Quote Originally Posted by Shurrikhan View Post
Okay. Let's put it this way:

She's a content creator who's established herself around FFXIV. To make money, she will primarily be playing XIV (or reacting to other content creators' [reacting to other content creators' [etc.] XIV-related, -comparative, or -adjacent content), and her doing so has to be at least decently entertaining to her viewers. To avoid burnout, it must also be decently entertaining to herself without overwhelming stress as she perceives it. Good so far?

Now... if the only thing you can create some sort of many-hour-spanning stream narrative out of after MSQ is (briefly Savage, and then) Ultimate, then the chance of entertaining both self and audience without overwhelming stress... is limited to solely the most stressful content in the game (exempting minority reactions to say, seemingly unfair Triple Triad NPC fights).

Now, compare that to what would be relevant to her even as a full-time streamer / content creator... if there were more midcore content. See how those aren't likely to be all that separate of issues?

But at the same time, such would benefit the rest of us, too. What would help address her complaints wouldn't be an undue expense to the rest of us; it would probably be a boon.

As such, I don't see why her complaints about having less to do surrounding, say, Relic progression should be ignored just because she burned out or just because she's a XIV streamer. That seems a misread of the larger picture there, equivalent to mistaking a problem felt in (potentially reluctant) option A with being somehow unrelated to any issue in lacking any real options other than A.
I feel like we're both operating in good faith but are probably misunderstanding each other. To be clear, I don't think that Zepla's criticisms should be ignored. Rather, I think that whether or not a player enjoys any game — especially one with as much complexity and variety as FF14 — is a highly subjective experience. Someone who's here for the hardcore raiding is going to naturally have a different experience than someone who's here for crafting. Someone who plays for just a few hours on the weekend is going to have a different experience than someone who puts in several hours daily. These diverse players have different wants and needs, and these provide valuable context that relates to how satisfied they will be with the game or any given patch. In particular, burnout can often make a defining difference between enjoying something and hating it; I've seen it so many times, and experienced it as well.

So what I'm trying to suggest is that when people hear Zepla's criticisms of the game, they should also consider the context within which she makes her critique. Do not dismiss her! Just be thoughtful. That's really all I wanted to say.