My dog got sick. It’s SE’s fault.
My milk expired. I blame Yoshi-p
My kitchen sink is clogged because of CBU3.
Climate change because XIV sucks
I know you haven't played WoW in years.
I was just on yesterday, as my sub time hasn't ran out yet.
PvP still is a thing, it's called War Mode and it's just as bad as the PvP servers of old. The only benefit it has, is players turning it on for 10% bonus exp, as no one keeps it on at max level unless they want to be ganked.
Then there's Blizzards new Zone - those Caverns. Already dead. Why? Enemy density is too high, enemies and their elite stacks have numerous mechanics, way too much HP/Damage, it's a rare chase, and getting rep for the new faction is a massive grind as they massively reduced the rep players get for activities. Blizzard is trying to force the zone as a group zone, but most players are just leaving the zone as it isn't fun and is extremely annoying. Especially the left side (that is the most mob dense) that constantly warns that they'll be dismounted.
Lose the insults. Uncalled for. Especially when you don't know anything upon the matter.
You also get 3 additional abilities/passives you can choose from which can be pretty good depending on the job while in war mode. You get some more world quests in war mode as well and another gearing path if pvp is your thing too. I agree it's sad that the caverns isn't as busy as forbidden reach was but I think that is also due to not being locked to the caverns to upgrade the gear unlike with forbidden reach. Literally everything you do gives you flightstones and you can get the crests from a ton of different things as well. I think if the gear drops from the rares wasn't really vendor trash it would be more popular but heroic dungeons (which are as brain dead as expert roulette) give better gear than the rare mobs most of the time.
Blizzard let Forbidden Reach die (by not scaling it down, so if you aren't in the only raid group there then might as well stay out of the zone) to try and force people into those Caverns and those Caverns are dead because it isn't fun being in there. I don't understand how Blizzard could design the caverns (especially the left side of the zone constantly dismounting you and having massive mob density that all hit hard and have a lot of HP) like that and thought people would find it fun. They just abandoned it. I feel bad for the few players that are still in the Caverns as they want to do the content but the Zone was balanced around having as much player density as the Forbidden Reach - only it has WAY less. So, players are struggling just to do the daily/weekly quests there as the Mob density and scaling isn't solo friendly. Doesn't help that packs on the left side are almost always 3-5 mob pulls, or even more with a massive HP super elite nearby on the bridges. Then there are multiple mobs in said groups that can shield and/or heal as well as with knock backs or pulls. Cannot interrupt them all, but good luck trying to get a group to do it since after the first day it's a ghost town. As players that do want to do the rep want to get it over with on the first day and then just not go back to the Caverns til next week.
I mean Forbidden Reach was dead as soon as they changed the way gearing works with the last patch, the rare spawns not being scaled down doesn't matter as you get essentially a free set of gear by doing the story for the caverns which can be upgraded to be better than the stuff from the Reach. I do wish they would update the rares to make them still appealing but they definitely did it to get people into the new zone. I guess I don't mind the elite quests as I just find one or two others to go do the quests after I do the boss quests in the random raids that form. I did mine at night on the weekend and we had a 40 person raid going to do the boss mobs and then had a small group and we knocked out the rest of the quests so I guess YMMV. The dismounting is pretty obnoxious, I'll give you that but I adapted to it and just find a safe place to land and reset the debuff if I need to get further in if I don't have the speed to make it in one go. The little "fate" style encounters around the caverns is how people capped the mole people rep in the first week I think as they are pretty rapidly spawning and there are a lot of them to cycle through. I guess overall I don't mind the caverns as a zone but I haven't really had many issues as a casual going in there and getting a group when I need one.
They easily could have let Forbidden Reach give Flightstones at least.
Blizzard chose not to as they wanted it to be abandoned. That's my issue with Blizzard designing. They want players pushed towards the latest new zone (and balance it around a lot of players pushed into it) and will gladly kill the other zones that came before it. Now if you missed out then you're gonna have a rough time doing the stuff from Forbidden Reach like the Vault.
I am reminded of this post because I was thinking of replayability and saw this reply.
Sorry, I refuse to buy into the dominant narrative among raiders today that memorizing a strict dance script by repeating it over a thousand times, straight down to each GCD and weave window, would be enjoyable to the vast majority of the gaming audience. Literally no other game is designed this way other than rhythm games, and rhythm games are niche at best.
80% of the reason why people are complaining about the lack of replayable content is, I believe, because the content itself is a script that you repeat over and over again, with zero variation. The only content with extremely high levels of non-reward-motivated replayability in the community is PvP - something that is exactly the opposite of the "dance". And personally, even with all the flaws and the garbage netcode of FF14 PvP, I enjoy it far, far more than PvE.
I am also tired of people debating replayability from the perspective of rewards (or even worse, pointless achievements like collecting 20,000 Accursed Hoards). To me, the problem lies almost exclusively with the inherent/innate un-replayability of the content.
Even if you're determined to keep the dance design philosophy:
I was a pianist for a while and I found it enjoyable. I stopped, however, when I got to the level where mastering a single Liszt etude will take months, and require constant repetition... for months. At the same time, mastering a basic Beethoven sonata (most of them) took only a few hours and playing them again and again beyond those few hours is unenjoyable too.
The same issue lies with FF14, you either have Ultimates where it literally feels like a grind, repeating the same etude again and again. Or you have dungeons where you can master them after literally the first time you've done it and it becomes very tedious doing it again and again.
For almost all players of all skill levels, there is probably an individual sweet spot where the dance takes some time to master - but not an entire month or even multiple months, like Ultimates - and feels relatively rewarding to execute again and again for a while - at least enough for the patch. But then 80% of the content would lie outside of that sweet spot, making only 20% just right for that player.
So if you really decide to stick with this, in my honest opinion, horrible design philosophy, you need to massively expand the amount of midcore content to hit the sweet spot for people who don't want to do Ultimates or Savage but find dungeons extremely tedious. Frankly, I think they failed to hit the sweet spot for probably over half of the playerbase.
Then again, this problem would be far easier to solve if you just abandoned the dance design philosophy.
I wish there was a tag system you could attach to users like reddit does, it's hard to keep track of all the alts.
I honestly think most player can't even manage unscripted fight combined with mechanics we have now.
Imagine random 8 man stack/split or after the math quiz during contruct 7 fight
Imagine savage Eden titan gives random colors with random elevated platforms combined with proximity damage markers.
I see. You make a fair argument and perhaps if it was all random then the content would be more replayable because you don't know what will happen next, or if two mechanics will come one after another and be really tight.
I think part of it is that when you start playing, you assume it will be random, but then it starts to become clear it's a script and it feels unique that they do it this way somehow and it makes you wonder are there benefits to this?
Over the years when I've seen people look at what benefits there are to this it seems to come to that it gives you a start to the progression (learning the dance) and an end (learned the dance and mastered it, like playing an instrument or doing a dance from memory) and thereby makes you feel good at it and like you "have it on farm". Which you could feel with RNG when you really, truly understand every mechanic and not just a script, but there's more likely to be that lingering doubt with RNG if you get an unfortunate order of mechanics that developers didn't necessarily think about.
I think another thing is the spectacle. I didn't expect that either. I expected them to be like traditional MMORPG enemies where they just cast a bunch of random things, you ignore it and DPS it down. But instead they were these fights with arena-wide animations, phase changes, alignment to the music and even cutscenes midway to transition it.
Fights working this uniquely could make one a bit protective of it when not every game does it. But I do wonder what it would be like if they just made it all pure random. At the very least, they could do that for content like dungeons to help turn it into a content that doesn't feel boring to repeat.
I think the point isn't to say give a random amount of markers such that the puzzle cannot be completed, but rather to put the puzzles in a random order, such as having uplift as the first mechanic in the fight sometimes, but having it as the 10th mechanic in another pull.
It's frankly quite sad that a lot of raiders don't even prize understanding the mechanic. People just memorize a toolbox and not understand why it works.
We desperately need raids to be designed so that it rewards players understanding the mechanics.
To me, the true essence of FF14 raids is not memorizing scripts but to have fights that are like small bite-sized puzzles. E7S's portals and P12S's Classical 2 are mechanics I really enjoyed during prog. However, it's sad that because the mechanics are designed in such a static way, you don't actually need to understand the mechanic to solve it. For P12S's Classical 2, instead of rotating the map 180 degrees in your head, you use a macro version of this picture instead:
https://i.imgur.com/h4CP9bz.png
And E7S boils down to this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...in_dead_strat/
These complete defeat the purpose of the mechanic. You're not actually solving the puzzle now, you're just relying on mnemonics and brute force memorizing it (or have a second monitor with the diagram on) to solve it.Quote:
If the first beams from the side portals are going into the same color i.e. Red into Red, you will swap tiles/portals EVERY TIME, if its going into opposite colors i.e. Red into Blue, you will be standing on the SAME TILE EVERY TIME.
If these mechanics were sufficiently random that forces you to resolve the mechanic by actually solving the puzzle in your head rather than memorizing what spot you should go to if you get X, that would be a good start.
(Though that will probably cause a lot of players to get upset, since I think the community is now full of raiders who are incapable of solving puzzles in their head and just rely on brute force memorization - P12S really opened my eyes.)
The problem is fights resolve mechanics far too quickly to solve complex puzzles mid fight while keeping up your rotation.
Maybe for world proggers this isn't an issue, but try looking at raids from the view of the less skilled but still clearing crowd.
As in, people still working on clearing p12s.
Ah, right. If you aren't week 1, don't bother. Got it.
Also, msq and savage difficulty isn't even close to being equal. Just because it takes some groups longer doesn't mean they are bad. Learning speeds differ. If the only people who cleared savage were week 1 raiders the content would be deader than anything and SE would stop making it.
Even ultimates have casual groups clear it after long periods of time.
Also, anyone else find it funny that the forum troll is mad that a reddit is overrun with trolls?
There is no single content design that is enjoyable to the vast majority of the gaming audience. You're talking about billions of players world wide.
The design does appeal to some, though. It only takes a hundred thousand players to make a MMO profitable (assuming the developer isn't spending wastefully). As long as this game finds that 0.005% of the gaming audience that like "the dance" for raid design (or that audience finds this game), FFXIV will continue to be successful.
Players need to learn that it's up to them to find the games that have the content design they want to play and then support those games. Developers aren't going to waste their time struggling to meet the varied expectations of players who want a different game than the developers are trying to make.
Giving money to a game that isn't delivering what you want sends the wrong message to the gaming industry about the type of content you're looking to play.
Definitely agree with this. People do x, y or z thing "because YouTuber said so" and don't always find out why that is, because it was the day 1 blind proggers that worked all that out. At the very least I like for a guide to explain why we are doing something, otherwise it is not making us truly understand the mechanic.
That and having a script generally means you can sometimes just do "x action, at 2:20 in the timeline". RNG, on the other hand, is going to force you to understand how to identify when the mechanic is happening and not just be reacting based on the timeline and muscle memory.
Sometimes I think this too. For fun I solve the mechanic in my head but it becomes clear after a while there are only a fixed number of combinations and the disappointment sets in...Quote:
If these mechanics were sufficiently random that forces you to resolve the mechanic by actually solving the puzzle in your head rather than memorizing what spot you should go to if you get X, that would be a good start.
Telling people to unsub was what made Blizzard make drastic changes for Dragonflight when they bled players. If players didn't abandon the game after BFA and SL, then DF would have been a far different and worse experience.
So, unsubbing is the best thing to do if you want change.
This would require tho the will to actually draw consequences and follow through. Something most of the forum trolls can't do cause they are addicted to hating the game or trolling. <shrugs>
And i kinda don't see a Blizzard like scandal in the near future that could warrant the same kind of player protests in XIV. So if you unsub out of protest you can wait a long long time for changes cause most people they just won't.
I mean you are right, abandoning the game would be the most effective solution, just wish it didn't have to come to that. There used to be a time when feedback was more proactive and went both ways in this game, if not look up Yoshi Ps posts in this very forum.
So communication has definitely gone down hill.
I don't necessarily think people on these forums with negative outlooks are trolls. It's actually that they're the ones that love the game the most to be active in this place. (both positive and negative folk) so they'll also be the last ones to leave. If this place goes silent that means everyones gone.
Has anyone seen this? Lucky Bancho is showing that the "unsub and play other games" faction is winning hardcore. This graph shows the number of people who have gotten a single new achievement in the past month. In other words, active players. Notice how Endwalker compares with the other expansions.
https://livedoor.blogimg.jp/luckyban...9/391943a1.png
Is this really a good thing, and are we still supposed to like it?
https://luckybancho.ldblog.jp/archives/57775035.html
Respectfully, if you like something you should be willing to at least entertain criticism of the things you enjoy especially when you wouldn't be at a disadvantage if content were built to last like it used to and that the story took itself seriously. I understand you are a newer player and have not experienced the recent MSQ and endgame battle content, but I promise you deserve better than what Endwalker gave us.
I will roughly guess and say you may be somewhere around Heavensward or Stormblood to give an example - when the game was very much concerned with telling a story with a lot of care and passion behind it. This isn't the case when it came to the FFIV crossover trial series that took the place of the MSQ. The tone is completely off and drags - while battle content does anything but that and unironically feels easier to clear than some dungeon fights in earlier expansions.
Endwalker also just doesn't have a relic. You don't see people using or talking about pursuing the Hildibrand weapons because they are just given to you for tomes. Except we also literally already have tome weapons so there was no point at all to them. Even if exploratory zones aren't everyone's cup of tea, they at least demanded effort in exchange for the relic.
I'm not sure if you are a casual player or not but believe me if your time was limited during Endwalker, there's basically nothing to do unless you want to try Savage. Past expansions gave those players a Deep Dungeon with decent rewards and weapons - not ugly allagan monstrosities - exploratory zones of two distinct enough flavours, and good story throughout.
We do not complain because we hate the game. We complain because what we loved strongly got turned into something unrecognizable.
Gatekeeping so hard they can’t even cope with the fact that I’m a real person….
Go read my other posts, the rest of the creepers already do.