Quote Originally Posted by AwesomeJr44 View Post
People who never liked MMOs came in and acted like the person on the left, and now a bunch of us who have loved XIV for years have seen it altered in a such a massive way that it no longer resembles the game we loved. Everything has been watered down and made simpler and less fun for the sake of people who never liked the genre that XIV was and was supposed to be. Just look at the relics as an example. Relics are a standard MMO grind, but now they're a braindead tome vendor because grinding is too hard/boring for people who don't like MMOs. Those people insisted that an MMO should abandon the genre it was supposed to be in because people who don't like MMOs want this game to be something it's not. Bozja and Eureka were designed for people who love MMOs, the Manderville relics were designed for people who hate MMOs. There's also far less content per patch because people who don't like MMOs only want to log in once every four months.
This definitely sounds like a case of trying to act as if you're speaking for a wider community, but you're really just speaking for yourself. For example, I'm part of the "veteran fanbase" that's been playing FF games since FF1 and this game in particular since 2015, and I'm personally very satisfied w/ how the game has evolved.

My take on what happened is simply that time has passed and the primary demographic for MMO's has changed. Back in the earlier expansions, or going back even further to things like FFXI or the early days of WoW, GW, etc., the primary demographic for MMO's was teenagers, college kids, and recent graduates with plenty of time on their hands. Now, those same people are still the primary MMO players, but as a demographic they're now primarily adults with families and full-time careers. Games need to adjust to that. Ultra-long grinds, complex rotations with button bloat requiring 3+ hotbars, etc., your typical MMO player today just doesn't have the time for that.

Remember Wildstar? After WoW first started improving QoL for people with limited time by introducing things like LFG, removing or altering the questlines with "Elites" that usually required groups to complete, etc., Wildstar promoted itself as the "old-school" game that was built around "dedicated" players and the old "higher" level of difficulty. What happened? Yeah, it ran for a few years and then shut down because the playerbase just isn't there. It sucks for the younger generation and adults who might still have that much time on their hands, but life has changed, and the genre has changed to go with it. FFXIV is still designed for people who "love" MMO's, but with acknowledgment of their real-life circumstances and what remains feasible versus not. It's rather presumptuous (and a bit sad) that commentary like yours basically tries to say "if you don't like exactly what I like, then you hate MMO's." No, they don't. They love MMO's, too.