I love the game so much…

[Shistar]

Although,I know it sounds weird but sometimes our current reality is depressing that I prefer to go on an adventure in eorzea and experience what my character experienced as well.

My honest question to the community is,Do you guys ever wonder the same?

If I was a powerful mage, a rich noble that gets to chill all day and enjoy life, or a similarly OP luck roll, then sure, why not!
Anything else, I'd be scared to be there. Maybe in Sharlayan I'd have a chance, but Eorzea is really scary for a normal person. Have you seen the size of those hornets...? :'D I think I'll pass!


Tbh, even as the WoL it'd be difficult. The game never really touches on it except the DRK quests, but going through all of that must be pretty traumatic. The WoL is dealing with it like a champ lol some strong compartmentalization going on there.

[XtremePrime]

Let me explain what I mean by this.I love the npcs,the locations,the fantasy aspect and everything in between that I get immersed to the point that I wish It was my reality instead of the world we currently live in.Although,I know it sounds weird but sometimes our current reality is depressing that I prefer to go on an adventure in eorzea and experience what my character experienced as well.

My honest question to the community is,Do you guys ever wonder the same?

Personally I have, and I'd sure love to live in a world filled with magic, even if I don't get the opportunity to be the Warrior of Light. Maybe it's because of real world bias, but I'd be blown away and fascinated by the usage of crystals to power things, just see adventurers come and go in the city from the mightiest of warriors to the most charming of bards. Being able to live in a world with not just humans, but also all the other allied races (elezen, roe, au ra, lala, miqote, viera, hroth, etc) would be incredible!
I know Eorzea is not all sunshine and roses, there's a lot of dark aspects deep down in the city states, but for the magic of it, the fantasy, the people, I'd take that trade <3

You stay safe out there, and hope you have a most joyous and exciting adventure in Eorzea! <3

[Connor]

Honestly I can understand how the OP feels. I’ve been the way same at many points; I think everyone turns to things like gaming for escapism at some point.

That said, Eorzea kinda depresses me too now to be honest. It feels like over the years they’ve gradually stopped caring about world-building, or just generally putting in real effort to create a compelling world. They rely on attention-grabs by referencing previous games and drawing from their elements only for them to have extremely little payoff or so little relevance to anything that you have to question why they’re even making the reference in the first place. Even things like them not giving a shit about how job skills actually relate to their lore/identity (i.e Seraphism).

I guess to put it simply, it feels like they’re draining the life out of the ‘world’ they’ve built all for the sake of efficiency, profit and a heavy focus on visual spectacle / aesthetic presentation in the absence of actual conceptual development (doesn’t matter what it means or why just make it look good).

And, I don’t say that in the spirit of ‘this game sucks’ or solely out of negativity. Having played FFXIV since like 1.23 (I wanted to be a Black Mage lol) I’ve seen the game do almost everything so much better than it does now. And that’s coming from someone who enjoyed Endwalker’s story lol which I think most people did not? I mean, it was hammy as hell and endlessly predictable, but it felt like they genuinely cared about creating an emotional payoff for what came before, like in Ultima Thule (even though it was extremely obvious they’d be back within the next 5 minutes lol)

Seeing something so beloved slide so far downhill does suck. I think sometimes what comes across as ‘negativity’ is people trying to protect themselves from disappointment, or wanting to see the game improve itself (but not necessarily expressing that in the proper way lol).

[Tatiana]

Wow not people dooming on the OP's joy, I don't understand that mentality at all..There's no reason to rain on someone else's parade just because you've become cynical. For me, it's lovely to see someone who has that much love and comes away from FFXIV with it being something very positive in their life.

FFXIV is an incredible game, and while I personally don't daydream about wandering Eorzea IRL (though I have been interested in taking a look at the cookbooks), I have always advocated that the developers really should look into ways that encourage and motivate players to leave Limsa or Gridania and explore the world they've built. Yeah, the world is beautiful, the lore is interesting, so they should be utilizing those strengths in their content development to get people out there and interacting with the games world more and move beyond just the FATE system for open world content. Many people who are long term players such as myself do wish for a change up in the content formula to some degree and there are a lot of new games out there that encourage exploration that FFXIV could take inspiration from such as GACHA games with map completion and unlockable lore and cosmetics (not adding GACHA systems), GW2 for the same reasons, and Soulframe (which for a pre-alpha game has amazing potential in this department)

I love that the OP has so much love for FFXIV, and that should inspire the developers to enhance that experience for all of their players and shake the game out of being just a lobby to queue for instanced content for many people.

[Atma]

I would say this creates a bit of a catch-22 for me, cause I love the world of FFXIV and the environments within it. We need to start having more reason to be out in that world.

It'd be nice to see them drastically increase the XP rewards for side quests, which these days mostly go ignored. Making them into a viable and fun way to level up additional jobs again (instead of a sliver at a time) would be good. Restoring FATES to their former 2.0 glory (huge groups of people running around NThanalan) would also be...nice? It's not like levelling things up is 'hard', so don't know why we're still dealing with that xp being drastically reduced from the glory days.

Gathering needs a ground-up revamp.

We need more reasons to get people out in the world so it feels like a living, breathing place instead of sitting at FC houses queuing for roulettes. For several expansions now, the world is just a place you 'pass through' as you're going through the MSQ, not a place you go to and spend any real meaningful time in. And it sucks, cause it feels like something they spend a lot of time on, but every small town you go to for an MSQ quest is 'thanks, just visiting. 30 minutes from now, you'll never see me again.

[TaleraRistain]

Nah, escapism is fine and I enjoy the game well enough but I wouldn't want to live there.

[Rabblerabble]

Let me explain what I mean by this.I love the npcs,the locations,the fantasy aspect and everything in between that I get immersed to the point that I wish It was my reality instead of the world we currently live in.Although,I know it sounds weird but sometimes our current reality is depressing that I prefer to go on an adventure in eorzea and experience what my character experienced as well.

My honest question to the community is,Do you guys ever wonder the same?

I know Yoshi and the team won’t see this but I want to thank them all from the bottom of my heart for making this game and I hope it continues for more years to come

Thanks for being a ray of sunshine. Really.

[TeresaFortell]

Honestly I can understand how the OP feels. I’ve been the way same at many points; I think everyone turns to things like gaming for escapism at some point.

That said, Eorzea kinda depresses me too now to be honest. It feels like over the years they’ve gradually stopped caring about world-building, or just generally putting in real effort to create a compelling world. They rely on attention-grabs by referencing previous games and drawing from their elements only for them to have extremely little payoff or so little relevance to anything that you have to question why they’re even making the reference in the first place. Even things like them not giving a shit about how job skills actually relate to their lore/identity (i.e Seraphism).

I guess to put it simply, it feels like they’re draining the life out of the ‘world’ they’ve built all for the sake of efficiency, profit and a heavy focus on visual spectacle / aesthetic presentation in the absence of actual conceptual development (doesn’t matter what it means or why just make it look good).

And, I don’t say that in the spirit of ‘this game sucks’ or solely out of negativity. Having played FFXIV since like 1.23 (I wanted to be a Black Mage lol) I’ve seen the game do almost everything so much better than it does now. And that’s coming from someone who enjoyed Endwalker’s story lol which I think most people did not? I mean, it was hammy as hell and endlessly predictable, but it felt like they genuinely cared about creating an emotional payoff for what came before, like in Ultima Thule (even though it was extremely obvious they’d be back within the next 5 minutes lol)

Seeing something so beloved slide so far downhill does suck. I think sometimes what comes across as ‘negativity’ is people trying to protect themselves from disappointment, or wanting to see the game improve itself (but not necessarily expressing that in the proper way lol).

The world needs to feel alive. Right now, it feels like the world is built for the sake of the story, and there aren't a lot of things you can do in the world. There are hunts and fates, and that is good, but once you are done with them, there is really nothing else to offer.

[MayuAmakura]

I liked this game when I started it. Later I realized how flawed it actually is and problems it brings with it. Then after a few years of playing I felt less excited. Friend list getting smaller, everybody offline. Whenever you ask they say: ''is new patch out? if not, i'm afk another 4-6 months", "oh it's yawntrail... no thanks i rather go and play another game" and so on. So now when I'm completely alone it just feels empty and bland. Seems like only reason I ever enjoyed this one was because I had some initial friends here. Right now it's stale old content and nothing impressively new made.

[LilithGardenia]

No the game is too stagnant. Too much of the same thing over and over again is bad. But you wouldn't understand unless you spend years with barely no change at all, and whats worse, every expansion things get easier and less complex, thus continually reducing the depth of the world.

But to give you credit, the game does have a pretty wrapper. But like any sweet or sugar, eventually it will be cloying.

I do understand what your saying because I’ve been here since a realm reborn and I have seen all the massacres of every job,content and all in between get destroyed but my stance on what I’ve said stills stands and I have hope that it can come back to how it was before they did so many unnecessary changes that ruins the game for a lot of people.