Disappointed With XIV Direction

[Silhart]

I've been frustrated with the game's direction since Endwalker. My frustration lies mostly with the job design, so I hope OP doesn't mind me commenting on this aspect of the game even if it wasn't mentioned in the original post. I was primarily a Monk main, and Dawntrail's media tour angered me enough to unsub and walk away from the game. After a few months I calmed down, adjusted my expectations and recently returned to the game with new plans of taking Dragoon to Dawntrail--a job that still looked somewhat enjoyable.

And then I experienced the 7.1 DRG changes first-hand.

Needless to say, those plans have gone up in flames. I don't even feel frustration anymore - just apathy. The devs and the general community (outside of these forums) constantly push for job design to be overly simplistic and free of any friction. Despite my pet grievances in Shadowbringers (such as SE deleting Scholar from the game), I enjoyed myself because there was a healthy mix of simple and busy playstyles to cater to all kinds of players. But it's clear to me now that there is no longer any room for players who enjoy busy playstyles. The devs are hellbent on pruning what little gameplay the jobs have left in order to appease the players who complain that it's "bad game design" when they can't play a job 100% perfectly. Yeah, I am holding those players responsible. Time and time again I've dealt with people who argue that things like positionals, buff timers, DoTs, randomness, and proc management are bad for the game because they're "tedious", "clunky", "pointless micromanagement", "fake difficulty" or whatever buzzword people use to paint something as bad game design just because it doesn't align with their personal tastes, lol. Those voices are the ones driving the game's direction. It's sad because I've identified SAM as a job I could enjoy playing now, but knowing its gameplay is an anomaly with respect to the game's overall direction kills my motivation to put any long-term investment in it--same goes for any other job I could potentially enjoy. Why bother learning the intricacies of Samurai optimisation when someone can just complain about Meikyo Acceleration and Bana Realignment being "unintuitive" and get the devs to remove the things I find enjoyable about the job? I wouldn't get too attached to Pictomancer either: watch as their motif hardcasts are removed in future and for people to justify this change saying "not playing the game for 4 seconds every motif cast was bad game design" lol.

I don't want to stay subbed to a game where I am constantly worried about future patches and what they'll remove from the jobs I enjoy. I've debated using the rest of my sub to argue on these forums--especially against some of the more bizarre takes I've seen in the 123 combo thread--but much like Hallarem above (I like your WoL, by the way), I no longer care enough to push back. I don't see the point anyway - the community outside of these forums seem happy with the game as it is now, and I've been hearing the siren call of WoW in my ears, so none of this will really matter once my sub is up.

[Hycinthus]

The devs are hellbent on pruning what little gameplay the jobs have left in order to appease the players who complain that it's "bad game design" when they can't play a job 100% perfectly. Yeah, I am holding those players responsible. Time and time again I've dealt with people who argue that things like positionals, buff timers, DoTs, randomness, and proc management are bad for the game because they're "tedious", "clunky", "pointless micromanagement", "fake difficulty" or whatever buzzword people use to paint something as bad game design just because it doesn't align with their personal tastes, lol.

SE went overboard with the pruning -- and this over-pruning mentality just permeates across job design and game design overall.

I understand that Toto-Rak was not popular with most people, but at the very least you could go about collecting those energy sprites in different ways if you wished, and the map was wild enough that you could take some wacky paths and not play it through exactly the same each time. And I think it's fair to extrapolate that design choice out past the ARR dungeon redesigns to see that they're taking this hyper streamlined amusement park approach to all the new content which does not allow for variety or unpredictability at all.

To use another example, Toto-Rak, also suffers from pruning. The multi-hallway dungeon concept has always been criticized by players, because eventually people would always just use the most optimized route.

However, the point is more about having those options, even if people don't use them. Let people make mistakes. Let new players take the non-optimized route. It would make the experience less like having the guardrails on all the time.

[BabyYoda]

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FFXIV dev thinks that making job simple will improve players reacting to mechanics, which is the wrongest thing you can imagine