Bring back crowd control. Bring back branching dungeons. Bring back ADVENTURE.

[Niyuka]

No.
What players want is fun. Most people do not find wiping fun and frankly put: 85% of this games community does not have, nor cares to acquire, the necessary skills to beat such content. These aren't nerd players of eld that rise to the challenge. The masses of players today have no interest in challenge. They want a quick and easy dopamine fix and then move on.

I am very much against "reward-forcing" gameplay. WoW does that far too much, to the point that the DEVs seemingly no longer care if the game is fun. If participation is too low, they just throw more rewards at the problem.

So why are games like Nier Automata, Dark Souls, Bloodborne etc. more successful than the FF franchise, generally acclaimed, and keep selling like hotcakes years after their release? Why do more and more designers go that route? The quick dopamine fix doesnt work as well as good game design. The decline of many games, among them WoW (look at its playerbase - it was at its peak right after one of the hardest expansion endgames!) is because slowly but surely, cheap dopamine hits fade. FFXIV has developed a massive player retention problem between content patches because these patches barely contain interesting content for more than a week when there is no new raid. The .1 and .3 patches are just the catch-up my little pony patches to make the game easier.

Game design is much more difficult than just a cheap dopamine hit from dropping a bunch of legendary items. Right now, sadly, the MMO genre is lacking the quality of game designers that the aforementioned games have.

[monk-dps]

So why are games like Nier Automata, Dark Souls, Bloodborne etc. more successful than the FF franchise, generally acclaimed, and keep selling like hotcakes years after their release? Why do more and more designers go that route? The quick dopamine fix doesnt work as well as good game design. The decline of many games, among them WoW (look at its playerbase - it was at its peak right after one of the hardest expansion endgames!) is because slowly but surely, cheap dopamine hits fade. FFXIV has developed a massive player retention problem between content patches because these patches barely contain interesting content for more than a week when there is no new raid. The .1 and .3 patches are just the catch-up my little pony patches to make the game easier.

Game design is much more difficult than just a cheap dopamine hit from dropping a bunch of legendary items. Right now, sadly, the MMO genre is lacking the quality of game designers that the aforementioned games have.

I hate statements like this because I believe this game isn't even THAT easy. If it was we wouldn't see people fail the most simple of task, more people would be good if it was that easy. This game asks ALOT of us, it's only not alot because if you'rel like me.. you play video games and you care. And I want to debate you on if souls is more popular then Final Fantasy, cause I think more people know FF then souls. Hell Souls doesn't even touch this series or this game in terms of money. I'm starting to hate souls cause it's all people who don't know a better harder game like Devil may cry talk about. Souls is only hard cause it's in a world where real game overs aren't a thing.. hell there isn't even a REAL game over in -souls-. Checkpoints and saves up everyone's butt. Go play the unnerfed version of Devil may cry 3 with no continues and then come back to me. Tho even THAT has save points and checks so not even THAT game is safe.

16 bit days were the best. Ok.. I went on a rant lol. But yeah my point is I don't think it's /xiv that's brain dead.. too many people die to stupid shit all the time everyday for me to ever agree with that. The issue isn't the game. The issue is players.

[Razard]

So why are games like Nier Automata, Dark Souls, Bloodborne etc. more successful than the FF franchise,

Citation Needed.

[Vulcann]

So why are games like Nier Automata, Dark Souls, Bloodborne etc. more successful than the FF franchise, generally acclaimed,

because they are overrated by their rabid fans.

[Reynhart]

What players want is fun.

Sure, that's why they scream, insult or throw a tantrum any time someone doesn't treat the game as a job. Or how they want rewards basically without having to even play the game.
It might be time to reevaluate the definition of "fun".
Also, do you remember the massive amounts of thread claiming that Eureka was absolute trash...yet people still played it for the reward even though they hated it ? Did those players really play the game for "fun" ?

I hate statements like this because I believe this game isn't even THAT easy. If it was we wouldn't see people fail the most simple of task, more people would be good if it was that easy.

You said it yourself, people fail simple tasks. Just for the record, we're still talking about dungeons. If one think they're hard, one saddly lack really basic MMO skills, sorry...

Here's a little thing that would have made, for me, The Burn much more enjoyable. You make it a big open are (Like it's supposed to) where you start in the center. You put three bosses in a triangle formation around you, that you could do in any order, and, when you've killed all three, the final boss appears back at the center. This way, every run would most likely start with "Hello guys, which one do we do first ?". No reason to fight, rant or anything, since you'll have to kill all of them anyway, but runs won't all be exactly the same.

[JohnSpawnVFX]

Sure, that's why they scream, insult or throw a tantrum any time someone doesn't treat the game as a job. Or how they want rewards basically without having to even play the game.
It might be time to reevaluate the definition of "fun".

You realize the people "screaming, insulting or throwing a tantrum any time someone doesn't treat the game as a job" (AKA not wanting to carry lazy people) aren't the same people who want rewards without having to play the game. If anything, the lazy ones are the ones who want the rewards for no effort.

[Reynhart]

You realize the people "screaming, insulting or throwing a tantrum any time someone doesn't treat the game as a job" (AKA not wanting to carry lazy people) aren't the same people who want rewards without having to play the game.

Didn't say they were. But for me, they're both people would forgot that the game is supposed to be played for "fun", not for drama.

And you realize that someone "not treating the game as a job" has nothing to do with "being lazy", right ? You're kind of showing my point, there.

[Rasikko]

In a game ruled by damaging AOEs, enfeebles like Sleep are useless. AOE paralyze, etc would be fun to use though.

[Stanelis]

*Eureka has entered the chatroom*

Eureka was poorly designed content.

On a personnal standpoint I m just getting sick of monster in a box "raids" and linear "dungeons", especially after playing wow classic and getting a character there to 60.

The saddest thing is probably that indeed level 1 to 50 dungeons (and the coil of bahamut) were quite interesting , but stuff got streamlined in HW.

[monk-dps]

Sure, that's why they scream, insult or throw a tantrum any time someone doesn't treat the game as a job. Or how they want rewards basically without having to even play the game.
It might be time to reevaluate the definition of "fun".
Also, do you remember the massive amounts of thread claiming that Eureka was absolute trash...yet people still played it for the reward even though they hated it ? Did those players really play the game for "fun" ?

You said it yourself, people fail simple tasks. Just for the record, we're still talking about dungeons. If one think they're hard, one saddly lack really basic MMO skills, sorry...

Here's a little thing that would have made, for me, The Burn much more enjoyable. You make it a big open are (Like it's supposed to) where you start in the center. You put three bosses in a triangle formation around you, that you could do in any order, and, when you've killed all three, the final boss appears back at the center. This way, every run would most likely start with "Hello guys, which one do we do first ?". No reason to fight, rant or anything, since you'll have to kill all of them anyway, but runs won't all be exactly the same.

But that's still not on the game.. that is still on the players. Look here's the rub. If people fail simple things Why are we asking for harder content when we watch and see people fail a level 20 dungeon for example. I don't mind harder stuff but I also don't think this game is totally brain dead either. I've seen people fail simple things, to the hard things. I watched people rant about rotations to story dungeons with one button attacks. It's not the game that is brain dead. The game is fine. It's the people. :c Instead of asking SE to make things harder which to be honest.. they would just add more instant death mech anyway. - which I like- What we should be asking is providing more tools to teach people rotations, skills, and more then basic level of play. We need the game to actually show people how it's done. And I mean EVERYTHING needs to be shown so there's no excuse.