An impassioned plea from a WoW member, A lesson for FFXIV.

[Alexandre_Noireau]

i have a feeling anything they came up with you would not like. =p

Yeah, at this point, my issue is more with the genre than FFXIV itself - But still, it means i want FFXIV to lead in a new direction, maybe lead a new way to think and conceptualize about MMORPGs.

As for content i enjoy much in this game. Trials, the few jumping puzzles, lore oh god i love it i love hydaelyn and its many cultures, i mean... Dungeons are usually fast, i would like more 8 man longer dungeons with a bit more to them. Not challenge per se, but for example:

1 corridor of the dungeon, is actually split in 2. Tank and healer get on one and both DPS get in the other: Healer cannot heal DPSs, just the tank. Tank can only do damage and tank enemies on their corridor: While tank and healer HOLD THEIR GROUND. Both DPS need to race against a wall that doesn't do damage and is just pushed back when certain checks are met. While the tank and healer actually deal with some enemies, some of them might trigger AoEs that can actually hit the DPS corridor, so they have to be careful and actually also do their own DPS race... On the contrary, if DPS is too slow, tank and healer will get overrun. The goal is for the DPS to reach a lever, shut the entrance where the enemies are spawning and then the tank and healer can actually open the doors that lead to the boss arena.

Yeah, you make it soft too, nothing to rough or wipes will be guaranteed. Honestly, this game has kinda become a safe-space for TERRIBLE players. I think one of the things the devteam needs to remember, is that games are meant to be beaten, not AFKed...

[Noodle_Trinidad]

I find that people who obsess over numbers are cynical enough to not find much enjoyment in their hobbies in general. At some point, certain individuals find themselves having more complaints than compliments when it comes to something they used to enjoy. It happens - it's part of life. It's usually a good point to move on, though, rather than stubbornly cling to that particular thing in the hope that it'll suddenly change.

Many people enjoy FFXIV as it is at present and aren't keen to see things change drastically for the sake of it every few months.

Welcome to people who actually get into their hobbies I guess? Have you not met some of the most dedicated players in Video Games? One of their main concerns is manipulating numbers in their favor to get the most optimal output possible. Hell even FFXIV has it with theorycrafters and the people who record numbers for days/weeks/months to figure out the new stat weight spread to eventually figure out how to calculate the BiS for a Job. There will never not be a time that people who play games or rather any hobby that requires some form of calculation, no matter how basic, that won't be worry about the numbers.

Also I enjoyed FFXIV a lot, stuck by it when Palamecia became Excalibur and when Yoshida took over from 1.0 to 1.23a/b. The game has had a lot of promise and still does to this day. It has all the basic systems to properly grow yet we still seem to be bogged down by Technical Limitations which we have received radio silence on. Even Yoshida admitted that our server hardware is set for Megaservers yet due to said technical limitations its not possible so why is it that when the game is technically the 2nd highest subbed in the MMO market that we haven't seen any attempts to fix said limitations since they seem to always stem from the engine itself? This is actually one of the reasons I really find the Cash Shop to be so egregious since they claim that it's the only guaranteed source of revenue for the game proper yet we haven't seen any real growth to the game. I mean instead of fixing the game's engine and trying to resolve most of the issues with their know technical corners they decided "Hey let's waste time and money on reshuffling the servers instead of fixing the base issues that will once again creep in over time".

Also why are your arguments always implying people want FFXIV to suddenly become a different game thru changes? People want change but in the form of the existing systems, they want to see some natural growth on the base. We want the game to actually feel likes its progressing over time alongside its players not just simple number growth that will eventually get number squashed just like in WoW.

[Xion136]

You might want to cite your sources on that. Poker stars universally hate the game? Pro sports players who study playbooks and work out 7 days a week hate their sports? Movie critics hate movies? Game enthusiasts hate games.It’s obvious.

No that's the game journalists! Badum-tss

Terrible jokes aside, I don't mind the content cycle more so than I mind the reuse of models. Yeah I can forgive the enemy models here and there but every time armor models are reused and feel out of place for the dungeon hurts. Like the Burn - the set there doesn't feel like it belongs there. A more allagan set would have made sense, since we we found an allagan facility.

Everything could be better. And from a passioned 14 player whose looking into one day doing UwU?

I am a player. And I'm damn near feeling like a payer with how much the Mogstation has expanded. Old event items are questionable (Lightning's stuff should have been added to a permanent event eventually, like Monster Hunter's but that's for another topic) but the cash shop should be for Special items: Important NPC outfits (like Aymeric and the Scions), China/Korea exclusives (as it is) and other things like the SDS Fenrir, and arguably the statue emotes.

Yoshi-P clearly has a love for this game and it's community. I just hope he doesn't forget how much we love this game.

[Arrius]

I'd say WoW has come to a level where no player will be 100% happy anymore.
And I believe they can't 'get better' all the time with each expansion, otherwise they put themselves standards they can't reach anymore.

Which might as well happened after WotLK and MoP.

It's just era of free-to-play for quick snackable sessions, the general scoffing at subscriptions (ironically instead paying for Discord Nitro to get their animated emojis for their sweet memes), and the general flood of titles come out each day.

[Theodric]

You might want to cite your sources on that. Poker stars universally hate the game? Pro sports players who study playbooks and work out 7 days a week hate their sports? Movie critics hate movies? Game enthusiasts hate games. It’s obvious.

I find that the post history of some of the more vocal posters serves as a decent enough source. Especially if it includes any or all of the following:

- More complaints than compliments towards the game itself.
- Deceptive claims or moving goalposts when it comes to clarifying their concerns.
- Statements implying that they stick around due to time/money invested rather than because of friends/enjoyment.
- Leaping at the chance to negatively criticise content that is not even out yet - such as the hysteria surrounding BLU.
- Refusal to acknowledge that quite a lot of people actually enjoy the stuff that they do not and that they, themselves, may simply be part of an echo chamber/very vocal minority when it comes to expressing their views.
- Attempts to incite panic. In this case implying that the game is not doing well based on 'numbers' and attempts to track the amount of active players.

I have my own beef with the game when it comes to certain elements. If it ever reaches a point where the negatives outweigh the positives I'll quit, just like I did with WoW. I urge others to do the same. It's just...not hard to assume that some people are sticking around out of habit and misguided motives when most of their contributions to debate are negative.

[Adrestia]

- More complaints than compliments towards the game itself.

People expend more effort when they have something to complain about. Whether good deeds deserve more compliments in our society is a great question, but seeing more complaining than complimenting isn’t a sign of anything

Deceptive claims or moving goalposts when it comes to clarifying their concerns.

To be honest as someone who’s had a lot to complain about lately, what I’m seeing is other people moving the goalposts for me, saying that I claimed things that in plain English they can see very well I did not, and then arguing against the insanity they invented.

Statements implying that they stick around due to time/money invested rather than because of friends/enjoyment.

Sunk cost isn’t an abberration but an intended design of the way online games are marketed. Not only that, but the social component is a substantial tie too, and I wonder why you moved “friends” to go with “enjoyment.” It’s stressful to leave your friends behind even if it means playing a game that’s not as fun for you as it once was. Your social groups are another thing that you lose, just like your time and money, if you jump ship. Also, people don’t see everything in black and white. It’s possible to have a lot that you wish was better while still preferring the whole package to not having the game at all.

Leaping at the chance to negatively criticise content that is not even out yet - such as the hysteria surrounding BLU.

People don’t like getting burned by the same old stuff time and again. Were you around for the infamous “you players are so dumb, you could beat AV easily if you just melee’d with an earth staff” video? People who have played MMOs are at this point conditioned to expect disappointment when things are teased but shrouded in mystery. Also, even though I’m one of the few who love Pagos, SE doesn’t have the greatest track record right now with releasing experimental content. I think it’s only natural to be a skeptic.

Refusal to acknowledge that quite a lot of people actually enjoy the stuff that they do not and that they, themselves, may simply be part of an echo chamber/very vocal minority when it comes to expressing their views.

I can’t speak to these types. I know full well I’m in the minority on the type of content I like. I just don’t buy into the argument that making exclusively content that everyone *can* do means you’re making content that everyone *wants* to do. I’m aware of the existence of the majority and believe they deserve a lot of attention. But not all of the attention, and sometimes that even means being told “no” when their demands negatively impact others too much.

Attempts to incite panic. In this case implying that the game is not doing well based on 'numbers' and attempts to track the amount of active players.

Heavens forfend someone should base an argument on quantitative data? Many companies, and SE is incredibly guilty of this in my eyes, *rely* on convincing their consumers that their product is an exception to all the rules and needs to be judged differently. But this is almost never the case. This game’s aging code and straight up bad infrastructure, something I’m very much complaining about these days, are the rule, not the exception. My company still has some products using Microsoft WebForms and Visual Basic. We have the largest market share in our field, but we still make do with a lot of old cruft and we don’t try to sell our customers on the idea that because we have old software they should accept a sub-par product. Legacy code is a problem for a developer to fix, not for a customer to excuse for an infinite amount of time.

I have my own beef with the game when it comes to certain elements. If it ever reaches a point where the negatives outweigh the positives I'll quit, just like I did with WoW. I urge others to do the same. It's just...not hard to assume that some people are sticking around out of habit and misguided motives when most of their contributions to debate are negative.

Quitting is easier for some than others, and is kind of the scorched earth solution. Not only that, but I don’t think anyone who’s playing hates literally every last thing about the game. There’s a lot of stuff here you can’t get elsewhere. For some people that’s atmosphere, for others it’s content, friends, the Final Fantasy name, stability, the satisfying explosion of Fire IV. Yes, there are people who are so unhappy they should probably just quit and then they’ll realize how much better things are without the game. But for a lot of us, we’d rather see a flawed gem become slightly more polished.

[Elamys]

The Activision-Blizzard merge happened in 2008. WoW was excellent for a long time after that. Whatever problems Blizzard has now, it's not Activision, and it's a little tiresome to see them be used as a scapegoat for every issue.

WoW's biggest problem right now is that they are not listening to their players. They've decided that they know what's fun for us, and that what's fun isn't the things we're asking for, so the things we're asking for won't be implemented. It's how we got a second-rate artifact grind in the form of Azerite when everyone already said they hated that. It's how they made boneheaded class design decisions like removing totems from shaman. It's why we still don't have any noteworthy content for people who don't raid or push PVP rating. It's why we don't have player housing or dyes or any number of things that players have been asking for for years. It's why the allied races have threadbare customization. This is a fairly new thing, and I doubt a merge with Activision that happened 10 years ago is causing it.

WoW is facing the same issue a number of other companies today are facing. They're not the only (literal) game in town anymore. They never really have been, sure, but what other MMOs have come even close to approaching WoW's scope and appeal? I feel like they've been so used to being on top that they've forgotten how to improve. They got so used to being what other MMOs aspired to be that they've failed to notice other MMOs are making changes that move them away from WoW and make them more appealing to others. The people who are playing MMOs today are not the same people who were playing MMOs in 2004.

[JohnSpawnVFX]

What a weak argument that is, especially when the mess of 1.0 managed to make dungeon running more engaging than FFXIV ARR+ ever has.


This is Cutter's Cry before its revamp into ARR's Cutter's Cry. It gave reason for the party to split up and sync up their kills to get certain chests. It gave reasons to keep wanting to go back in and properly gear your characters out, though part of that also had to do with the limited pool of gear, and it made sure to not put all the best gear in one dungeon splitting it among the 1.0 version of Aurum Vale that had its own unique setup. The issue is we shouldn't expect dungeons to be content that is just forgotten after being done once instead we should be expecting the Devs to further their design philosophy once they finally know how to make a base dungeon. The dungeons have kept following the same setup for years now and while it was fine during the reboot launch you would have expected some work being put into them to make them more interesting than they are now. The only good piece of battle content that has some seem growth has been Raid Bosses.

So basically dungeons where what would happen would be "Let all playerbase follow path X which is the fastest and anyone who wants to prolong the run will be uncerimoniously kicked (a la PotD/HoH treasure chest seekers)" or at worst (if there's no faster path or it takes significantly longer than other dungeons): get dungeon in roulette - people leave as soon as they load in.

[Makeda]

You know...

I'm an ex-WoW player too so I get it...

The desire to talk about 'WTF went wrong with my game' is intense...

But can we NOT carry that over into every other MMO we migrate to?

Folks here got their own drama and topics. They don't need WoW's as well.

[Adrestia]

The Activision-Blizzard merge happened in 2008. WoW was excellent for a long time after that. Whatever problems Blizzard has now, it's not Activision, and it's a little tiresome to see them be used as a scapegoat for every issue.

I mean, WotLK was 2008 meaning it was already pretty much code-complete by the time of the merger. I don’t think you’ll find many people agreeing with you that the game hasn’t been getting progressively worse from Cataclysm on. It’s not like you kill the name of one of the biggest gaming franchises of all time in a day. It’s been a drawn out sickness starting with the watering down of core gameplay and culminating in the cash shop with mini games we see today. You don’t think Bobby Kotick’s infamous "The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games." quote had anything to do with that?