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

[Jojoya]

Before I start responding to some of your individual points, let me say that I agree with your thread title.

If someone is unhappy with the game, they need to unsub for their own sake. Games are for our entertainment and relaxation. If a game isn't fun, it's not serving its purpose. Wasting money on it is counterproductive.

I remember CBU3 actually creating polls on the forums, if you can believe that, asking players what it was they wanted to change in FFXIV as it currently was. '

CBU3 didn't exist until 2019.

The polls did exist but CBU3 had nothing to do with them. They were there to help the game's "re-developers" pinpoint the most urgent changes needed.

Once the game was released and became successful, there was no need for the polls anymore. This is no different from the majority of other successful games. They aren't using a player democracy to influence their game design.

(comments on content difficulty and subsequent nerfs)

If the majority of players feel left out of content because it's too difficult, they quit the game. That doesn't serve anyone.

Citation? See Wildstar. Oh wait, you can't anymore. Game is dead due to a lack of casual content, especially at end game.

FFXIV does still have difficult content but do not expect to find it in the MSQ or content related to the MSQ, which is intended for players of all skill. There's nothing wrong with that. All those players who enjoy relaxing in easy mode are still contributing financially to the development of more difficult content for those who want a greater challenge.

(comments on formulaic content design)

Most long-running games that add new content on a regular basis have their fomulas. They've developed based on player response. Players will stick to what they like. Change the formula and you start losing players.

Citation? See World of Warcraft post Wrath. The more they took away for the sake of change, the more players they lost. It's only now that they're starting to bring back some of what was discarded that player interest is starting to creep back up.

Formulas that worked with players are safe. Change is risk unless the game was already failing (see FFXIV 1.0).

If you need something different as a player, try a new game. It's better than watching one you enjoy get destroyed by change for the sake of change.

(job design complaints)

Job design will always be a challenge for MMORPG developers trying to find the right proportion of job balance to job uniqueness.

Some players want uniqueness. Some want balance. Some want both. I remember the same issues in WoW. I've heard GW2 players making similar complaints because certain builds are considered mandatory for raiding.

This is not the only game that has suffered from it.

But I will agree that it suffers more in this game because the developers have a lopsided view of the Holy Trinity. Until they address that weakness, job design will remain a problem.

RE: Kaiten - most job changes don't happen because players ask for them. They happen because developers are trying to introduce new elements without increasing button bloat.

Kaiten might have been removed but skill potencies had been increased to compensate. They could have added Kaiten back but they would have reverted all those potency increases to compensate for its return. SAM players would no doubt have seen that as being punished for demanding Kaiten back.

I bet the Kaiten fuss wouldn't have happened if Kaiten hadn't been removed at the same time as the stat squish occurred so players could have clearly seen the impact of the potency increases.

It will be interesting to see how SAM is designed for Dawntrail. I suspect Kaiten will be back along with some additional button bloat since the impression left is that SAM players like a lot of unnecessary buttons to press.

FFXVI and YoshiP complaints

Do people understand the difference between the role of a producer and the role of a director in game development (or in any entertainment media for that matter)?

A producer makes certain a project has the resources it needs to be completed.

A game director oversees the actual creation of a game and guides its design decisions.

FFXVI was completed. If you have issues with FFXVI game design then direct your comments to that game's director. YoshiP was not the director of that game.

As for listening to the player base, listening to players and making changes in response to players would be 2 different things. We know they are listening. They have made some changes to the game and acknowledged those changes as being due to player feedback.

That they don't make other changes requested in player feedback doesn't mean they aren't listening. It may be those changes need time for development before they can be implemented in game. It may be those changes require technology that doesn't exist or is beyond what the clients owned by the average player can currently handle. It may be they don't agree that those changes are right for the game.

You can't always get what you want.

(cash shop complaints)

Welcome to capitalism - give the customer what they're willing to pay for. Those with the excess disposable income aren't likely to stop buying the extras they want to have because the prices are trivial compared to what they have available to spend.

It's a weird hill for people to choose to die on considering that the cash shop revenue reduces the need to increase prices elsewhere not to mention that we get far more items added as in-game rewards than are added to the cash shop each expansion. Outside of some specific situations, I'm using ingame rewards instead of items from the cash shop. The quality is still there in most cases. All they lack is the separate price tag.

If you don't want to pay more, then don't pay more. Nothing on the cash shop is mandatory for game play.

(comments that business exist to make money and have no reason to change as long as they continue to make money, consumers need to be smarter)

You've got the conclusion more or less nailed except for one thing. Business do listen.

They're looking for trends in customer opinions. Sometimes consumer feedback gives them ideas that will increase profits.

What you're asking for may not be seen as being in the best interest of profits. They need to decide if implementing your ideas will cause them to lose more customers than they gain. It's easy to assume that all other players want the same things that you do but that's rarely the case.

That is why you need spend your money where you think you're getting value in return. If your interests do not align or stop aligning with the product, it's time to move on to a product that does align with them.

Businesses pay attention to where consumer money is going and that tends to influence their decisions more than anything else.

What message are you sending with the way you spend your money?

I'm glad that you've taken action that aligns with your best interests.

But yours aren't mine. I'm still having fun with FFXIV and will continue to pay for the game until that stops being true.

Nah. If you're unhappy and you know it, clap your buttcheeks...

What a marvelous description of Zenos.

Yes, you are correct. I have a very small glimmer of hope combined with the fact that gaming landscape is mostly desolate of good options that don't have psychological warfare on the players, aka nickel and diming. I will 100% stay true in my word though and unsub permanently should Dawntrail continue the trend. I'm also not the one making complaint threads every single day though and talking about how unhappy I am with this game every single day.

You probably won't even remember this post 11 months from unless you go out of your way to bookmark it with a comment "Must reply when Dawntrail is released".

Better to quit playing now then come back to Dawntrail with a somewhat fresh perspective. Nothing is going to improve between now and Dawntrail's release.

You think it's going to remain merely fluff items? Just like when microtransactions were introduced, devs will test the waters gradually to see what they can get away with. They WILL introduce pay-to-win elements. Players will complain all while shelling out the money anyways, and years from now we will be in a pay-to-win landscape instead of the cash shop merely being fluff items. That's where this leads.

That's a bridge I will cross if it ever happens.

I don't think it will happen unless this stops being a subscription based game. As long as it's subscription based, it remains in their best interests to leave the cash shop items all vanity. As soon as P2W shows up, they lose all that subscription income and are left reliant on the whims of the whales.

No, there's one thing that speaks louder than any individual wallet, and that's multiple wallets.

What you should be doing is to use your voice to dissaude those multiple wallets. Let the world know this game is atrocious. Spread the message. We need this game's reputation to nosedive off a cliff.

Make sure to pressure content creators and reviewers and let them know how you feel.

Negative publicity is still publicity. All you'd accomplish is getting more people to buy the game to see just how bad it is. Some will find out it's not what they expected and that they actually enjoy it, and then SE will get all that extra revenue.

If you want a game to die, what you want to do is get people to stop talking about it at all.

"weren't you playing that game? I've been thinking about it" "meh, lost interest. Playing this other game now" "oh, maybe I'll try that game instead"

[Mr_Gyactus]

It will be interesting to see how SAM is designed for Dawntrail. I suspect Kaiten will be back along with some additional button bloat since the impression left is that SAM players like a lot of unnecessary buttons to press.

Not really.
- Right now you use every skill when it's ready (if not paired with a DRG) <-- need some adjustment
- SAM needs situational abilities
- SAM needs the merging of some single/multi target version abilities.

[Jojoya]

So why do the jobs have to be gutted beyond their SB designs? If newer players are neutral and veterans are unhappy then the net result is unhappy.

I wasn't trying to pass judgement on the state of job design overall or state that they need to be gutted. I agree some improvement would be good, assuming it doesn't involve button bloat. There's a point where too many different actions is worse than not enough.

No, people gravitate to meta jobs. WAR, DNC, and SMN are all meta for casual prog because of WAR's Holmgang for PF invuln strats, SMN for raise and the high mobility, and DNC+SAM is one of the easiest way to boost your rDPS. DRK is actually the most played tank in JP, along with SAM being the most played DPS. A lot of people don't actually like playing DRK though. These statistics don't show anything other than what's meta.

Nerf WAR's self-sustain and you'll see WAR becoming far less popular.

Also, a lot of people gravitate to jobs because of the visuals. How do you disentangle the % of players picking up a job because of the visuals vs. them picking it up because of the simplicity? A lot of players play DNC, WHM, and SMN purely because of the class fantasy, not because of the mechanics.

It's raiders who use PF that gravitate toward meta jobs, not casual players in general. Those who don't raid are free to play whatever they want. Those who have a static are also generally free to use what they want as long as the roles needed get filled.

Those who rely on PF feel constricted by what the raiding community has decided is meta because if their job isn't part of the meta, it's harder to get accepted into a group. That could be solved by starting the PF but a lot of players prefer to avoid anything that smacks of responsibility, such as being a party leader.

It will always be a problem in MMOs until such time as player communities decide metas aren't accomplishing anything, and I doubt that will ever happen.

Not really.
- Right now you use every skill when it's ready (if not paired with a DRG) <-- need some adjustment
- SAM needs situational abilities
- SAM needs the merging of some single/multi target version abilities.

Oh, I'm not saying that SAM players really do like button bloat, only that the uproar over Kaiten leaves that impression. It's hard to say how the developers will interpret it.

Bard is easy too. We all know Fisher is the hardest job in the game. Having to go around looking for fishing spots. Going underwater to hunt them with spears. Fighting off random bears and retainers trying to mug you for your catch... >.>

Your roof nails are more in danger from my retainers than your fish.

[Renathras]

Because if people take their time to criticise a game they are actively playing, they are doing it because THEY CARE. They like some aspects of it, but think that others could use improvement. Wanting something you enjoy to be the best it possibly can be isn't that outlandish of a concept, surely?

The people who just hate everything aren't taking the time to post their criticism. They just leave.

SOME people yes.

But no, there are some posters here who legitimately hate the game and/or are trolls about it. They're also the most prolific starters of threads about how they dislike the game. It's false that people who hate everything just leave. Some people have to feel validation from others, so they try to get others to hate the game as much as they do.

The way to spot the difference:

People who care criticize the game but not other players.
People who hate harp on the game but also attack anyone who defends it even partially as not being terrible.

There's a point where too many different actions is worse than not enough.

Very much agreed. I posted a thread in the healer forum, but the tl;dr of it is that about 2/5ths of the Jobs have 27, 30, 31, or 32 buttons. The other 3/5ths (more than half) have 33, 34, 35, 36, or 37 (PLD). Some absolutely justify that as the buttons all are useful and interesting enough to justify a hotbar slot...but a lot have fat to trim where they really don't. And it's not always the ones you think. MNK has the fewest buttons of any Melee Job at 31, but pretty much all of them are relevant and its one of the more complex Jobs in the game to optimize, despite that. RPR has 2 more at 33 but is easier. So number of buttons doesn't really guarantee simple or harder gameplay and more speaks to hotbar efficiency (buttons that change on context, like Paradox sharing the Blizzard 1/Fire 1 button) and Jobs that have a lot of random stuff. Some with lots of buttons absolutely justify them, but others less so. Either way, though, 30 is a lot of buttons, and SMN is the only Job in the game that doesn't have that or more (SMN at 27 and MCH at 30 are the only two in the game that have 30 or less)

It's raiders who use PF that gravitate toward meta jobs, not casual players in general.

Also this.

Casuals play whatever they feel like. Many aren't even aware the forbidden site, the Balance, or other meta stuff even exists, and aren't chasing it. They're playing what feels fun to them and what they think they do well on or simply enjoy. Midcore sometimes feel like they have to chase the meta, but they'll make substitutions based on their own perception of skill. One reason SGE is so popular (aside from the visuals) is that it's a slightly weaker SCH that has so much less jank, players feel they can be more competent playing it. RDM is also wildly popular with both casuals and the midcore since non-hardcore players tend to value Raises and healing spells very highly, far more than the raid community that belittles such utility and often asks for it to be removed so "SMN and RDM can be properly balanced against BLM". The rest of the playerbase likes those spells being there and it's one reason they enjoy the Jobs. (Never mind it's yet another case of the hardcores asking for homogenization they'll later then complain about all the Jobs being too similar if it happens...)

.

The idea that everyone behaves like hardcores do, that casuals (especially) and the midcore act the same as what a hardcore thinks they should, or that all these changes are made for the sake of casuals, is just so weird, yet so persistent. It's as persistent as it is wrong; which is very much so.