Dear SE: Please listen to actual players, not just content creators

[0blivion]

As a midcore player (which is to say, everything up to and including Savage/Chaotic/48man)... I mean, it's fine. The normal mode content in Dawntrail is borderline brainless, just less brainless than EW/ShB. The people who think that's too hard? They want easy. That is beyond what "accessible" entails. But to be honest, I think they could implement a story mode to circumvent that, perhaps as an extension of the trust system.

[Rawazh]

I completely agree, i'm tired to feel excluded of all the cool content with the awesome glams and mounts, because it's set on savage difficulty.
I was super excited to explore the forked tower, because i thought it would be like castrum/DR or Dalriada - instead i'm stuck outside, forced to watch hardcore gamers having fun, while all i have is 3 CE, two fates and a pot that is trying to kill me in a cave.
I'm tired of being gatekeeped from the lore content and fun because i'm getting too old without much time to commit for hours every day to learn 500 mecanics and join 50 discords in hope to set a foot in any new content.

I'm tired to see the same hardcore players spitting on the game every chance they get because they dare get bored for one second between ultimates / chaos / savage / orthos / criterion dungeons / BA / DRS and now Forked Tower

Thank you for giving us, 3 quests a day with tribes, one quest a patch with Hildy, 1 dungeon, one trial with awful color settings, one unreal 15mins a week, one alliance raid with the worst glam you could possibly find, roulettes that always end up in cristal tower, a lotery system with an impossible chance to win a house, treasure maps with the worst luck and drop rate.

Surely, for people who keep the game alive paying every months, you reward us well, by telling us all the money you get from us is allocated to please people who don't care about the game at all - Can you stop this toxic relationship you have with them please? No one cares about their videos on youtube, they are irrelevant for the majority of the player base.

[Sililos]

Chat bubbles.

Proof in 2 words they listen to content creators over pretty much anyone else.

Mike Preach wanted chat bubbles, Mike Preach is getting chat bubbles.
Heh at least it was Ultimates that appeared to pick up the bill for that feature, Though lets be real here, adding one new feature shouldn't "Cost us a raid tier" to quote a dated meme from another MMO.
Not that i want too see Hardcore players lose out on content so others can get their slice of the cake.
SE just need to start investing in their game so that all 3 tiers of players can be covered for content to carry them through each patch. (Casual, Midcore, Hardcore).

If SE were smart, they would cater too the casual player base and work their way UP so that the larger portion of the player base has content, instead of top down.
Casual and normal content is getting more difficult i feel, Yoshi-P Has said they are trying to make things more difficult. All that's doing is alienating a larger chunk of the player base so Hardcore can enjoy themselves.
Im sorry SE, but you cant manufacture Hardcore players by making low end content more challenging, you just drive off the casual player base. Yes this makes player skill line go up on paper, But its not because the player base is improving, its just shaving off the casual player base making the existing Hardcore appear as a larger portion of the population, and most of them quit once they get their clears then return next patch while Casual and Midcore when they have something to do stick around roleplaying or enjoying they world. They play because they like the game, not because it gives them challenging content for a couple of weeks. (or days)

[Hastatus]

FFXIV feels unwelcoming when prioritizing Savage and cutting Normal FT.

I've spent all day in a state of befuddlement when thinking about FFXIV. I couldn't even watch the rest of the Live Letter. You didn't have the money/resources(?) to make both a Normal and a Savage version for the OC Raid and chose to make only the Savage version? Shock. Bewilderment. Frustration. This is one of the most baffling things I have heard in years. Am I completely wrong in thinking that there are fewer Savage and Ultimate raiders? Do Savage and Ultimate raiders not play the base game? Are only Savage and Ultimate raiders subscribed? Is it that Savage and Ultimate raiders spend more in the cash shop? Who is all the money FFXIV gets coming from: is it the Savage and Ultimate raiders? Am I mistaken in my belief that Savage and Ultimate raiders are the minority? I thought FFXIV had at least a million players: There are roughly 113865 characters who have cleared the Chaotic Raid. Am I wrong that the Savage and Ultimate Raiders only make up about 10-12% of the player base at most? Are the Normal-difficulty players the minority, which would make the Savage and Ultimate players the normal players? The accounting and math do not compute. The only logical thing that would make any sense is that your standard developmental process is to always begin designing the hardest content first and then work your way backwards so when time and or money ran out you were left with only the Savage version and an incomplete Normal version? But if you had spent time and money on the Normal version you would release it later, surely?...nope poof gone, better luck next time. I am at a loss. There were two patients on the table: what made Savage the choice if only one could be saved? Someone influenced you...who was it?

Who is now the target audience of FFXIV? Taking only OC players into consideration and using imaginary numbers as an example: Does it really seem best for content to be engaging to 20% of OC players and inaccessible to 80%? Or Accessible to 100% and boring for 10%? Many Savage and Ultimate raiders would still have fun playing with others. It did not escape my notice that you said there were over 400 clears of the tower to date but never mentioned how many unique characters or players have actually cleared. I saw one estimate from PC Gamer suggesting about 2% of the total player base may have cleared FT to date. If you knew FT was aimed at only a small percentage of the player base why did you not put a warning when players enter OC that grinding certain things in the OC might be a complete waste of their time because the OC's current only raid statistically might not be for them?

I used to think your target audience was everyone and you wanted as many people as possible to advance into harder content but you seem to keep cutting the content normal people would need to be able to make the climb to meet your lofty expectations. Why is Savage and Ultimate becoming the normal place to spend so much of your...no wait...OUR money for FFXIV battle content?

P.S. At least the 100 clears of FT: Blood makes more sense now: it was probably the achievement for the now-cut non-Savage version. You might want to delete that too and put the properly corresponding 10-clear achievement like it is for BA, DSR, and most Savage Raid tiers. I also cannot remember any previous instance where a TT card was a Savage-only reward.

[Sifpatata]

In conclusion completely ignore what Arthars wants, for him all content should be hardcore.

[Kisshu]

didnt they say something about delubrum was too accessible so they made fork tower less accessible at the LL? not sure why they want content being played by less people

From my understanding, this was in regards to the "want it easier to enter FT with a premade" question. They seem to think it was too easy to enter DRS, and that's why they chose to have the current way. And for some reason they look at content of how many people can clear content in x amount of time as a metric for design.

The team has time and time again failed to anticipate how a normal playerbase will interact with content.

[TaleraRistain]

In conclusion completely ignore what Arthars wants, for him all content should be hardcore.

Yeah he's on Twitter right now saying crap like this because there's not a new Ultimate in 7.3

"FF14 went from a major turn around to become the best expansion in terms of amount content, into now possibly back to the EW slog era"

And I've seen similar sentiment from other streamers. Basically 7.3 has "nothing" because it doesn't have an Ultimate. They are so completely divorced from the actual player base and what the actual player base spends their time on. SE needs to stop listening to them.

[Volgia]

I remember when there were discussions around whenever people liked DT or not, and they started pointing out content creators opinions to back up their arguments, so I guess if you don't want SE to cater to youtubers or streamers, mayhaps it's time to stop listening to them ourselves.

[Kisshu]

Yeah he's on Twitter right now saying crap like this because there's not a new Ultimate in 7.3

"FF14 went from a major turn around to become the best expansion in terms of amount content, into now possibly back to the EW slog era"

And I've seen similar sentiment from other streamers. Basically 7.3 has "nothing" because it doesn't have an Ultimate. They are so completely divorced from the actual player base and what the actual player base spends their time on. SE needs to stop listening to them.

This whole situation just reminds me of this meme.

[Volgia]

This whole situation just reminds me of this meme.

This dichotomy is probably one of the issues with the community of this game. Like don't get me wrong, I like to raid (Though I don't like to raid Ultimates) but it'd benefit me 100000000% more if the non-raiding part of the game wasn't boring as heck.

For instance during Endwalker one of my biggest complaints was that Expert dungeons ended up being nothing but a dumbed down version of mechanics with a DPS race. It's a dungeon, it doesn't have or need body mechs or DPS checks, you can literally do anything creative with it.