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

[Nora_of_Mira]

So over all you got burned out, complain like everyone else over things that have been designed in online MMO's for yours now, you have RL issues, and you lack motivation so finding an outlet by blaming the product. So same as any other previous thread that people have made in the past... -.- and like any other thread; good riddance. Many hated Eureka, many liked it and like most players will resub once new content comes in and will become another useless circle. Feed back takes time to implement so rage quitting is always fun to read. I'm even more surprise that people can't just take a break and say, look forward to coming back once things have gotten better.. kudos on at least being descriptive.

/atleast10characters

[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...

[MilanFrozen]

Reason 1 is a big enough reason for anyone to quit. I'm hanging around till POTD 2.0 to see and then will likely unsub untill the next xpac. Truthfully though unless they really knock the next expansion outta the park I probably won't be back.

[Melichoir]

I read your complaints, and well...ok?

They all just seem frivolous to me.

Complaint 1)
You found out the formula and got bored. Ok? Thats 99% of all games. There is a structure most games follow in some fashion, its what partially defines them, and what is pragmatic. Yes it can get boring, but thats the name of hte game. You expect htem to 'change it up' and completely redesign the game? Even redesigns will be some iterration of what we have, because, well, it works.


Complaint 2)
This is by far the most inane one out of all of them. You can cap on Mendacity by just doing EX roulette 5 days. If you do EX, Trials, and Alliance, you can cap in 3 days. "But Im a DPS Player!" So you have no friends to play iwth? No FC mates? You dont have 1 healer or tank to queue with? Staying up to relative gear lvl is probably the easiest thing to do in this MMO of all the MMOs Ive played. They give you a lot of options, and frankly it doesnt take that much time to do them. 3 Days worth of work for about an hour and a half isnt a whole lot. And if youre doing Sigma/Delta/etc, you shouldnt be having a problem getting to appropriate ilvls even as a casual.

Complaint 3)
Old content gets outdated. Thats the way it works in MMOs. It sucks sometimes cause some of the old stuff is interesting. SE does their best to encourage people to play some of the old stuff (Except Diadem probably, cause that was....yeah). Again though, you dont have FC mates or friends? No one to do stuff with? If youre not making friends or being a part of an FC and engaging with players, youre not going to get as much in the game. MMOs are part social. thats the way it is. Ive gone through all the old content. Still farm some of it for Birds, Ponies, funsies, etc. They come up in roulettes. Again, this stuff isnt hard to get into. Im not seeing your PoV.

Complaint 4)

Ok, so you stopped crafting/gathering all together cause your inventory filled up and you decided not to get rid of older mats? Really? And then you dont like doing the relic stuff cause "Oh, new stuff will come out before i finish the old so why bother?"

More and more, it seems like you want easy mode rather than being pragmatic and making decisions about the game. Inventory full? Sell some of it, Vendor it, Dump it and then continue doing the stuff. New content coming? Keep going with what you have (they dont out date it immediately). Beast tribes are kinda a pain to do? Theyre time gaited? Yeah, they do that so you will do them daily. THats part of the game. Sorry if that sucks for you, but if youre going to play, expect to invest time into it a bit. Doing beast tribe dailies doesnt take hours (well after ARR). As I mentioned, it sounds like you want easy mode. You want all the perks of people who dedicate an ok amount of time, wihtout any actual dedication.

Complaint 5)
"I got lazy cause I became nihilistic about the game, now I suck at DPS. Thats SEs fault."
That about sums it up. Getting through Normal mode of Trials is more about understanding the fight mechanics than about being a "Hardcore DPS". If you cant manage that, than thats you not even trying to 'play' the game.

Complaint 6)
SE is dong things you dont like, and yorue not happy. Get in line. Theres are things I dont like about FFXIV (I dont even touch the glamour wardrobe), and yeah I would like it addressed. But there are lots of things I like. Everything you complained about I have no issue with, and actually enjoy. I like the trials, I like the difficulty it takes to be good, I like the side content. I like how I can cap on mendacity with some pretty ok effort on my part. I dont mind storage space or otherr issues. I dont want SE to hand me things that hardcore players get through their efforts, much like I dont want them to hand someone who cant even be bothered to play the game the same things I worked hard for.

Complaint 7)
They dont value you? They create holiday events that have free emotes, glamour, or mounts on a regular basis. Theyre fairly consistent with their role out. The dev team is passionate about not making this game suck, and are attempting to give casuals a way in to see the game, as well as give hardcore players a challange and run for their money. Theyre not gods, theyre not perfect. they will make mistakes. Every developer does. But saying "OH! SE HATES ME AS A CUSTOEMR CAUSE THEY HAVE CAMPAIGNS THAT TARGET CERTAIN GROUPS!" is silly. You ever think maybe they do that so you cant abuse the system? If you know its coming up, why resub when you cna get a free few days by letting your sub run out and using the campaign? They reward active players with events and cosmetics you can get for FREE. They reward people who say "Hey, Imma sub for 90+ days" and pledge their money to FFXIV. They do quite a lot that Ihavent seen other MMOs do. Are they perfect? No. Do they try? Sure.



Yeah, everything you said comes off as "I cant be bothered, and its SEs fault."

Frankly, if this is how you feel, yeah, unsub. This game isnt for you.

[Makeda]

In your edit you mention GW2 as being more responsive to it's customer. I have the exact opposite opinion.

Four things GW2 did that annoy the heck out of me:

• Run rough shod over their world's lore. I was a hardcore lore fan of Guild Wars 1. There were so many violations of lore in GW2 that from launch I was annoyed. Let's just start with the most glaring one: the very skin tone of the humans is wrong. The Ascalonians were European in skin tone, and they came to Kryta as refugees. The Krytans are a deep brown skin tone with features that resemble the native people of Australia. In GW2 the Krytans went Caucasian - despite the Ascalonians remaining a distinct enclave in a separate town. Then you have the sky people - that include both humans and charr - and have for centuries. Yet the peace between humans and charr is extremely new and the lore is very clear on the point that the war between them did not have exceptions - certain factors worked to keep these two at extreme odds. These just scratch the surface. Give me a few days to pour over it all again and I'd had a multi-chapter essay on lore violations in GW2... including where GW2 violated not just GW1 lore, but it's own GW2 lore...
• The dungeon fiasco. Laying off the dungeon team and abandoning dungeons because they couldn't figure out how to fix the problem of lacking a trinity.
• Putting the trinity back in with raids - in a way that forced classes into roles that had previously played extremely differently... and now had only one viable role for raids (I am most specifically referring changing the 'ranger' into the 'druid' here - even though I love playing a druid, this was the wrong move and the playstyle of a druid is a nearly complete opposite to that of most people who played ranger before - the ideal 'casual soloist farm pets' class turning into a 100% 'high intensity situational awareness demanding healer'...).
• Graphics settings - the contrast is too extreme, and there is no dial to adjust this. The game exists in extremes of light and shadow. Where half your face can be so bright it is blurred and the other half can be in total darkness... This goes beyond the style - the style is amazing... but for some reason you can't tone down the extremes... Most games have an assortment of graphics settings to fix for an end user's local conditions... Guild Wars 2 does not.

There's more than three... just those three keep popping up for me.

Now you complain about housing... but compared to the home instance in Guild Wars 2... the situation here is amazingly good...

and is a housing plot is too hard to get, you can still get an apartment - and then customize it. Few other modern games offer than. Mostly here, ESO, and Wildstar. Granted of those 3 FFXIV has the worst version... but it is miles ahead of GW2 on this score.

[KaldeaSahaline]

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

Correct. My mark. I'm not defining it for you, I'm defining it for me, and for anyone who happens to agree with me. I apologize if you mistook that for anything else.

However, rather than be emotional, why not try to demonstrate where I am incorrect in my analysis?

For instance - take the few example systems I've detailed below and give me some insight into how each of these was either well designed, scalable, or fun; in your own words of course.

• Chocobo Racing
• LoV
• Diadem (1 & 2)
• Eureka
• Materia
• Dungeons
• Squadrons
• Retainers
• Airships/Subs/any other menu content

[Usho]

Yoshi-P and his team seem to be scared to take off the "Training Wheels" since ARR's launch. The gear trendmill is beyond bad, the patches are predictable (which they shouldn't, they need to keep the players guessing and or surprised), the open world (outside of Hunts) is a barren wasteland (sorry Thanalan), the gear designs keep getting more and more feminine, Eureka (imo) was a total flop (despite waiting almost a year for it), and the weekly lockouts imo are continuing to hurt this game.


By keeping a weekly cap on tomes and raid gear, they make the grind even slower than it shouldn't be. I think they do this, like housing, to keep the players subbed, despite Yoshi once saying "We don't want the game to be something the players need to do everyday. If they want to leave and take a break, its fine."

This translate too: "You can take a break, but if you're gone for too long you will not only be behind the 1% but you also lose your finite in-game benefits like your houses, etc. So leave, but leave in the knowledge that you'll lose something and wont have it when you come back".

Between Jump Potions (gameshark codes), upping the prices of misc. things on mogstation, to the upcoming "Companion app" and having micro transactions via kupo nuts/coins and Premium for extra benefits over the common player, they have set the bar even lower and imho they are becoming a little too greedy and are not devoting time to improving this beautiful game.

SE seems to resist "change" in this game and that is what is hurting it and will continue to hurt it in the upcoming years. I'm not saying the game needs a "complete overhaul" but changes NEED to be made.

Threads like this, that explain (in great detail) why the unsubbing player is unsubscribing is important and SE needs to take this into consideration going forward. SE needs to listen to the NA/EU base, and not just the JP base. They need feedback like this so change can be made. To those who keep attacking Bubblegum for his explanation, I think you need to stop white knighting and look at the bigger picture. Voices like Bubblegum's need to be heard and respected.

[Talraen]

Correct. My mark. I'm not defining it for you, I'm defining it for me, and for anyone who happens to agree with me. I apologize if you mistook that for anything else.

However, rather than be emotional, why not try to demonstrate where I am incorrect in my analysis?

For instance - take the few example systems I've detailed below and give me some insight into how each of these was either well designed, scalable, or fun; in your own words of course.

• Chocobo Racing
• LoV
• Diadem (1 & 2)
• Eureka
• Materia
• Dungeons
• Squadrons
• Retainers
• Airships/Subs/any other menu content

Ooh, I want to get in on this.

Chocobo Racing
I really love the way they designed genetics in chocobo racing (i.e., realistically). The abilities and the way you customize them are pretty interesting as well. I had a lot of fun with this content for a while, though as I've gained in rank I have hit a bit of a wall where it's not really worth trying to advance. But I got plenty of fun out of it, so I'm pretty pleased. A bit annoyed that I can't really complete the win-based MGP challenges anymore though.

Lords of Verminion
I admit I haven't actually finished all the tutorials, because I suck at LoV (good at making an initial plan, terrible at reacting to changes on the battlefield). However, the depth of strategy here is pretty cool and I used to spend quite a lot of time statting out good combos of minions. I am impressed at how well they made this clearly mouse-driven style of game work with a controller. Even though I've kind of run out of ways to really enjoy it, the 10,000 MGP weekly challenge keeps this somewhat relevant for me.

Diadem
I never did Diadem when it was current, but I have looked at it after the fact (duoing from my FC house) and it seemed like an interesting idea. I can see why it failed on a combat level, but I do think the gathering was a neat idea as an alternate way to get some rarer items. The spoils have also been pretty useful as another option for getting various materials.

Eureka
I initially resisted Eureka because the idea of FFXI-style grinding wasn't appealing. By the time I decided to try it, everyone had moved to the NM train model. I've only recently started actually participating in Eureka, but I have to say I find it strangely compelling. There's a lot of downtime on the NM train, and my attempts to level outside of it have been pretty terrible, but the camaraderie of waiting on NMs and the level to which people go out of their way to help low-level nubs like me has been pretty great. I really misjudged this one.

Materia
Materia has gone through so many forms, all the way back to the strategic conversions of 1.0. Now that they've added materia to most dropped gear and allowed for materia removal, this system has really become something amazing. I'm pretty lazy with updating my combat gear, but in leveling crafting and gathering on alts the system as it stands now has been hugely helpful. I finally don't feel like my materia is just going to sit there waiting for the perfect time to be used. There are tons of ways to get good materia as well, and it seems pretty well-balanced between allowing you to easily get decent materia and it taking effort to get grade VIs and crafting overmelds.

Dungeons
While I appreciate the early dungeon design with the alternate routes and such, they quickly became frustrating because no one ever uses them. Most of my alts still don't have map completion on a number of ARR dungeons. The newer dungeon design cuts out the fat and just leaves a great experience with fantastic bosses (Genbu being one of my all-time favorites in terms of neat mechanics), awesome visuals, and usually great music. I still love the Stormblood boss theme to death. I hate the type of speed running that was in vogue in the 2.x series, and I think they've done a good job of limiting that sort of thing to a fairly reasonable compromise. I have no complaints about dungeons.

Squadrons
I love squadrons to death. Initially leveling them up isn't terribly compelling, but once you unlock the weeklies and are strategizing what items to go after, doing missions just to hit synergies for cheap bonus items, and recruiting new wacky characters, it gets pretty fun. I am anxiously awaiting 4.3 for the squadron glamours. But the reason I love squadrons is command missions. There is no better way, in my view, to level a character to 50. Gaining 2+ levels per run, being able to kill everything without anyone complaining about taking your time... it's bliss. If you like the old school dungeons, this is the way to experience them.

Retainers
I have a lot of retainers and a lot of characters and I make the most of them. Now that ventures are a currency and not an item, I have a ton (over 2k on my main at one point) and I use retainers extensively to gather items, especially for FC projects. I spend my red gatherers' scrips getting them better gear (because how many hi-cordials do you need, really?) and spend a lot of effort customizing and glamouring them all.

Airships/Subs
I only got into the airship game after Stormblood released, as I moved servers and started my own FC. I've personally built every type of airship and sub piece, and capped all their levels, and enjoyed doing it. It's laid back content you can do whenever without much pressure, and you can get pretty cool stuff at relatively little cost beyond the initial building. Every now and then I send my retainer squad out to get a bunch of dark matter clusters for repairs, but otherwise it's a well-oiled airship/sub machine that provides me with a ton of weird mats, materia, and crystals to do with as I please.

Overall I'm very happy with the direction of this game. I never really thought about all these systems separately, but it is kind of amazing how much different cool stuff they've made here. I'm also a big fan of hunts, maps, chocobo companions, and gardening. There's a ton of stuff that you can do at once, which makes me feel like I'm being efficient even when I'm not really doing anything. Now if only I could get off my lazy butt and actually customize my housing a bit...