Players and the game design's mindset has become increasingly individualistic

[Pip_Chick]

All we have gained is a mediocre single player expirience.
The MMO part of this game is dead. The players are only in their ERP head space, there is no flavour or texture. You just go in a dungeon with 3 or more other players who are so robotic, they may as well be bots. The expirience is so much on rails that you start falling asleep not even half way through the first boss.
I used to like doing the daily roulettes and talking with other players. Now I can't even do more than 3 at a time cause I start falling asleep, and even then I need some sort of distraction like a YT video or music to even get through. No role is engaging enough after the 3rd run, no job is interesting after a few days of playing.
Everything is just boring. The most fun I had in game recently was when the tank got disconnected and the rest of us didn't notice, we got to the last boss by the time the tank returned. And it is sad.

[Souljacker]

I see this is the week of "back in my day...<insert_how_things_were_better>" posts

Yes.

All we have gained is a mediocre single player expirience.
The MMO part of this game is dead...

I don't talk with other players because there isn't a second I'm not pressing a button or hopping out of an AoE. The experience here is very different than in its predecessor - I think the game is weaker for it. Leveling parties - perhaps outside of well-geared and specifically tailored meripos - were a much more relaxing experience and I'd argue more engaging. You could talk to your party members and make friends, and you often did because you'd spend an hour+ with them. There's so few memorable group activities here.

I can still remember the first time I defeated the dragon in mission 2-3, the first time I defeated the Shadow Lord, the first time I helped OTHERS with those missions, getting through Promyvions, preparing for the fights (leveling summoner lol), getting to the top of Attohwa Chasm, getting to the final floor in Nyzul Isle, defeating all the sky nms and getting my byakko haidate, exploring every single inch of sea, defeating Maat, defeating Maat on a job other than WHM (lol), completing all the Dynamis zones and getting my relics, so many stories because they were engaging. Cutscenes were sparse because they were rewards, not forced movies we have to sit through before we can go back to playing the game.

It was a completely different feeling, that game was, and it was so beloved and has such a loyal fanbase that it's still profitable for them to run the servers even today. There is a serious open-source project to emulate it with over thirty thousand commits, and private servers running era-preserved systems, that's how much that game is loved.

The only reason I even remember Crystal Tower enough to describe it is because it's literally the only raids that come up in the roulette. I've had to work for exactly nothing in this game. Almost all my jobs are 90 now, progressing there by doing brain-dead roulettes and 71+ Bozja while netflix is on in the background. This game is exactly like every other mmo on the market except with FFXIV lore and graphics. There is nothing that really distinguishes it from other modern mmos, while XI was a defiantly differently experience and design while still being so far ahead of its time I'm not sure that SE hasn't developed some sort of game engine time travel.

I miss the complexity of the simplicity of the older systems. I know that doesn't make sense to some of you who might be new to the franchise... but if you had been there... you'd understand.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Yes.




I don't talk with other players because there isn't a second I'm not pressing a button or hopping out of an AoE. The experience here is very different than in its predecessor - I think the game is weaker for it. Leveling parties - perhaps outside of well-geared and specifically tailored meripos - were a much more relaxing experience and I'd argue more engaging. You could talk to your party members and make friends, and you often did because you'd spend an hour+ with them. There's so few memorable group activities here.

I can still remember the first time I defeated the dragon in mission 2-3, the first time I defeated the Shadow Lord, the first time I helped OTHERS with those missions, getting through Promyvions, preparing for the fights (leveling summoner lol), getting to the top of Attohwa Chasm, getting to the final floor in Nyzul Isle, defeating all the sky nms and getting my byakko haidate, exploring every single inch of sea, defeating Maat, defeating Maat on a job other than WHM (lol), completing all the Dynamis zones and getting my relics, so many stories because they were engaging. Cutscenes were sparse because they were rewards, not forced movies we have to sit through before we can go back to playing the game.

It was a completely different feeling, that game was, and it was so beloved and has such a loyal fanbase that it's still profitable for them to run the servers even today. There is a serious open-source project to emulate it with over thirty thousand commits, and private servers running era-preserved systems, that's how much that game is loved.

The only reason I even remember Crystal Tower enough to describe it is because it's literally the only raids that come up in the roulette. I've had to work for exactly nothing in this game. Almost all my jobs are 90 now, progressing there by doing brain-dead roulettes and 71+ Bozja while netflix is on in the background. This game is exactly like every other mmo on the market except with FFXIV lore and graphics. There is nothing that really distinguishes it from other modern mmos, while XI was a defiantly differently experience and design while still being so far ahead of its time I'm not sure that SE hasn't developed some sort of game engine time travel.

I miss the complexity of the simplicity of the older systems. I know that doesn't make sense to some of you who might be new to the franchise... but if you had been there... you'd understand.

For every person that had this experience in XI, there is one who had an experience like mine, where people didn't want to help you level past the introductory areas, you get stuck in a loop of trying to form parties in the Dunes, being unable to level due to them not lasting long, and then repeat.

[Valence]

But some of the systems cited were removed because they were genuinely bad.

Your opinion.

But this is going back to the age old "improve and fix" vs "just delete what's imperfect in execution".

In short, I agree with your sentiment, but I think you're remembering the past with rose coloured glasses.

I am not, and I do think you're purposely colouring it in a bad light on purpose yourself with cherrypicking/nitpicking and overplaying certain aspects that were definitely not perfect (and it goes back again to the aforementioned point).
Any system has flaws, and the current one we have is no exception either. The whole point of the OP is to go over individualistic behaviors in XIV's history and the only thing you reply to me is "but X or Y were not perfect"?


Edit: I'll take the bait on tank aggro. Tanks didn't deal the same damage as rphys jobs, I don't know what you remember but you probably remember wrong. Tanks at top level were about 60 to 85% of the damage output of dps jobs depending on the jobs. If we remove the 10% piercing that rphys benefited from this still doesnt close the gap, even remotely close. If we're talking about AoE in dungeons, then it gets even messier, because AoE back then was crazy badly balanced, way more than raids, and the difference between a MNK (ludicrous AoE options) vs a SMN (completely busted with no falloff painflare/deathflare) was astronomical. Tank AoE was not on par with dps either, and this is even without talking about damage profiles, because if something bursts like crazy immediately, better than you do, then you'll lose aggro if you don't use at least some aggro moves.

Now I'll definitely agree that the higher your gear (BiS) and your skill, the less likely you'd have to spamm aggro moves, and I'd wager that you never really needed to do it because a lot of players didn't output way enough damage to remotely threaten you, even if they didn't use their quelling strikes either. Gear differences were definitely one of the limits of the system.

I see this is the week of "back in my day...<insert_how_things_were_better>" posts

If this is the only thing you chose to take from that thread, then you see me sorry hear it.

[Aidorouge]

For every person that had this experience in XI, there is one who had an experience like mine, where people didn't want to help you level past the introductory areas, you get stuck in a loop of trying to form parties in the Dunes, being unable to level due to them not lasting long, and then repeat.

That was my experience, yes, made even worse because I was a Mithra and because stats were "so important" back then, I *had* to play Thief and nothing else ever. Suffice to say I didn't last long with FF11 after release, and ultimately moved to WoW because it was the "casual" MMO even back then compared to the likes of everything else that was out.

Now I don't even play WoW and haven't for years, partially because Blizzard is an absolute YIKES of a company, but also because so much of that game was spent having "roll regret" because they were always doing things to classes causing most of them to end up in the dumpster until the next expansion because they just couldn't stop themselves from trying to re-invent the wheel all of the time.

[GodModule]

All we have gained is a mediocre single player expirience.
The MMO part of this game is dead. The players are only in their ERP head space, there is no flavour or texture. You just go in a dungeon with 3 or more other players who are so robotic, they may as well be bots. The expirience is so much on rails that you start falling asleep not even half way through the first boss.
I used to like doing the daily roulettes and talking with other players. Now I can't even do more than 3 at a time cause I start falling asleep, and even then I need some sort of distraction like a YT video or music to even get through. No role is engaging enough after the 3rd run, no job is interesting after a few days of playing.
Everything is just boring. The most fun I had in game recently was when the tank got disconnected and the rest of us didn't notice, we got to the last boss by the time the tank returned. And it is sad.

Pretty much how I feel

[xivYuiM]

All we have gained is a mediocre single player expirience.
The MMO part of this game is dead. The players are only in their ERP head space, there is no flavour or texture. You just go in a dungeon with 3 or more other players who are so robotic, they may as well be bots. The expirience is so much on rails that you start falling asleep not even half way through the first boss.
I used to like doing the daily roulettes and talking with other players. Now I can't even do more than 3 at a time cause I start falling asleep, and even then I need some sort of distraction like a YT video or music to even get through. No role is engaging enough after the 3rd run, no job is interesting after a few days of playing.
Everything is just boring. The most fun I had in game recently was when the tank got disconnected and the rest of us didn't notice, we got to the last boss by the time the tank returned. And it is sad.

100% spot on. I cannot emphasize how much I hate what dungeons have become since SB. Recently I decided to do level 90 roulette as paladin with my entire monitor covered in sheets of paper besides the minimap so I could vaguely navigate. I couldn't see my MP, HP, hotbars, cooldowns, character, enemies, anything. Not only did nobody die ever but my party members didn't even notice anything was wrong (or at least they didn't say anything about it). It was all "Hi" or "howdy" and "ggs" "tyfp" by the end.

[AnnRam]

All we have gained is a mediocre single player expirience.
The MMO part of this game is dead. The players are only in their ERP head space, there is no flavour or texture. You just go in a dungeon with 3 or more other players who are so robotic, they may as well be bots. The expirience is so much on rails that you start falling asleep not even half way through the first boss.
I used to like doing the daily roulettes and talking with other players. Now I can't even do more than 3 at a time cause I start falling asleep, and even then I need some sort of distraction like a YT video or music to even get through. No role is engaging enough after the 3rd run, no job is interesting after a few days of playing.
Everything is just boring. The most fun I had in game recently was when the tank got disconnected and the rest of us didn't notice, we got to the last boss by the time the tank returned. And it is sad.

Welcome to Second Life XIV.
If you aren't in to mod beast / venues / ERP and talk about sex jokes in Uldah or any main city then you aren't part of the group.
Don't forget to carry your "uwu f/f+ femra/kitsune Kon kon" preset and share your <Mare> tag.

[posona]

Welcome to Second Life XIV.
If you aren't in to mod beast / venues / ERP and talk about sex jokes in Uldah or any main city then you aren't part of the group.
Don't forget to carry your "uwu f/f+ femra/kitsune Kon kon" preset and share your <Mare> tag.

And you’re on Balmung? Sounds like you should just switch DCs altogether, that’s rough.

[Ardeth]

All we have gained is a mediocre single player expirience.
The MMO part of this game is dead. The players are only in their ERP head space, there is no flavour or texture. You just go in a dungeon with 3 or more other players who are so robotic, they may as well be bots. The expirience is so much on rails that you start falling asleep not even half way through the first boss.
I used to like doing the daily roulettes and talking with other players. Now I can't even do more than 3 at a time cause I start falling asleep, and even then I need some sort of distraction like a YT video or music to even get through. No role is engaging enough after the 3rd run, no job is interesting after a few days of playing.
Everything is just boring. The most fun I had in game recently was when the tank got disconnected and the rest of us didn't notice, we got to the last boss by the time the tank returned. And it is sad.

And this is why I've spent the better part of this year not playing 14. I only came back for the Yokai event. Hell, I'm not even excited for Dawntrail. I know it's going to be the same game repackaged with an Aztec theme. I know it. It's depressing.