To Square Enix, these are the reasons why I am currently unsubbed from the FF14.

[KaldeaSahaline]

MMORPG's that do not use the Tank-Healer-DPS or Tank-Healer-Support-DPS mechanics are a lot less fun, because there's absolutely no skill involved. It's just keep pushing buttons with the biggest boom until you defeat the target.

Firstly, I love holy trinity games. I want to make that clear up front.

Secondly, this is your opinion. You cannot say that holy trinity games are objectively worse/better than other alternatives like you did above.

Blade and Soul was a game that did not use the holy trinity, and was hands down the most fun MMO I personally have every played. The poor optimization and focusing way too hard on the cash shop ruined the game IMO. That game required infinitely more skill than any of the savage content I've done in FF14.

Cross Job Stuff; those were a few things they did, based on usage certain actions were removed and only key elements were kept, also they did both add and made adjustments based on Feed back. I could pull every article and patch and suggest you take the time to read some of those to see how it has improved.

Cross class stuff pre-rework was garbage and they managed to make an awful system, equally as awful. They should honestly scrap it entirely and bake the effects into existing abilities and tune encounters accordingly.

Dungeons: They have made them more appealing and less of a grind to an extend. Before people use to take almost an hour with the exception of main dungeons which cant take over 60 min to complete. How did it change? Dungeons should not take more than 20 min, if anything they can be done in 10 min with proper set up and if well gear. Do to feed back they made it so one of the main dungeons CS can't be skipped. ( The Praetorium ) use to be able to run it and clear it in under 20 minutes, now can take 60+, what did SE do raised the xp and tomes to compensate. Keep in mind this is old content. While I understand everyone pays, most should not suffer. Again people are not satisfied which is my point. Some new dungeons also helped test mechanics, included voices, made to make people learn mechanics which to my surprise many still can't learn the basic. Either do to ignorance, they expect to be carried, or blinded by having over gear thinking they can by pass by pure zerg methods. Yes some can be but not all. People are still ignorant.

Dungeons haven't really improved. In fact I'd argue they've gotten worse IMO. We had fantastic places that offered meaningful challenges get nerfed because they asked an iota of effort from players.

You go on about how people "can't learn the basics", and blame the player, when the content designed literally doesn't demand the basics.

Gear Let see Materia, over melding, and now AF gear with guarantee 5 slot melding, Relic weapons that have come alive ( Anima ), PvP gear, glamour, ...yeah I'm sure nothing has changed. This one of the reasons why I even doubt some of your remarks. To me it seems you have not really explored all of the aspects of this game.

So to be clear, you think the current Materia system is well designed and interesting? You think it's been improved upon since 2.0 in any fashion that deserves merit?

It hasn't. In fact, the implementation of Materia is probably one of the most criminal things FF14 has done with respect to source material. Materia is both boring and needlessly complex, not what I would consider good design. Don't even get me started on overmelding. Find me a single person who thinks it's a fun, or good process or changes their gameplay in a meaningful manner. If Materia had synergy with itself MAYBE the additional slots of AF gear would matter, but binary stat sticks aren't relevant enough to qualify.

With this comment you have really lost credibility. First of FATE TRAINS have been around long before Eureka, or Diadem. So I doubt that they were blind to the idea of that happening. It's common sense that it would have been used in Eureka. Low exp, yet high xp on fates. Fate Trains are made by players not SE, even now people that afk during FATE Trains, it's not an SE issue. It's the player community decision to keep them in parties. Regardless SE made that inactivity rule and closed instance to try and please people based on feed back. Learned from FFXI about burn parties and for saw this happening. It's nothing new here or in many other games. If you can't piece this together from these sentences there really is no point in even debating.

It's clear they were blind. We have the evidence because they boosted other competing avenues. Had they thoroughly tested the NM train (which honestly, any junior tester could have identified it as a valid test script) they'd have seen the issue and either boosted mob farming prior to release or nerfed NMs.

Then you have stuff like not having the ability to turn in boxes in bulk (seriously? who tested this?)

Why would they design it for 144 people, knowing full well their engine doesn't handle that well? That to me shows a complete lack of leadership in the content development pipeline.

That's not even getting into the actual gameplay of Eureka, just genuinely not being that much fun IMO. I don't really consider FATEs fun, nor do I consider grinding world mobs who don't fight back fun. Maybe if the elements actually mattered or were anything other binary if/then statements; or external elements had any impact on enemy AI/behavior or mechanics, etc.

To finish with this , unless your a programmer, have some knowledge in business, you will only keep a narrow perspective of what you consider to be reality. Your perception, reality, simple. However, the reality is that SE is running a business, it has made many attempts to please everyone on the spectrum running from sprouts to veterans. Will they ever find middle ground, unlikely. Have you ever competed in their contest for designing gear? It's a way that they reach to us to get ideas of what a gamer want to see. Did you happen to see the upcoming video for 4.3? lots of feed back is being answered there. IF you step back and look at the big picture they are working smart not hard.

I'm a business systems analyst by trade. I have programming, systems, and business knowledge abound. It's not about trying to please everyone. It's about simply making the best content form you can. I personally don't think they hit that mark. I think they're afraid to deviate from their established template because it results in content like Eureka. A untested mess of competing methodologies that was delayed.

[ManuelBravo]

I'm a business systems analyst by trade. I have programming, systems, and business knowledge abound. It's not about trying to please everyone. It's about simply makingthe best content form you can. I personally don't think they hit that mark. I think they're afraid to deviate from their established template because it results in content Eureka. A untested mess of competing methodologies that was delayed.

So you choose to disregard the basic principle of business as a whole? being in the programming field you should know the amount of time and testing it takes to implement things that seem like nothing to the consumer, however can take time on the back end. I'm surprised this has note ven crossed your mind.

Like any other game phases / patches are meant to implement changes based on feed back. What your suggesting is for people to give it 100% percent, and then come up with more creative solutions later on which in turn can burn out creative minds and make them work harder rather than at a steady step that would be comfortable to the staff. Lets say they do pull out all the stops, they give players what they want, what would happen after some time? It becomes an expectation. Online games have to have some type of pace to allow both consumers ( who are casual ) time to catch up. Hardcore gamer will get it done within a few days rather than months. Now then you have two options, as a gamer burn yourself out and make the game more repetitive or make and then stress out from the start. If things are not set in increments both staff and gamer get burnt out.

They have to keep balance. Eureka is not for everyone and it is optional content. People who rage quit over optional content is fine and dandy, not all content may appeal to everyone. Lets face it many people will never see thing eye to eye.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Like any other game phases / patches are meant to implement changes based on feed back. What your suggesting is for people to give it 100% percent, burn out with great ideas from the start, and then stress out start, implement them so that most can finish within a few days, and then complain that enough content is being released so they go somewhere else and they scrap the game faster.

... what?

This statement makes little, if any, sense. How is giving 100% going to result in burn out? You are arguing in extremes. Most people aren't expecting perfection, but Eureka lacked even standard features any PTR would have highlighted. You can see this throughout much of their design. Even something simple like say, The Glamour Dresser. How they didn't anticipate the sheer number of complaints about destroying items baffles me. Likewise, how is it other games have implemented far superior glamour systems with more dated equipment than XIV? You keep insisting things take time yet SE has had plenty of time. They simply aren't implementing things, especially those which deviate too drastically from their very rigid formula.

Stormblood is essentially a red-coated Heavensward, which itself didn't differ much from A Realm Reborn. While it was understandable previously due to it being their first expansion since the relaunch, we're now approaching year five and what has changed? I certainly cannot fault people for getting a little tired of the same thing hence the OP's complaints.

[BluexBird]

How is giving 100% going to result in burn out?

I mean... if I'm being honest with you, if there were no such thing as 2 chests a week, 450 tome restriction, I would probably log in every day and spend most of my weekend doing raids until I'm ilvl 370 with all 3 of my characters. It might take a bit over a month. After that, I don't think I'd know what to do in the game. But that's exactly what the problem is for me. They time-gate the game to give the impression that there are many things to do, when there actually isn't...

So instead of most of my playtime being concentrated over a very fun month or so, I'm forced to delay that throughout a period of 6 months, by logging in every Tuesday morning...

People are getting tired of that.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I mean... if I'm being honest with you, if there were no such thing as 2 chests a week, 450 tome restriction, I would probably log in every day and spend most of my weekend doing raids until I'm ilvl 370 with all 3 of my characters. It might take a bit over a month. After that, I don't think I'd know what to do in the game. But that's exactly what the problem is for me. They time-gate the game to give the impression that there are many things to do, when there actually isn't...

So instead of most of my playtime being concentrated over a very fun month or so, I'm forced to delay that throughout a period of 6 months, by logging in every Tuesday morning...

People are getting tired of that.

It's ironically how many raiders use a certain website as self-competition just to stretch out the content, isn't it?

Mulling over ideas just now, I wonder if something similar to Legion could be adopted over here. Replace tomestones with a persistent upgrade system spanning the entire expansion. Every piece of content you do offers some degree of progression, though capped to an extent to discourage spamming easy stuff endlessly. Obviously not a perfect idea, but I can't help wonder if something akin to that would be better than simply capping and replacing our gear every six months.

And what I wouldn't give for gear with more thought behind it than "does this have Crit?"

[Neophyte]

Thing is, depending on amount of new players/quitting players, there is almost no point in asking people why they left, if you don't ask the staying and newly subbing people why they do so, too.

I mean, if someone says "Gearing is too quick and gear gets replaced too fast" and someone says "The endgame is too easy/too hard" and another one says "Because I think this game moves in direction of p2w." and another one says "EUREKA!!!!!"...
...that doesn't mean in any way that those are things they should look into or even change.

They also have to make sure, that those are not things making other ppl sub in the first place....
Where is the point when you make endgame harder because 3.000 ppl quitting told you so, but after that change there are 3.000 other quitters because now it's too hard.

That's why they propably don't even ask... they won't change core-systems or game mechanics because of quitters anyway, unless a real huge bunch quits... and then they will just ask us how the next reboot should look like. x)


Edit: Imho it's way better to have Surveys now and then asking every player (and those subbed in the last 3 months or so), what they like and what they dislike.
Only asking quitting players won't tell you which changes are best for the whole community.

[Neophyte]

After that, I don't think I'd know what to do in the game. But that's exactly what the problem is for me. They time-gate the game to give the impression that there are many things to do, when there actually isn't...

No, they say they timegate, so people don't burn out on content, leaving them with nothing to do for the rest of the patch. They're pretty honest about that.
And ofc, they aim for a specific playtime-per-dollar.
If there is no lockout people with a lot of time on their hands would be able to experience the x hours of content of a patch for 13$ (within a month), while others would have to pay more depending on how rare they play.
I think it also influences the stability of server populations, average people playing, etc... which is pretty important for an MMORPG.

If there were no timegates/lockouts they'd prop release a patch as a dlc for 40 bucks or something like this and scrap the sub system or lowering the sub to just an "online fee" of 2-3$, while you pay seperatly for the real content.

Imho ppl just need to ask themselves if they have fun for enough hours a month to justify 13$.

[KaldeaSahaline]

So you choose to disregard the basic principle of business as a whole?

Just like you chose to ignore all my counterpoints above?

being in the programming field you should know the amount of time and testing it takes to implement things that seem like nothing to the consumer, however can take time on the back end. I'm surprised this has note ven crossed your mind.

Completely irrelevant to an end-user. My understanding of the backend has absolutely no bearing on my expectations as a consumer. People should not be saying oh its ok Yoshi, we know you have spaghetti code to deal with. Not our problem, it's his job to identify solutions and implement them in meaningful and timely ways regardless of the challenge.

Like any other game phases / patches are meant to implement changes based on feed back. What your suggesting is for people to give it 100% percent, and then come up with more creative solutions later on which in turn can burn out creative minds and make them work harder rather than at a steady step that would be comfortable to the staff.

No. I am expecting the devs to actually use their brains the first time around they design their content to make sure its actually:

1) Fun
2) Well designed
3) Scalable

We keep getting features that not only miss a mark, but often multiple/all. Then they can FURTHER iterate on pain points, or if there are limited pain points, they can IMPROVE/expand the content.

The problem is that they're constantly fixing existing content because it just isn't well designed, fun, or scalable. It severely limits their ability to design new content, let alone GOOD new content. Not only that, but we're also riding an incredibly rigid content development template that is getting stale.

[Remyogic]

We keep getting features that not only miss a mark, but often multiple/all.

Who's "mark"? Yours? What gives you the right to define the "mark" for me?

The game has ~600k active characters and there's what, a couple hundred people between forums, twitter, youtube, reddit that are outraged? Heck, I'll round it to 1,000 just to overcompensate. That is LITERALLY .167% of the player base! I'd say they are hitting "marks" pretty well.

[Aerlana]

The game has ~600k active characters and there's what, a couple hundred people between forums, twitter, youtube, reddit that are outraged? Heck, I'll round it to 1,000 just to overcompensate. That is LITERALLY .167% of the player base! I'd say they are hitting "marks" pretty well.

"A complaint is worth twice a compliment"

And not only people writing on forums/reddit/elsewhere that get angry/happy. Large majority stay silent. But get their own thought... my FC get a 100% unhappyness about the app and get bored by the content, their playtime fell off... not only mine. Where we could. And dont count that majority we had from ARR release to now have left the game. 2 other sometime spoke on forum, long time they left this.

Also, i am not the one who speaks for them, but instead of what you think, there isnt only 0,2% unhappy with the way FFXIV is taking...


Yeah there are also many people liking it, never said all was unhappy. But not because "some are happy" that "those happy are in the good mind"

You speak manytime "the feature is not there so no way to complain" ... i dont see why? the feature is there soon, probably close after 4.3 and we know what we will have at first, we just dont know what they will add to use the mogcoins...

Try to not see only on your garden...