What has happened to my beloved FFXIV?

[Stormfur]

Odin - drops pieces you can exchange for armor
Ixion - drops pieces you can exchange for mount
Foxy - drops pieces you can exchange for glamour

Those are the things that get people involved. Not orchestrion rolls...not earrings...not stuff that is totally forgettable and practically invisible.

[Dragoon4life]

SB really suffers from Eureka. The Devs Tripled down on hot garbage content. They knew better and still released it. Then punished us when we made it enjoyable. Pyros is ok at best but is still ruined bc of Pagos. Anemos really isn’t fun either by no means. But Pagos...Oh My Goodness is the worst content by far. And the stupid low rng on top of more rng on top of you of you guessed it more rng. Pagos is so bad the even the JP player base hate it. Good job SE you brought us all together to hate Eureka. /clap

[Derio]

SB is a fail IMO. From Eureka to the MSQ. Everything feels clunky and not well thought out. The only thing good from SB is the Omega and Hildibrand storyline. And even Hildi is getting cut short.

[pclarkson85]

I like the way things are progressing, I've played since 1.0 and I can honestly say SB is my favorite xpac. Last month started anew and I am going through the main campaign again, I did love ARR and HW the first time around but I can honestly say now it's kind of a slog and I can't wait to get back to SB. I look forward to every major content patch, more than I have in past xpacs. Yes not everything is perfect but I have enjoyed the evolution of the game quite a bit.

[Sitallik]

yeah, pyros feels like an unpleasant chore, somewhere up there with doing the dishes and cleaning the bathroom.

[hynaku]

Yoshi and his team is what happened to it. They need to bring in team that listens to the player base.

[Dzian]

That is truly the hart of the problem with FFXIV, Player Motivation. They are really bad at incentivizing players to do anything when any rewards you get will be obsolete by next patch or poop-sockable a patch after that with dungeon gear.

The biggest issue is XIV lacks any progression. Players just don't go anywhere. There's a reason why it's so often referred to as a treadmill or hamster wheel and that's because it goes absolutely nowhere. There is no progression at all. You can step on a tread mill and run 100 miles but you are still in exactly the same place when you step off the treadmill. Is it any wonder then that more and more players simply just don't care anymore.

The game badly needs some real long term progression and players have said this since beta and over time it seems more and more players are feeling the same.. If players go and do that 100 mile run then they need to feel they have actually gone somewhere. At present though that just isn't the case. You can be the hardest of hardcore raiders on that treadmill while the laziest of lazy players just sits on a bench and watches you run. It doesn't matter how far you run though you are still in the same place as the guy just sitting there watching you. You haven't progressed at all.

The issue we're at right now is a content drought, now there is new content (Eureka) but it's so bad and so much negativity about it that it's put a sour taste in the communities mouths which I understand, outside of EX Trials and weekly raiding with Savage and Ultimate there's not much..

The problem with this is there's always a content drought even on day 1 of a new patch. Players can be done with all of the new content in a single evening and thus have nothing to do for the rest of the week until the loot resets.

I feel this game has too much emphasis accessibility and convenience and it comes at too great a price.
Content is all so easy it can be rofl stomped first time every time which leads to its incredibly quick demise. Another aspect of it being so easy is it has negative impacts on the general community in terms of player skill and attitudes and that then leads to the common arguments and complaints you see about players being elitist and excluding them and everyone throwing around the word toxic every chance they get.

The gearing and reward system is a total joke but again accessibility means you cant have any progression for fear of leaving players behind. stats are incredibly dull and boring as well which only goes to make gear and rewards even less interesting.

Then there's the social cost where players don't build ties and connections or work together to strengthen the community. Hell just getting a hello from the people in your party can be rare. there's also a massive lack of group based or team based content. Most of the content in this game isn't group based or team based it's just 4 8 or 24 individuals who all happen to be doing the same thing. there's little or no group or teamwork involved. this can be seen quite easily by simply trying to remember the names of the people you were with in your last duty. or even what jobs they were.. This is an MMO it's meant to be about playing together and building bonds with each other working as a community.

The game needs to sacrifice a good amount of accessibility and convenience and instead focus on being more satisfying and rewarding to play. making it super accessible doesn't do any good if it's just not fun or rewarding.

When you can clear all 4 wings of Alphascape within a couple of hours of the patch going live it's really not satisfying at all. and this is also why players are so bored of dungeons because there's no satisfaction or accomplishment in clearing them when you quite literally cannot fail.

Nor is there any satisfaction or accomplishment in getting new weapons or gear when your just going to throw them away next month. Or even clearing challenges when they'll be trivialized next month..

[DPZ2]

I feel this game has too much emphasis accessibility and convenience and it comes at too great a price.

Content is all so easy it can be rofl stomped first time every time which leads to its incredibly quick demise. Another aspect of it being so easy is it has negative impacts on the general community in terms of player skill and attitudes and that then leads to the common arguments and complaints you see about players being elitist and excluding them and everyone throwing around the word toxic every chance they get.

You have to face the fact that the majority of players can't play at your level, and that your level is beyond what the created content requires.

You are looking for 'more satisfying and rewarding' play in a game. Sorry to say it, but the formula of 'accessibility and convenience' is built into the design of FFXIV, and it would not be successful (for the majority of players) if it was otherwise.

The problem is that MMORPG game design requires a large number of players, of varying skills, playing in the same world setting. That requires content that is accessible and convenient to the largest number of players. Those who have a higher level of skill are always going to feel unsatisfied, unless the game is purposefully designed for that skill level -- unfortunately, the only places that happens are in single-player games, where the game can accommodate your skill level, and MMOs like Conan Exiles (which appears to be grindy as heck).

Keep playing because of the community that is already built, play more than a single MMORPG so that you always have content, and look beyond to other games to provide the level of challenge you desire.

The day FFXIV decided to become the game you are looking for is probably the day I would stop subscribing.

[Arrius]

Yoshi and his team is what happened to it. They need to bring in team that listens to the player base.

Quite the statement, considering he brought the game back from the dead and made it successful again.

'A team that listens to the player base" - Pfah. We are talking about eastern developers and rarely witness direct (and well translated) feed from the west.

And even with that considered, have look at Blizzard : Stepped into turds after turds, even though they should know better already after over a decade.
The only actual time where they gave in, was when they considered adding your actual real name onto the battle.net accounts for everyone to see.

So, yeah. Good luck with finding a team who listens to the player base. Because developer vision comes first, community feedback (maybe) second.

[Gemina]

If you haven't noticed, NMs have always spawned in the rest of Eorzea. They're the basis for S-rank hunts ...

XIVs current overworld has always been one of my delights. Those that consider it boring or safe are really looking for a different MMO than the one they're playing -- perhaps Conan Exiles would fit the bill better.

I've been saying the same thing in previous threads similar to this one, and I still agree when it comes to things like changing the outer world to be more dangerous, or when players continue to desire concepts from other games that just would not fit with FFXIV design.

However, it was after this year's All Saints Wake when I myself began to worry about the current state of the game. I joined back in 2016, and the events that year were so well thought out and rewarding, and last ASW was the laziest amount of effort I've seen this dev team put into anything to date. That gravely concerned me, and I tried to set it aside, but then I started doing the Post Moogle quests to get my Postmoogle Cap, which in turn made me think of the 2.x Hildabrand questline as well. What happened to the time, effort, and love put into this kind of content?

I'm ok with using the same formula from one expansion to the next. However, I still desire the same amount of that time, effort, and love from previous expansions be put into it. We are not getting that with SB. If a merchant brings you five quality apples per day, you expect five quality apples per day. Once he starts bringing 4 instead of five, and they're also coming bruised is when you have FFXIVs current state.

I have to echo the OPs thread header on this one.