State of the Game prior to Liveletter

[KizuyaKatogami]

yeah you need facts to check this out bud
EW has only just started but most will say SB is still the worst story wise and Shb content-wise.

Im not talking about content or story, im talking about player retention, aka how many players unsubbed after Ew compared to other expansions. EW seems to be the most controversial though in terms of both story and content.

[JungoBungo]

Much like the one person I noticed who explicitly mentioned Machinist in this thread (apologies to others I missed or glanced over, though I doubt such posts were numerous), I would like for them to maybe acknowledge that it, firstly, exists, and secondly, that it has a bevy of issues they needed to fix a number of patches ago. But, I imagine such concerns will go unheard and forgotten (or worse, handwaved), as most things involving Machinist in any capacity do. I just want to know if what job I most enjoyed is really dead. Again. For what feels like the 4th or 5th time.

Anything else I'd be concerned with are downward trends of monetization and a dearth of content that are not really new issues for this game and are unlikely to be improved upon without a lot more work than they're putting in these past several years. And, uh. Echoing hats and hairstyles for Viera and Hrothgar. If they want me to spend goddamn 22 dollars on an outfit (lol) I'd better be able to wear the freaking hat.

[AziraSyuren]

Im not talking about content or story, im talking about player retention, aka how many players unsubbed after Ew compared to other expansions. EW seems to be the most controversial though in terms of both story and content.

Early expacs have been pretty terrible from the jump honestly, it's always really deflated any hype surrounding their release.

It really just makes me feel like they've traded shitty content for no content, and, y'know, I'm not sure which is better. This game is starting to make me feel like I'd rather be angry at the content than underwhelmed at the lack of it, which is also coincidentally (or perhaps not coincidentally) how I feel about modern job design.

[LyraMaru]

Yeah it's a shame they still release new outfits with exceptions for Hrothgar and Viera. I understand the lack of headgear for older gearsets but that they don't design it in EW is ridiculous. Especially for shop items!

Good old times as they made primal weapons for new classes. My poor reaper. I have no hope they will deliver them in the future. GNB and DNC got nothing and they were released one expac further.

Regarding the new mogstation outfit: If you use the "forbidden" modpack for viera and hrothgar hats... the new hat is included and will be shown WITH ears...
Just saying, modders 1 : SE 0

[MoofiaBossVal]

18 Battle Jobs (and the entire battle system) managed by:

1 Supervisor
2 Dedicated developers
1 Intern (who is probably a junior developer by this point)

And it's been that way for 2+ expansions

There. That is why Job design is in the crapper. SE and the FFXIV have refused to expand and give the jobs the time and dedication they NEED to make the game better.

MMO devs refusing to hire enough class designers seems to be a recurring trend. Just earlier this week, we found out that the Guild Wars 2 class designer who broke Ranger more than it already is didn't even look at the Ranger subforum. He doesn't even play Ranger. He glanced at the fanmade wiki to see what a Ranger ability did, and nerfed the class based off of that. WoW class design was also at its apex during MoP when every class had its own dedicated designer and they actually interacted with people on the forums... and then declined when a handful of people were responsible for maintaining several classes and didn't talk to the community anymore.

[Payotz]

Enmity is not intuitive to a lot of new players. It becomes this secret system that some players know all about while others don't.

Except it wasn't. Enmity was clear cut and visible (in the enmity list, in the party list and the fact that the boss isn't turned towards you) and it was a core mechanic to how tanks played.

I would argue that positionals are more of a "secret system" than enmity just because you don't have a clear indicator that you actually hit your positional.

Removing enmity is like removing positionals from melee, and its removal only lowered the existing skill ceiling for tanks and the party as a whole, because let's face it, new tanks would literally just turn on tank stance and never turned on dps stance anyway.

It only affected the tanks who wanted to optimize and express their skill by balancing enmity and dps output. Regardless of how braindead simple it became at the end (prior to its removal), it was still a big part of tank gameplay that's removed for convenience (after being dumbed down a number of times).

DRK is decent

DRK lost Soul Survivor, Darkside MP management, Dark Arts, only to turn into a WAR clone with Tank Xenoglossy.
They literally have cut more from the job than replaced and is a shadow of itself compared to Stormblood, and especially Heavensward.
But hey at least the VFX is good smile?

new SMN is fun

Gotten the MCH treatment. SMN is deleted from the game, and they added a new lvl 50 job, made it lvl 90, and then named it SMN.
What little complexity it had is gone, and is now devolved into pressing a lego, exhausting lego charges, and then pressing another lego.
DoTs gone. But hey at least the VFX is good right smile?

astro cards are alright but Lord/Lady should change to how it was in Shadowbringers or to be like Royal Road.

Turned into an entirely new class just like every damn rework. There's no more flavor to the cards. It's all balance.
The class fantasy of "making use of what the cards give you" is gone for this high apm, dead simple gameplay loop of "match card to role".
The entire job now alienates old AST mains to just attract new players to the job, which is a recurring theme for literally all their class reworks so far.

Healers didn't lose a lot of their abilities, they just lost 1 or 2 each.

Healers lost Largresse, Eye for an Eye and Cleric Stance (both Stormblood, and Heavensward, take your pick on what you like).

SCH lost Bane, Miasma 2, Miasma, Shadow Flare. They lost Quickened Aetherflow. They lost Rouse. Instead of Selene being improved, they deleted it and turned it into an Eos skin instead. The fairy also lost their own separate GCD queue, so you can't use fairy abilities while you're casting GCDs anymore. You can't manually embrace anymore. Can't deploy shields off the fairy anymore. SCH itself has been turned into Whm with a fairy.

AST lost old cards. Lost Nocturnal Sect instead of it being reworked. Lost Time Dilation and old Collective. They lost the ability to enhance an arrow card to 150%, put it on someone and then extend the buff crazy high.

Whm, despite being the healer with the most basic toolkit, lost Aero 3 and Stoneskin.

Physical ranged's unique utility has been homogenized a lot but the jobs themselves feel very unique. Dancers don't use heat blast and robots. Bards don't use guns or dance all the time. The Samurai changes probably weren't worth it because instead of making it easier, it makes your thumb exhausted from spamming the same button.

Physical Ranged has been turned into a baby dps role where you only really bring them for the 1% party DPS.

The fact that they NEED the 1% Party DPS participation trophy to be included in the group speaks volumes to how utterly bad Physical Ranged is.

Physical Ranged used to be the support DPS. They used to be able to refill mana. They used to have Palisade for damage mitigation. Both Bard and MCH used to apply a damage vuln up of some kind on the boss.

Leg Graze, and Arm Graze isn't even used in relevant content anymore. The last time people used it is T7, which is sad, considering there are fights like E8S where it would've been amazing.

Raids used to have mechanics that will be a lot easier to handle if a ranged physical would go ahead and bait the AoE or mechanic for them. Things like Pantopraktor, BJ/CC Superjump, or Mustard Bomb are literally almost nonexistent in Endwalker and most of Shadowbringers.

There's literally no reason to bring a Ranged Physical, other than the participation trophy.
A far cry from how utterly useful they were in Stormblood, not because of their personal dps, but because of their rdps and the utility they can give the team.

Let's not forget that they used to have the more complex and fast APM rotations as a whole to compensate for no positionals and infinite(ish) movement.
Executing a midfire during Bulwark was dopamine inducing.

MCH itself had 2 openers, and 2 rotations each opener. Bard procs scaled off crit so the job progressively felt better and better the more crit you get.

There's a lot of subtle things that made the game feel good that were removed under the guise of "QoL" that was never replaced with anything else.

These systems weren't perfect but at least they exist .

[AziraSyuren]

Enmity was a skill floor and not a skill ceiling thing for tanks. There was nothing to push to greater heights or optimize. Once you got it, you got it, and it did nothing but inflate the output difference between an average and decent player, just like most of the things people point to when they talk about a “skill ceiling.”

There are plenty of other things you could point to that hampered skill expression upon removal (I.e. HW and ARR-era cleric stance, as messy of a mechanic as that was, HW and even neutered StB-era Darkside, TBN giving blood gauge, actual defensive cooldown management, that one Third Eye kenki skill, Blood of the Dragon management in HW, and even things as recent as 60s trick attack) but enmity really wasn’t one of them.

[Renathras]

I'm a bit confused...about some of these things being issues. And others are generally being mischaracterized here.

As a player since 2013 day 1 of this game’s release I don’t think I’ve ever seen this game’s community in such a widespread state of disarray.

You must have missed the fiasco that was DNC revealed as a "Ranged Physical" instead of a healer, Alexander Savage breaking Statics, and/or the entirety of 1.X... Not to be snide, but "widespread state of disarray" is overselling your case a WEE bit.

-Samurai players are angry that Kaiten, an ability core to their class fantasy and gameplay loop was removed with no suitable replacement.

Some are, some are not, and many don't/didn't consider it "core to their class fantasy". Many ARE upset about it, that much is definitely true, but you add embellishment where none was needed...that also is overselling your case.

-Disdain and disregard for healer gameplay,

Those are interesting word choices that require some mind-reading to verify. We don't know that the Devs have a "disdain" for healers; if they did, they could outright remove them from the game if they wanted to. Nor is there any clear sign of disregard for healer gameplay, as many healers enjoy the current healer gameplay, and the Devs seem not to be disregarding them.

with previous healer testers apparently having been removed from the role due to becoming too good at it

Much as I've seen this argued, I've never seen a source for this citation. Is there one?

– coupled with the statement that upset healers should consider playing Ultimate.

Again overstating your case. He said play Ultimate for a challenge, and he didn't use the term "upset healers" in any case.

-A three-way civil war between Summoner players that is unlikely to ever be resolved until the remaining pantheon and associated abilities are added along with a Necromancer/Time Mage job that encapsulates whatever could be salvaged of the previous iteration.

Okay, yeah, this one's true. But it's more a cold war than a civil war; dull, muted, and with one side favored by present events. (Though ngl, I'd love to see Green Mage or Time Mage fill the old SMN void)

-The perpetual crisis revolving around Dark Knight.

Let's be fair, DRK's are edge lords; there's never NOT a crisis with DRK. XD (That was a joke, DRK always needs work, that's true; but it's always been true, so that's not a new thing)

-A severe and longstanding lack of midcore battle content to keep player interest.

That's not really true. Depending on how you look at it, we currently have 2 or 3 Extremes and 1 or 2 Savage bosses that could all be called midcore content. HydEx and ZodEx are easily described as midcore (rather than being strictly casual like the MSQ or normal versions or Aglaia, and also not being at Savage level), with P1S being of a similar difficulty. Aria is a step up, as is P2S, but both can be largely considered midcore content, especially with 590 gear at this point. I'd argue (if we say P1S and don't even include P2S, as midcore) that hardcore have less content (only having P2-4S and DSR), and in terms of current end-game, casuals also have less (having only Aglaia and arguably Expert Roulette, two dungeons of which are 6 months old at this point). But I think this is also a case of picking your own adventure - ShB Extremes, even at level 90, could be considered midcore content as well, and hardcore prog groups routinely try for BLU clears of Alexander.

-Concern that the initial step of the relic will be an overly simplified quest similar to Shadowbringers until the exploratory zone itself is released.

I'm not sure how many people are really all that concerned about this, though NOW THAT YOU MENTION IT, it is something I'm curious about...but I wasn't concerned before you mentioned it, lol

-Concern that Criterion dungeons will not offer the degree of challenging small group content expected of them.

This is valid, but is partly due to people making assumptions about it before it's revealed.

-The apparent abandonment of Blue Mage, or pushing it down so far on the list of priorities that there is no definite timeline on its updates any longer.

BLU's consistently been a slow trickle of releases. I'm trying to remember their patches that updated them, but it's typically been late in an expansion cycle, so I'm not sure why this is cause to be concerned at present about "abandonment". I'm honestly not sure there ever WAS a timeline on its updates...

-Mismanaged community expectations regarding Island Sanctuary, with widespread disappointment imminent from people who were led to believe it was the equivalent of instanced housing.

This one is ABJECTLY false.

Yoshi P has said over and over and over again - and DIRECTLY in plain language that requires no "reading between the lines" - that Island Sanctuary WILL NOT BE instanced housing. I think he's even outright said (translated) "it will NOT BE instanced housing". Anyone at this point that is expecting that somehow listened to the initial announcement of it and then refused to listen to ANYTHING the Devs have said since, as they've been clear in every interview and announcement since that it will not be instanced housing, to temper your expectations, and so on. There's been no ambiguity, and Yoshi P has gone to great lengths to say that specifically to PREVENT any "mismanaged expectations".

The only ones mismanaging expectations at this point are the people insisting in their minds it will be instanced housing.

-The complete stagnation of the housing lottery on various servers, with people unwilling to move to new empty servers or making shell FCs to game and get ahead of the unlocking FC only wards to private buyers (with FC only wards themselves being an out-of-touch idea considering the overwhelming greater demand for private housing.)

Wait, are you arguing people aren't gaming the system or bemoaning people not gaming the system? As for the latter, it's not an "out of touch" idea. There are FAR more players than FCs in the game. FCs having houses means that more players get to, directly or indirectly (dependent on the FC and permissions) get to experience housing gameplay. If an FC with 20 players gets a house, effectively 20 people are getting to experience housing gameplay in some form. If 1 player buys a house, 1 player is getting to experinece housing gameplay and the other 19 are completely excluded from said gameplay. Moreover, FCs have additional things they can do with housing, like submarine missions and the like, which they don't have access to unless they have an FC house.

So it's a rather in-of-touch position to hold. You might argue that they got the ratio off (I agree that there should be more private house slots when a lot of smalls in the FC wards are going unbought, but it looks like that's what they're planning), and you can argue other things would be nice fixes (like adding garden plots to apartments or letting FC's have subs/airships/aether wheels without FC houses), but those are different discussion points than "out-of-touch" or "stagnation".

-Various story concerns regarding the Endwalker MSQ and the future direction the plot will take, with fan expectations of a Heavensward style and scope expansion seemingly dashed with the Void being pushed instead of Meracydia or Ilsabard.

I feel this is you again overstating. A lot of people enjoyed Endwalker's MSQ and are excited for the future direction the plot will take - easily a majority, though obviously not everyone. I don't know that there were many "fan expectations of a Heavensward style" expansion. Most people I know were expecting something a bit more like ARR and/or Stormblood, with more a focus on adventure and traveling the world, breaking from HW/ShB/EW where the narrative was more rigidly focused on the happenings of the story, per se.

Moreover, Meracydia or Ilsabard are not things that would be introduced in patches, where the Void could be. Meracydia and Ilsabard are likely future expansion destinations. I'm not sure anyone was expecting us to go to Meracydia in 6.2, and if anyone was, they have a really unrealistic expectation. Not saying the Devs COULDN'T do it...but it's highly unlikely.

-The utter catastrophe regarding Hrothgar customization, which demonstrated a fundamental misunderstanding of player expectations of what they want to be able to do with their characters’ hairstyles and the ability to equip hats.

I know some people feel REALLY strongly about this...but it's not an "utter catastrophe", much less breaking the game or endangering the game. Moreover, this ALSO isn't new - this is literally a 3 year running thing at this point. You could argue that, itself is a problem, but again, this is a pretty niche thing. It's huge to the people that are having to deal with it, but has no direct effect on the rest of the player community, the game at large, or even all Buns and Gars, as there are many that don't mind it or have settled into being okay with it pending future adjustments.

-The cessation of new hairstyles being added in order to catch up on the hairstyles for the limited races, aside from Online Store purchased ones.

How many hairstyles do we need?

And who is begging for more hairstyles all the time?

And even if we set those aside - new hairstyles are still being added to the game...I'm not even sure where this point is coming from.

How in the world did we end up like this?

Well, in a word, or rather, two words:

We haven't.

/shrug

I can understand some of these complaints/arguments/concerns, but most of them you are overstating your case, in some cases wildly, and some of them aren't even rightly concerns.

EDIT:

Not quite. The difference there is that feeling was everywhere. Talk to your guildies in-game and there'd be frustration. See guilds disappear because nobody logged on anymore. Watch more and more servers become "dead."

Here? The forums are the only place you see this negativity, and then you read the various threads and recognize it's the same small group of names over and over. Meanwhile, in-game guilds are flourishing, servers are strong, people are happy. WoW changed its very nature to focus on eSports and made decisions openly spiting large swaths of its playerbase. FFXIV has done neither of those, and in fact one of the biggest "complaints" from the naysayers are how the devs are giving people what they want in the form of fan-service.

This is largely true. A LOT of the "massive negativity" here is from a relatively small handful of posters who are very vocal (and often VERY antagonistic to people who don't agree with them) posting in a lot of threads about their discontent and who aren't saying good/positive things in basically any of their posts. I've seen the OP of this thread post negatively in a lot of other threads here as well.

The servers aren't "dead", people are still pretty active, and right now is probably the biggest lull of the entire expansion cycle. In FFXIV, X.0 is huge because all the new story and all the new content from zones to dungeons to raids along with new Job mechanics and leveling. X.2 brings a second raid tier, by then we have a 24 man, a new Trial and Extreme (the X.1 Extreme is the X.0 final boss reworked, which can be cool...but isn't "new" in that sense), the start of the Relic grind, new Tome/Crafted/etc gear to grind, etc. X.3 is often MSQ heavy (normally the climax of the story, though EW is supposed to be different), new Trial, new Relic part, new Best Tribe, etc. X.4 is basically X.2 with some more stuff, so final raid tier, etc. X.5 is often the setup for the next Expansion in story and stuff, final 24 man, and COULD be a lull like X.1, but normally sees people getting excited in the last two months before the coming Expansion rather than X.1 where people unsub.

X.1s are pretty unique in this regard, and are the most "dead"/content drought/lulls of an entire expansion's cycle/patches. And this is abjectly normal, for both FFXIV and for other MMOs in a more general sense for their equivalent patches.

And Striker's right that when WoW started going downhill, it went downhill EVERYwhere.

Outside of this forum, you wouldn't know FFXIV is on its supposed deathbed...

[Quri]

Nobody ever speak up for Paladin.

Our DPS sucks . . .

Anyways . . . game on!

What are you talking about? They're going to remove flight or flight, so that PLD advance rotation will be easier and smoother. Because that's the player feedback on the forums. At least the tank player base on the forums are now a bit self aware about the changes they want, as they are now aware that the devs do listen to their feedback. I don't know if the other roles are self-aware yet.

TLDR: Half the jobs changes that the player base is upset about comes as a result of players suggestions.

[Lauront]

Evidence? The game usually grows by 200,000 consistently active players after an expansion according to years of Lucky Bancho statistics, yet it's grown by either as much or more than that this time. It's double the increase we were seeing since Shadowbringers during patch lulls.

He is referring to the Steam figures - which Lucky Bancho himself refers to in both this most recent survey and the previous one.