Are we destroying "our own" game?

[Kes13a]

People don't usually come on the official forum to say "great job!" They come here to complain, so it's going to make the feedback on pretty much anything look largely negative.

Dawntrail has its issues but on the whole I'd say it's been a pretty good expansion so far.

I agree. I neither hate it or extremely love it, it was good though.

as players, we cannot really "destroy" the game. thats up to SE to do that. and they are extremely capable of that without our help

[Payadopa]

I've leveled RPR to 98 and AST to 94 and these skills are a joke. The story I like, the gameplay bores me to tears. The dungeons are a nice surprise but all I do is walk from cutscene to cutscene being unengaged by what counts as "gameplay" outside of group content. Jobs at this point are abysmal.

[angienessyo]

I've leveled RPR to 98 and AST to 94 and these skills are a joke. The story I like, the gameplay bores me to tears. The dungeons are a nice surprise but all I do is walk from cutscene to cutscene being unengaged by what counts as "gameplay" outside of group content. Jobs at this point are abysmal.

To be fair, that's what the MSQ experience has always been. It does need help now though. I think the length of DT's story really highlighted that the actual experience of playing the game until end game isn't all that fun.

[Payadopa]

To be fair, that's what the MSQ experience has always been. It does need help now though. I think the length of DT's story really highlighted that the actual experience of playing the game until end game isn't all that fun.

That's true but with jobs being this bland it's not helping. lol And with each lvl up I'm more disappointed than excited. I dunno, man.

[Galvuu]

Nah. Heavensward had terrible raids, terrible encounters and terrible class balance. Some classes were considered griefing if you brought them to a PF team. HW was definitely the worst expansion they brought, but it was also the first one, and they learned from their mistakes. Go back to those times on this forum, and you'll see some dramatic wails from people.

That is revisionist in of itself. EW had more "forbidden jobs" in the pf during Abyssos than all of HW. You can see for yourself- while limited, all data we have on pf from HW logs will corroborate what I'm saying. 3.0 and 3.1 balance was pretty abysmal for AST and, to a lesser extent, MCH... but it's as abysmal right now for BLM and all the non-PCT ranged jobs.
And HW has some of the most original encounter ideas in this game- some of which became standard.
- A5S interacting with the arena to defeat the boss;
- A6S had a unique add phase in Brawler and the fight being made of 4 difficult minibosses was very unique;
- A7S had a different type of arena interaction with the spikes and the giant balls going around as you fought the boss;
- A8S brought Gavel, the first "resolve a ton of different debuffs in order depending on role" mechanic that became a staple of XIV Savage encounters;
- A10S had another different form of arena interaction, with people triggering traps that interacted with the players and the boss;
- A11S was the first Active Time Maneuver in the game, and A12S had the whole cutscene playing in the background;
- Sophia had the scales mechanic;
- Zurvan had the first cinematic transition of its type (where you can't move and just watch the transition).

I can't believe people think that Midas, Lamebrix Strikebocks and Cruise Chaser and Thordan/Sephirot/Sophia EX are "terrible encounters". HW had a lot of problems, but encounter and job balance weren't one of them. Yes, it had its stinkers, like A2S or A9S, but that's true of every expansion.
Even Gordias wasn't problematic in a vacuum- the issue is that it was deliberately tuned for 4/5 weeks of tomestone gear, making it unclearable before you got a ton of tomestone gear.
Ofc HW is old, and a lot of its fight design shows its age. It also didn't have a lot of QoL features we have now, but it's still a decent expansion with good msq.

The only truly new mechanic I've seen in DT so far is the whole Castellation thing in Interphos, Mountain Fire on Valigarmanda and the line aoes that interact with the swords on the field from Zoral Ja.

Fwiw, I think the combat in DT is pretty good. I enjoy the extremes and expert dungeons more than I've enjoyed any other batch since SB. But I'm also not gonna pretend it's groundbreaking. People also overestimate how "bad" HW balance was. EW's balance in 5.2 and 5.3 and our current DT balance are worse. (2.0 was also terrible, but that gets a pass since it was the first revision)

[Dogempire]

People don't usually come on the official forum to say "great job!" They come here to complain, so it's going to make the feedback on pretty much anything look largely negative.

Dawntrail has its issues but on the whole I'd say it's been a pretty good expansion so far.

The fact that I see negative comments about DT being upvoted on the main subreddit is enough for me to know that the consensus on the DT story is that it's crap.

If the forums is where people go to complain about FFXIV, then the FFXIV subreddit is where people go to talk about the parts of the game that they love, post memes, all those sorts of things.

[Volgia]

I've leveled RPR to 98 and AST to 94 and these skills are a joke. The story I like, the gameplay bores me to tears. The dungeons are a nice surprise but all I do is walk from cutscene to cutscene being unengaged by what counts as "gameplay" outside of group content. Jobs at this point are abysmal.

I guess you weren't excited about Enhanced Second Wind.

[CidHeiral]

The fact that I see negative comments about DT being upvoted on the main subreddit is enough for me to know that the consensus on the DT story is that it's crap.

If the forums is where people go to complain about FFXIV, then the FFXIV subreddit is where people go to talk about the parts of the game that they love, post memes, all those sorts of things.

Of course there are negative comments there. There are positive comments here too. No community is a monolith even if it tends to trend one way or another.

[Volgia]

Of course there are negative comments there. There are positive comments here too. No community is a monolith even if it tends to trend one way or another.

This.

It's easy to come here where people complain about the game, and they do this every patch and expansion mind you, and find yourself a circle of people who to feedback loop your negative opinions at. It's also pretty easy to feedback loop your opinions to the point you feel that they are a universal fact.

[Striker44]

To to be perfectly blunt, the game really dropped the ball a few times. Why are we doing a "cooking contest" but not actually doing the cooking, if our WoL is already a level 90 Culinarian. It's stuff like this that makes me shake my head and ask why crafting jobs are completely missing from the MSQ of the game. If you have the right crafter, instead of playing fetch quest, why not just craft the thing needed on the spot? Why not have a botanist actually "gather" materials.

Just gonna jump in on this particular comment. It's because the MSQ has to be accessible to anyone regardless of whether they've leveled crafters or gatherers or not. Those jobs are "completely missing" from the MSQ because they're optional, and the MSQ by its nature can only include required things (consider how they made the previously-optional Crystal Tower series mandatory when it became tied into the MSQ in ShB). It's also why you can do certain side quests like Unukalhai's, but he's not going to appear in the MSQ even in places where it might "make sense" because not everyone is required to have met him. To be perfectly blunt, the dev's approach makes sense here and I don't feel drops any proverbial ball.