Ultimate demise of 14?

[Kirutsuki]

Wanted to write about this topic since its been on my mind for a bit now.
Kind of a late night rant than anything.

I am sort of scared about the future of FF14 if this is what they have to show for us.
So put your set belts on as I go about criticizing ALOT about the current state of the game.

Now, this is coming from someone who has ~6000hours put into the game. I started with patch 5.3 when they introduced flying to ARR zones. So I have not been here as long as many of you.

But I honestly have started to feel like the the entire Dev team has pushed themselves into a corner with the way they handle their expansions and the following patch content with such data driven systematic approach,
that it ultimately is hurting the game and at least my enjoyment for any of it anymore.

I WAS hoping Dawntrail would deviate from their normal way of handling an expansion and it's content, but were are exactly back here where we were on the hiatus of Endwalker.
Searching for content to do and waiting for patches and all of those upcoming patches are so predictable that people already know what is going to be included in each .x patch.

It's getting stale, and the dev team needs to stop doing this. While there are of course things to do still in Dawntrail, it is not actually a lot of engaging content more than it is doing your daily/weekly tasks.
The only content that I personally feel engaged in are Treasure Maps and Savages. But I'm not a hardcore raider so Savages tend to take a backseat, so what am I left with?

Hunt trains, fate farmings, crafting, these are all things we've been doing for the past god knows how many years for each expansion, many of you more than me.
And I can't be alone in thinking that it's getting way too repetitive. And these I consider more like tasks than actually engaging content at all, we all do them half brain-dead just collecting points for mounts.

Why can't the devs in Creative Studio III come up with new and unique gameplay systems to spice up the general non hardcore gameplay?
Doesn't the developing of a game so systematically become extremely boring when you know exactly what you're making for each patch?

And why must we wait for these patches to come out so that we finally have something to do at some point that resembles something unique?
Why couldn't we just wait for Dawntrail to be released a bit later so that it already has content to it beyond the normal MSQ + 2EX's

And I know there's more to an expansion, but the fact that the devs are so adamant on having the expansion experience be exactly the same as the last expansion is just annoying to someone like me;
who wants and needs different kinds of things to do after the MSQ is done. I do not like doing single thing over and over again until I have lost all interest to it.

Now sure, I could always go back and do some ARR relics or finish up Eureka or whatever,
but those are things that will always stay on the backlog of things for me and I will only do them when I literally have absolutely nothing else at all to do.

Why couldn't we just have the expansion come out a few months later, with all the bells and whistles and people could go and do whatever they wanted.
As an MMO this feels extremely limiting especially if you stay within the confines of the expansion.

And I've kind of lost interest on doing the literal same progression I did on endwalker.
And I only experience that one. I wasnt' there for Shadowbringers, but I'm sure alot of you have been doing this same routine for far longer.

1. MSQ
2. Do some FATES & Hunt Trains, maybe PvP.
3. EX 1&2
4. Level Up crafters
5. prepare for savages in 2 weeks
6. wait for more content
(bit of a generalization)
and this repeats on every .x patch until nauseum.

Yes we do get content that drives the players. But it's always so predictable,
oh it's the 0.X patch that will give the beast tribes, or that this 0.X patch will give a SINGLE dungeon!
YAY!

Just some ramblings of mine, I know most will probably disagree with me. And its more likely that I am just burned out,
but I can't help but think that I am literally in the same spot as I was in when people were complaining about the lack of content in Endwalker.

I honestly feel like I should have just skipped playing Dawntrail and waited for the last patch to hit before starting to play,
there's just too much downtime unless you really want to keep doing the same stuff you've been doing for multiple years already.

I do hope Creative Studio III just stops with this "neat package" system they have created that they so systematically follow to a T.
It doesn't allow for surprises of any kind and it certainly doesn't allow devs to explore new ideas. As much as I love FF14, I am no longer willing to turn a blind eye for the gripes I have.
Just increase the development time of things and release more content in one go, rather than trickle them out like candy once in a blue moon.

Regardless, I do hope that whatever each of the patches bring are actually good. I just don't think I have the patience for it anymore.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Stop the doom posting. Game is fine, there's a minority of people on the forums who have been negative for the past 4 years or so.

[Lak14]

Why can't the devs in Creative Studio III come up with new and unique gameplay systems to spice up the general non hardcore gameplay?

ereuka *cough* bozja *cough*

but the casual whined too much and so we got the manderville instead.

[Kirutsuki]

ereuka *cough* bozja *cough*

but the casual whined too much and so we got the manderville instead.

Did those come with the expansion release or did people have to wait for months for them to finally be playable?
Thats the topic here, not that there isn't content to do.

[angienessyo]

I mean, if WoW can survive BFA+Shadowlands back to back, FF14 will be just fine. I don't think there's ever been an MMO that hasn't had some misses.

[Lak14]

Did those come with the expansion release or did people have to wait for months for them to finally be playable?
Thats the topic here, not that there isn't content to do.

extreme mount, new minion, dungeon glamour, fate mount, that not enough for casual player ? I didnt even buy the game until 1 week before savage update, trust me when i tell you the casual have more thing to do than raider.

[Sekundessounet]

Your complaints are something that comes up regularly since at least the end of Heavensward. Yoshida& the team talked about it a few times, but the reason the game is so formulaic is because it allows for people to come in and come out of the game whenever they feel like it and know what they go into when they come back, basically.

On another note, the game is so formulaic because... it's the game. That's FFXIV. They're not gonna dramatically change the formula. Yes maybe we could wait 3 more months before an expansion comes out (which is not a smart business decision tho), but you'll just get the content of what would have been the next patch into the normal release. Which amounts to the same. And while a dramatic/substantial change in formula would probably appeal to you, to a lot of people it would probably be gratting, especially if the change goes in a direction that is not to their liking. The current formula has at least the merit to speak to most types of player populations. (And to be fair, MMO players always want change, then invariably complain about change).

Lastly, expansion launches are always a bit low on endgame content, by nature. It gives the player time to level up a bit of everything and go on to a few things before bigger things like your Bozjas and all come out (which was what Endwalker lacked). If the formula feels stale, or the current content is getting boring on repeat for you, frankly, do not hesitate to stop for a time and go play another game. It's not a jab to you, different games are there for different experiences. And XIV will always be there to come back to when you're not bored with it.

EDIT : also you played 6000 hours in the last 4-5 years. Burning out of it is kinda natural.

[Willemdarke]

While WoW has been a catastrophe, especially during SL with the whole frat boy scandal, they've always had the big Activision/CoD money behind them and now Microsoft as well. Meanwhile, Square has been underperforming for multiple years, even when it comes to their well-received games like FF7R, let alone flops like Forspoken.

I think it's fair to say that as long as SE is around, so will FF14 - their flagship property. However, if SE were to go down, it's lights out. Unfortunately, it is fair to be at least slightly worried, when even their best ongoing property underperforms review-wise and hasn't had any innovation in multiple expansions.

[Ritsugamesh]

The formula is a joke. I've been here since 2.0 and so I've groundhog day expansion cycled it quite a few times at this point.

The only thing that keeps me engaged is side content at this stage. Deep dungeons, eureka/bozja, treasure maps, etc. The main loop of steep vertical gear treadmill is tiresome and feels pointless when the content isn't challenging enough to actually warrant gearing, especially when it'll all be thrown out in 2 patches time.

When they are creative, they succeed (mostly). Even the content that bombs - Criterion is a prime example - is miles better than the cookie cutter content, but it died on arrival because everyone is so conditioned to need ilvl! Give me ilvl!!

A shake-up would have been great, it was a missed opportunity this expansion, so I have to hope the side content is top notch.

[Kirutsuki]

All those are more like tasks, they're not actually super engaging content at all. They're what most people do to pass some time and probably watch TV while doing it.
And what I men by super engaging is not that I need some raid tier level combat, but I do want to feel interested in what I'm doing.

Tell me one thing that is in Dawntrail specifically that keeps you engaged that isn't the raids or dungeons.
Treasure Maps, that's it. And arguably even those are kinda TV worthy, but atleast there's fun in those.