Chaotic Alliance Raid: More Content for Professional Gamers

[AllenThyl]

The core of FFXIV upon release was to play through the narrative.

With a combat class. Having to do combat duties / dungeons / activities while on a combat class. Only able to progress the narrative while on a combat class. Yes, it's in the "R" of "MMORPG". There are RPGs that don't feature combat. They have a narrative, and you progress that narrative without combat. They are simply other games. How is that so hard to grasp? This is simply not one of those games. Also, regarding your "it was established as a title in the famous Storytelling JRPG game series Final Fantasy, but with MMO features": All the mainline games heavily feature and require combat throughout the whole narrative. Even when you spend 80% of the playtrough with Triple Triad, the narrative is only advanced by successfully navigating combat encounters. In fact, in many of the installments of "the famous Storytelling JRPG game series Final Fantasy", there are even less non-combat activities.

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.

People afk in Limsa, doesn't make this not a combat game, because that's the main activity. The story skip only allows access to all content of the previous expansion, not the current one. To get access to current endgame, it's combat all the way until the end. Combat is what gets the most development time, it's what's prioritized during announcements and in patch notes. And further, and this is the most important point, it's what this thread is about. A combat activity. It's especially grating when this thread is so derisive of people engaging in that combat content, when the combat content itself is one of the major game defining features. Racing games allow customization of the car, are they not racing games then? FPS games allow customization of player character and weapon, some feature storylines. Are they not FPS games then? In Farming Simulator you can just drive around not doing any farming, doesn't mean it's not a farming game.