Waist items gone, where's the gil I spent on them?

[kaynide]

You know though OP, there is a good point in this:

Maybe there could be a town crier that actually read off like 5-6 one liners that reflected current game news and when clicked could just pull up the lodestone. Just text chat bubbles like other NPCs as you pass by.

Eg.
“Patch 6.05 coming mid January”
“Housing relocations suspended until 6.1”
“Island Sanctuary coming 6.1!”
Or, pre EW,
“Belts being removed in 6.0!”

Especially now with people blitzing to get into the game ASAP to get through queue. I wouldn’t have noticed the starlight event was live unless I saw the blurb in game upon login because I’m not really checking the launcher.

Not a bad idea to integrate outside of game info back into the game.

[Elkanah]

You know though OP, there is a good point in this:

Maybe there could be a town crier that actually read off like 5-6 one liners that reflected current game news and when clicked could just pull up the lodestone. Just text chat bubbles like other NPCs as you pass by (or in this case just the town criers).

Eg.
“Patch 6.05 coming mid January”
“Housing relocations suspended until 6.1”
“Island Sanctuary coming 6.1!”
Or, pre EW,
“Belts being removed in 6.0!”

Especially now with people blitzing to get into the game ASAP to get through queue. I wouldn’t have noticed the starlight event was live unless I saw the blurb in game upon login because I’m not really checking the launcher.

Not a bad idea to integrate outside of game info back into the game.

I think that's a bit much to have npc's randomly tell you, since people don't even read those half the time when they walk by npc's lol. What if you don't go into town much? Then this complaint comes up unless it's in every zone like a shout or yell within your character vicinity. "Where does the complaint stop at any point" is mostly what I'm trying to get at. Most times, people aren't standing around idling in limsa (unless they're afk and actually botting or preventing afk kicking) and other towns. And most others are in the fields or hunts and dungeons, among other things.

I logged out twice just now, and got them on two different characters.

Purple text from the game in the chat box window:
[12:05 a.m]Welcome to Final Fantasy XIV!
[12:05 a.m]Updates to the prohibited activities in FINAL FANTASY XIV and Account Penalty policy
[12:05 a.m]In order to ensure players can continue to safely enjoy their time in Final Fantasy XIV, we have made changes to the "prohibited activities," as well as the related "Account penalty policy." Detailed: (they posted the link there in game too that leads back to the lodestone update
[12:05 a.m]*The starlight celebration seasonal event is underway until Dec. 31, 2021 6:59 A.M. (PST). Details: (again--link back to lodestone in game message).

This was pretty much where they posted in game that told people about the belt changes coming. Though it seems like most may not be paying attention when those messages pop up. They mentioned fanfest, linked it back to lodestone on those same messages, among other things that had happened over the last couple months (events included). This has always been normal (at least from what I've seen since post 1.0

[kaynide]

I think that's a bit much to have npc's randomly tell you, since people don't even read those half the time when they walk by npc's lol. What if you don't go into town much? Then this complaint comes up unless it's in every zone like a shout or yell within your character vicinity. "Where does the complaint stop at any point" is mostly what I'm trying to get at. Most times, people aren't standing around idling in limsa (unless they're afk and actually botting or preventing afk kicking) and other towns. And most others are in the fields or hunts and dungeons, among other things.

I can go with that;

My main point was more being able to integrate more external things into the actual game. Like, some MMOs can just straight up load webpages into the UI if it needs to. It would be nice to be able to browse the mogstation, lodestone or official wiki directly in the game.

[Packetdancer]

Not a bad idea to integrate outside of game info back into the game.

If I remember correctly, didn't the Play Guide thing that they throw in your face by default used to also have the news links in it? (Maybe even still does?) It's just most people I know go "AAAAA STOP" and turn off the "Hey, would you like to open the Play Guide in a web browser?" thing it often prompted with.

So, without being snide, I strongly suspect most people would see nothing of note in the news on a regular basis and then just start tuning it out. As noted earlier in the thread, many people don't even bother to read the News links in the launcher either, because after a certain point you just visually skip over them as like... visual noise in the landscape.

So I'm unfortunately not sure there's a good way they have to surface information beyond what they already do that wouldn't fall prey to the same thing.