Combat system is beyond saving.

[OgruMogru]

I mean, there's plenty of reasons to keep someone subbed even if they don't like the game.

Housing is the biggest, explicit one. Some houses took the efforts of entire FCs to obtain originally, and some long time hold outs hold onto those because of not only the perceived value but the memory of what it took to acquire the house.

Another reason is OF access. You can't access the forum if you can't login, so you can't unsubscribe and participate in the forum discussions. Which, fruitless though they may be, probably help with boredom and venting.

Third reason would be socialization. I.E. Friends or at least social groups/places to hang around in from the comfort of your own home. There's no small amount of streamers or other gaming social networks that use XIV as a gathering point/common point of interest. Even a bad game is still fun with friends. Anything can be made fun with friends.

And fourth, if it's as Caffe Macchiato says, then they feel like there's no other space that gives this experience, even though other MMOs still make more money and have higher player counts (WoW and Runescape).

People are angry because they care and care too much. And are angry that they care. It's a vicious cycle. Not too hard to understand imo.

You shouldn't have to justify anything like this. I knew this was gonna start again like clockwork after the huge tantrum the community threw over the benchmark CC [rightfully but still a tantrum] and we're back to telling people to unsub because they're posting critiques and concerns about battle changes.

[Jojoya]

I was a WAR main during Heavensward and can confirm that it was a far different class. I spent a lot of time in dungeons during that time just because it was fun. I actually wanted to run roulettes. Now WAR is a pittance along with most other classes in this game.



You and your ilk killed off every other MMO by incessantly spamming every forum, Reddit thread, comments section, etc. about how much better FFXIV was better than WoW and so on. FFXIV has a near-monopoly among MMOs and now you tell us to go back to playing those other games? The same games that you killed off?



World of Warcraft, I'm sure you would agree. Final Fantasy is another good one, I don't think Yoshi-P did the PS5 any favors. FFXIV is an exception to the rule because of the former's implosion and people spamming every single orifice of the internet with free shilling for this game. And the explosion of low-quality G'raha fans, big-titty modbeasts, "nightclubs" and assorted drivel that turned FFXIV into Idiocracy. I'm sure you're aware that turning FFXIV into a one-button porno game would probably rankle some people?

What the OP listed isn't what killed WoW. WoW was killed by the borrowed power systems that turned the game into an endless and, in the end, waste of time grind. WoW was killed by casual players getting pushed out of endgame (which to be honest was more the fault of the player base itself than the developers). WoW was killed by removal of quality of life such as flying because some players insisted that what everyone really wanted was a more hardcore game and the developers listened to those players instead of to the players that told the developers they would leave.

FFXIV isn't a one-button porno game nor are the developers taking it in that direction. If you see it as one, that's your problem because of your personal porn obsession and need to keep looking for signs of it.

[xivYuiM]

No it absolutely was not. There was a huge amount of community pressure to use cleric stance in dungeons. This whole idea now where people get mad when healers don't dps in dungeons? Happened back then, too. Healers have never be allowed to just focus on their given role.

Uhhh, a massive part of the reason that people get mad about healers not doing DPS in dungeons TODAY is because what the hell are they going to do otherwise? Every tank is so powerful now that with a few notable exceptions (some dungeons with DRK) healers are genuinely not needed. The other three tanks do not require healing to complete any of the max level dungeons in EW and to say otherwise is just lying. If healers don't need to heal then they might as well do DPS. In HW if you pulled wall to wall the healers needed to be doing a lot of healing or the tank would die in an instant.

[xivYuiM]

Interpreting OP charitably, if they weren't referring to cross-class skills, perhaps they were referring to party comps.

...

TP was a great mechanic.

Finally, another TP enjoyer. It was a great mechanic that died too soon. Also, I was more referring to the fact that not every job had an objectively correct build that was always the right one to use no matter what. A couple examples being balancing strength and vit accessories on tanks in order to find the perfect balance between damage and HP and also how some black mages would prioritize spell speed vs raw INT or even build for a specific amount of MP based on their preferences.

[Rekh]

I loved TP as well; it grounds and emphasizes your role as a physical damager; the same way MP does for casters.

[xivYuiM]

People are angry because they care and care too much. And are angry that they care. It's a vicious cycle. Not too hard to understand imo.

This is a lot of it for me. I do have an FC house that would prevent me from unsubbing and also as much as I doompost or cry about the game it's like I said before, I have been subbed almost constantly since patch 2.1 and I believe that until patch 4.0 FFXIV was genuinely one of the best online games I have ever played. I have like 6500 hrs played now and I will likely sub until they shut the servers down for good but I am more concerned with not only making my time on the game as enjoyable as possible but also it is just sad to see the slow and painful death of something that I had previously held in such high esteem.

[AlucaDragonheart]

A couple examples being balancing strength and vit accessories on tanks in order to find the perfect balance between damage and HP and also how some black mages would prioritize spell speed vs raw INT or even build for a specific amount of MP based on their preferences.

I loved equipping accessories on the Warrior that I wasn't "supposed" to, and creating an amazing powerhouse of an offtank.

[Jeeqbit]

Heavensward was the peak of this game as far as the combat system goes

Do you truly remember Heavensward? RNG mitigation (parry). Job mechanics built upon the concept of parrying when bosses weren't doing physical damage? Combos breaking due to lack of Accuracy? Janky and redundant abilities, such as attacks you can only use when the boss is at 20% HP, Fluid Aura, Featherfoot and Keen Flurry? No magic mitigation or AoE on PLD? Materia for elemental stats? Bowmage? Vitality vs Strength fight with the devs on tanks?

There were things that were good about it but I don't think Heavensward was what anyone wanted at the time. I remember people being just as critical of the combat system then because of things like Parry.

Maybe going back to Heavensward would be a "step in the right direction" to people who see things the way you do, but after that they would probably need to change things about the battle system still to make people truly happy because of the sorts of examples I gave.

I don’t understand what they claim the issue was with the combat back then.

They said when Stormblood was coming out that they wanted to move away from tracking status effects, because a lot of players didn't understand that concept. It's a concept that MMORPG players understand, but many people start playing this as their first MMORPG and have for a very long time, so they wanted you to "track" things via a big, visual job gauge. It doesn't help that the default location for status effects is the top-right of the screen (I literally didn't know I could see them except in the party list for over a year, they were hidden under the map in the corner).

The skill ceiling was high enough that if you really wanted to push your job to the limits it made doing dungeons at the time more engaging than today’s savage raids.

I agree that it was more fun to "do well" in dungeons then than it is now, because it shows more if there is a bigger gap between the skill floor and ceiling. But a big part of it was a knowledge gap - casual players not knowing the hundreds of different nuances and min-max stuff about this large game.

And we didn't have discords until shortly before Stormblood, where they started doing this, so it's not like SE could think "there are discords that teach stuff" back then. There were hardly any well-known FFXIV content creators then either so they couldn't cover every little thing.

The artificial gap such as some tanks using a 20% damage reduction stance 100% of the time, and others using their DPS stance 100% of the time, amongst other rotation and gear differences they probably have, was not healthy for the game in my opinion. I think there being a difference in skill is one thing, but Heavensward was overboard. That said, maybe the current situation is overboard in the opposite direction.

• Aggro management
• Cleric stance and Multiple tank stances (3.x WAR was the best job in the history of this game)
• TP (sprint not draining it was a good change)
• Dungeon packs actually being a threat

Aggro management wasn't really a thing honestly. You turned on your tank stance, grabbed aggro, then after enough hits you didn't even need stance anymore so you could DPS. And if you stayed in your stance the entire time, you had aggro for sure. Is that description of it much different now?

I know the penalty of using tank stance has been removed and enmity has been increased by many times, but the effect is kinda similar. The difference is really just that enmity combos existed and stance dancing was a thing (at the start of a fight ).

TP was pointless and redundant, mostly unnoticeable unless DPS was low.

I agree that Cleric Stance was fun and should really have stayed and that tanks relying on healers made the holy trinity work properly then, unlike now.

Aggro management ALONE made this game fundamentally different. It was a deceptively in-depth mechanic that, while being immensely satisfying to master as a tank, required interaction from ALL THREE ROLES and really added a sense of teamwork to every encounter and was the SOLE REASON TO PLAY TANKS!!!

In 3.x, I just did my enmity combo once in stance and then I was done, and we're talking about 3.x here. In Stormblood, I needed to do the enmity combo 3 times in stance, so I did start to see interaction from many DPS players to reduce their impact on my enmity generation. When they did this, I was able to switch out of stance sooner. But you used the word required, which it wasn't.

Now tanks are just 123 drones that act as a (somehow) even less engaging melee DPS.

I find melee DPS alright at the moment, actually. Arguably PLD was 1-2-3 in ARR and is still beyond that in 7.0 with Blade of Faith, Atonement combo, etc.

anything short of a complete overhaul in 8.0 there is no chance for another 10 years of this game existing.

It's just being aimed at a different audience than the people who want it to be like Heavensward, tbh. Many people (like myself) find Summoner and Machinist fine.

[xivYuiM]

I loved equipping accessories on the Warrior that I wasn't "supposed" to, and creating an amazing powerhouse of an offtank.

Doing this during EX roulette was the some of most fun I ever had on this game after clearing T9 and T13 when they were relevant.

[LittleImp]

Heavensward was a good expansion because it really pioneered the games framework and established a lot of long-standing features and systems.

I cannot in good conscience say that it had good combat design though. I don't disagree that the modern game has many problems, but the idea that combat design peaked in Heavensward is a little... much.

To be exceedingly blunt, I think people are simply being nostalgic for a time where they were still ignorant and optimistic.