Why is "It's something to do" apparently a valid defense?

[TheCurls]

Have you wondered why people are upset? From what I have seen people are very vocal (albeit maybe too vocal) in the REASONS that they are upset. Saying "Don't like it, don't do it" is completely counterproductive to discussion and in a way invalidates their opinion (I have seen more people who are in defence of the game claiming to be a victim of this, even though I have seen those same people do this far more). I am just stating my observation, but, trying to be as unbiased as possible, that's the way that discussions seem to go.

And calling someone a white knight for enjoying something is invalidating the other person's opinion. That's the point I'm making. There is a right way and a wrong way to present an argument. Ad hominem attacks are the wrong way. Politely organizing your criticism and posting it without making it personal is the correct way.

The problem is that those same people were also disappointed with the 3.1 patch (to be fair, so was I), and the fact of the matter is that we were supposed to get the relic months ago, but it has been delayed again and again. The REASON that people are upset is because this was a highly anticipated patch with content that should have been in a major patch and the fact that it is lackluster, and in places insulting (if you want reasons why, see above), on top of an already controversial 3.1 patch (diadem and LoV, while fun to a few, has done more harm than good) has left a bad taste in the mouths of a noticeable chunk of the player base. The fact that you don't know this goes to show that you haven't been reading and understanding what people have been saying, and perhaps the reason that you are being so defensive is that you don't want to hear what others have to say about a product that you personally enjoy.

If you think I'm being defensive, you've clearly not read a word I've actually written. I'm barely taking a side, and that's only because I find one side more annoying than the other (and I've even previously said that I find both sides annoying).

I think both sides need to substantiate their evidence. It's easy to say Diadem and LoV has done more harm than good. Prove it. At best, I'd consider it having a neutral response. I haven't tried LoV yet because I've been too busy grinding out my crafts and leveling other jobs, but I've tried Diadem. It's okay. The amount of people I see wearing that pink i210 gear says that there are a lot of people doing that content, so I wouldn't suggest it's a failure. Now, if SE sees that nobody is doing Diadem and LoV (and I expect that far fewer people than anticipated are doing LoV), then that will affect them going forward. They'll adjust accordingly. But when they see people complaining about content on the forums but going ahead and doing it in game anyway (and don't tell me that nobody on these forums is doing this, because I'd wager that the majority of complaining people are still doing the content), they have no reason to think that the complaints are anything but little Veruca Salts (The "I want it now" girl from Willy Wonka).

They know how many people are doing things. Why should they change anything up when people -are running the content-? That's the very basis behind the "If you don't like it, don't do it" replies these people vehemently despise. You might feel obligated to keep up with others, I know I certainly do. But when things start feeling like a chore, I back off and find something else to do. Most times it's in FFXIV, sometimes I turn the game off and do something else. What happens a lot with gamers these days, however, is that there's this pervasive need to do everything. Even if they hate it. When they force themselves to do it, they hate it even more, then it turns into the vitriol you read on the forums.

If SE sees an area of the game empty, they will adjust things going forward. Look at the Beast Tribe quests. People hated waiting for fates, so they stopped requiring fates in the new quests. People hated wading through hordes of aggroing beastmen, so they made it so the mobs scaled with you and you could bypass 100% of the open world mobs. I know the argument is going to be "But they are making us do all this again for the new relic!" and that's irrelevant. The relic's sole purpose is to reward players for repopulating older content. They always adjust -new- content based upon the feedback they get about old and current content.

TL;DR- It's okay to be upset at things, but write your criticisms with a little tact and respect. Treat your fellow players with tact and respect. Otherwise you come off as petulant, entitled, and salty and easily ignored.

[Lambdafish]

It's easy to say Diadem and LoV has done more harm than good. Prove it.

While I don't have the same stats as SE does, lets look at the facts, as you seem to want proof. Lets get the biases and assumptions out of the way first: This is taken from my personal experience on my server and also looking at the consensus of what people from other servers have been posting on here and places like reddit to generate a bigger picture.

1. It is hard to get a LoV match with another player, and like before, the area is very quiet. What this means is that not many people are doing it, and it has not generated the following that SE was hoping for. Why is this a problem? It took up a big chunk of the 3.1 patch and also had a lot of development resources to make. While some might like it, the fact that it is quiet means that a large chunk of the patch is wasted potential.

2. Like LoV, the diadems queues are very long now too, implying that yet again nobody is doing the diadem. Now while this has somewhat been alleviated by the relic crafting mats being in there, the content has been plagued with controversy since its release.

3. The lifecycle of the diadem has been a mess. You say that people wearing pink i210 gear is good because it shows that people are running the diadem, but that shows complete naivety to the situation. On release the diadem was prone to abuse, with the pink i210 gear dropping like candy like we had never seen before in the game. What this did was upset the balance of the game drastically as people (casuals and harcore) were basically being handed the gear on a plate, invalidating any content that also gave i210 gear (I know the stats are random, but unless you are going BiS, this gear was good enough). The release of the diadem saw raiding stagnate, and statics collapse as it was unnecessary to dedicate time to savage to get gear.

This was quickly addressed and the gear was made rarer and harder to get, and while this came too late and the damage was done, it did at least balance the content. But this led to massively long queue times, and nobody seems to run diadem anymore, and more than anything, I think this shows that the consensus is that the content wasn't very fun, and a lot of people were disappointed at how basic it was, thus when the incentive was reduced, they just did content that was more fun (or stop playing).

Now with relic, we shall see, but saying that these pieces of content were fine is beyond naive, and is really unhelpful, what im trying to show that these pieces of content were a huge part of the patch, and, if nothing else, represent a lot of wasted resources that could have aided progression and led to a more fulfilling patch. This leads on to the complaints with relic, which to a lot of people is the final straw in a string of failures, and overall, this patch sorely needed relic to live up to the delays and hype in order to revitalise the game.

TL;DR- It's okay to be upset at things, but write your criticisms with a little tact and respect. Treat your fellow players with tact and respect. Otherwise you come off as petulant, entitled, and salty and easily ignored.

Finally something we agree on, I think I have said all I can on the white knight issue, and we both agree that there are problems on both sides, however I will reiterate: please don't shut someone down because they don't like what you like. As someone who is starting to feel the health of the game decline, the current game state and rift between players upsets me, and I want the devs to know what I do and don't like about OUR (as a community) game, because I love this game, I have spent 100s of days worth of game time on it, and have spent a tonne of money on it, and I care a lot about it. Forgive people for being passionate, because they are very likely in the same situation as me.