Quitting ffxiv for good

[Striker44]

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Please check out the forums, though you might need to go back toward the beginning of this expansion to see how it was just absolutely filled with comments tearing apart the gameplay (and specifically the difficulty). Here's the link: https://www.bungie.net/en-us/Forums/...=0&d=0&lang=en I know it's difficult when you're in the position of not actually being familiar with the game, and so you poke around and find a few people's responses and start getting the impression they're the norm. Or perhaps try doing a search for "Neomuna" specifically (the zone where the difficulty increase was most pronounced) - I found these threads almost instantly: https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheG...parent_reason/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheG...regardless_of/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheG...a_over_scaled/

Also, for clarification, the general difficulty progression for Destiny 2 is Normal --> Hero --> Legend --> Master --> Grandmaster, though different types of activities tend to only have some of those levels available, not all. So, despite being called "Legend," it's actually meant to be rather middle-of-the-road difficulty-wise.

Oh, the main point of the article I linked was about how Bungie had to lay off ~100 of its employees because of how many people have left and pre-orders came in a whopping 45% under expectation. As I said, it's different when you're trying to piece the puzzle together on the spot rather than having watched it being assembled, but the overwhelming consensus was that Bungie specifically catered to the critics and streamers this expansion...and killed the game for almost everyone else. Yes, the "content creators" will praise the gameplay - meanwhile the other 99% hated it and 2/3 of them quit.... (Edit: Yes, those numbers are hyperbole, don't take them literally. You get the point...)

[VerdeLuck]

Oh, the main point of the article I linked was about how Bungie had to lay off ~100 of its employees because of how many people have left and pre-orders came in a whopping 45% under expectation. As I said, it's different when you're trying to piece the puzzle together on the spot rather than having watched it being assembled, but the overwhelming consensus was that Bungie specifically catered to the critics and streamers this expansion...and killed the game for almost everyone else. Yes, the "content creators" will praise the gameplay - meanwhile the other 99% hated it and 2/3 of them quit.... (Edit: Yes, those numbers are hyperbole, don't take them literally. You get the point...)

I've seen the same with various other games and that's why I beat the drum of listening to ACTUAL player feedback and group sentiment instead of thinkpiece writers, influencers, and streamers. Those people will always want something different than the general public just by nature of them wanting something to make people watch them play the game 8 hours a day, every day or read their clickbait think pieces. It's a real shame when game companies take the easy way out and just rely on streamers and influencers to be their PR, Marketing, and community outreach all in one since they are going to have their own agendas and have no guarantee they will actually convey what players are thinking as a whole.

An example I'll always stick with is Overwatch 2, they really drove home the influencer support by eliminating their Test servers, ignoring their bug report and feedback forums for the most part, and getting almost 100% of their feedback for changes from streamers being given an early sneak peek build and then telling them how they like it. The whole game just shifted towards streamers, stream watchers, esports fans, and the "elite", which is definitely a direction, but it absolutely murdered their player numbers and burned a lot of fans. You can't do that in a live service game, casual players and new players are your lifeblood and your game lives or dies based on them. Streamers want long grinds to have content to stream, they want increasingly hard content for clickbait videos of "The New Raids are HOW HARD??!?!!?", as well as hard content that the average player cannot experience or see unless they watch a stream. That's not really what the average player or casual player really is looking for in a game like this.