why are people so resistant to constructive criticism about the game?

[ClickOnce]

Because this game is perfect in every way and no negative opinions are allowed OP.

[Shurrikhan]

A lot of the suggestions I have seen are to make FF14 a mirror of WoW where subs are in heavy decline so yeah sorry if some get shot down from people who played the game and know some of these "offended" people will jump ship immediately on the next WoW expansion launch.

Let's take a look at some of those most common WoW-esque suggestions:

1. Glamours should be treated like achievements (immediately unlocked via binding the item or consuming a glamour prism for it) rather than as items, such that appearances storable in a glamour dresser are unlimited (rather than capped to 400) and need not deny inventory access to the original item itself.
2. Progressive difficulty in reiterative midcore light party content.
3. Instanced housing such that every player can have one.
4. A more integral and lasting open world (beyond merely leveling and gem tier grinds).
5. Dynamic questing (actually follow Bismarck, rather than just going from lookout to lookout, where none really even indicate the direction to the next lookout except via minimap).

Do those things really strike you as elements so inseparable from WoW, or unintegratable with XIV, that anyone who finally got them here would still be just as likely to jump ship back?

Yoshida stated specifically that he wanted to build his XIV rework in imitation of other MMOs, especially WoW. He traded out some more variably sourceable gather X item quests for delivery quests, forced more back and forth WoL-as-courier rather than using such only for intro or auxiliary-yet-major lore questlines, but the base is straight WoW / Ragnorak / Tera hub-to-hub questing. In-action storytelling and phasing are largely replaced by glowing clickable spheres, purple circles to step in (and be surprised!), and static cutscenes, but the core is the same. FATEs amount to no more than world quests, just over a much smaller area. Open world hunting as a meaningful means of progression is as dead as it's been since around Burning Crusade.

There is incredibly little, part by part, that is novel about XIV, and a lack of sensible polish or features should never be what sets one game apart from the others. Each of those WoW-based suggestions can be used to make XIV more unique by better doing what it does well, and bringing much of the rest nearer that level of quality.

[Astrus]

Let's take a look at some of those most common WoW-esque suggestions:

1. Glamours should be treated like achievements (immediately unlocked via binding the item or consuming a glamour prism for it) rather than as items, such that appearances storable in a glamour dresser are unlimited (rather than capped to 400) and need not deny inventory access to the original item itself.
2. Progressive difficulty in reiterative midcore light party content.
3. Instanced housing such that every player can have one.
4. A more integral and lasting open world (beyond merely leveling and gem tier grinds).
5. Dynamic questing (actually follow Bismarck, rather than just going from lookout to lookout, where none really even indicate the direction to the next lookout except via minimap).

Do those things really strike you as elements so inseparable from WoW, or unintegratable with XIV, that anyone who finally got them here would still be just as likely to jump ship back?

As someone who quit WoW years ago because it turned into a game I thoroughly disliked I would actually welcome any combination of these points in FFXIV, especially 1,3 and 4.
Does that help reinforce your point?

[Shurrikhan]

As someone who quit WoW years ago because it turned into a game I thoroughly disliked I would actually welcome any combination of these points in FFXIV, especially 1,3 and 4.
Does that help reinforce your point?

I mean, probably? Though I appended more of my own thoughts to it later, I'd originally meant to simply take a top 5, look at the spirit of the suggestions and word them accordingly, and see if they were really of no use to XIV (nor, as more relevant to whom I was quoting, anything that'd make a former WoW player more likely to stay in XIV).

Obviously, I too would like most of those, though it'd depend on how they're done and how much resources they'd consume. If I had to take just three, it'd probably be 2, 4, and 5, but only because I really love XIV's story (but often find its storytelling techniques -- e.g. as in-game interaction -- a bit lacking), I like its zone aesthetics but wish they were designed to be more lasting and had more "special" of areas beyond merely being spaces for some quests and then FATEs, and really think the game could benefit from progressive midcore content.

By the way, the 6 and 7 seem like they'd likely go to less blinding/gaudy VFX without losing detail/impact, and better antistrophic filtering. In fact the better AA options might be the actual #5...

[Lubu_Mykono]

People don't like to be called out for playing badly. Particularly by strangers in a game that takes a lot of time to be invested in.
SE themselves are partially responsible for this, due to how strict the terms of service are.
Its quietly encourages passive aggressiveness and if the community in general was allowed to speak their voices a little more honestly other players (that are playing badly) etc might listen.
You should not be allowed to report someone who tells you are playing poorly when it is pretty clear that you are.

[Puremallace]

OHHH lets also look at some other WoW suggestions
1. Get rid of this MSQ stuff
2. Unlock everything without having to do ANY story..screw the people leveling they are on their own
3. Lets spice up that gear and put some random procs on it.....yeah that is working great in WoW
4. Too many buttons time to prune these classes down to about 5 buttons
5. Allow people to use DPS meters and call out players for bad dps without fear of bans
6. Allow any addon that WoW does
7. Invest more time in raids and not storylines
8. Get rid of most of the quest from 1-70 to allow for speedy leveling
9. Spice up those classes with racial bonuses that affect raid progress
10. Get rid of the buff for bringing different classes in raiding so that we can stack classes
11. Get rid of the support classes like Dancer or Bard and turn them into pure dps classes
12. Give me my lvl 80 tool kit in a synced level 16 dungeon so I can chain pull the entire instance. Screw those lowbies trying to learn.

^ This is just SOME of the suggestions I have seen that would gut this MMO.

[Shurrikhan]

...

1. Comes from people who've not played WoW as much as have, and seems rare in either case. Most have asked for fewer time-sink fetch quests.
2. The story itself was one of those things they were requesting to not be locked behind other especially obstructive activities, though?
3. This tends to be something former WoW players in particular dislike. Chosen bonus features or more specialized or otherwise special gear (a la legendary items) see the occasional suggestion, but that comes even more strongly from the XI crowd.
4. You realize WoW uses about as many buttons for combat as XIV does? Asking that Mirage Dive share a button with Jump, Between the Lines with Ley Lines, Blizzard IV with Fire IV, Assassinate with Dream Within a Dream, or the like, when they literally cannot be used except in order or from conflicting stances =/= "we want only 5 buttons".
5. You realize harassment is likewise an offense in WoW, right? That fault-finding is wholly informed or not (i.e. parsed and eyeballed, both, or not) does not make harassment any more or less harassment.
6. I have yet to see this except as a last-resort workaround for the devs ignoring obvious QoL UI reworks such as to retainers and the market-board, auto-sorting, being able to right click on a quest area in the mini-map to load the relevant journal entry alongside it, and the like.
7. Asking that the dev team not invest increasingly less time into endgame combat-centric content =/= "Don't do any more stories." It can, however, reasonably be read as a request for the director not to siphon funds from one of his games (largely paid with the tacit intent of supporting and expanding it) into another.
8. By all means, link some of these. Equally anecdotal, perhaps, but what I've seen amounts far more closely to "Can we do fewer shitty fetch-quests?"
9. Link? That seems laughable coming from a community that mostly begged racial abilities to be de-emphasized, with even the anti-flying or slow-down-leveling portions agreeing that it was fine for them not to be as raid-prevalent.
10. Because woe be us if the game has to actually balance jobs themselves rather than rely on composition bonuses, or if there may be two physical ranged in the same group who each only enjoy one of that role's jobs? Is asking for balance enough to play the job you want without relying on 1% main stat party bonuses so abhorrent an idea?
11. At the same time, allowing for more support skills, and actually allowing them to have a place in fights, is also suggested by many a former WoWer. Just as the removal of CC was suggested by plenty who've never played WoW, to the horror of most WoW veterans here. We're talking about a community who, in majority, get hyped over having to hit an extra button every hour or after each death just to maintain a raid buff just because it adds a bit more "flavor" and "raid support".
12. Retaining abilities through level sync, albeit at variable potency or worth attached mob upscaling, has been suggested since ARR, and is thus difficult to pinpoint any particular population from which it may be disproportionately stem. It hardly seems an oppressive/invasive WoW idea only that we be allowed to use more than a tiny handful of abilities in scaled (e.g. roulette) content; such merely requires proportionate rescaling so that the helpers can still enjoy their game without that coming at expense of those they're helping.

You can cherry-pick as you like, but then the absurdities wouldn't stop, or even really even cluster, around former WoW players. They're not some monolithic boogieman; they're just people with experience from another MMO, likely among multiple more.

[Jirah]

My experience with critique is been more positive on these forums than most tbh. its the way you word your criticism but i know some will simp for FFXIV to no end and Those people are truly the worst desiring no changes to a MMO no less is stupid. but they arent common or just type smug stuff like "then leave" or "its not for you bye" without thought or logic.

[Puremallace]

[LIST="1"]SNIP

This entire post tells me everything I need to know about you. You obviously play both MMO's but do not understand how minor changes have EXTREMELY long term consequences in MMO's.

Minor request to you "that do not seem that bad" or are easily explained away when people give legit criticism is how you kill an MMO. Daring to sit on these forums and suggest that gutting the MSQ is justified when you only ever play through it once is just ridiculous.

It is the core of this MMO and noone is stopping people from hitting escape to power level super quick through the MSQ.

You have to understand a lot of people here played so many MMO's and watched ideas that rip the soul out of an MMO to appease this person or that person just kill the soul of an MMO.

We have literal queue times to login with servers that are on par with anything WoW or other MMO's have. The game is EXTREMELY healthy and growing huge right under the vision of Yoshida and the very competent devs running this MMO.

If an idea has merit then post it and be ready to defend that idea if someone puts any type of criticism that is constructive. If people are negative then let the forum mods deal with it. My point of view on every single suggestion is how does this ripple through the community.

Any number of things I listed would make the leveling experience in FF14 a complete nightmare of infinite queue times requiring the devs to nerf a majority of the MSQ that has you unlock dungeons and trials so that by end game you literally no practice playing your character with other people.

Every decision ripples from wanting to spice up boring gear forcing devs to keep having to add new spice and change that an add something different the next patch then the next patch then the next patch. Every single suggestion that is taken serious has ripple effects.

People wanting threat changed "because that is why noone wants to tank" caused end game tanking to become chain pull fest from one side of an instance to the other side. This forced them to change dungeon design to add walls in random spots to slow people down. It made abilities completely useless that used to be used to control and cc mobs like sleep on Black Mages.

FF14 are so defensive about the current game because we consider it a unique MMO that is actually growing in a world where a lot of MMO's have died or are dying extremely slow and painful deaths. So you are going to get people coming at you with daggers ready to debate hard on any issue that we consider affecting core aspects of the MMO.

Also lets not pretend Square Enix is not addressing these concerns. They literally added flying to ARR in a patch. Do people understand Blizzard charged you $60 for that as an expansion feature in Cataclysm?!?!?They removed and fixed 30% of the quest in ARR in a single patch to address VALID complaints.

[Shurrikhan]

This entire post tells me everything I need to know about you. You obviously play both MMO's but do not understand how minor changes have EXTREMELY long term consequences in MMO's.

Oh, that's why I argued against so many changes going into ARR, HW, StB, and ShB for their potential to have... exactly the consequences they did?

Daring to sit on these forums and suggest that gutting the MSQ is justified when you only ever play through it once is just ridiculous.

And indeed it would be. But again, who's done that? Don't just give me an offhand "us vs. them" overgeneralization. Who?

A strawman does not form a solid argument. A couple outliers do not form a community.

People wanting threat changed "because that is why noone wants to tank" caused end game tanking to become chain pull fest from one side of an instance to the other side. This forced them to change dungeon design to add walls in random spots to slow people down. It made abilities completely useless that used to be used to control and cc mobs like sleep on Black Mages.

And I argued against enmity inflation and the removal of CC without relying on go off-hand comments like "just leave then".

But you realize end-to-end pulls were already a norm in ARR, right, when enmity modifiers were a fifth of what they are now?

CC was removed because low difficulty tuning generated community habits which in turn left no room for CC. Enmity was given the mercy-stroke not to enable wall-to-wall pulling, but because it was already reduced to mere bloat. They weren't removed to create the current paradigm. They were removed because that's been the paradigm since the game's rework from 1.x.

What did I personally, do about it? I argued against nerfing dungeons, outside of OHKO boss skills and unintuitive effects, on the basis that it'd have these tack-on effects down the line, and a rework of AoE (to cumulative mitigation) and diminishing returns as a system.

You have to understand a lot of people here played so many MMO's and watched ideas that rip the soul out of an MMO to appease this person or that person just kill the soul of an MMO.

Yes. And I'll be right there, alongside you, to argue against such red flags. I'd do that for anyone who actually wanted to gut the story (instead of merely make the worst of its fluff optional, as the devs themselves clearly agreed was a good goal), for instance.

But why generalize most bad suggestions into the form of an MMO you clearly know little about? Heck, unless you're posting from a second account you in all likelihood know relatively little about the design philosophies or consequences of changes present in this one.

Do people understand Blizzard charged you $60 for that as an expansion feature in Cataclysm?!?!?

They charged me $40 for an expansion. Redoing the main world's coding to allow for flight was a small part of redoing the main world's leveling experience to be smoother, more engaging, and make use of features made over the last two expansions, which was itself just a bonus feature of that expansion. It quite notably did not cost me content elsewhere unless that would-be content would have far exceeded what was promised, hinted at, or even expected.