“Everything is amazing and no one is happy.”

[Caurcas]

I quite like throwing rocks into this lake.

[Xaruko_Nexume]

I'll agree with that one. I love delayed gratification and when I try to explain it to others they look at me like they are seeing something so foreign they can't comprehend it. That said, if you are looking for instant gratification then why are you playing an MMO of all things?

There is a friend I cherish dearly in this game, that I now play with for hours every day. They are very patient with me and I am very patient with them. But they have a very "gogogo" mentality and I have a very "oh wow look at this skybox" mentality haha. If there is something painful that will save 1 second of time off of something, they are all for it. And I just don't care. They are the yin to my yang lol.

[Izar_Chillen]

I'll agree with that one. I love delayed gratification and when I try to explain it to others they look at me like they are seeing something so foreign they can't comprehend it. That said, if you are looking for instant gratification then why are you playing an MMO of all things?

Instant gratification has been ingrained to those that grew up as a teenager/early 20s on social media/youtube/30sec vid clips of memes etc


They have larger addictions to dopamine hits than I did smoking cigarettes for 30 years

[Breakbeat]

Most people playing this game are happy with the game.*

Visualize and conceptualize of the whole. Of all the millions of people playing this game globally.

Don't get stuck visualizing the whole based on forums. A mere pittance of the player base uses forums to communicate. Actually, a pittance of the player base communicates about it online at all.

Compare a "popular" reddit thread with 1,500 upvotes to the whole, all 36 million of us that are subscribed. Makes that Reddit thread not even statistically significant.

As a person who lived plenty of life before internet discussion and/or social media, this is one of my gripes with these things. People see a bandwagon and jump on it, regardless of how minor an issue might be in their personal experience. 2,000 angry folks on a Reddit post or a forum thread literally isn't even a significant indicator of how the majority feels.

But that's humans in 2022:

- 35,000,000 people do this thing.
- 2,000 people appear grossly unsatisfied
- In our infinite wisdom, "Everyone's angry about this thing!"

Nonsense. Show me an angry Reddit thread with 1.5 million upvotes (half of the daily player base) or a forum thread with 17,000,000 upvotes (half of the subscribed player base), and we could begin to talk about forming an educated opinion on "how people feel about this game."

See: social issues IRL as well. We do this same nonsense everywhere. 2 people complain about a thing, or a bad thing happens to three people and all of the sudden entire huge, sweeping section of how we normally live is deemed 'wrong' or 'cancelled' or whatever. We've lost our ever-loving minds.

*And last, one might say, "but Break, how can you say 'most people who play this game are happy with the game' and then go on to say you can't really make a determination about the mood or feelings of the player-base given the online discussion present?"

Because, logically, people don't pay and play to feel bad. People maintaining a subscription and logging in are getting some sort of satisfaction from it... minus the masochists that like self-harm. Therefore, I'd have to say that a controlling majority of the people subscribing and logging in, are happy with this game. Logically, quite a huge controlling majority.

The counter-opinion, that the majority of people subscribing and logging in are unhappy, has no such logical backing. Such behavior would be counter to the normal human inclination to shy away from optional activities that aren't satisfying.

[Xaruko_Nexume]

Most people playing this game are happy.

Visualize and conceptualize of the whole. Of all the millions of people playing this game globally.

Don't get stuck visualizing the whole based on forums. A mere pittance of the player base uses forums to communicate. Actually, a pittance of the player base communicates about it online at all.

Compare a "popular" reddit thread with 1,500 upvotes to the whole, all 36 million of us that are subscribed. Makes that Reddit thread not even statistically significant.

As a person who lived plenty of life before internet discussion and/or social media, this is one of my gripes with these things. People see a bandwagon and jump on it, regardless of how minor an issue might be in their personal experience. 2,000 angry folks on a Reddit post or a forum thread literally isn't even a significant indicator of how the majority feels.

But that's humans in 2022:

- 35,000,000 people do this thing.
- 2,000 people appear grossly unsatisfied
- In our infinite wisdom, "Everyone's angry about this thing!"

Nonsense. Show me an angry Reddit thread with 1.5 million upvotes (half of the daily player base) or a forum thread with 17,000,000 upvotes (half of the subscribed player base), and we could begin to talk about forming an educated opinion on "how people feel about this game."

See: social issues IRL as well. We do this same nonsense everywhere. 2 people complain about a thing, or a bad thing happens to three people and all of the sudden entire huge, sweeping section of how we normally live is deemed 'wrong' or 'cancelled' or whatever. We've lost our ever-loving minds.

Nice thoughts. It makes me happy to see my assumption reaffirmed that most people playing the game, are in fact, quite happy with it. Sometimes I can't play the game but I can access the Internet, so I often come to these forums. And its not always so bad, I mean I enjoy seeing all the different takes, even the ones I think are ridiculous. I wish there was a Final Fantasy lore subreddit or somewhere I could go to just talk to people who are actually happy with the game when I cant play it lol.

[Deceptus]

For me, it is everything is not great, but I am happy.

You can generally love a game and still point out where it can improve. While there is a lot of room for improvement, it's still the best MMO, imo.

While I often come of as critical this is pretty much my stance on it.

I criticize the game because I do love it but know it has a lot of bad spots that need improved but this dev team has lost it's way on a lot of things.

Success has given them ego.

- 35,000,000 people do this thing.
- 2,000 people appear grossly unsatisfied
- In our infinite wisdom, "Everyone's angry about this thing!"

You do realize that's literally the basis of statistics right? BTW, The total is a bit over a million active players when it comes to FFXIV

Take a sample of something and show if it is a trend or not. A sampling of 2000 people, with an accounting of bias, is a statistically valid sample.

[Mapleine]

Endwalker was a blast for what it was, but I'm quite unhappy the end game is in the same "wispy fumes" state its been in since Realm Reborn launched.

On top of that, I'm still having the same issues I did back in Realm Reborn with party finder glitches and only being able to gear one job at a time.

Now we're pouring copious resources into tuning up ARR's MSQ of all things, trying to chase holdouts (who won't play any game with a chat box, give up) and are planning for massive data center expansion despite no content growth. I feel like Yoshi P genuinely thinks Emet Selch memes and bleeding WoW subs are a permanent avenue of growth.

[EaraGrace]

There has never been an official game forum that isn’t full of negativity. Reddits are often fine, Twitter is fine, pretty much every website but the official forums is fine. But the forums themselves? Trash fire.

[TaleraRistain]

It doesn't sound like you played the wrong game for 16 years. You played a game that you enjoyed but it changed. And your experiences with it have let you come to appreciate this game in ways you didn't when you tried it before. I'm glad you were able to find a home here. I'm also of the older crowd and have played MMOs since the 90s. I used to jump on the treadmill to keep up with things in other games and that was enjoyable for its time. But I much prefer how I can take things at my own pace and partake of just what I want with this one, with no fear that I'll fall behind and can't catch up. I still have my EverQuest account from over 20 years. But every time I've tried to go back, I'm so far behind in levels and AAs that it would just be better to start fresh. Whereas here I can choose to not play a bit because I'm playing another game or busy with work and I come back and I'm not far behind at all.

[Xuled]

I agree that the game itself is good. The community on the other hand.. well..