Realization that I could safely quit at 6.0's completion just hit me and that sucks

[Puremallace]

Extreme monetization is everywhere though tbh. Not trying to say it's excusable but we've been in the age of games (especially live services) being monetized for years now. Only a matter of time before FF joined in. I can easily list more games that take it to a worse place than FF tho (glamour rentals/charging upwards of $60+ for one outfit, as an example).

The Lunar Whale is effectively monetizing my nostalgia of FF4 from my child hood. The price of the collectors edition easily is higher then anything released by most other MMO developers. They spent time at a Fanfest advertising a watch and a guitar for sale.

Majority of the new mounts, minions and housing items added in the game are on the MogStation now. They are treating a subscription game like a free to play game and the only reason they are getting away with it is because of content schedule and they have not crossed the line of boost.

If they continue to cross these lines then I will just keep up with the story from people who post on Youtube and officially be done with MMO's as the path they are on is more concerned with monetizing the playerbase then delivering more content.

What just happened to the New World developers should be a major red flag to Square Enix of how quick a playerbase will turn on an MMO if they cross a very fine line that western players will not deal with in an MMO.

[Kiurai]

I can't personally see the reason in complaining about potential job design when we haven't even seen how the new jobs play completely or even understand the reworks I understand why people are pensive especially seeing the forum reactions to healers alone but this doomposting is always a doozy since we haven't seen anything in depth about the combat and gameplay in 6.0. Also a side comment on the poster mention 4.55 as having more varied content, wdym 5.55 will have almost identical content to 4.55 minus an extra ultimate raid and a deep dungeon?

[Kurando]

What just happened to the New World developers should be a major red flag to Square Enix of how quick a playerbase will turn on an MMO if they cross a very fine line that western players will not deal with in an MMO.

WoW have been doing it for years, hell they are becoming more aggressive lately with their methods but players still go out there and buy the stuff anyway. Being a Westerner is fairly irrelevant though as such competitive monotization between MMOs is pretty common in the East. If any company constantly listened and acted on Western complaints all the time, very little would ever get done.

[Puremallace]

WoW have been doing it for years, hell they are becoming more aggressive lately with their methods but players still go out there and buy the stuff anyway. Being a Westerner is fairly irrelevant though as such competitive monotization between MMOs is pretty common in the East. If any company constantly listened and acted on Western complaints all the time, very little would ever get done.

So my main point is as long as it stays cosmetic and the content does not appear to suffer from it then most will honestly not care. If that remains the status quo then I can care less but if WoW proves one thing that even an extremely loyal fanbase will turn quickly if the content suffers but they still see new items being added to a cash shop.

I have seen it happen to multiple MMO's over my time of playing. Square Enix is only doing cosmetic currently so I have no issues right now but I do wish a lot of the Final Fantasy 4 items had been rolled into an event actually in game versus being on a store.

[KageTokage]

I'm not terribly concerned about the post 6.0 story, considering that Heavensward was largely self-contained outside of some mild Ascian/Garlean involvement. I'm also not too concerned about 6.0 itself, because there's enough intrigue just with all the mysteries waiting to be unveiled that how they handle the villains has honestly become more of an afterthought to me.

I do worry that the content cycle is going to continue to remain largely formulaic without much to shake it up, though.

[Aelin_Ashryver]

I hope they bring back astro's uniqueness but they are taking away the last thing it held. I have said before but in Stormblood my fave jobs were MNK, DRK and AST. And each one got totally gutted for ShB it was devastating. I really, really hope they bring these classes back what made them special. They have been slowed down, dumbed down and made less interesting. I loved everything about those jobs in stormblood and even though I am used to how they play now.. it is not as fun to play them as it used to be. I liked the more difficult and fast paced aspect of these jobs. But I guess so many non mains complained about them being hard to get into the devs chose to make them a job for everyone. Really, not every job will suit your taste or needs.. why can people not accept that?

Still to not be wholly negative. I really appreciate what the dev team does as a whole, they work very hard and I am sure it can be difficult to see such negativity like this. Just to know, our complaining comes because we love this game and are passionate about it. I hope we all enjoy EW and it is everything we want it to be. I am really hyped for female hrothgars at least! And Reaper looks like it will be a fun job to play!

[Karl0217]

Agreed with most of this.

Any complexity with tanking got removed with 5.0 and aggro management was gutted. Astro and Scholar are shadows of their former selves. Many class support abilities, like dragoon inflicting a piercing debuff or a Warrior a slashing debuff, are gone. Dancer pretty much made Bard redundant. And the fact that our new DPS class is a DPS specced Dark Knight with a name change and Bloodborne themed armor makes me think they are running out of ideas for new classes.

End game content keeps getting reduced. We are down to almost half the end-game dungeons Heavensward had. No new deep dungeon like Palace of the Dead or Heaven on High. The Hildibrand quest line was completely absent from Shadowbringers.

Instead we are getting completely redundant stuff like Fellowships; even though we already had free companies, linkshells and the party finder.

[CKNovel]

Yeah I'm with you on most points. I love this game but the class designers absolutely ruin it for me.

Definitely agree, they worked on reworking crafters way too early and gave up important works.
The balance in the game is amazing and no job is useless, that's a good point.

But the ranged state, I hope they fix it otherwise I won't enjoy my favorite job anymore.
You do less damage, less support (more depending on some specific situation) all of it because of mobility. Said mobility was a punch to the guts, removal of casts did more wrong than good to MCH.

I truly enjoy the rework and think the guy behind the Drill&Air Anchor idea had a genius moment.
But on the other hand, we got a glorified dot as a pet that don't work in that game, Flamethrower was left as an emote, 3 actions are only meant to be used for AoEs not counting spreadshot. The job was mostly redesigned in dungeon context.
And the 1 2 3 does not fit the job aethetic anymore.

MNK had a recent rework that made the job back to the basics.
BRD has its first expansion where it's a complete mess, worse than when cast time existed.
Healers are bored and spams 1.
Remove Nascent Flash, Infuriate and Upheaval, Warrior is almost the same as Dark Knight.

Job design is better than before by removing and reworking annoying part of the jobs, but it's going downhill at the same time.
That and the fact they want more large scale content where the community is answering "Nononononono", even the WoW players I know dislikes large scale content.

[Jeeqbit]

LOVED AST until it was gutted and the uniqueness was somewhat lost. (That and after memorizing the "cards" and how to use them, stung a little too.)

The uniqueness is still there because no other class uses cards like that. You still have to memorize what role each card is for, and when to use Lord/Lady instead. Someone who has no idea what they are doing and no knowledge of who is melee or ranged would still play it wrong. It still involves more thought than the other healers.

Tanks just play the same and DRK gets shafted every expansion.

By that logic tanks have always played the same... they are fundamentally tanks, with mitigations and a tank stance. They achieve their tanking differently though.

Warrior focuses on taking the damage, but then healing it back up. Paladins focus on mitigating the damage... usually by just 20%. Dark Knight focuses on mitigating it entirely with its shield. Gunbreakers settle for a balance of shields and self-heals.

Another difference between the tanks is that Warrior and Paladin are GCD tanks, while Gunbreaker and especially Dark Knight have lots of off-global attacks making them a lot more fast-paced to play.

Yes, Dark Knights have been made simpler for a casual player to take up. That's not necessarily a bad thing if it's still fun to play. It's nice for a class to be difficult enough that there is a way to become "good" at it but even with 3 GCDs to press there are people who won't play them well, so that is achieved already.

[LisSquid]

It will also provide a potentially more welcoming invitation to those who haven't gotten invested yet because of being afraid they'll need to be intimately familiar with 10 years of ongoing story.

But.. those new players will still have to do the entire "10 years" of MSQ.