Why casual players don't 'just leave'

[Lilapop]

The problem here is that you really (ironically) can’t treat anything from the FFXIV forums as representative of anything from inside the game itself.

I’ve been playing since 1.0 and I can count on one hand the amount of times I’ve seen anyone maliciously call others out, and even in those rare cases usually nobody will respond anyway. And one of those times was my own fault in 2.0 for thinking I could totally get away with joining a clear party of Final Coil - Turn 2. I was absolutely not lol and got heavily abused ofc but I just apologised and left and that was the last I ever heard of it. Oh, and this was on Balmung lol

Basically you have to treat the ‘ffxiv forum community’ and the ‘ffxiv in-game community’ as completely different entities.

(Certain) People on these forums seems to revel in maliciously creating ‘gotcha’ moments of assumed superiority instead of actual conversation or feedback about the game. I can hazard a few guesses as to why lol but that’s a different story. But if you read the forums without having experienced the in-game community, I can see why you’d expect it to an extremely hostile and volatile situation where any moment you’re going to get blown up at for doing 4 dps less than the maximum value lol ( obviously this is an exaggeration for humorous effect I am not literally saying that 4 dps off max is unacceptable)

There've been some pretty insane horror stories of the in-game community that make the forum community look benevolent, in fairness. It's largely a "mileage may vary" type of deal.

[Colt47]

Another consideration is that it's entirely possible to in fact be playing other games but still want to play this one too. At present I also play:

6 gacha games, including Zenless Zone Zero where the only thing left for me to do is the hardest commissions, taking them on one by one.
Marvel Rivals
Pal World
Baldur's Gate 3

I'm clearly not adverse to RPGs, exploring an open world, collecting stuff, mindlessly grinding, doing PVP, or getting my balls busted with individual challenges, but for some reason Final Fantasy 14 doesn't really care if I'm here, and a lot of the playerbase outright HATES my presence.

Was I truly, horribly misinformed about what Final Fantasy 14 was? Least of all "friendly and welcoming"? Who was this MMO even for then if I mistook myself as part (not all, just PART) of the intended audience? I can indeed take my money elsewhere, but I was almost certain I wanted to spend it here and told to fuck off instead.

This isn't really about getting tired of an existing game since all games are like that. This is more a question of whether or not feedback going to the developers is related to people growing tired of the game or the game going in a direction that doesn't fit the audience. The only thing that differentiated FFXIV from other MMOs was the fact it had a much lower raid focus than other MMOs and went more with the accessible but grindy direction. When they moved away from that they basically put all their chips into the MSQ and hardcore raiding, which in truth is already owned by other MMOs that handle it way better than this game. That's why you don't see Asmongold or other major streamers engage with FFXIV much because it just isn't that kind of game.

Also, this entire conversation gets lost with these left field "what is really difficult?" discussions because difficulty is such a nebulous term. If someone masters a savage fight in this game the fight suddenly becomes doable in the same time-frame as doing an alliance roulette, so I guess it isn't difficult at that point in time, but then how many weeks did it take to get to that point? And the huge problem with the savage raiding and hardmode raid focus is the drain on the economy and lack of flexibility. Someone either goes part-time job on the savage content or not at all, and it comes with strings attached in the form of binding yourself to a group of people for an extended period of time. Socially the US DCs aren't really built well for this and only scant few groups stick together through an entire tier.

[Connor]

There've been some pretty insane horror stories of the in-game community that make the forum community look benevolent, in fairness. It's largely a "mileage may vary" type of deal.

True; it’s probably related to everything from what server you’re on to what groups you run with, what kind of fc you’re in etc etc. It’s not like there aren’t ’bad eggs’ in on either ‘side’ of the community. Naturally, it’s more nuanced than just ‘forum bad game good’ lol.

Still, I would maintain that I think you’re ‘generally’ less likely to get hit with aggression in-game than on the forums. Whether that’s because of lack of moderation on the forums or over-moderation in-game or whatever the reason turns out to be.

I guess it could be more accurate to say ‘(Certain) people in-game aren’t as overtly aggressive as you see on the forums; but that’s not to say they’re not the same and just aren’t articulating it publicly lol.

[Lilapop]

True; it’s probably related to everything from what server you’re on to what groups you run with, what kind of fc you’re in etc etc. It’s not like there aren’t ’bad eggs’ in on either ‘side’ of the community. Naturally, it’s more nuanced than just ‘forum bad game good’ lol.

Still, I would maintain that I think you’re ‘generally’ less likely to get hit with aggression in-game than on the forums. Whether that’s because of lack of moderation on the forums or over-moderation in-game or whatever the reason turns out to be.

I guess it could be more accurate to say ‘(Certain) people in-game aren’t as overtly aggressive as you see on the forums; but that’s not to say they’re not the same and just aren’t articulating it publicly lol.

Makes sense, forums at this moment seem to be full of people who can't seem to stand the current state of the game and people encountered in-game obviously at least tolerate it enough to still get some type of joy from playing.

Not completely unrelated, but I recently encountered a healer in my roulettes not healing, I asked the guy to hear, I got hit with a "you dont pay my sub" unironically. Needless to say we wiped once and almost wiped again. As one can imagine, the guy was a legend mentor. On the forums the typical experience is either a sound conversation or someone insulting your very existence for disagreeing.

[NegativeS]

A level 1 player has lots to do, such as getting to level 100. I don't find any of the new players I'm meeting to be bored. If anything, it's the level 100s that sometimes say they are bored.

Sorry, I was trying to be cheeky with a Mafia City meme.

I disagree with this statement. The "aging audience" only applies to MMORPGs that put off new players. If the game has a reputation of not being playable without 10 years of experience getting good, 40 addons, an MMO mouse, then of course it won't get any new players sticking around, resulting in an aging audience.

This is... pretty much every popular MMO.

...as he put it, you clearly have an agenda and a bias in saying that no other MMORPG on the market does any of those things. It's a very provably false declaration, extremely silly to suggest, and as such, I don't believe any amount of effort put into convincing you otherwise would make any difference.

"the point i'm making is so obvious that i'm not even going to make the point"

If I had a nickel for every time I've seen this on this forum, I'd be able to buy a double cheeseburger meal from the McDonalds down the street.

Doubt this game is as good as you make it sound, it's pretty mediocre actually.

I didn't say that the game was good, I said that it was the last MMO where true casuals actually have something to do.

Aksually.. Genshin is not an MMO

I know. I just hear it talked about so much in MMO spaces that I figured I would at least mention it. That's partly why it got 'yeah okay buddy whatever you say'.

Then I would like fights in FF14 to be more like WoW.

ESO just announced they are no longer doing expansions. Before this announcement they cut new content nearly in half. In 2024 they moved a feature that used to come with expansions to the cash shop instead.

They are no longer to committing to new content at all - they announced nebulous seasons with no commitment to any volume of content or time frames. Their cash shop which puts most new items into RNG loot boxes is one of the worst on the market if you care about cosmetics and housing. They even listed cash shop items in their latest letter as upcoming content. Some people have spent $700 for a mount due to RNG.

Oh cool, another one I can add to the maintenance mode pile.

[Lilapop]

Because the casuals are having fun, and the vets are just perpetually seething over them

Where's this fun? You might be the only casual satisfied with this expansion. The "vets" as definitely not the ones seething at this moment.

[NamiRocket]

The problem is that XIV used to have a more balanced approach to this and we had a lot of the WoW model in fights as well. XIV also added its own touch with very specific mechanics that weren't constantly about playing DDR.
So yeah actually, as a XIV vet I'd like fights in XIV to be more like WoW too, because that's what they used to be like. And yet it wasn't fully copying WoW, it was XIV, not WoW, and it played like XIV, not WoW. If it played like WoW I'd be playing WoW.

I mean, being fair, we can still see and play all those fights. It's pretty clear that raid fights used to be a lot more like they are in WoW. But, and forgive me for this, I think this is just a difference in taste. That raid content feels like a pale imitation of what WoW does and not at all as unique to FFXIV as you suggest. I think Stormblood's changes to how this game does raiding was an extremely welcome change and, while they can definitely stand to shake things up again, I also don't think going backwards is the answer to that.

[Vintersol]

For me, the game gives me the best of all (mmo) worlds. Most people want a simple loot grinder, the dopamine is real. I can name at least one game which makes a certain thing better than ffxiv, but the whole package is good and better than in most other games.

[Valence]

I mean, being fair, we can still see and play all those fights. It's pretty clear that raid fights used to be a lot more like they are in WoW. But, and forgive me for this, I think this is just a difference in taste. That raid content feels like a pale imitation of what WoW does and not at all as unique to FFXIV as you suggest. I think Stormblood's changes to how this game does raiding was an extremely welcome change and, while they can definitely stand to shake things up again, I also don't think going backwards is the answer to that.

You can't judge older content by playing it with the newer battle system added to crazy powercreep. Old stuff is just broken and insipid now. Old stuff wasn't designed to challenge and engage with what the current game does.

There is a question of tastes, and there is a question of the actual void left in the trail of everything that's been blown to pieces by the devs over expansions. If you're fine with the sorry state of the current battle system, the current job homogenization and lack of identity, the constant samey bosses in a circle square arena regurgitating the same stack markers or donut telegraphs, then yes, you'll not see what the game used to be, because all of those issues didn't really exist yet and started being a thing at various points in the game's history.

This has never been about going back to the purity of an idealized model of the past, but to point out at everything that's been lost on the way because the last time the game ever added something actually new to its battle system was Stormblood with the gauges.

[Sigma5]

The fun for casuals like myself is dungeon runs and hilarious stuff that happens in them and story content too, but all the people that talk trash have 4k hours or more, always. I'd consider those people vets. And after those 4k or more hours they still hate sprouts and are still paying a sub for some reason, and that's the thing that doesn't make sense.