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

[LisSquid]

Healer's damaging spells are simplified so that they can spam them without worrying about interrupting a combo because they have to manage and look after the tank's HP bar.

simplified

spam

This is our issue.

Also:

interrupting a combo because they have to manage and look after the tank's HP bar.

What combo? Also if you play WHM you'd know a regen and a medica 2 = you can just spam holy and ignore the tank for the rest of the pull. Outside of the greenest of greenest, and I mean no cd usage, tanks I don't use a single casted heal outside of add pulls for entire dungeons. At 80 I can say the actual hardcast heals I do for heals goes down to 0 once the group knows what is up.

Edit to reply:

and if enough players quit

I was referring to this. Besides, enough new blood is coming into the game. Flush in and flush out is just how mmo demographics work.

[TaleraRistain]

Everyone has to make their own decision for what's worth spending their time on.

For myself, I'm not going anywhere. A lot of people in this thread seem to be looking for a more hardcore game. There's nothing wrong with that. But XIV has never been hardcore. The devs have always been concerned about the accessibility of things to the playerbase. As an MMO vet of 20 years, I can tell you that truly hardcore games don't care about that.

Yep, some jobs have been simplified. That's more of that accessibility. The devs saw people weren't playing them and listened to feedback about why and made adjustments. Or like some others have mentioned, they didn't want a situation where one or more classes were required, leaving others out in the cold in having fun on their own classes. Outside of a few specific examples, they do seem to care a lot that people are having fun.

XIV has always been a casual game. It's become more casual over time. There are any number of more hardcore focused games out there. So it's fair if someone wants that experience. But for myself, I played those hardcore games. I had my schedule decided by raid nights. I don't want that anymore. There's room for XIV to be much more relaxed about that.

So I'm happy engaging with the things I enjoy here in XIV. If it tried to mimic those games instead of being itself, then I'd probably leave.

[Sotaris]

The question I've come to is if the storyline is engaging but the gameplay isn't worth the sub fee, why not just keep up with ethys or similar play/lore channels on yt or twitch instead?
FF14's story is great, and ms./mrs. ishikawa in particular has absolutely blown me away with the quality of her work writing for this game--the ROG 1-30 quests, the DRK quests (back when classes were allowed to have interesting class quests), the azim steppe story section in SB, basically the entirety of 5.0-5.3 shadowbringers, and so on--but when everything that isn't the cutscenes has been reduced to boring at best boring (heals) and at worst deeply depressing (blu), it doesn't particularly seem worth dealing with the drudgery just to see it.

I see, cause I stopped reading after you say you would quit after 6.0 cause that's when the story from 2013 ish is going to be concluded. I still like the gameplay and have no reason to see how I will make a 180 degree turn on the game i put in so many year into. If you're still playing after this many expansion, I take it you disliked the changed the past 2 expansions? Why did you still sub past these if that's the case and why would 6.0 change that?

I see someone even was considering to go back to wow, that's a interesting take seeing that game hardly evolved to anything but the worse the past couple years lol.

[Caurcas]

I mean people still whine about having "tankexity" despite it being dumbed down to the easiest role in the game. It's a point of SE shooting themselves in the foot with how they keep simplifying gameplay, given how 14's rotational system is one (or was one) of the best mmo combat systems on the market.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

I mean people still whine about having "tankexity" despite it being dumbed down to the easiest role in the game. It's a point of SE shooting themselves in the foot with how they keep simplifying gameplay, given how 14's rotational system is one (or was one) of the best mmo combat systems on the market.

It was always the easiest role. Healing is the hardest, always has been.

tanking just has a stigma for whatever reason.

[Sotaris]

It was always the easiest role. Healing is the hardest, always has been.

tanking just has a stigma for whatever reason.

I think we have certain streamers to thank for that stigma here in the west.

[Caurcas]

It was always the easiest role. Healing is the hardest, always has been.

tanking just has a stigma for whatever reason.

Eh, I'd argue dps is the most difficult role to play optimally. Healing is also pretty easy.

[LisSquid]

I really wouldn't mind if they just gave healers a toolkit to play with. Not make healer dps mandatory for clears outside of savage/ult, but just something to play with for downtime in alliance raids and such.

Been spending some time on other mmos to not burn out on 14 before hitting the ground running for EW. WoWs cat weaving with a resto druid made me realize just how little SE thinks of healer engagement. ESO healers can change their kit depending on what the party needs: from full buffing healing machine to more like a cleric/extra dps.

I wouldn't mind even being a full healer if I had more to actually heal. More often than not the majority of our toolkit sits dusty.

[Aluja89]

No, I'm saying what you said i "active" isn't really. Inner Beast was just Shelltron, but with damage. And there was no insult, what are you even talking about.

I'm not defending the design, I'm just stating that I don't find Inner Beast to be the solution.

Back during Coil I had an incredibly strict defensive CD rotation. I also had a lot less damage GCDs. Now its just, throw up a CD during a tankbuster, and it'll be up for the next one. Turn 4 I had to use them in very specific orders, and call out what was up and when it was falling off.

Telling someone who was here since the 1.0 closed beta that they're playing the wrong game sounds like you treating them like an idiot.

I only used that as an example, it's a bad example but I'm refraining from my own made up examples in fear of derailing the topic. So my point was that they should go harder in that direction. How they do it, it's up to them but how it currently is, is just no bueno.

[linayar]

I was referring to this. Besides, enough new blood is coming into the game. Flush in and flush out is just how mmo demographics work.

That doesn't refer to all the old guards, because that would assume all of them dislike the game's current direction.

And regarding EQ and WoW, obviously not enough people left, even with games like FFXI, which is still going. But I would also argue that, at least with WoW, it doesn't necessarily provide a clean break depending on players' wants, what with all of the collections it has, along with enough limited run rewards.

But 1.0, and plenty of dead MMORPGs, showed that there is a tipping point to which the game developers either change the game or end it.