I just don't get it.

[Welsper59]

The environment is certainly different, but I do not believe that those who are critical of XI complain that there were too many stats. In general, the discomfort for a lot of players with FFXI was the grind, which is easy to adjust. Even 2.0 and 3.0 has grinds, grinds that many players are unhappy with such as the new relics. Also, I am aware that some players wish that FFXIV would have a form of gearswapping, but I'm not so sure that is what a majority of former FFXI players want. I believe that veterans of FFXI want to feel like they can explore the game and its world. That it is worth exploring and that they're rewarded for doing so.

I agree that the stats weren't TOO much of a complaint in XI. I don't think that's what the potato was getting at though. Pretty sure he was just referring to horizontal gear progression not working here due to system related conflicts, such as an inability to gear swap mid-combat.

One of the biggest mainstream criticisms of 1.0 was the copy pasted terrain, which became a meme of sorts. Unfortunately, that public criticism has provided us with empty boxes that are wrapped in nothing but pretty paper. What do I mean by this? Well, the zones in 2.0 and largely 3.0 are varied quite a bit giving this feeling that there is a detailed world to explore. However, once a player begins to open up that box and they remove the paper they begin to realize there isn't much of anything there. In fact, most zones are full of forgettable sidequests; yet, once those are exhausted there remains little reason to spend time in them unless you gather or do hunts. FATEs, something that the developers were proclaiming as this great addition to 2.0 before launch, have become an afterthought in 3.0. Most likely a result of players farming FATEs instead of dungeons for exp.

Actually, I'd say the biggest criticism that 1.0 had was the horrendous buggy launch. They literally took something with blatantly obvious UI and communication lag, then decided it was ready to go. Maybe it was a little more complex than them just thinking the public will love anything they crap out, but that is pretty much what killed 1.0. Those of us who played it, particularly any beta players, experienced the same exact problems during the testing period, yet there it went... up for sale. QoL and things that remove them (like UI lag) affect enjoyment far more than people may realize. It's a form of displeasure that slowly builds, which is actually one of the more detrimental forms of it when involving products that aim to keep them there for long periods of time.

The FATEs mention, for the time, really was a great addition to the MMORPG format. Keep in mind that they're designing the game not just from the WoW players aspect, but from their home game of XI (and 1.0). A simple faceroll means to level up fairly quickly? Those types of features were a godsend for those of us that dealt with the crawl back in the day. Yet, while everyone did enjoy FATEs, we (the players) are not the brightest of the bunch. We generally do not have self control in how we choose to enjoy ourselves. If we decide that something seems efficient and fun, we will absolutely burn ourselves out to the point of hating every single thing about it. What's even more humorous about that, is that most of us that do that will never ever figure out why that came to be, and will point fingers at the feature just being bad. There's a difference between something being objectively bad, and something being bad because someone is bad at how it's used.

That having been said though, the devs have proven time and time again that they just suck at execution. Ideas are great... usually... but how they envision the player base to receive it or take part in it without destroying it, is where they fail consistently. Despite whatever Yoshi-P says about learning from their mistakes, they haven't had the reality of the situation sink in yet about their overall philosophy behind content.

Design decisions such as these cause me to arrive at the conclusion that the developers have merely blind folded themselves and attempt to throw darts at a board in the hopes that something might stick. They constantly will promise one thing only to make a complete 180 on their stance 6-12 months later. Something that players continue to be upset about since it was released (housing) is a perfect example of this. Prior to its release and even before 2.0 launch Yoshida continuously told players that the gil earned from leveling to 50 would be enough for a small house. It's amazing to think that this was even promised when by the time it came out small houses were on some servers 100-200x more expensive than the gil earned from reaching the initial level cap of 50. To this day, small houses on most servers are 10-20x more expensive than the gil earned from reaching level 50.

It's likely something to that degree. We need to always remember that devs try to cater to a nearly infinite number of tastes and preferences, while also keeping to what they want the game to be. Those tastes change over time, and that's an absolute BS situation, but it's reality checking in at every turn. Basically, while it might be entirely intentional for content to be released the way it is, the player acceptance and how we handle it is always a gamble, no matter what they did to prep for it. Keep in mind though, the devs creating something with proper prevention and care in mind is different from creating something then just letting it loose without doing the prep work (players cheating to win and lack of action, for example). The devs tend to never learn by doing the latter most of the time.

I'm going on a tangent here, but the point is, many of the design decisions for the game feel more like knee jerk reactions to criticisms or even players exploiting game mechanics such as Amdapor Keep and Wanderer's Palace (hard) speed runs.

You are absolutely right about the knee jerk reactions as a result of the things I've mentioned, and then some that I haven't.