Why is the game going down every expasion?

[ddwarbird]

Every dungeon is now "Avoid stuff on floor" and "Instant Death Galore" this expansion and Square Enix asked themselves why they lost so many players. I personally don't have any motivation to do any dungeon grinding for Dawntrail because the dungeons feel cheap, not fun and challenging but cheap a lot of the time, especially for classes that have no inherent or limited mobility skills like Astrologian and White Mage. The glaring hallway dungeon design is something that became really obvious in Dawntrail and it even bled over into Final Fantasy XVI because that seemed to be all that team of Square Enix was capable of doing. I think a lot of people are tired of being built up as the "Warrior of Light" and then getting one-shot by some cheap boss mechanic every dungeon/raid.

I am sure it is enjoyable if you can ping-pong around the arena as a Viper or Reaper.

The OP is a Warrior too and don't Warrior's essentially make healers obsolete with their self-healing. I think Square Enix needs to restore the trinity to give all three roles a place again because having a Warrior do all 3 roles themselves is a bit depressing.

[SkankyRoe]

The glaring hallway dungeon design is something that became really obvious in Dawntrail and it even bled over into Final Fantasy XVI because that seemed to be all that team of Square Enix was capable of doing.

Blame FFX for introducing the hallway design. Also I'll take Dawntrail's hallway dungeons over XIII's hallway everythings.

[ddwarbird]

I think FFXIII was way way worse for that, but I do take your point, FFX had the same problem but that game was turn based so I can forgive it's flaws, plus it served the story, being a pilgrimage from one area to another. There is no need for dungeons in FFXIV to be so linear, some branching paths to the same bosses with different content/mobs in them would not go a miss. Maybe something like "Northern Crater" from FFVII where you can pick one of three pathways to get down to the same boss. However FFXIV does seem to be "Hallway everything", especially when you start to notice how segmented and instanced the world map is, it begins to feel very limited.

I think that is why a lot of players left, once the story tanked, people were less willing to forgive the games flaws and linear design.

Final Fantasy in general has had a major identity crisis since 10, with the latest mainline entry playing more like Devil May Cry then an actual RPG.

[Souljacker]

The OP is a Warrior too and don't Warrior's essentially make healers obsolete with their self-healing. I think Square Enix needs to restore the trinity to give all three roles a place again because having a Warrior do all 3 roles themselves is a bit depressing.

Couldn't agree more. SE leaning on everything being a DPS - it's so anti-everything FF was through the years. But I blame the players. It's honestly exhausting to read some of the discussions here by folks who are upset they only get 1 or 2 DPS buttons to press. YOU ARE A HEALER. Your job, by definition, *should* be *healing*. Look at that BLM thread where folks are complaining that BLM "Feels like a healer" now because SE dumped Enochian. I mean, I just can't even with some of this stuff.

The noise from the community is so loud that SE has no choice but to lean into what the community wants, and that's basically everyone as DPS (and not JUST a DPS, a DPS with lots of buttons and clocks and timers to manage). The encounters get tuned around healers doing x percentage of DPS, and here we are where the other jobs need to be able to compensate for the diverted attention of what used to be a required role.

[ddwarbird]

Yes, exactly, I want to be a "HEALER", not a DPS or I would have picked it. It annoys me that healers are relegated to "back-up DPS" because Square wants to spend more time praising tanks with free self-healing abilities. Do I need to go to Square Enix, cap in hand and be like "Please sir, can I do my role?"

[Ellona_Andrivari]

Yes, exactly, I want to be a "HEALER", not a DPS or I would have picked it. It annoys me that healers are relegated to "back-up DPS" because Square wants to spend more time praising tanks with free self-healing abilities. Do I need to go to Square Enix, cap in hand and be like "Please sir, can I do my role?"

Found the kid from the WHM class story.