wanted to play. I'm assuming everyone else did, too.

I mean, would changing FFXIV to a ‘mobile game’ model even change anything? Like we’re already 3/4 of the way there. Super condensed, streamlined and shortened rotations for all jobs (like 3 skills and an ult as most mobile games do), main reason for subscription/playing is completing daily/weekly tasks (I.E roulettes/normal raids/savage+). Hell we even have the ‘premium cosmetic items that are purchasable with real currency’. Trust gatcha incoming?

Honestly wouldn’t be surprised if they start making ‘premium subscriptions’ where you get exclusive glamour rewards or extra raid loots or something ridiculous if you pay an extra 15 monies a month.

…they really want FFXIV players to suffer , don’t they…?

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Originally Posted by Connor

I mean, would changing FFXIV to a ‘mobile game’ model even change anything? Like we’re already 3/4 of the way there. Super condensed, streamlined and shortened rotations for all jobs (like 3 skills and an ult as most mobile games do), main reason for subscription/playing is completing daily/weekly tasks (I.E roulettes/normal raids/savage+). Hell we even have the ‘premium cosmetic items that are purchasable with real currency’. Trust gatcha incoming?

Honestly wouldn’t be surprised if they start making ‘premium subscriptions’ where you get exclusive glamour rewards or extra raid loots or something ridiculous if you pay an extra 15 monies a month.

…they really want FFXIV players to suffer , don’t they…?

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They've already admitted as much that if any feature from the mobile version proves popular enough that they'll see about trying to add it to the PC version. Of course, what constitutes "popular" could also be "what people spent the most money on" and it just so happens that the mobile version has gacha boxes for cosmetics including hairstyles with variants. I couldn't tell you how well they're selling, but given we've already had people begging for some of those cosmetics to be added to PC... it's only a matter of time before the current cash shop becomes even more aggressive.