If you continue to dumb down the game, you will lose half your player base

[Roflcopter]

Yoshi P said in a video that FFXIV wouldn't exist were it not for WoW. The game was a major inspirational source for this game. My question really is: Is the dev team willing to learn from the mistakes Blizzard made?

Blizzard literally went on a raging simplification spree. Notably pruning and removing tons of abilities from each class and specializations in the name of "accessibility". Shortly after the game went downhill big time. Skill expression is today completely gone in WoW. Every class plays braindead 1-2-3 button smashing that literally dulls your brain as you play.

I truly do not understand why the developers want to do the same thing to FFXIV. Heck, Blizzard even recently stated that pruning was a mistake. They're now trying to "undo" the damage, but that's likely going to take multiple expansions of work. Why on earth would you want to repeat this same mistake in FFXIV?

Having easy jobs is perfectly fine, but there needs to be jobs that offer also medium difficulty and high difficulty. Pruning and dumbing down existing jobs is not in any way acceptable, and is an insult to players who main those jobs. If you want to make something simple, then you need to create new jobs that are simple from the beginning - period. People are invested in their jobs and you're actively disrespecting their affection by making changes none of them asked for.

By all means, continue to remove abilities and make the game play itself. You will not gain more subs; but you will lose half your player base from your arrogance.

Have you ever played wow? It had nothing to do with pruning. It had everything to do with cultivating toxic group play and linking progression to endless daily treadmills for artifact power that didn’t transfer to alts.

It really shit the bed while jumping the shark when they tried to turn it into an esport with excessive mythic+.

Every time WoW tried to go a more hardcore high end player route, it lost massive subscriber numbers. Cataclysm, WoD, BfA, Shadowlands. It has never worked for them. It didn’t even work in TBC where 80% of the raid content was locked to 1% of players. TBC probably hurt their growth more than it helped.

[MisterNublet]

Have you ever played wow? It had nothing to do with pruning. It had everything to do with cultivating toxic group play and linking progression to endless daily treadmills for artifact power that didn’t transfer to alts.

It really shit the bed while jumping the shark when they tried to turn it into an esport with excessive mythic+.

Every time WoW tried to go a more hardcore high end player route, it lost massive subscriber numbers. Cataclysm, WoD, BfA, Shadowlands. It has never worked for them. It didn’t even work in TBC where 80% of the raid content was locked to 1% of players. TBC probably hurt their growth more than it helped.

Lol

But really. Lol

[Roflcopter]

Lol

But really. Lol

How am I wrong? The majority of raiding content past T4 wasn’t experienced by a huge majority of the player base. Subs didn’t grow nearly as quickly as they did in classic. The same is true for their classic reboot. TBC just isn’t as popular. Most people in classic at least got to see up to AQ20. Most didn’t see Naxx and that was all. Very few in TBC saw beyond Kara.

[MisterNublet]

How am I wrong? The majority of raiding content past T4 wasn’t experienced by a huge majority of the player base. Subs didn’t grow nearly as quickly as they did in classic. The same is true for their classic reboot. TBC just isn’t as popular. Most people in classic at least got to see up to AQ20. Most didn’t see Naxx and that was all. Very few in TBC saw beyond Kara.

Played WoW, still regard TBC as one of the best early expansions. Vanilla WoW finished off with 8 million. The fact that TBC still gained over 3 million subs is absolutely insane. TBC had an easy entry into the raiding scene, starting off with the 10 man Karazhan. TBC's 25-man raids made it even easier for people to continue up the raid tiers which saw a lot of people raiding.

Lol

But really. Lol

[hagare]

Played WoW, still regard TBC as one of the best early expansions. Vanilla WoW finished off with 8 million. The fact that TBC still gained over 3 million subs is absolutely insane. TBC had an easy entry into the raiding scene, starting off with the 10 man Karazhan. TBC's 25-man raids made it even easier for people to continue up the raid tiers which saw a lot of people raiding.

so what you're saying is. TBC had an increase because it was easy to get into. Hmmm

[Roflcopter]

Played WoW, still regard TBC as one of the best early expansions. Vanilla WoW finished off with 8 million. The fact that TBC still gained over 3 million subs is absolutely insane. TBC had an easy entry into the raiding scene, starting off with the 10 man Karazhan. TBC's 25-man raids made it even easier for people to continue up the raid tiers which saw a lot of people raiding.

I remember the road to getting keyed for T5 and T6 being an excruciating grindy undertaking. There is a reason you don’t see many Champion of the Naaru or Hand of A’dal titles in live. It was definitely an accomplishment.

[Darthgummibear]

How am I wrong? The majority of raiding content past T4 wasn’t experienced by a huge majority of the player base. Subs didn’t grow nearly as quickly as they did in classic. The same is true for their classic reboot. TBC just isn’t as popular. Most people in classic at least got to see up to AQ20. Most didn’t see Naxx and that was all. Very few in TBC saw beyond Kara.

And in wrath of the lich king most people never got farther than the lootship...the expansion which had greater player numbers than any mmo before or since. What's your point?

[Roflcopter]

And in wrath of the lich king most people never got farther than the lootship...the expansion which had greater player numbers than any mmo before or since. What's your point?

Are you referring to most players getting to the midpoint of ICC? That is pretty damn good wouldn’t you think? I’m pretty sure most players at least got to see the Lich King fight if not clear it though. I did and my guild at the time definitely wasn’t the best on the server. You don’t see a difference between most players clearing every raid but the final one and most players not even clearing the first tier in TBC? I don’t think a lot of the player base even killed Prince or Nightbane back then.