I don't know what can honestly be done for Final Fantasy XIV at this point.

[jameseoakes]

There it is again, that bad faith attempt to frame anyone voicing complaints about a video-game as not being 'mentally healthy' and in need of therapy.

It's such a bizarre leap to make. Especially since this is the very place people are directed to when asked to leave feedback regarding the game itself. It's not like it takes a terribly long time to compose a post or it can't be done in between other activities.

Gotta love how the defence for the state of the game now is just personal abuse

[R041]

All these doomsday, the sky is falling threads, yet you’re all still here and the main city hubs are crowded when I log in

[TowaIsBestGirl]

I think for some on this sub, based on my observations - being upset and complaining is worth the monthly sub fee for them. Some spend an inordinate amount of their precious lifespan on finding new ways to be upset here.

It's not mentally healthy for them to be doing that, and just makes them look like they need a therapist. They need to find something to do that they enjoy doing instead of living in their negativity all the time.

Did you not just say that you weren't being denigrative towards others? Why the sudden change? What evidence do you proffer that this is what people are doing, and if you have none to offer why make a baseless and inflammatory insinuation to begin with? I wonder if maybe I ought to just stop making the attempt at reconciliation like another poster suggested, the nice approach isn't really getting me anywhere.

Source? Recent articles on MassivelyOP about Blizzard's financials are that it's player counts are rapidly falling from it's recent peak.

Either way, even if XIV is #2, it's still generally at the top of the pile.

https://massivelyop.com/2023/04/26/a...zzard-q1-2023/

I am not convinced that Massively OP can be trusted as a valid source, they are a known malefactor of World of Warcraft. Besides, Dragonflight didn't truly need to become a smash hit to keep pace it just needed to hold people's attention which so far it has. Even if Blizzard is far from it's glory days, and it has been for a while, with Square refusing to release the concurrent subscription statistics for Final Fantasy XIV as Blizzard has in the past we'll never be able to accurately make the supposition that Final Fantasy XIV has surpassed it in playercount.

There it is again, that bad faith attempt to frame anyone voicing complaints about a video-game as not being 'mentally healthy' and in need of therapy.

It's such a bizarre leap to make. Especially since this is the very place people are directed to when asked to leave feedback regarding the game itself. It's not like it takes a terribly long time to compose a post or it can't be done in between other activities.

Yeah, I'm not easily rankled but it's beginning to aggravate me. This goes beyond misconduct, such things should simply put not be stated here. I have no clue if anyone here qualifies as a wounded party, but mental health should be respected and this is the opposite of what's happening here. This is no longer simple rudeness, this is devolving into legitimate slander.

[RyuDragnier]

Did you not just say that you weren't being denigrative towards others? Why the sudden change? What evidence do you proffer that this is what people are doing, and if you have none to offer why make a baseless and inflammatory insinuation to begin with? I wonder if maybe I ought to just stop making the attempt at reconciliation like another poster suggested, the nice approach isn't really getting me anywhere.

Acknowledging it's bad for mental health and that people need to back out of the game and probably seek professional help, something I'm currently getting myself, is not denigrating people. It's being aware of a problem that needs to be dealt with before it spirals out of control. Dunno why you seem to think calling attention to your own mental health is denigrating people...the hell is with Americans having this stupid stigma with mental health?

[Jeeqbit]

Skill trees or custom builds come up every now and again and every time it has to be said that no matter what the only build that will be acceptable is the optimal one.

I think that Blue Mage did this right. You can actually use different abilities depending on your party or strategy. For example, you could try to use the Avail (Cover) strat, or just do mechanics. You can use Bad Breath to apply a damage down to the boss, or risk it and try to invest in a primal ability instead. You can use a Basic Instinct strat where you get the MT to final sting last while using Basic Instinct. You can all pick up White Wind to help, or invest in DPS skills. There are a whole lot of interesting things you can do that stray from a meta depending on the capabilities, interests and skill of your own party members and it's great.

[Striker44]

All these doomsday, the sky is falling threads, yet you’re all still here and the main city hubs are crowded when I log in

Because they start with false premises, like saying the game is in a "rut" when every MMO in existence is cyclical, with spikes around launch/patch times and troughs between. FFXIV, meanwhile, is at its highest active playerbase ever during EW. The spikes were the highest, and even the troughs are still significantly higher than at similar points in past expansions. They can't stand the reality that the game is doing well and your typical casual gamer of today loves FFXIV.

[AwesomeJr44]

There it is again, that bad faith attempt to frame anyone voicing complaints about a video-game as not being 'mentally healthy' and in need of therapy.

The people using this tactic give off more red flags of needing therapy than the posters they're complaining about lol

Because they start with false premises, like saying the game is in a "rut" when every MMO in existence is cyclical, with spikes around launch/patch times and troughs between. FFXIV, meanwhile, is at its highest active playerbase ever during EW. The spikes were the highest, and even the troughs are still significantly higher than at similar points in past expansions. They can't stand the reality that the game is doing well and your typical casual gamer of today loves FFXIV.

Mom said it's my turn with the copium, hand it over.

[Shinkuno]

Because they start with false premises, like saying the game is in a "rut" when every MMO in existence is cyclical, with spikes around launch/patch times and troughs between. FFXIV, meanwhile, is at its highest active playerbase ever during EW. The spikes were the highest, and even the troughs are still significantly higher than at similar points in past expansions. They can't stand the reality that the game is doing well and your typical casual gamer of today loves FFXIV.

The ONLY reason EW spike as because of disgruntled WoW players, and alot of them are back to WoW which is why the game had higher spikes but bigger drops. You are on mad copium if you think the quality of EW had anything to do with that. Because frankly, EW is peak "how little effort can we put in and people still throw money at us"

[seolhyun]

EW feel like they just gave up tbh. they got big hype because of wow refugees and their response was slower patches with nothing to do. game is still held back by being built on failed 1.0 base, like we have races that cant wear hats and so many features cant be added cause yoship thinks the game will explode if we have more furnishing. not to mention the failed house lottery system (ive lost 3 lottery where the winner never even showed up lol), the game filled with cheaters in pvp, ppl flaunting cheats and mods in ultimate raids, ppl making billboards with ugly modded characters and all the corny night club spam.

[Nizzi]

"The typical casual gamer of today loves FFXIV"

How is this take reconciled with the fact that a large majority of the content added this expansion has been high end raiding content that the "casual gamer" will never interact with?

This is not a casual friendly expac, its all single player activities with no longevity like Island Sanctuary or Variant, or high end activities like Criterion, Savage or Ultimate that have longevity by way of hours of prog that require you to stay subbed and playing weekly for months, by way of Criterion being designed around having BiS and Ultimate REQUIRING it. Even if you were to clear Savage week 1, you have to be subbed for at least 2 months, potentially 4 if you're doing it in PF and unlucky with loot drops to even be able to attempt Ultimate. There is an effective $30 price tag on being able to do Ultimate on patch at minimum, before the content is even out. You also cannot just resub when Ultimate comes out to speed run the tier, because it isn't unlocked until the .5 patch, which is 2 months after the main patch, so again; you effectively are required to pay $30 worth of sub time before you are even allowed to do Ultimate in the patch it releases on.

This also isn't an expac that respects your time at all, DSR>Abyssos>TOP feels intentionally designed to have been so brutal to keep raiders subbed without breaks, and high end raiding is literally the bulk majority of the content for players this expac. In 6.4 and 6.45, the majority of the content is the final tier of Savage, a new Extreme, BLU (which is high end raiding content by way of the achievement grind) and Criterion (and Criterion Savage), which is more high end raiding content that "casual gamers" will not do.

Meanwhile what multiplayer content that isn't one-and-done do casuals have to spend time doing? There's literally no goals for a casual player to work towards at all this expansion and nothing that requires more than like the 15 minutes it takes to beat the instance or isn't "i'm working on doing 5+ year old content from Stormblood ", and if the main defense of the game is "I'm doing content I could've done expansions ago" or "I'm leveling things most people leveled years ago" then that's point in favor of older expansions, not this one. All of the people who defend this state unsurprisingly do not really play the game.

Bot-like behavior from some of the official forum's finest