DT writing is not even the biggest problem XIV has right now.

[Fatch38]

biggest problems are : the state of that stale formula, sorry but when you can say almost all the content you'll get in the next expansion and being totally accurate on level you get said content etc there is a major probleme. to me for DT the expansion should have been split totally : having the first arc and keep all the sphene arc for 7.1+ (so you release the area related to it at the same time), it could have made the writting breathe more, could have been focusing on world building and character developpement etc

and the second is : that boring gearing system (im here since ARR), for a game that like to remind you that you can play everything, it has the worst way to handle gearing. dungeons gear being totally useless, and even savage gear becoming totally worthless the next patch. only having two real options for Bis (tome and savage) makes it boring too (but the substat system makes it so, crit and DH being way too powerful in the game). that's why i stopped doing savage, to me it became a waste of time because anyway i'll just wait to unsync one expansion later for mounts (if i want them). there isn't any kind of rewards, gear not having enough longevity to it (and not being "interesting" stats wise, the game could litterally throw away all substats it wouldn't change a thing)

and we can add to the problems : all those "concept" left to rot : jonathas and achievements not getting anything added to it since .... well litteraly since it released. gold saucer rewards being updated like once every expansion (and most of the time it's only to add one orchestrion roll). while we're on gold sauce : no update to chocobo racing, to mini games, to vermillion, to the fashion report vendor, etc. Even PvP is left in the dust, you get one map for CC once in a while but frontline, rivalwings got nothings in years, we don't even have anything to spend our trophy crystal on (since, like demonstrated before, vendor aren't updated or only once in years)

[TDawnstar]

But honestly. My take. This is an MMO designed for Japanese officeworkers. That have 2.3 hours of gametime per week

100%. I'd take it even further: there is a non-zero chance that it is a game YoshiP and other FFXIV devs designed to be compatible with their own schedules!

[TDawnstar]

This is entirely false tho. Do I need to remember how the first thing they cut during the pandemic was the 2nd Shb ultimate raid?

Oh noes! A piece of content that maybe 5% of people will clear is rescheduled for later? I mean, it was a pandemic and all that, they even delayed 5.3 released by 3 months or so?

Or how in EW we didnt get any 24 man raid outside alliances?

Well, we didin't get a new Bozja either. So overall it's a neutral impact.

how the amount of casual side activities has actually increased

Where? The only fundamentally new activity was Island Sanctuary (which, I admit, was good, but not everyone shares that sentiment). Everything else was more or less around for ages.

Also the whole "chores" before raid is a boogeyman you have just invented to blame raiders for something that doesn't even happen. If the devs didn't add the chores before raiding is because they treat raiding as its own separate thing that only affects market boards and materia selling

You should look into WoW's story to see how it went from an awesome world to a lobby dungeon/raiding simulator. The transformation was more or less complete before FFXIV even moved out of ARR. And now FFXIV is repeating the same mistakes again, sadly.

[TDawnstar]

especially when XIV tries very hard to appeal to a more casual audience.

"Trying" being the keyword here. The only feature like that we got recently were the character plates (which, I admit, were an awesome idea). And other casual non-combat stuff like Gold Saucer, housing mechanics, chocobo racing etc. hasn't been updated in ages.

[Heavenchild]

It's why people play for years without tackling even an Extreme, even though Extremes are really not that much of a challenge. Just the idea that it is "harder" content is enough to dissuade people. Happens even on the higher end, where people woujld grind the boring Pandaemonium raids and not even step a foot into the legitimately fun Criterions because a bunch of influencers said Criterion was pointless.

I think for many people it's not just the point that it's harder. For me for example it mostly feels like nonsense to do extremes when they release. Weapon drops will soon be outdated again and mount drops have such a tiny droprate that it's really crazy. For me personally it just feels like 'time-wasting-simulator' to try farm that stuff. And criterion had nothing really rewarding.

I wished for wingmounts for such a long time. Now they are gated behind extremes. Yeah, no thanks. No matter how much I wanted that, I won't play time-wasting-simulator for a mount. I have already so many mounts, but also so less opportunity to use them in this game. So..., just no. I can waste my time go play other games. Non-SE games!

*grabs switch and plays zelda*

[WaxSw]

Oh noes! A piece of content that maybe 5% of people will clear is rescheduled for later? I mean, it was a pandemic and all that, they even delayed 5.3 released by 3 months or so?

The point is that it was the first thing on the cutting block. If raiders were the ones who say what the game does or doesn't then the most important raids would never be cut, yet look at what happened (while casual content like the firmament stayed)

Well, we didin't get a new Bozja either. So overall it's a neutral impact.

Yet casuals got island sanctuary, deep dungeons, the variant dungeons + the majority of the standard patch content which outside raids is tailored to msq and casual audiences

Where? The only fundamentally new activity was Island Sanctuary (which, I admit, was good, but not everyone shares that sentiment). Everything else was more or less around for ages.

See above

You should look into WoW's story to see how it went from an awesome world to a lobby dungeon/raiding simulator

That is a false equivalence since XIV never had the same focus on their open world outside ARR and maybe HW yet it thrived. Its simply not one of building blocks of this game contrary to WoW so saying that the game is failing because of that and its because of the JP raiders is plain mental gymnastics.

"Trying" being the keyword here. The only feature like that we got recently were the character plates (which, I admit, were an awesome idea). And other casual non-combat stuff like Gold Saucer, housing mechanics, chocobo racing etc. hasn't been updated in ages.

Ye ofc, that + content like variant dungeons, deep dungeons, may more side activities and tons of sidequests I'm probably forgetting, the alliance raids, the overall job changes, trusts... XIV if anything is much more worried about its casual audience than the majority of mmos on the market. In fact it does to a fault seeing how they even added very easy modes so even the lowest common denominator can reach the end without having to learn a bit on how to play the game


TLDR: Raiders are not at fault for the direction of the game, nor casuals, is the devs and pointing fingers to the players is a waste of time. We all want the game to be good again

[CNitsah]

XIV's biggest problem has long been the roulette system, but it's taken several years for that to become glaringly apparent. The roulette system incentivizes players to return to irrelevant instanced content by offering them rewards detached from that content: additional XP and tomestones. Because the majority of this content is tied directly to MSQ progression, and much of it cannot yet be completed with AI party members, there must always be a sufficient number of players queuing for roulettes to prevent newer players from being blocked from progressing.

If they added enough other rewarding stuff to do elsewhere in the game such that too few people were queuing for roulettes, it would be disastrous. So every update just feeds the same content into the roulette system. Every dungeon and raid and trial is roughly the same length, because people would stop queuing for certain roulette types if there were a chance they'd get something too long or too unrewarding. It is a prison in which the developers trapped themselves. That's why the post-story gameplay mostly boils down to something more akin to Deep Rock Galactic than a true MMORPG: a lobby where you queue for a game and then play a little instanced content for 10-20 minutes before going back to the lobby.

The solution? I have no idea. I can't really see a viable way out of it.

Yeah, but what you describe is not a roulette problem, the problem you describe is there is nothing else to do but the roulette. The roulette are fine by themselves.

[Iscah]

I think for many people it's not just the point that it's harder. For me for example it mostly feels like nonsense to do extremes when they release. Weapon drops will soon be outdated again and mount drops have such a tiny droprate that it's really crazy. For me personally it just feels like 'time-wasting-simulator' to try farm that stuff.

I've been avoiding extremes up to now but decided to step into it this time.

I don't see the point in farming it but I do like that I've learned to do the fight properly from start to finish at a time when people are expecting to learn the whole fight. So I don't think it was a waste of time for the fights to be programmed and added to the game because I enjoyed learning the fight.

Beyond that, I'm regarding it more like a single-player RPG – I beat the hard thing, yay me, now I don't need to touch it again other than maybe trying for a weapon coffer. Farming and fancy wings can come much later when gear and drop rates are higher.

[CNitsah]

LL is out. It seems 7.1 will continue in the direction of "giving more high end content" hoping people will suddenly jump into them. High end content is the exact opposite of what the game need right now : low barrier entry content with a shelf life. Another hint that goes in the sense that they don't even understand (or choose to ignore) the importance of engagement content/content with longevity.

[CNitsah]

it seems that Yoshi-P at least mentionned the matter of long term content in an interview in Australia. Let's hope they'll get it right...