Chaotic Alliance Raid: More Content for Professional Gamers

[Eyrilona]

Please, that argument is just as dishonest as the "1%" one. Which classes are you progressing the story on? Combat classes. You don't even have a choice, the game forces you. It also forces you reach certain level and gear milestones to progress. It forces you to choose a starting combat class when you create a character, and forces you to play only on that class, doing combat activities like killing enemies for quite a while as well. Unlocking non-combat activities except for "standing around in the starter cities" is also locked behind reaching certain levels with at least one combat class or MSQ progression. Yes, this is first and foremost, a combat MMORPG. And we are talking about a combat duty here. And not just any duty, but one for endgame characters. When a new major patch releases, it also always features new combat content first and foremost, everything else comes secondary.

The core of FFXIV upon release was to play through the narrative. It didn't even have a Savage mode or an Ultimate yet, those were game modes tacked on later after some experimentation just as a thing to see how far they could push it, but in the entire Final Fantasy series such special optional battles have always been entirely optional side content, often located on isolated islands on the world that could only be visited in the very last chapters of the game. This game was not sold as a combat-first game. The goal of the game was to experience the adventure of getting to explore Eorzea and repel the threat of the Garlemald Empire. It was never about defeating the Ultima Weapon at its highest possible difficulty.

That lately we have only received some very underwhelming narrative, no exploration, and nothing really to do outside of raiding, is a sign that this high-end combat side content has hijacked the entire direction of the game, but it does NOT make it mean that we all opted in for that when we bought what you now want to call a primarily "combat oriented" game.

For your "Combat oriented", I will raise you a "Storytelling oriented", an "Exploration oriented", a "Community oriented", even a "Best online Mahjong simulator around", and a lot of other things that could make equal claim to being the soul of FFXIV.