Bizarre burnout

[Anodic]

(1/2) I've been taking a break for several months now, though came back just to try out Island Sanctuary and maybe level occasionally. Endwalker was the first time I played a FFXIV expansion on launch and doing so made me realize that there were so many things about the game that felt like real pain points to me that I never realized before. For example: I decided that I'd level crafting to start making some gil to eventually buy a house. But at some point, I realized that to use the crafting macros that I'd need to use at high level, I needed the Manipulation skill--which you have to unlock on every class individually via job quests. But doing the job quests of each class often asks you to get materials that only other classes can craft, and to do those other classes' quests, you need other classes' items. That was a MAJOR pain point for me because why in the world for the level 45 carpenter quest do I need to have a level 33 leatherworker, a level 43 blacksmith, a level 30 alchemist, and a level 40 goldsmith in order to complete a quest that at this point in the game is largely irrelevant when it comes to current ilvl gear? And when you level those other classes, the same problem happens.

It's like a feedback loop that keeps on compounding and it overall makes the early crafting experience feel very very horrible for new players. And a common response the community to it is just "well, you shouldn't be crafting at low levels anyways. Wait until you're max level" or "just buy the items from the marketboard". For the latter bit, the problem with that is that more often than not you can't buy individual materials, you you might end up with 99 iron ingots and 98 of them you won't need, which is annoying at least and frustrating when the materials start getting very expensive because of the people that like selling low level items at inflated prices. The problem with the former is--it will take the average player hundreds of hours to get to the current max level. If people aren't supposed to touch crafting at such a low level, why is the option to do so even there? I expressed in a couple of discords about how I wish that some of these low level items--at least the ones you need to complete quests--could be crafted by multiple crafting jobs so you won't have to sit there and level multiple classes just to be able to complete an ARR crafting quest. And how it felt like the devs realized where they went wrong when in the expansions, they changed crafting quests to "oh, we'll just give you the materials you need. All YOU have to do is craft it". But... they never went back and changed the ARR quests to the same format.

[Anodic]

(2/2) When I brought this up in different discords though, people got mad at me. They said: "Your idea would make other crafters irrelevant. Why would you ever level multiple classes if you could do it all on one class? Stop nitpicking, that's just how the game is and it's more immersive." I still don't know how in the world it would make other crafters irrelevant, six months later. If letting a level 25 carpenter craft all the craftable materials they need to make a level 25 Bow of You're-Gonna-Just-Give-This-To-An-NPC-Anyway is going to make other crafting classes irrelevant, then that sounds like there's something worse going on with the crafting in the game. And I'm pretty sure that a carpenter isn't the one that's supplying raiders with their BiS stat potions.

I originally had a lot more to say about some more problems I've been having w/ the game since EW, but that ended up reaching 9,000 characters so the TL;DR of it is: I'm not a fan of current dungeon design being just hallways filled with non-optional and non-EXP dropping mob packs (makes them feel like useless filler between bosses), healing in dungeons has become way less enjoyable to me with tank self-sustain getting buffed in EW so much, how I currently can't do the 6.2 MSQ because my ilvl is too low and I don't have the tomestones/gil to easily get up to that point atm (I'm not sure why you need to have a certain ilvl to use trusts to do MSQ, I wish they'd just scale your ilvl up for that since it's singleplayer but keep the requirement for you to have your real ilvl that high to do the content with other players), Island Sanctuary felt like it was full of a bunch of weird design choices (nodes only dropping 10 exp and 1 of each item, animals FLEEING more often than not which made getting rare, timegated/weathergated mobs a PAIN (it took several irl days to get a goobue ), having to gather crops/leavings from your garden/pasture 1 by 1 even with the mamets tending to them, etc.), and that I might just take another break until 7.0 because I know and hope that, by then, they'll have added some stuff to the game that will make these things less of a headache because seriously, playing this game at expac launch vs at X.5 patches feels ENTIRELY different due to what options they have available to you. I would NOT have gotten my crafters to level 80 before Endwalker if it wasn't for ARR/HW/SB/ShB beast tribes (started leveling them seriously for the first time during 5.5) and right now, trying to level them to 90 feels so tedious without that option being in the game.)

[AwesomeJr44]

(2/2)

You can have posts that go over the initial cap by making an initial post, then editing it, and pasting the rest of the post into it. Edits allow you to bypass the word limit. Just some helpful info for you in cause you didn't know.

[Anodic]

You can have posts that go over the initial cap by making an initial post, then editing it, and pasting the rest of the post into it. Edits allow you to bypass the word limit. Just some helpful info for you in cause you didn't know.

Oh neat, thanks!

[Iscah]

I'm gonna be honest, I've never tried endgame raiding. I've always been scarred to do it because I feel like it would be awful and I'd fuck up a ton, though the rewards seem really cool. The most endgame thing I've done was bozja and eureka which are pretty fun for the most part.

Are you including alliance raids and story-mode standard raids/trials in "endgame raiding"? Those aren't too daunting and there's plenty of leeway. Just join in and pay attention to mechanics. They've gotten better at making things intuitive.

[Atelier-Bagur]

I hear this so often but I have absolutely played games where their forums were mostly positive overall. It definitely is possible. Even though ff14 has always had some complaints, there was a point where most people would agree it was a great game. I took a break last patch and picked up some good single player games and their forums were night and day difference to here.

The problem is when a game has received negative feedback for long enough, people just start to assume that's normal. It's the opposite of nostalgia googles. We actually forget how good a game can be.

I play ff14 because it's the best MMO on the market, not because it's an amazing game and perfect. The MMO market is in a slump right now and recent competition has been poor quality. FF14 is riddled with flaws, but there just isn't anything better.

Actually I just took a quick peek at the first few threads on this forum. Suffice to say there were a lot more technical game questions among the usual complaints about certain systems. Which makes sense since ARR was new and people cared more about the game than the story maybe?

I'll have to actually go back and take a throughout look to see more of the old forum.

[VelKallor]

That was a MAJOR pain point for me because why in the world for the level 45 carpenter quest do I need to have a level 33 leatherworker, a level 43 blacksmith, a level 30 alchemist, and a level 40 goldsmith in order to complete a quest that at this point in the game is largely irrelevant when it comes to current ilvl gear? And when you level those other classes, the same problem happens.

Crafting has been interdependent from day one. This is news?

or the latter bit, the problem with that is that more often than not you can't buy individual materials, you you might end up with 99 iron ingots and 98 of them you won't need, which is annoying at least and frustrating when the materials start getting very expensive because of the people that like selling low level items at inflated prices.

Or you get your miner, go out, mine the items then craft the ingots.

The problem with the former is--it will take the average player hundreds of hours to get to the current max level.

*spits coffee everywhere*

Crafters get MEGA xp and youi can be done in a week, hell the daily GC turn in is a huge exp boost..there are also low level tribes like the ixal that hand out mega exp, hundreds of hours?

Dont be ridiculous.

[Anodic]

Crafting has been interdependent from day one. This is news?

Just because it's been in the game since day one doesn't mean that it's a good low level design or not frustrating to deal with for new players. It might have been okay in the past, but as time goes on and levels get higher, it just becomes more and more outdated and even wonky to deal with. Like I said before, in the expansions they removed the requirement to need multiple crafting classes leveled to complete crafting quests. And you're completely missing the point of the second bit. Yes, you can go gather on miner if you have mining leveled high enough to make some ingots. But for the people that don't? They will 9 times out of 10 buy from the market board. And when they do, a lot of the time they won't be able to purchase the exact amount they need, causing them to overbuy and essentially waste gil, and a lot of people will just end up leaving the material in their inventory, taking up space. The point is that they either are forced to buy in bulk or they are going to have to get lucky and see someone selling what they need at a higher price (I don't know why in 2022 we still can't pick how much of an item we want to buy from someone's supply). You can't always assume that people that are trying to take a dive into crafting are going to have every gathering class at an equivalent level either.

Not everyone is going to be looking ahead at the wiki for their carpenter quests to find out ahead of time that they're going to need a level 40 fisher in order to make a longbow for their level 50 quest. You can't realistically expect someone to either. Most new players to MMOs are going to take quests as they come, and it can be extremely discouraging to suddenly find out that you won't be able to complete a quest without either spending however many more hours leveling something else just to craft one item.

And the part about 'taking hundreds of hours to get to max level' is in relation to the combat class levels. I could've maybe worded that a little better, but the average player isn't going to speedrun their way to level 90 in less than a week, especially because people are always told to take their time while going through MSQ, and that means people will dabble into however many bits of side content or idling in a capital city to socialize that they want on their journey. Thus, hundreds of hours. People have told me many times in discords and in shout chat that you should only take a serious look at crafting after you get to your first max combat class level. And if someone is getting every single crafter to max level in the span of one week, they certainly have a lot more freetime on their hands than most people do considering that to do so, you're going to have to spend a lot of your hours gathering in Diadem and turning those materials into craftables. Otherwise there's no way you're getting everything maxed with beast tribe quests and GC turn ins alone.

[Darthgummibear]

I've been feeling something similar this past week. For me it's a combination of a bunch of things. The current story/character direction feels weak, their intentions towards job design make me worry about being able to enjoy the same jobs a year from now, not having enough of the things I enjoy doing. In other games I've always ended up settling into pvp and housing type stuff when the normal routine gets...well...routine. Unfortunately for me, both of those things are awful in this game. The main new thing of the expansion is basically a glorified phone game. I have zero interest in savage raiding, which pretty much leaves me with roulettes and beast tribe stuff.

One of the biggest things that really sucked me into the game when I started playing last year was the story/characters/setting/etc. Over the course of this expansion, the allure of those things has been all but obliterated. Combined with my other issues and it makes me wonder why I keep playing. I honestly thought it would take me longer to get to this point.

When I step back and try to look objectively at the big picture I can't help but wonder if the only reason this game is doing as well as it is, is because every other offering on the market is a complete dumpster fire.

[Midareyukki]

^this, and!

It's actually worse when you consider that you also need to gear yourself up. Naturally, you can try to gear yourself up with vendor stuff or Marketboard items. But odds are if you're starting out, you don't have that much money to spend away (unless you're shady). So you'll be gathering some stuff and realize that you need to level up all crafters at the same time because making gear requires stuff found in only one class's list. And it's doubled down if you add in the Gatherers.

I honestly agree with VelKallor. Like, it's not that bad. And Square has made the experience easy to go through. The rest of his post mentions how easy it is to get experience. So if you want to do stuff from one class's list with materials only found in another, the game gives you a bit of a window of opportunity to get it up to par.

But it's slow. Especially at lower levels, it's slow. And worse still if you've neglected any class other than Culinarian, the drag piles up. And if you're a sprout that doesn't know they have to do this, it becomes daunting. It does get better at higher levels and especially if you've been levelling them all at the same time, but it doesn't break that initial impact.