What happened in the last week to make people so vocally against the current state?

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

[...]and no, sorry not sorry, roulettes are not content, it's the same boring thing in which you end up with 2 or 3 spells because its a low level dungeon or raid, because oh my god the entertainment of using 2 spells in a dungeon or raid, how fun

Doing daily roulette without premade feels like playing the game partly in Free Trial limitation lol.

[Jamini]

I see people talk an awful lot about the vast majority of people playing the game and not on the forums as being ultimately satisfied with it. Has nobody ever considered the possibility that there are just as many dissatisfied, who come here to visit the forums, see how their critique would be responded to, and instead elect to quietly back away instead? It's far and away from being beyond the realm of possibility. I daresay it's even something some here ought to put more thought into.

As for myself, Endwalker's content thus far simply hasn't felt nearly as enjoyable and/or actively played as what came before it in previous expansions. It just hasn't, and I struggle to see just where the arguments that it has come from aside from anecdotal experiences which cannot be relied upon on a statistical basis. Take Variant, for instance. Once you get all the rewards for it, that particular Variant is all but through. That isn't to say that nobody does it for the simple fact that they enjoy the dungeon, but by and large people play MMO content due to what they can earn by completing the content moreso than the joy they get from the content itself.

There is an old customer service adage:

For every person who complains loudly, there are ten who complain quietly.

[Iscah]

Doing daily roulette without premade feels like playing the game partly in Free Trial limitation lol.

Depends entirely on the player. I prefer just signing up to the roulette without having to arrange a group first. It's just what the game is, to me.

[jameseoakes]

What does that even mean? I'm not against the "back and forth" so much as I'm against the way they devolve into trash-flinging. I'm not exactly going to refrain from putting my thoughts out there, why would I do that? I can simultaneously be weary of the way the forums get, but also wish to remain so that my voice is heard. I'd like to believe I'd been relatively fair and courteous in my dealings as well, so I'm puzzled as to what precisely the insinuation being made is here. If I am to be frank, it feels oddly petty in nature.

Honestly I've been finding your posts refreshing and I think I've only seen you be civil. I've also been playing the the game I am pretty sure your name is a reference to so that's been amusing me ^^

[ForteNightshade]

The forums, or general discussion at least, are pretty.... bad.. right now. I actually don't think I have ever seen so many.. blatant personal attacks (?). I really question where moderation is, because, well, I mean people always used to joke that it was non-existent, but like now... And I think they actually are deleting some posts lately, which makes it even weirder that there doesn't seem to be any bans, thread closures (that I am aware of), or generally just more cleaning being done.

Don't get me wrong, I have been reading a lot of stuff for the past few days, and it has sated some morbid curiosity, but wow! I'm going to have to collect some people on Discord if they ever do get around to banning. Unfortunately, there doesn't really seem to be a lot to actually... discuss.

Oh yeah, same. I have refrained from sharing A LOT of opinions of my own on here.

Would be nice if we had some moderation that wasn't entirely automated. Alas...

[Zachia]

Tbh there seems to be a lot of people making fun of each other and just being rude / disrespectful. To everyone who just is unhappy with the game or not having fun, what would make FF14 fun for you? What kind of content? How would you make this content you want engaging? Do you want 20 new trials and 5 new alliance raids every six months? Do you want seven new pvp modes every expansion? Do you just want to own 20 houses to decorate? 50 more beast tribes? 25 more jumping puzzles? Like "WHAT" would make you happy?

[Absurdity]

Tbh there seems to be a lot of people making fun of each other and just being rude / disrespectful. To everyone who just is unhappy with the game or not having fun, what would make FF14 fun for you? What kind of content? How would you make this content you want engaging? Do you want 20 new trials and 5 new alliance raids every six months? Do you want seven new pvp modes every expansion? Do you just want to own 20 houses to decorate? 50 more beast tribes? 25 more jumping puzzles? Like "WHAT" would make you happy?

To be perfectly honest? As much as I complain about the lack of content longevity in Endwalker it might be something as "simple" as the job design for me.

While Stormblood had absolutely more content (it honestly spoiled us considering how much content it added compared to ShB and EW) but it was still pretty much the same content as it is now. The difference is that I had no issue with running the same ex trial 30+ times, the same Alliance raid for weeks, and the same Savage fights for months, because simply playing my job felt fun, engaging and I would still regularly find new improvements to how I approached a fight.

Now I can't be bothered to do most content more than once, because figuring out the mechanics is the only interesting thing left, after that you just go through the (incredibly basic) motions.

1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2-Fell Cleave-4-1-2-3-Fell Cleave-1-Burst-go from there until you repeat the burst...and mapping this out actually took more brain power than doing it in the game because it all just blurs together into "mindlessly spam buttons, Upheaval on cooldown, Fell Cleave to not overcap gauge, go into burst with 50 or less, press IR, mindlessly spam all the buttons INTENSELY, repeat".

This works for a while in savage because the mechanics keep you engaged but the easier content? Absolute boredom after clearing it once. And before someone says "just play a different job", in the current 2 minute meta it isn't much different on those either.

[SassyAssassin]

Would be nice if we had some moderation that wasn't entirely automated. Alas...

Wait the moderation is just a bot finding keywords?

[DevonEllwood]

To be perfectly honest? As much as I complain about the lack of content longevity in Endwalker it might be something as "simple" as the job design for me.

I rarely come to the forums but I am a constant lurker. I spend 2 days for a total of 24 hours at work and I spend it mostly reading the forums. I don't bring my key to be able to sign in and post because I know I'll lose it, but I really have been tempted recently. So this is the reason for a massive block of text. I only post in the thread that must not be named, but I really want to add my thoughts here.

The job design is currently a problem for me. I never really looked into mele classes but I have picked up new classes each expansion and continued with favorites. I used to love working on my rotations and trying to get better. I loved bard, but the one change they made in the dots not interacting with the kit anymore completely killed the enjoyment. It's a constant struggle to want to improve in content when what I am doing is no longer fun. Every class I have tried has been a complete "meh" and I'm apprehensive in leveling others because I can never tell if I am going to have any more fun with them than the previous class.
I am easily entertained but I have finally met my match and gotten tired of scholar. Repeatedly slapping the ground just doesn't tickle the part of the brain that found it therapeutic once. Even Mr. Happy, the FFXIV fanboy he is, has been questioning the state of healers.

I don't care about the lack of content. But just because I don't have any problem with it, doesn't mean that there aren't problems with it. It's incredibly frustrating that people cannot remove themselves from what they personally like or don't like in order to critique or understand a larger problem. I don't care that there's no long lasting content, but I know it's a problem that there isn't any. My FC is a ghost town and a few people only logged in for the moogle tomes, got what they wanted, and left.

Steam charts of course are not accurate numbers, but the trends are going to apply to everyone. Steam players are not aliens, they are regular players and their behaviors are going to be the same. The constant spiking during patches are because people are not sticking around to engage with any of the content because there's nothing that lasts past a couple weeks + some weeklies. Even the MSQ and trials story was combined as well as the relic and Hildibrand stuff so there's even less story to go through.

FFXIV streamers are quitting. Yeah I know "no one cares about them" but they are advertisement and if people catch wind that streamers are leaving then it will cause potential new players to question whether the game is worth playing. The people Square sees as representatives of their game, are leaving the game they represent. How does this look to any potential buyer and outsider? the community harassing and gas lighting streamers about the story and content is not good.

The game is not dying, but numbers are dipping. People mentioned wow players checking the game out, but failed to mention returning people. The expansion was heavily publicized as the end of the story, so a lot of people returned and new people came in to see what all the fuss was about. They saw, they left. When numbers start dipping below post stormblood, then it's a concern. The "doom and gloomers" are wanting to bring attention to this before it gets to that point.

The relics do not need a zone for them, but they should come with some kind of gimmick or content tailored to them. These are Manderville weapons, so why not use the Manderville gold saucer? I've always wanted an arena style content where it's one boss after another (like in 7's gold saucer) so why not use something like that? It could even have a separate system where you could replay all the solo instances that some people have been begging to be able to do instead of having to go through an entire expansion in NG+ just to fight Zenos again. They could have re-used the leve system and created more involving open world content that you can bring friends to. There is content that they could have churned out using things that already existed, but they didn't.

The game should absolutely be praised where it needs to be, but blanket praise of "I'm having fun, this game is great" helps no one. Tell them what they're doing right. Even everyone's favorite whipping boy made a topic on Pandemonium praising it. It's also no one's job to offer solutions to problems. That's what Square's staff gets paid for, so stop telling people they need to do free labor. I love reading all the suggestions, but no one should feel obligated to offer them.

[Theodric]

Wait the moderation is just a bot finding keywords?

I don't think so. They can admittedly overlook things that arguably break the rules and be slow to act at times, but some of the more explicit stuff is dealt with quite effectively.

Often a lot of the complaints regarding moderation boil down to people being angry that posters they dislike have not been banned. Then there's individuals who cannot avoid bringing their own real world politics into everything and believing any differences in opinion there should be worthy of a ban as well. Which, thankfully, doesn't happen around these parts given that it is a global forum with posters from a great many different countries, cultures and belief systems.

There's also those who try to frame any attempts to be civil, playing devil's advocate or avoiding joining in with derailment of threads as worthy of a ban as well, usually framing whatever is being said in the most disingenuous way possible.

Finally there's those who simply brand someone a 'troll' because they disagree with or dislike the poster for whatever reason. The poster in question isn't necessarily a troll, either. Interestingly, this happens a lot on the lore forum where 'trolling' is equated with calmly providing lore sources. It also happens often comes from posters who simply cannot handle any criticism of the game whatsoever and do not seem to grasp the idea that just because someone is critical of the game it does not mean that they hate it.

Feel free to take that with a pinch of salt, of course, but that's my observation over the years that I've posted here.