There’s been a few quotes from interviews and stuff recently that sum things up pretty well and, in many cases, fall in lines with complaints and issues players have raised as far back as the ARR beta phases. (12 years ago?) So many of these issues have been so long standing and have only gotten worse over the years. If it wants to last another 10 years then it really needs to get its act together in so many ways.
"our policy of reducing gameplay-related frustrations was sometimes taken too far, and in some cases, even the hurdles and frustrations that existed to make the gameplay more engaging were eliminated, which made them less fun."
Players said this in the beta phases when many “staple elements” of final fantasy games were stripped out, things like the elemental wheel, monster variety and weaknesses, meaningful status effects and enfeeblements, choice and impact of skill usage, meaningful buffs that weren’t just do x% more damage for y seconds or take x% less damage for y seconds.
things like having fire-based mobs. Weak to water but resistant to ice damage. Or fast and agile monsters like wolves or birds wouldn’t be very tough but would be agile and evasive making them harder to hit. Or big slow hunking turtle types that cant dodge a thing but are very heavily armoured and thus require higher attack or piercing type of damage to break that armor. Or monsters that could be blinded and thus cause that tank buster to totally miss the tank. or paralyzed which might prevent that boss from acting or interrupt actions like the boss walks across the arena to pick up a boulder and throw it at the group but paralysis causes him to fumble it. Maybe could be weighed down with gravity causing him to take longer to cross the area and pick it up giving players more time to prepare or put up shields or something.
Or 1.0 incapacitation system. Where sometimes youd make a choice do you use that skill from behind a mob for increased damage. Or in front of a mob in an attempt to break its horns or something. Hell even combos in 1.2 were better. Because they made positionals carry impact. Missed positional = no combo. Where since ARR missed positional = no measurable impact. (3.0 – 6.0 positionals were mathed out to contribute less than 1% damage. Basically immeasurable once you factor in rng eleemnts like crits or the variations in skill damage from one use to the next. This made positionals worthless.
The you’ve had the gradual removal since ARR of things like tank stances, cleric stance, TP gauges goads, minuets, paeons. Kaiten, bane, shade shift, smokescreen, stuns silences, heavies. Even basic accuracy. .
Remember early coils. Actually needing to use silence on high voltage. Or bind big golems in place so they get petrified and provide cover for the party to hide behind. mechanics that no longer exist yet Aal of these things could open the door to more interesting loot gear and builds. Even 1.0 had better gear stats. For varied bosses. Some bosses were squishy but highly agile so you'd focus more on accuracy and speed over power. Other bosses were sluggish and slow but heavily armoured so your gear would focus less on accuracy and more on breaking that armour. both examples of those hurdles that make things engaging and fun being stripped away. There's no prize in XIV either everything is just disposable trash replaced by the next Item level upgrade. Even in 1.0 gear had lasting value. getting dark light didn't suddenly invalidate your sentinels boots or getting the mog axe didn't totally invalidate your ifrits axe the best weapon or gear changed depending on the encounter you were heading into. This made gear fun and more interesting / engaging and gave players more options. Did you spec your whm into healing magic or enhancing magic both equally viable options.
As it stands though. Gear is nothing. In a recent embers arcade video he sums it up perfectly. Saying he finally got BIS for his viper and felt nothing. No power no satisfaction NOTHING.
The combat was also more fun and interesting the 1.23 battle system was leagues ahead of what we got in ARR and since. At present you can and people have done it to prove it Put your entire job rotation on a single button macro using your Razer, Corsair, Steelseries, Logitech or any other gaming software. press 1 button and effortlessly glide your way through every single encounter. Because the rotation is lifeless static and never changes making it dull and meaningless it feels nothing more than a glorified auto attack.
Then comes skill. “Casuals are terrible and should quit” Casuals aren’t terrible. They are just lazy and a massive part of that is due to the “impossible to fail” design choices the devs have created an atmosphere of laziness over the years. Growing complaints of players not knowing how to play there jobs when the reality is they simply don’t need to. They can press anything or nothing and still win. Why put in 10 times more effort to achieve the same outcome. In endwalker there were videos going around of people beating content using nothing more than auto attacks! Sure it was slow but it demonstrated a lot how “impossible to fail” things really are..
Then just look at the whole unsynced system. What reason is there for players to put in effort or try to improve themselves when such systems exist and these systems also destroy any sense of accomplishment or prestige players earnt from clearing them and obtaining trophy mounts or such. Players suck for one reason. “Theres no reason not to!” you can still get everything. And it destroys the value of so many rewards and the incentive for players to step up to the challenge instead of just wait for the challenge to be stepped down to them.
Then they Also force players to endure the story solo by repeatedly blocking progression. “you cannot progress this quest because you are in a party” the game is an MMO but they dont want you to play with others. which has over time destroyed social circles and groups. Which destroys the building of meaningful relationships bonds and teamwork between players. All that does is drive players away. And it’s a big part of why no one talks in duties or content. Well that and the must mash buttons every second to maintain the same boring rotation you perform in every single boss encounter without ever making a decision on which skill to use at which time. YAWN!! Not suprising then even Yoshi p said he falls asleep in content because its so boring. Famitsu I think it was. Cant find the article at present.
The other big issue the game has is the world is rubbish. Dead, lifeless, static. Compare Eorzea to it’s predecessor Vana’diel. That was a world created 25 years ago and its infinitely more alive and interesting than Eorzea ever can be. You’d think with all the technological advances Eorzea would blow vanadiel away.. but nope compared to Eorzea vanadiel was decades ahead of its time..
One of the best things about FFXI that blows XIV away is simply the game world. Vana'diel Dominates Eorzea in nearly every single aspect. Eorzea is this static shallow dead lifeless world where nothing ever happens and nothing players do matters. You can see this on so many fronts from Fates to the story. The world never changes or evolves. Take the Naadam segment of the MSQ as an example. The Azim Steppe is exactly the same when you leave as it was when you first arrived. Despite all your actions and influence “apparently” causing a big shift to the balance of power between factions. But nope nothing changes it’s exactly the same as it was when you first went there. The world is nearly always empty when you traverse it because the open world is dead and lifeless even its monsters are jokes hence the very term “trash mobs”
Compare that to Vana’diel in XI where the world is a living breathing dynamic ever-changing and virtually every action players took had some real impact on the world. Even that new level 1 player stepping outside of San d'Oria and killing an orc for the first time had a real impact on the game world and the balance of power. The same is true if that same player stepped out and got killed by the orc. It’d have an impact on the balance of power.
This balance of power impacted many things including the
economy, transport options and vendor merchants Whose wares and stocks would change based on who had control of certain regions which would in turn impact prices.
Then you had travel options like airships and stuff that all happen in real-time. You could jump on an airship in Bastok and go up on deck and see it flying over the Konschtat Highlands. And at that same moment a player in the Highlands could look up into the sky and see that airship flying overhead. Small details but made the world feel connected and alive.
Another comparison between the worlds is just variety. Eorzea. Basically, every zone is just a big bland open space with a slightly different colour pallete. However, in Vana'diel every zone was vastly different and many of them had unique mechanics and elements that helped bring them to life. You had outdoor zones, indoor zones, sky zones, sea zones, underground tunnel zones.. all with different mechanics and puzzles. Some Examples include The Toraimarai Canal with its 3 Mage gate requiring a white balck and red mage to work together to open or a Moon Orb. Ifrits Cauldron where you could use ice clusters to douse the flames and open paths, The Garleige Citadel with its gate breeches needing people to stand on platforms to open gates, The Eldieme Necropolis with its gate switches, Sea serpents grotto with its underground caves and hidden doors. The quicksand caves with its weighted platforms. 1 Galka or 3 Taru to weigh it down and open the door. The Sacrarium with its maze that changed every game day even if you were in the middle of it you would see the walls moving around you. You could even run around inside a giant tree. Or go mining in actual mines. Not to mention all the castles and towers you could explore. So much more varied and diverse than Eorzea where every single zone is just a big open mostly empty space.
You also big events like like besieged and campaigns that impacted the game world based on outcomes. Beasties invaded Aht Urhgan you might find the chocobo npc has been kidnapped and you can’t hire a chocobo or use the runic portal to teleport because they took the Astral ccandescance when they invaded and players would need to go and get it back and rescue the kidnapped npcs.
Or you could simply catch a ferry and find yourself being randomly attacked and boarded by pirates. There were so many of these things that helped bring the world to life. And to add to that just players.. in Vana’diel you never knew what you’d see the next time you ran through a zone, you might see nothing, you might see players EXP farming, you might see players doing a mission or quest boss, or hunting / killing a NM or ZNM, WSNM doing skill up parties or any number of things.
Then there are monsters. Eorzea is dull and boring and there’s no danger or peril. You can run past monsters 20 levels higher than you and not bat an eyelid because in 3 steps they’ll stop chasing you. And mobs are considered trash because they’re so weak and puny players literally just round them up by the dozens and aoe them all down without breaking a sweat. and every single boss in Eorzea is exactly the same. Same skills in the same sequence following the exact saem rotation against yet another boss with exactly the same weaknesses and strengths as every other boss, doing the same attacks at the same time in every single fight scripted to death boring and predictable. Which again leads to many of the games problems.
In Vana’diel virtually every single monster can and would rip not just you but your whole party to shreds if you weren’t careful. They actually felt like monsters and they all felt different to fight.
It amazes me how Vana’diel was a world created around 25 years ago on what is now incredibly dated code and hardware technology yet is so much deeper, more complex and actually alive than what they created with Eorzea. Where the world is shallow dead and lifeless and nothing you do matters which is a big part of why the game feels so boring. Especially when combined with the fact that’s it’s often harder to lose a fight than it is to win it.
So many of the problems in the game today have existed since before ARRs release. Many have even been bought up frequently on the forums and even the beta forums before that. You can go back to topics 10 years ago and find topics on the same subjects people are discussing now like they’re new issues that haven’t existed for over 10 years already.
And then when you scroll the comments of some recent you tube videos you see a hell of a lot of yeah we said this years ago but no one listened. To quick to defend Yoshi-p..
If its going to survive 10 years they need to make some big and fairly drastic changes
HOLY HELL this is longer than i realised. could keep going too but lets not.
TLDR- Every issue players are complaining about has existed for over 10 years.
Originally Posted by BabyYoda
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