Concern on the current state of FFXIV, and future content

[Kallera]

B-but I want it to be good BEFORE 5.0! D:

It would be nice to have panned content not stay bad for more than a year before changes are implemented.

[Remedi]

I believe it's safe to assume they didn't want a zone where you zerg down trash mobs hoping to spawn a Notorious Monster.

And people have offered numerous suggestions. They range from simple adjustments like making dungeons somewhat challenge (Vault level), have some branching paths or introducing more crowd control style mechanics. Basically, anything beyond "dodge the orange aoe." Requests for actual raids and alternative methods to gear progression that isn't just "slightly more STR" are frequent. Need I even mention the tomestone system that has steadily become loathed? Stormblood literally painted a red brush over Heavensward. I mean, honestly, what has changed?

Some ppl do offer suggestions and I'm not talking about them, I'm talking about the countless it's boring, unimaginative, bland comments that I expect each new content is added no matter what.
I'm sick and tired of the official forum becoming a cesspool of moaning because of this, an echo chamber where ppl can insult everyone that doesn't share the opinion that the game is shit and the devs are imbeciles, calling them apologist and white knights, that's really immature.
Before you ask I don't like Eureka and it's grind, some ppl like it though and I'm glad for them, not everything in the game has to be to my liking (I don't like pvp either fyi, but I don't think pvp content shouldn't be developed just because I think so)

[InkstainedGwyn]

an echo chamber where ppl can insult everyone that doesn't share the opinion

This is honestly the biggest feeling I have. Every time I spend a few hours on the forums reading these threads, I come away with the horrible, oppressive feeling of SUCK, and I can't be alone in that feeling. However, when I log into the game, and ignore the forums, I find that (in the absence of other's opinions), I still enjoy the game. I deal with this at work; I have a minor complaint about a product issue, but as soon as the time comes for me to explain it, and other people on my team start to agree it turns into an absolute bash-fest, which we then have to step back from, reign in our emotions, and go back to "okay, it's really not as bad, we're just annoyed and it gets amplified by other opinions."

Do I think Eureka is the amazing breakthrough everybody was hoping it would be? No.

Do I think there are problems with it, and with other content? Yes.

Do I love a lot of the constructive feedback that happens on the website? Yes.

Remember, though, that it's easy to get caught up in the negativity (or dragged down), which continues the cycle. And if people enjoy that, or this gives them a vent, or they feel like this is honestly what they want to be doing and how they feel about the game, that's valid. But I just want to point out that the fraction of players that post on the forums is small - and usually the angriest. That's how society works, and especially ours. People who are content/happy/don't care don't usually go out of their ways to log in and say so. (In before "but I do!", yes, that's great, but the majority don't.) It's easy to cry "doom of the game, the game is dead" but I've been reading video game forums since City of Heroes started around 2004, and this is something you hear nonstop, even in good cycles. People were crying that Lord of the Rings online was dead when Moria came out, even to this level. And guess what's still going?

My FC is small, and in no way indicative of the general population, but I felt like it was a good reminder in looking at how people received Eureka in general. Of the 10 of us that have gone in within the last two days, four are FFXI players, one is a 1.0 veteran, four of us are new to FFXIV within the past year/year-and-a-half, and six are ARR veterans.

One person hates it and isn't going back. Three of them love it and have spent all of their time in there. Six of us don't care. It's not bad, it's something we'll do when we're bored or interested in hanging out/grinding, and if we've got something else we want to do, we'll do it. And maybe it's completely unrelated, but I have a strong suspicion that's what the overall opinion of the general populace is. A small margin adores it, a small margin hates it, most people don't have particularly strong feelings one way or another.

And for folks claiming that "nobody asked for this", there was a specific thread on the forums that even said "this looks exactly like the grind us XI veterans have been asking for so please don't beg for them to nerf it, let us have our fun" (pre-release). And while my opinion might be "go to XI if that's what you want," I can't say that nobody playing XIV asked for this.

[ReplicaX]

And for folks claiming that "nobody asked for this"

Thus where I think lies the heart of the problem. Folks wanted something new with relics. This forum on every Relic release has been vocal about its content.

- Atma farming was heavily complained about and SE even discussed its low droprate.
- Ppl understood SE's intention of using recycled content to keep older content going for new players coming in. Folks did complain that they were tired of it due to previously grinding that content for its original rewards.
- Anima crystal farming, while not as low as Atma farming and having the option to skip with previous weapon while a thoughtful jester. Met resistance as it was still Fate grinding with the only real added bonus was XPing
- Anima in general followed the recycled content path of Zodiac, with a few optional paths, but the biggest feature being stat customization. Players were also rewarded a single minon.

NA/EU/JP players have asked on multiple occasions for a zone that involved more open world content and NMs. While this is an instance, it is still a zone that can hold 144 players cross world. Features 20 new NMs.

There have been countless threads asking for more realistic areas having a true sense of danger for years.

There have been many threads regarding elemental resistances/stats/materia being useless and players wanted it to have a purpose.

I honestly cannot understand how folks can say the Dev Team didn't listen to the community on this. Unless it is because it isnt what the individual specifically wanted.

[Okamimaru]

I have yet to hear of some fresh original ideas being offered up... all I hear is "add something like X from game Y"... that's not fresh or new... it's recycled content from other games... and let me tell you from experience that game companies listening to their most vocal forum users usually leads to something nobody actually wants...

[Vahlnir]

I have yet to hear of some fresh original ideas being offered up... all I hear is "add something like X from game Y"... that's not fresh or new... it's recycled content from other games... and let me tell you from experience that game companies listening to their most vocal forum users usually leads to something nobody actually wants...

At this point in the MMO genre, nothing is truly fresh. There is good, bad, really good or really bad. What has been suggested by people in this thread and others is things that work well to retain players in "new" content. I'd say that such suggestions have been overall "good", some "really good". I have yet to see a bad or really bad suggestion. Only really bad thing I've seen in all of this is the implementation on SE's part.

[loreleidiangelo]

I play this game to raid and even the raids are going downhill in terms of fresh design. Just reading the guide for Mythic Antorus in WoW already piques my interest more than any amount of material I've been reading as my group goes through the motions on God Kefka (which are mostly just image diagrams of geometric shapes showing me exactly where I need to stand with no improvisation or variation whatsoever).

Fully-scripted encounters with synchronized swimming group-wipe mechanics are just straight-up boring BS and incredibly frustrating for those raid groups that have one or two members slightly below the rest of the team in skill. There's no way to "carry" someone who might mess up the odd mech here or there with a brez like in WoW - if that person dies at a "bad" time you wipe due to some paint-by-numbers nonsense that puts debuffs out of whack or doesn't give you enough players for an arbitrary stacking requirement and makes them unresolveable with their combination. There's no way to salvage that situation by the better members on your team, you just die. That's not fun, and basically limits your progression to "how fast can the slowest among us catch onto this?".

Like, I'm looking at the phases of Mythic Argus and thinking, "this sounds really cool", most notably the stuff about the Tree of the Lifebinder and the Spirit Realm concept in WoW basically forcing you to actually die to interact with objects in the unseen world to buff the raid in the "real" world. Tomb of Sargeras had an encounter with dual bosses that featured a similar concept (NOT identical, though, to clarify). We don't have anything like that in XIV. We have "stack here", "spread for this", "don't stand in that" "the boss gave us a pile of debuffs but because the fight is scripted the raid lead can just tell everyone what to do based on the debuffs HE got", etc.

Tbh, Gordias 2 in my opinion was an example of a truly unique XIV raid fight. An actual VEHICLE that you got to drive around in and use? Holy crap, that was great! Not just a single boss planted in the middle of the arena, but instead varying mob waves with different strategies and mechanics for each? Awesome! Even Gordias 1 was a dual boss which was something we hadn't had since frickin' Cad in Coil (and haven't had since then, RIPPERONIS). Living Liquid sucked and embodied everything I hated about XIV raiding (nothing like your polarization tether partner not understanding WTF they were supposed to do and killing both of you, or your tank being a potato and failing to grab the one-shot tether off of you during the add phase, insta-gibbing you). Quit for the rest of the Alexander tier because Gordias 3 sucked so bad, no lie. Shame because some fights like AS6 seemed neat, but wasn't worth the frustration.

So now I'm back, and bosses are back to 1-mob center placement communist swim-together-or-sink-together positioning mechanics as a comical farce of actual raid design and I just feel really discouraged. Flat circular arenas with 0 interaction with the Z coordinate because of one unintended consequence of a fight (Twin divebombs) really limits what you can do, as does the mindset that every composition needs to be able to do the fight without people swapping (which is why we don't see anything with mag-vuln and phys-vuln like T11 anymore, or anything playing around with damage types like piercing and blunt). Everything hinges on "the true difficulty is meeting the DPS check when your BRD keeps standing in one-shots", which is a pretty sad way to reflect on what's supposed to be the pinnacle of battle content design, IMO.

Sorry for the long rant, but I'm trying to offer some perspective to the people who think player frustration comes from just Eureka. It's not. The less dungeons, the uninspired raids, continued bad support for QoL fixes or updates... I think people are right to feel concerned about the game's direction, I'm just not sure it'll do much good. As long as there are people who mindlessly consume content like Eureka even when they think it's boring or bad, it's hard for the developers to feel motivated to change things I'm sure.

[Remedi]

I respect your opinion, but I could say that wow bosses have become stale in a decade tbh, that said It's maybe just me having played that game for such a long time

[Zojha]

[...](which is why we don't see anything with mag-vuln and phys-vuln like T11 anymore, or anything playing around with damage types like piercing and blunt). [...]

Hey, let's be fair here! They DO have the "immune to ranged" "immune to magic" buffs at Sawtooth/Irminsul in Void Ark.

I know because every damn time, there's this one dude that keeps persistently attacking the guy that is completely immune to their attacks _all_fight_long_ >_<

[crystal-tower]

This is an incredibly good post.
I have to say that, I never post on these forums ever, I'm usually just happy with the content we get but, after trying out Eureka I hit a point where even I lost complete interest.
It was after trying several times to get to the level 3 quest objective and being KO'ed every single time by mobs that were a good five levels above me.
I wouldn't mind if there was more to Eureka but what we were given wasn't enough to keep me interested. The entire experience left me feeling incredibly disappointed. ;n;