If you're unhappy with this game then unsub... forever.

[Zabuza]

'In from the Cold' was only nerfed in the sense that if you choose the "Very Easy" difficulty, it is easier than it used to be. But if you choose the hardest option it is still as hard as before.

Which is a nerf in and of itself. I'm saying that "Very Easy" difficulty should never have come to pass. The game was already easy enough.

If you really believe that localizing the MSQ and all the text in the game to different languages, drawing concept art, creating models and weather effects that involve traveling to places in the world and taking photos for textures, developing highly-detailed environments such as Xelphatol, The Ghimlyt Dark or Holminster Switch, all of which they talk in detail about developing at Fan Fest panels by the way, is "minimum effort" in the way you are implying, then you're just mistaken.

Two out of three dungeons that you've cited are from Stormblood or Heavensward. Old dungeons back from when they still cared.

I think they just don't listen to the forums anymore. It seems like they still watch youtube and listen to that because they have been adding things based on it coming up as an issue in youtube videos so it seems it falls to content creators to articulate the things on these forums and present it in an articulate way to the developers.

So we have to bring our complaints to youtubers instead of talking to the developers themselves like we used to do? That would indicate that they no longer consider direct communication with the player valid. We now have to use youtubers as a medium. Also, youtubers are humans and therefore biased. There is no guarantee that their opinions will represent the player's.

You say that, but statistically there are more players than in this "past" you are referring to. Statistically it is flourishing compared to the days you refer to. Now I know what you mean, because I was around since ARR, and it's fair to say "classes have been made simpler to play", but statistically there is not a downward descent.

Purely riding on the back of their MSQ and those who want to play this game for social/ERP reasons. Many people leave when they finish the MSQ. They started cutting content outside of the MSQ come Shadowbringers. I don't mind the MSQ being good, but they've been increasingly trying to turn this game into a single player game when their loyal customers paid to play an MMORPG.

I am happy with consistency. Then I know what I am getting. Consistency isn't necessarily the problem as long as each thing is fun.

There comes a point when even things that were once fun lose their luster. Yoshi-P and team has kept to their same formula for 10 years now. One can only do the same things so many times. It became tiring in Shadowbringers. Now it's just frustrating that they refuse to change.

I like this, to be honest. Especially if it's hard to pull off. A lot of casual tanks actually can't even do it and I just seem them die because they don't know what Bloodwhetting is and stand in all the vulns. I just don't like it when something is flat out impossible, but I would be alright with it being harder to achieve.

I feel that it was harder to achieve in the past but now tank self-heals are so good that it's difficult to fail. For example, I've solo'd Gubal Library HM a few times and I'm not saying it was really hard, but I had to make sure I used my heal combo instead of the damage buff when I needed it. In a level 90 dungeon I wouldn't even need to think about this because of Bloodwhetting.

What is the purpose of having a healer at all if a tank can just solo a boss in an Expert roulette? If Ultimates can be cleared without healers?

Remember that most people play a game's new DLC/patch for a few days and then move onto the next game that released or got DLC. Most people only play for a few days anyway and this is who SE is catering to.

Those are single-player games. We pay a subscription and expect at the very least, the same amount of content that was once delivered. They have cut the amount of dungeons and MSQ is done quicker on patches. They've dumbed down the difficulty of alliance raids after what happened with Orbonne Monastery.

Both. They want to make them more intuitive so that we don't have players who "never" figure out their rotation, but with 20 classes they also want to make them easier to balance by making 2 of each play almost exactly the same ie. SGE and SCH, MNK and SAM, GNB and PLD, WAR and DRK, probably DRG and RPR.


I kinda accept their argument, I suppose, because at a certain point balancing 22 classes would be easier if 2 of each played the same. Trying to balance so many of them would create more overhead than what they had in ARR and Heavensward.

Rotations should take effort to figure out. We used to have easy classes but also some which had complexity to them. It seems that is being gutted to implement simplicity across the board.

[Jeeqbit]

Two out of three dungeons that you've cited are from Stormblood or Heavensward. Old dungeons back from when they still cared.

Those are just some of the dungeons I think about. They kept making dungeons better up through Stormblood's patches but after that, it seemed like they had peaked but they are still just as good as that peak today, visually.

So we have to bring our complaints to youtubers instead of talking to the developers themselves like we used to do? That would indicate that they no longer consider direct communication with the player valid. We now have to use youtubers as a medium. Also, youtubers are humans and therefore biased. There is no guarantee that their opinions will represent the player's.

They are Japanese so there are some translation difficulties I suppose. And this forum is full of garbage that is probaby hard for them to sift through and find decent feedback. The videos MrHappy has been doing have been doing a good job articulating it and we know Yoshi-P watches him, possibly with youtube's caption translate feature.

Content creators can be bias but they are also in a position where they should be trying not to be and to take a middleground view, because of how many people look up to them and their focus on this and articulating information for their viewers is conducive to sifting through and presenting the information in a form developers can use.

I would argue that content creators are usually only popular because people agree with them and support them, so that is a good reason for developers to listen to them as well.

I don't mind the MSQ being good, but they've been increasingly trying to turn this game into a single player game when their loyal customers paid to play an MMORPG.

True. They have been open that they are trying to make it playable alone even. But they still make raids and content that can be done with others.

There comes a point when even things that were once fun lose their luster.

Maybe, but this wasn't an issue for me for years of playing the game so I don't think the formula is a problem as long as there is variety within the content produced. For example, playing football in P9S or being tossed to another platform in P10S is interesting.

They could have completely copy+pasted all the mechanics from the previous tier and just changed the look of the bosses, and some games would probably actually do that if it was all about making money for minimal effort, but they actually put in the effort to make the mechanics different.

What is the purpose of having a healer at all if a tank can just solo a boss in an Expert roulette? If Ultimates can be cleared without healers?

SE wanted to create a game where you can play poorly or you can play well, but you'll be able to notice the ones that play well. Despite everything being simplified, you can still notice this... such as the difference between a healer that dies and a healer that doesn't, and the difference between a tank that can pickup the slack and solo and a tank that can't.

Being an FF game it also makes sense for some players to be able to pickup the slack for another, because in a team environment, sometimes there is a weak link for one reason or another (be it injury, skill, tiredness, lag), and it's nice to think you are not helpless in that situation and can find a way to pickup the slack.

But to answer your question, the purpose of having a healer could be, say, to do big pulls. I know tanks can often handle that without one now, but when we had less self-heals we would certainly just stick to one pack without a healer, so the benefit of a healer was efficiency and not having the slow deaths of DPS in a boss fight due to lack of heals where the tank finishes it off.

Even now, if a tank solos a boss it's still inefficient if they can't keep DPS alive because of the lack of outgoing damage.

Those are single-player games. We pay a subscription

True, we pay a subscription despite the game DLC being designed like a single player game. But often you have to pay for DLC, so the payment for the DLC can be thought of as the subscription fee and you only have to pay that for the month in which you play it. The expansion can be thought of as the game.

The people who pay the subscription fee endlessly all year round are probably a smaller amount of players and if they are paying it all year round, they are probably getting more out of it due to playing more than a few days and progressing through raids, pvp, RP, housing or collecting things.

We used to have easy classes but also some which had complexity to them. It seems that is being gutted to implement simplicity across the board.

Indeed. Yoshi-P used to talk openly about classes needing to be unique and how he wanted there to be complex jobs and simple jobs. He was even asked which ones he would recommend for new players and listed them. Suddenly, he stopped talking about these subjects when Shadowbringers came out and the direction had clearly changed.