6.2 Patch Notes

[Azuri]

The problem is, and you are well aware of this, some people here like to push their opinions as "the community as a whole" opinions.

You know "many people agree."

That goes well beyond personal opinion takes.

I link a lot of these threads to my community circle, and they all tend to disagree with whatever the topic is that I disagree with. But I don't come here pushing that as "the community opinion"

I voice my disagreements as my own. Aveyond does not.

Ah yes, the forum police brigade never presents their opinions as absolutes... nu-uh, never at all...

I wouldn't call it a double standard, more someone not realizing or accepting what FFXIV is about. If someone is purely interested in combat, why play a game that straight-up markets itself as primarily a story-based MMO (one of the reasons it's frequently called an RPGMMO instead of an MMORPG). There are other games that heavily emphasize endgame raiding and see the story as just something to blow through as a means to get you to endgame. FFXIV isn't that game. It would be like playing an FPS set in WWI and being disappointed that it doesn't include modern tanks and jets.

Remember, when WoW was far and away the "best MMORPG on the market," it attained that status precisely by being more casual-oriented than other MMO's at the time. And end-game raiding at that time was practically nothing more than tank-and-spank with occasionally one other mechanic at most involved. The "hardest" part of combat was actually just managing to get 40 people together to do a raid.

There's also a direct link between WoW shifting to a "raid or die" mentality focusing on ever-more-difficult combat and eSports, and it's loss of that "best MMO" status. Put quite simply, the unofficial "best MMO of the moment" title has a long history of going to the game that is most casual-friendly and doesn't focus on "harder" normal content.

Edit: Oh my, imagine going just one more thread over:

Are you suggesting the only possible content in the game are striking dummies or instances? I learn my abilities and how they interact just from normal questing, doing FATEs, etc.. Put simply, you're not likely to get a random average player to spend time at a practice dummy. That's for people who want to absolutely optimize their rotation and maximize their dps for high-level content. For the other 95% of the playerbase, it's pointless.