Been seeing a lot of doomsaying in forums/in-game lately

[Sebazy]

"Games' too easy"

Meanwhile DSW.

The thing is, Ultimate is far removed from the rest of the game. Casual content such as dungeons and 24 man simply don't prepare players for Extremes and Savage even in their comparatively watered down state vs what we used to have.

Sure, I'm 100% in agreement that Accuracy was duff and I'll side with you on cleric stance too, but even if you discount those 'complexities', healer gameplay was far more challenging despite being comparatively basic back before we had our pockets stuffed full of instant cast bandaids for every situation, something which is doubly compounded by the lack of tank damage nowadays.

Kefka was a one off freak fight (And a classic) and I honestly don't undertstand why SE won't give us more of that. Final Omega? Meh it was just Gavel mk2, only as much of a pain as it was because people never really settled on a single strat to deal with it, the rest of the fight was nothing out of the ordinary. Even so, nothing we've seen in Savage since Shadowbringers has come even remotely close to either of those two. Oracle was a victory lap, Hesperos pt2 isn't much better either.

[Jeeqbit]

If anything, I think there's a lot to be said about Simplifying kits so they can focus more resources into mechanics and making the more difficult content to challenge the player base.

The less time you spend looking at your hot bar is more time you can dedicate to looking at mechanics on the screen.

This is why I enjoy tanking. Our rotations are less distracting, but in place of that we get lots of tank mechanics (depending on the fight).

[Kolsykol]

I definitely have issues with the game but holy hell so many people think that because they have negative opinions or feel a certain way about the game that it's more widespread than it actually is.
The game has never been more popular and successful there is absolutely zero signs that it's '' dying '' or heading in that direction at all.
I rly don't think that the housing issue is an issue people at large care about, the game isn't at risk because of it.
As much as I hate some of the gameplay changes too ( RIP Kaiten ), I really don't think it's something that a majority of the playerbase care about either.
That's not to say that SAM players approve of it which is ultimately what actually matters more.
But it's not some kind of enormous issue that is causing people to quit en masse...

The Job changes and reworks haven't also been all bad I'd say that they've been mostly good people just HYPERFOCUS on the negative.
I mean you never see people bring up how well-received RPR was...
And there are also people who are happy with the reworks but they simply won't take to the forums, I do think that the SMN rework for example is too simplistic and hope that they build more on it in the future.
But I don't think it's some universally hated thing either.

Overall while there are some issues, the game still offers a great deal of very diverse playstyles and still manages to play smoothly and have incredibly well-balanced Jobs.
The balance isn't perfect but damn compare it to other MMO's and you'll see that it's in fact EXTREMELY balanced for a MMO.

You had the crazy queue times at launch

The queue times weren't that bad from what I remember, sure they were long but that is the case for every MMO expansion launch ( or fresh launch ).
What set FFXIV apart was actually that the servers were VERY stable once you were in, something that is usually not the case in other MMO's.
Not to mention that there weren't any bugs/ major bugs the same goes for new raid fights too the game is incredibly bug free compared to something like WoW where bugged to hell fights are just expected.
And remember that's WITH beta testing too, which FFXIV doesn't have.

Long queue times suck but that's just a MMO thing or even just online gaming altogether ( Diablo 3 was a complete nightmare I still remember it ).

[IdowhatIwant]

If anything, I think there's a lot to be said about Simplifying kits so they can focus more resources into mechanics and making the more difficult content to challenge the player base.

The less time you spend looking at your hot bar is more time you can dedicate to looking at mechanics on the screen.

This is a you problem, most players only check there hot bar for cd timers and that would be about it. Even then many use a parser and will just look at the time the skill was used and know this skill will be up at this time in the fight. Being unwilling to learn how to play should not be a reason to simplify a class, if you were unwilling to learn it to begin with you will still be unwilling to learn it after changes.

Cleric Stance wasn't some wonderful cooldown, it was annoying and as someone that played WHM in ARR, I'm glad it's gone.

This is an opinion, I know many healers that were happy about this change, I know many healers that stopped healing because of this change.

The queue times weren't that bad from what I remember, sure they were long but that is the case for every MMO expansion launch ( or fresh launch ).
What set FFXIV apart was actually that the servers were VERY stable once you were in, something that is usually not the case in other MMO's.

You can use this to defend it, but it doesn't change the fact that is was an issue players dealt with, and it attributes to players frustration with there experience with this expansion so far. Although some servers may not have had bad queue times, in Gilgamesh's case if you did not log in before peak hours, you would be in queue for 3 - 4 hours assuming you were not kicked out of the queue altogether which was an even more frustrating experience. The issue with players being removed from the queue was something that should have never happened and was a problem that existed since 1.0 from what they said.

[Broken_Wind]

The thing is, Ultimate is far removed from the rest of the game. Casual content such as dungeons and 24 man simply don't prepare players for Extremes and Savage even in their comparatively watered down state vs what we used to have.

Casual content shouldn't prepare people for endgame. That's not its role.
Not that I don't disagree it should be tougher then it is

[Zer0]

I've had the opposite. I've seen a lot of people be unhappy about PVP-related nonsense and Viera/Hroths feeling disgruntled about being given the shaft once again.

I'm on to hate the pvp in this game. Tried one match, full of cheaters hackers and all that. It's a garbage ass shit system and absolutely not fun in any way shape or form. Hell I had more fun just sitting in queue to get into the server than I did in PvP.

[Skiros]

When is there ever not controversy? Didnt I hear people actually complain of the state of Shadowbringers? Despite being lauded as the best expansion this game had, a lot of people here still had their complaints? I dont even want to know how the forums handled Stormblood, and I'm sure Heavensward and ARR era days were just as negative and bad. Basically I believe there never was a time in these forums where "everyone was content and satisfied" otherwise we wouldnt even have this game constantly improve.

IDK when you joined this game but what was previously the refuge of hardcore raiders - complaints about jobs becoming braindead which started since Stormblood - seems to be a welcome abode for even casual players these days.

Sure people complained about SB and ShB but it has never been this bad.

I remember when my complaint posts get ratioed all the time back in SB/ShB.

[Skiros]

The thing is, Ultimate is far removed from the rest of the game. Casual content such as dungeons and 24 man simply don't prepare players for Extremes and Savage even in their comparatively watered down state vs what we used to have.

Sure, I'm 100% in agreement that Accuracy was duff and I'll side with you on cleric stance too, but even if you discount those 'complexities', healer gameplay was far more challenging despite being comparatively basic back before we had our pockets stuffed full of instant cast bandaids for every situation, something which is doubly compounded by the lack of tank damage nowadays.

Kefka was a one off freak fight (And a classic) and I honestly don't undertstand why SE won't give us more of that. Final Omega? Meh it was just Gavel mk2, only as much of a pain as it was because people never really settled on a single strat to deal with it, the rest of the fight was nothing out of the ordinary. Even so, nothing we've seen in Savage since Shadowbringers has come even remotely close to either of those two. Oracle was a victory lap, Hesperos pt2 isn't much better either.

Sigmascape was the best Savage tier I played. Honestly felt like things only went downhill after that.

The problem isn't really difficulty. The problem is that modern raid design keeps catering to the nebulous idea of "comfort" and frankly parsebrain FFLogs rank chasers that they don't dare to make mechanics that make the player remotely uncomfortable. People screech like a banshee if you have to get out of melee range and lose 2 GCDs of uptime these days. People screech like a banshee if you had to use more than 5 GCD heals in a row these days.

Guess what, back in Sigmascape, healers actually had to use their brains and juggle GCD healing since oGCD healing was never enough to cover everything. People had to disengage from the boss to do mechanics. Stormblood raids was when FFLogs ranks actually meant anything beyond how much you crit-farmed (after people check whether you padded) because uptime wasn't literally just handed to you for free. Can we please have more of that. I'd rather the developers do their own thing instead of trying to cater to raider sensibilities. Some hardship/discomfort (like IDK using Lightning shot twice while doing a mechanic) isn't a big deal and opens up way more room for creativity in raid design.

I hate to bring Lost Ark into everything but that's a huge reason why Lost Ark is way more fun on melee jobs. Because I have to fight for my melee uptime and my positionals. It isn't literally just handed to me for free.

[Atelier-Bagur]

IDK when you joined this game but what was previously the refuge of hardcore raiders - complaints about jobs becoming braindead which started since Stormblood - seems to be a welcome abode for even casual players these days.

Sure people complained about SB and ShB but it has never been this bad.

I remember when my complaint posts get ratioed all the time back in SB/ShB.

Oh from looking at a glimpse of previous patches online, especially during ARR days I can just imagine the amount of negativity people would've been posting in these forums. Too lazy to actually check but like I said even during WoW's early days; the forums were filled with nothing but doomsayers and its lead me to believe that this is just forum culture in general; Mostly filled with people's hot takes, complaints, whines and actual good criticism sprinkled in between these threads.

[IkaraGreydancer]

He's not talking about opinions, healers ARE useless in most content. Most of dungeons can be soloed by tanks and consistently cleared with just tanks and dps, Ucob has been cleared by tanks only, we've seen tank only clears of all the normal mode raids (and even the 1 tank clear of P1N), P1s and P2s, unless mechanics that could cause a wipe target healers is pretty normal for extreme farms to have only 1 or no healers at all (and aside from endsinger both EW Exs have been cleared without healers) and even in savage and ultimate healers spam their main damage spell far more than all of the heals they use combined and there are far far more examples.

At this point there is no such a thing as dps centric healers, just healers that know how their role works and healers that don't

Don't think you know what the word useless really means