Playing an expansion as current content has been a lacklustre MMO experience

[LittleImp]

News of us being “the best MMO right now” have been greatly exaggerated.

It's wild. Even back in HW/SB, a lot of delusional people in the community were absolutely convinced that 14 was somehow out-performing every other MMO in the market.

There's never been ANY reputable data to support the idea that FFXIV is leading the market. The best number we have is that there were 1.6 million 'Active Characters' seen over a period of 100 days once. Love it or hate it, World of Warcraft expansions frequently more than double that number in preorders/day one sales alone.

I don't even blame SE for not releasing official numbers; So many people believing this game is vastly more successful than it actually is ends up being great, free marketing.

[Aword3213]

News of us being “the best MMO right now” have been greatly exaggerated. It’s time for our community to humble itself and come to terms with the truth: FFXIV is a niche product for Final Fantasy fans. The masses who flocked to this game expecting “the next big thing” need to go back to where they came. I sure am. It was fun, but it’s time to move on.

Oh no, XIV is doomed. What do we do without you?

You blessed us with your presence when this game was at its darkest times. It was your guidance that brought XIV to light. All the fame and prosperity, we owed it to you.

Without your patronage and endorsement, how could this game possibly stand on its own?

[Nizzi]

It's gotten to the point where the MMO portion is no longer fun outside of RPing or decorating your house. Nobody runs the actual content, if they did then we wouldn't be bleeding players to every other MMO currently.

It's only now that Shadowbringers and Endwalker are basically the same, and the combat and content model outside of MSQ continues to wither. It's become what you so desperately want, a Single Player VN with RP housing.

We stopped being an MMO in Stormblood, the design philosophy has slowly been creeping into instanced single-player. We're frogs, and we've been successfully boiled. Congratulations.

This right here is the true criticism, isn't it? It's not that "we stopped being an MMO in Stormblood" but rather "Shadowbringers gameplay is unfun and shitty compared to how it was in the past." Which isn't really something I'm going to argue against, since I don't disagree that the homogenization of combat makes a large amount of content unfun for a majority of the time.

I think a good litmus for these types of complaints is thinking about it in this regard - is the game itself unfun or is it the jobs that make it unfun?
I've thought about this a lot when playing Black Mage this tier going from playing a healer (something I notice you have as your main job) and it has really driven that home to me that the game is still fun when jobs are designed well. Black Mage is really fun to play, even in fights that are pretty punishing towards casters in regards to requiring a lot of movement (P7S was a bit miserable to prog as BLM but in reclears it's been pretty fun trying new strategies and figuring out the most optimal leylines timings and when I can do nonstandard lines) but BLM is just one job in a game that has 19 of them, and unfortunately BLM is the only job that 'sparks joy' for me anymore and that's seriously worrying for the future when it's gotten to this point, especially with the developers tendencies to wreck jobs more often than make them better.

Approaching complaints in this regard has helped a lot. A good 95% of my posts on the forums are complaints and criticisms towards how bad healer gameplay is, and at its core I think it's the biggest problem FFXIV faces at the moment. In general, the combat design is the biggest issue with the game, but I've also said things like "If they add Miasma and Bane back to SCH I will stop coming here to complain" and I'm genuine when I say that. Is it enough to make me happy entirely? No, but it would go a long way to showing that SE is willing to hear complaints that players have with jobs and rectify them. If SE would go back and make sure that all of the jobs are more fun to play when synced down, and reverse ship on some of their bad design decisions with combat, would you still think the game "stopped being an MMO"?

[R041]

If SE would go back and make sure that all of the jobs are more fun to play when synced down, and reverse ship on some of their bad design decisions with combat, would you still think the game "stopped being an MMO"?

This is a great discussion point and might actually be my main problem.

A lot of what I used to enjoy with XIV was the combat, open world gameplay, and discussion opportunities in casual content. I was also main BLM before I started to really see issues with the combat. The only content I really, truly enjoy now in XIV are just Trials/Raids - That's pretty much all I have left, because it's at least engaging outside of my rotation. Sometimes I don't res people as RDM because it'll actually make the fight more reactive and engaging.

Anything that makes me stop thinking, and only spam a rotation immediately start to feel disgusting (Which is now almost all content). It feels like we're all just bots hitting the same buttons over and over, and those buttons don't even feel good anymore. Everything's designed around sitting in 1 spot and spamming the same rotation 4 times, never needing to talk to your party. When's the last time you actually had a proper discussion in a Dungeon that isn't just "o/" and "tyfp" - Am I just so unlucky that they never occur in the thousands of times I've queued?

Everything anyone brings up that isn't directly related to Trials/Raids feel absolutely horrible, including MSQ - Like awesome, I teared up a bit in MSQ, but now I have to actually go play the game again. Most of the non-MSQ content we keep bringing up were all designed around ARR - HW to begin with. So that old content you all keep talking about, the FATEs, Hunts, Leves, POTD? They all stopped being engaging a LONG time ago. You're going to honestly tell me that Hunt trains are fun? How? It's so beyond boring you don't even GET to use your boring rotation.

Also, I don't RP but I appreciate the housing at least - But it still feels like Yoshi is intentionally creating artificial scarcity to make the game seem more active than it really is. Sometimes I wonder if housing didn't exist, would anyone even still be logging in after they finished MSQ these days? I kinda don't think so tbh.

Does anyone feel like combat content is even fun anymore? I'm genuinely curious. If so, what class? I started healing because at least that's reactive to situations so it keeps me somewhat engaged. But even then it's countered by mostly spamming 1-2 abilities. The only actual 'MMO' content alive now is probably Eureka.

So yes, I can admit that 'content' does exist, in the exact same way an abandoned mall may technically still exist. It's like going to a dead Disney World where most of the rides have stopped and are half broken, so you have to typically push them yourself. You look around and see a few other people attempting to do the same.

[Raven2014]

And this is why many FFXIV players take a break after finishing the story to play other multiplayer games with their friends. A lot of my friends are playing World of Warcraft and Fortnite right now.

And ... what was the time when all of your friends took break from other games and play FF14? And have you ever considered ... that actually is a good and healthy thing? I haven't played a lot of FF14 the last 2 weeks either, I bought DLC4 for Anno 1800 and have been playing that game none stop since.

You and yours seem to have the old mindset of measuring a game popularity/success by how dedicated its players base. I believe those days of a person need to eat, drink, and sleep on a single are long behind us. If anything it showed Yoshi-P a visionalist. Some people might have got mad when he said it's ok to stop playing FF14 and switch to other games in between, but that just him understand the time. On most MMO forums, with the right topic you can see a lot of people playing multiple games, taking break from one and switch to another. The tribalism mindset of there must be one true game is so ... last decade.

The masses who flocked to this game expecting “the next big thing” need to go back to where they came. I sure am. It was fun, but it’s time to move on.

I didn't come here looking for the next big thing. I didn't come here expecting to dedicating my soul to this game. I didn't come here expecting making a job out of a game. I'll be honest and say I don't know exactly what is that I was trying to find in FF14, but regardless I believe I found it. That's why I continue to play it, as well as other MMO when the right mood strike me.

[Deveryn]

I didn't come here looking for the next big thing. I didn't come here expecting to dedicating my soul to this game. I didn't come here expecting making a job out of a game. I'll be honest and say I don't know exactly what is that I was trying to find in FF14, but regardless I believe I found it. That's why I continue to play it, as well as other MMO when the right mood strike me.

Making a job out of it is exactly how things used to be (and probably still are) in other MMOs. I remember doing raid tiers elsewhere and it would be a 3x week commitment spending hours and hours to probably make no progress with a couple dozen players. The rest of the time was spent building up my character (while other people didn't). There was time in between because these raids had lockouts of at least 18 hours. Those were unhealthy times and I don't look back on them fondly. I'm sure there are a fair number of people that died from health issues related to sitting around all day and playing these games. I knew one of those people. I could've been one, but I turned things around.

I think enough people came here and were fed up with that idea of leaving one workplace to go to another and that's what brought us to this point where there's more flexibility and things are generally more relaxed.

[Shurrikhan]

I've typically felt like I could take breaks far more easily in WoW, especially Legion and later, than in XIV.

Fall a few ilvl behind spending all my weekly tomes on one job here (atop a crafted or previous Savage base) with no Savage loot luck in the current tier? Well, there goes my ability to join most PFs.

I usually find blind/fresh or not-especially-geared runs run far later into a tier in WoW than in XIV, proportionate to those tier's duration (XIV tiers are about half to a third the bosses each but at greater frequency), ilvl a bit less of a factor, especially if someone has at least some relevant experience (which can be more easily seen there than here), and a bit higher lenience in general if only due to the flexible raid sizes until Mythic (roughly Ultimate-equivalent) difficulty.

And even at the end of tiers, there's always M+, wherein one can never really fall behind except in competing for leaderboard positions (which is a percent of a percent of the population); there are always lower keys still being run. I don't have to keep on my treadmill whatsoever, which has been handy when work, emergencies, grad school, etc. won't leave time for MMOs (or games in general) of any sort.

[strawberrycake]

Why punish people who don;t have time for MMOs, and why Punish people who have the time and want to spend it on the MMO. Theres a middle ground here, and refusing to meet it is idiotic. XIV doesn;t need to be single player centric.

I'm not saying XIV is doomed, but As I've said in many other threads, this isn't what will make it last 10 years, what we had in Stormblood and HW will. The story for SHB was amazing, but content wise, it was dull. and EW is slowly going down a similar path, and I hope 6.3 proves me wrong. But denying and ignoring this won't make this game last longer, denying how SE treats this game won't help, Denying how 16s Dev time as screwed over XIV won't help. You know what happened to all the MMOs where this type of semantics arguing and Ignoring obvious issues happend? They died, slowly.

Like, no ones saying XIV is dying now. But it ain't lookin too hot either. The game could do better on Supporting BOTH Single player aspects AND Multiple Aspects. It's a trillion Dolllar company, they have the money AND the Man power to do it. SO why is it not happening.

Also this isn;t the first time SE did something counter to what worked for no reason, and scrwed their own products.So why give them a chance now. when they have a history of doing this?

Also: For the love of god, stop talking like SE hasn't put the same tier of Retention Mechanics in so many of their games over the years and hasn't done the same shitty business practices other companies have. A game being more Multiplayer focused, having more optional content thats Replayable isn't bad for the game. But you know what is. IGNORING the actual issues.

Like seriously if XIV was a person unconcious on the sidewalk people would, cook up a narrative on how they're just sleep and then walk off feeling self satisfied.

Just because you're happy with the game, think outside yourself and how Other paying customers wanna see a game they invested in be better. It's perfectly fine when someone says WoW is shit and they feel jaded for all the investment they put into the game. Why give people in XIV a chance to end up like that here?

[strawberrycake]

I've typically felt like I could take breaks far more easily in WoW, especially Legion and later, than in XIV.

Fall a few ilvl behind spending all my weekly tomes on one job here (atop a crafted or previous Savage base) with no Savage loot luck in the current tier? Well, there goes my ability to join most PFs.

I usually find blind/fresh or not-especially-geared runs run far later into a tier in WoW than in XIV, proportionate to those tier's duration (XIV tiers are about half to a third the bosses each but at greater frequency), ilvl a bit less of a factor, especially if someone has at least some relevant experience (which can be more easily seen there than here), and a bit higher lenience in general if only due to the flexible raid sizes until Mythic (roughly Ultimate-equivalent) difficulty.

And even at the end of tiers, there's always M+, wherein one can never really fall behind except in competing for leaderboard positions (which is a percent of a percent of the population); there are always lower keys still being run. I don't have to keep on my treadmill whatsoever, which has been handy when work, emergencies, grad school, etc. won't leave time for MMOs (or games in general) of any sort.

No one ever wants to admit that lower end raiders in WoW don't have to keep up at all and act like everyone who raids and does M+ in WoW is raiding like a World First Mythic Group and HAS to be up to date oin gear. Where its just like any other MMO and the average raider which makes up the most of the raiding population clears in 2-3 months doing w/e they want really.

[R041]

No one ever wants to admit that lower end raiders in WoW don't have to keep up at all and act like everyone who raids and does M+ in WoW is raiding like a World First Mythic Group and HAS to be up to date oin gear. Where its just like any other MMO and the average raider which makes up the most of the raiding population clears in 2-3 months doing w/e they want really.

There's been a major successful disinformation campaign surrounding WoW - Even I fell for it because of how much of an FF fanboy I am. It's actually crazy how accessible it is in almost all forms compared to XIV and other MMOs. I still prefer the theatrics and markers/mechanics in XIV, but otherwise it doesn't even come close. It's absolutely insane how far apart they are in terms of accessibility and coop-ability, it honestly feels disgusting when we call XIV a new player friendly game in comparison.

New player friendly to what? Visual Novels? XIV is not new player friendly, it's single player friendly. Big difference.

I started playing it a few months ago, blew my fucking mind. "Wait, you're telling me there's actual content all over the place, and I can bring all of my friends basically at any point - I don't have to make my own fun by RPing and acting like I'm actually interested in other people's MSQ?" - And the things I unlock are actually Account Bound. WOAH!