What went wrong? Is it the game or the grenre?

[Evtrai]

I quit around the point where I could pug turn 1-4 every week, addons would have been really nice but I think they lied about it at this point.

To add to the issues, gear came down to "I love how that gear I got totally let me get 3 more dex, worth every bit of time I spent." /not.

You realize this is because as time went on people over-geared with Mythic armor over a long time frame period that they basically overgeared the content except obviously turn 5, you need to be geared for that, it's simple as that.

[LioJen]

I think the fact that we have like 5 of these threads on the front page at any given time (and that outside these forums, most of the discussion of this game is negative) speaks volumes about the shaky foundation FFXIV is sitting on.

Even if the people complaining ARE a minority (for the time being), they're typically the same people who paid for FFXI for nearly a decade. It's generally not a good idea to piss off your loyal customers who have proven to be a reliable source of income in favor of a fickle-minded mainstream crowd who generally jump from one flavor-of-the-month to the next.

What are SE going to be left with when those customers hop on the next shiny new MMO to come out (the same way they hop on the next shiny piece of gear and forget about the last one)? The older players who they've now lost the confidence of.

SE made the decision to try and grab 2 million subs for a year or two at best, instead of 3-500 thousand for a decade. Bad business move, but investors and stockholders are completely blind to long term sustainability and only want to see immediate gratification and returns, just like the customers they're pandering to.

[Kyri]

I think the fact that we have like 5 of these threads on the front page at any given time (and that outside these forums, most of the discussion of this game is negative) speaks volumes about the shaky foundation FFXIV is sitting on.

Even if the people complaining ARE a minority (for the time being), they're typically the same people who paid for FFXI for nearly a decade. It's generally not a good idea to piss off your loyal customers who have proven to be a reliable source of income in favor of a fickle-minded mainstream crowd who generally jump from one flavor-of-the-month to the next.

What are SE going to be left with when those customers hop on the next shiny new MMO to come out (the same way they hop on the next shiny piece of gear and forget about the last one)? The older players who they've now lost the confidence of.

SE made the decision to try and grab 2 million subs for a year or two at best, instead of 3-500 thousand for a decade. Bad business move, but investors and stockholders are completely blind to long term sustainability and only want to see immediate gratification and returns, just like the customers they're pandering to

.

Totally 100% in agreement with this. Yes some people complain and rage and deserve to be ignored but some of the complaints bring good points to the table and deserve to be heard. There's something wrong when the majority of posts are complaints. It can't be passed off as a troll thing all the time.

[Goodberry]

Once I would have agreed. Not now. Not even Extreme Titan warrants such hatred and venom. Yes, I think trolling abounds here.

The problem is that people want everything. They want it at once. They want it perfect. And not only kids. There are a lot of adults who returned to kid-dom... AND NOT ONLY IN GAMING, ALAS.

As for me, I am having fun in this game, and planning on supporting it with my money, so please Heaven. Though my RPG gaming history starts with playing the Dungeon Master in the very first edition of Dungeons and Dragons, pen and paper in the 70's, studying enormous tomes, recruiting skeptical friends, organising tournaments. When the only visual/audio effects were the ones your imagination could conjure. When people talk of "easy" and "hard", I laugh aloud. But you know... when I go to do a daily in Larkscall, I am in no mood to sneer at the work Square Enix did. I find it quite breathtaking.

Flawed? Yes, it is. I am flawed too. :P

P.S.
I know I am ringing no bell in stone hearts. As the King Crimson said, "I talk to the wind". Double :P

[Colt47]

Totally 100% in agreement with this. Yes some people complain and rage and deserve to be ignored but some of the complaints bring good points to the table and deserve to be heard. There's something wrong when the majority of posts are complaints. It can't be passed off as a troll thing all the time.

It's best to enjoy things while they last. The game was actually off to a good start when it first released, but these patches and the direction they are taking are definitely underplaying the better aspects they took from the original train wreck. Instead of expanding and improving the crafting, they are doing the same thing everyone else did because SE believes it will yield profit. If they would stop selling themselves short and go the right direction, this game could blossom into something truly beautiful.

[Imapooonu]

What went wrong occurred for some of these people long before they played FFIV.

We just see it now.

[Alexander_Dragonfang]

This is te typical vertical vs horizontal progression and character development.
FFXIV was always planned as a pure vertical progression with plain normal character development, not liking this, means you shouldn`t even buyed the game in the first place, is like buying a CoD disliking FPSs.

There are games that have tried the horizontal progression and they are a mess because they can`t keep people interested for too long, mayor example of this is GW2 which has been forced to introduce some level of verticality.

Anyway, if you want to enjoy a MMORPG first of all, you need to be patient and read, read those quest a laught a lot of them, most people just click past everything and then complains the game is not fun because there is nothing fun on it when they passed thousands of lines of well writted content. Specially in FFXIV.

8 years ago people complained about mob grinding leveling, now the complain about quest grind leveling, this genre is not bad, MMORPG are great, the problem is that 90% are not true RPG players so they dont have what a RPG player needs to have to enjoy this games. Patience, dedication and a taste for slowpaced rewarding progress. Maybe the only problem with this industry is that is trying to appeal to that 90%... Thank god there is still hope in games like this.

[Colt47]

What went wrong occurred for some of these people long before they played FFIV.

We just see it now.

It's true, some people didn't follow the letters before stepping into the game. The thing is, some of the problems didn't start up until 2.1 came around and 2.2 isn't resolving the issues.

[Doo]

Making everything instant gratification has made end game unbearable. If you don't beat hard content in one or two tries, players rage quit or you get harassed if you don't measure up to someones expectations. It makes end game very non casual friendly. FFXIV was slower pace and everything was force grouping so players tend to have more patience and more friendlier. Now it's if I don't get my shiny in one or two tries I'm buying it, rage quit, or harass the "bad player".

[Niko_Kishiko]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvK8fua6O64