The Reason Why FFXIV Is No Longer Fun/Exciting

[Doopliss]

I feel nuts whenever I see people abide to Yoshida's PR idea that you need to do high end content to feel like you're playing your role because this just literally was not true for the first three expansions in this game's lifespan. Somebody in this forum said it was better than I'm going to, but you can't really have "improved encounter design" with dogshit job design.

IMO the main reason people don't try more content these days is because the "main portion" of the game is way too boring now. The simplicity of casual content worked in the past because there was an actual skill ceiling to aim for within your job, and trying a new job didn't feel like a reskin of another in the same role. In the past each job had numerous differences from each other, be it buffs, debuffs, different and real fail states to watch out for in their rotation, aggro management that mattered for everyone (and especially tanks), and actual stance dancing. Combat design was more active and varied and had unusual mechanics that would require people to sacrifice DPS vs. the stagnant DDR boss arenas we get now. Basically it felt like you were building up into something instead of just being thrown into a completely different game.

I know some people cry about past expansions in a telephone fashion being unbalanced, but if you played, like, any other MMORPG you could easily tell it really wasn't. Every job could clear all content throughout HW and SB especially, but some would guarantee a worse parse on the scoreboards and that would make people desperately pretending FFXIV was an esport blow up I guess.

I don't get your point since right now the game does feel quite empty. If this doesn't prove to you that XIV formula stopped being appealing i don't think anything else will.

Yeah, I had an easier time getting people for content prior to the game being a commercial success and lacking crossworld PF back when the game required you to think even a little bit in casual content vs. now. The gap in content variation is just objectively much worse than it used to be because of their current design philosophy for the most base parts of the game.

They absolutely hate returning to old formulas though so I don't expect anything from saying this. I can only hope that they'll figure something new out that will actually help.

[TheDustyOne]

I feel nuts whenever I see people abide to Yoshida's PR idea that you need to do high end content to feel like you're playing your role because this just literally was not true for the first three expansions in this game's lifespan. Somebody in this forum said it was better than I'm going to, but you can't really have "improved encounter design" with dogshit job design.

To add on to this, the "easy jobs, hard content" mantra is like playing a Mario game, but not having access to his triple jumps, dive jumps, long jumps, high jumps, wall jumps, and only having the basic jump and crouching and being told "Those are too complicated, you'd be expected to do all those jumps, don't worry, the levels will make up for it." You could already play through mostly doing the basic controls, but the fun of scaling a building with carefully timed jumps, leaping over large chasms with precise inputs (all the while giving players "correct" routes that are incredibly simple to navigate), gives the game a lot of replayability and mastery while still making the game easily accessible. Instead it currently feels like I only have the basic jumps and a crouch, and rather than having lots of ways to navigate a level, I'm instead doing precisely timed basic jumps onto small safe zones from start to finish with little else to do. Oh wait, but sometimes a level makes me duck under a lazer or something to break up the monotony! How riveting...

Our jobs are how we interact with the fights, if our jobs are limited to just the basics of their role, the fights will be limited in their potential interactions, which in turn makes the game less replayable.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

[…]Our jobs are how we interact with the fights, if our jobs are limited to just the basics of their role, the fights will be limited in their potential interactions, which in turn makes the game less replayable.

This final point IMHO often gets overlooked. People often ties replayability to rewards but that’s ignoring the actual process to get said reward. It is to no wonder that players nowadays are so reward-centric that they very often are obsessed to ‘shorten’ their gameplay so much just to quickly get their reward & get out, never touching the content anymore. Because why wouldn’t they? Rewards are one-time. Gameplay is garbage, focusing at one very narrow, specific subtype of player while leaving the rest dead in the ditch.

[Azurarok]

This final point IMHO often gets overlooked. People often ties replayability to rewards but that’s ignoring the actual process to get said reward. It is to no wonder that players nowadays are so reward-centric that they very often are obsessed to ‘shorten’ their gameplay so much just to quickly get their reward & get out, never touching the content anymore. Because why wouldn’t they? Rewards are one-time. Gameplay is garbage, focusing at one very narrow, specific subtype of player while leaving the rest dead in the ditch.

imo that's the result of listening to players who only see jobs as mere tools to access content with, rather than content as ways to experience job gameplay. The game was built around the latter so of course it falls apart when you try to force it into something else.

[TheDustyOne]

This final point IMHO often gets overlooked. People often ties replayability to rewards but that’s ignoring the actual process to get said reward. It is to no wonder that players nowadays are so reward-centric that they very often are obsessed to ‘shorten’ their gameplay so much just to quickly get their reward & get out, never touching the content anymore. Because why wouldn’t they? Rewards are one-time. Gameplay is garbage, focusing at one very narrow, specific subtype of player while leaving the rest dead in the ditch.

In game design, there's what is called intrinsic reward and extrinsic reward. Intrinsic reward is internal; the feeling of satisfaction of fighting the boss well, learning and mastering a fight just because that fight is fun, replaying it because goshdarnit I want to try out a different strategy or I feel I could do something better this time around. Extrinsic reward of course is the external factor; you're doing this fight for the gear, the glamour, the minion, etc.

You ultimately need both, the extrinsic rewards motivates you to do the fight in the first place, but the intrinsic rewards is what ultimately makes the game engaging, those are the dopamine hits from playing well. But to achieve it, you need depth, plenty of choices that can affect how you perform future plays, failure states (otherwise "correct" plays have no meaning), risk vs reward, etc.

The reason I think people only care about the extrinsic rewards you mentioned is because there's no intrinsic reward to care about. We do the content just enough to get all the rewards and stop bothering after that. The moment things like player expression and interesting choices get made, it's easier to shoot that down and say "that'll be hard to balance; you'll get a meta where everyone goes for the best choice anyway; people will just use the safe strategy and ignore the hard one (or vice versa)." But in my opinion, the content that ages best are things like Eureka and Bozja where there is some level of player agency in say, what Lost Actions you can bring, Logos actions, stat potions that can potentially change your role in combat, sub-jobs, etc. Despite my issues with Occult Crescent, I still had fun taking Time Mage as my sub-job just because I liked how well it synergized with Red Mage, using Oracle and ignoring the damage penalty of that one spell it has using Hallowed Ground on Paladin, etc. Those are fun, that's the player expression part of intrinsic reward done right.

[Veritas-Ancora]

You ultimately need both, the extrinsic rewards motivates you to do the fight in the first place, but the intrinsic rewards is what ultimately makes the game engaging, those are the dopamine hits from playing well. But to achieve it, you need depth, plenty of choices that can affect how you perform future plays, failure states (otherwise "correct" plays have no meaning), risk vs reward, etc.

The reason I think people only care about the extrinsic rewards you mentioned is because there's no intrinsic reward to care about. We do the content just enough to get all the rewards and stop bothering after that. The moment things like player expression and interesting choices get made, it's easier to shoot that down and say "that'll be hard to balance; you'll get a meta where everyone goes for the best choice anyway; people will just use the safe strategy and ignore the hard one (or vice versa)." But in my opinion, the content that ages best are things like Eureka and Bozja where there is some level of player agency in say, what Lost Actions you can bring, Logos actions, stat potions that can potentially change your role in combat, sub-jobs, etc. Despite my issues with Occult Crescent, I still had fun taking Time Mage as my sub-job just because I liked how well it synergized with Red Mage, using Oracle and ignoring the damage penalty of that one spell it has using Hallowed Ground on Paladin, etc. Those are fun, that's the player expression part of intrinsic reward done right.

I totally agree with you about Eureka. People still roll their eyes when I say that Eureka was the best content that XIV has ever come out with, but I find it true specifically for this reason. I loved encountering the bosses and having different techniques to take them down. The elemental system was excellent and made you want to level it (whereas in Occult Crescent, I don't see the intrinsic or extrinsic reward in getting all of the jobs capped).

[Kaurhz]

Simply...

Quality just isn't what it used to be and the systems in the game are largely just superficial.. Don't really actually matter.

The amount of systems this game has forsaken is crazy, and all in the guise of trying to funnel people into very select pieces of content... Like, they can't even give people options for leveling. e.g., trying to rationalize the absence of leveling in Occult due to releasing a deep dungeon... Just give people the choice... It's a game that actively tries to limit choice.

Then there's the whole issue of predictability (granted, this has been a thing for a long time)