FFXIV: Do Better

[LianaThorne]

Just gonna drop this study here again as a potential explanation for why the game is becoming "dumbed down" or "less involved mentally".

https://quanticfoundry.com/2024/05/21/strategy-decline/

This is a study on gamer motivations that has been conducted over the last 9 years (published May 2024) with a pool of around 1.7m people. It outlines the 12 motivations of gaming and how, compared to the other 11, strategy in particular has taken a much larger decline in priority to gamers.

A quote:
"Even if the underlying cause(s) cannot be identified, it’s clear that gamers have become less interested in strategic thinking over the past 9 years. It implies that gamers are now more easily cognitively overloaded when they play games and are more likely to avoid strategic complexity. This has implications for game design and marketing. Overall, gamers now prefer shorter time horizons to plan for (i.e., the number of steps and branching outcomes they have to think through) and less complex decisions that rely on fewer parameters to consider."