Do We Remember That a Game Is Meant to Be Fun?

[Kishin12345]

It is highlighting why their post ultimately doesn't really say anything -- My example was simply pointing out this is what was going on in some instances where people were complaining about the content or lack thereof in Endwalker. It was not a genuine recommendation.

Since you've clearly misunderstood, let me put it like this... Suggesting that people take a break or quit the game in response to complaints does nothing to resolve those complaints, it shrinks an already shrinking player base further. Hence why it doesn't really say anything.

Many people have already tried savage, and have found out it is either not for them, or it doesn't offer what they are seeking, which is why it's largely an empty comment. It's no different from the "Why don't you go do this if you want engaging gameplay".

Damn you wasted so many words to say even less than i did smh....

This game is more centered around raiding. It is what keeps you busy for the longest time. If you don't do savage or ultimate you obviously miss out on the best content this game has to offer. That is where the dev's effort goes. The game has only become more and more raiding centered in the past years, so obviously that is the direction they are taking.
And no the game is not devoid of fun for me personally. I have content that i enjoy a lot. Just because you might be skipping out on that content or don't enjoy it doesn't mean there is no fun to be had for others.
Challenge yourself, push your favorite jobs to their limits, optimize your rotations.
The game is not braindead easy as soon as you engage with the actual endgame.

And who even plays this game for social interaction? Most of the times your teammates are just a hinderance slowing you down.
Tanks not sprinting in dungeons, prog liars, people not knowing their rotations or how to optimize, people not being able to use their mitigations....

[Miradelle]

And who even plays this game for social interaction?

Do not visit balmung.

[Kaurhz]

Damn you wasted so many words to say even less than i did smh....

This game is more centered around raiding. It is what keeps you busy for the longest time. If you don't do savage or ultimate you obviously miss out on the best content this game has to offer. That is where the dev's effort goes. The game has only become more and more raiding centered in the past years, so obviously that is the direction they are taking.
And no the game is not devoid of fun for me personally. I have content that i enjoy a lot. Just because you might be skipping out on that content or don't enjoy it doesn't mean there is no fun to be had for others.
Challenge yourself, push your favorite jobs to their limits, optimize your rotations.
The game is not braindead easy as soon as you engage with the actual endgame.

And who even plays this game for social interaction? Most of the times your teammates are just a hinderance slowing you down.
Tanks not sprinting in dungeons, prog liars, people not knowing their rotations or how to optimize, people not being able to use their mitigations....

The game well over a decade later is still trying to discover what it wants to be, I don't really think they have a clear direction in mind, and to be honest I would not be surprised if they rebounded in some ways... Just as we saw going from SB -> ShB, and then again from EW -> DT.

It's great that you have fun, really, but your idea of fun is not necessarily the same for everyone... Personally I've tried savage, did Eden's Verse, and came out of it feeling more relief for the fact it was over rather than the fact I cleared it and pushed myself, in a way that I hadn't since Final Coils of Bahamut.. Personally, I am not complaining about the game being easy or not. I just don't think in recent history it has been fun -- Hence why I find myself in Eureka far more than I do Occult.

Given it's an MMO, you will probably find there are far more people interested social interaction than there are not.. --> "Just because you don't relish in the idea of interacting with a community, or because you don't enjoy it doesn't mean there is no fun to be had for others."..

[Kishin12345]

Do not visit balmung.

I don't think "social" interaction is the reason there xD

[Kishin12345]

The game well over a decade later is still trying to discover what it wants to be, I don't really think they have a clear direction in mind, and to be honest I would not be surprised if they rebounded in some ways... Just as we saw going from SB -> ShB, and then again from EW -> DT.

It's great that you have fun, really, but your idea of fun is not necessarily the same for everyone... Personally I've tried savage, did Eden's Verse, and came out of it feeling more relief for the fact it was over rather than the fact I cleared it and pushed myself, in a way that I hadn't since Final Coils of Bahamut.. Personally, I am not complaining about the game being easy or not. I just don't think in recent history it has been fun -- Hence why I find myself in Eureka far more than I do Occult.

Given it's an MMO, you will probably find there are far more people interested social interaction than there are not.. --> "Just because you don't relish in the idea of interacting with a community, or because you don't enjoy it doesn't mean there is no fun to be had for others."..

Well, i don't talk to strangers, strangers don't talk to me. Has been like this for over 12 years. Sometimes you do casual smalltalk with someone you meet in an extreme farm or something. That has been my general experience. I don't think this game is good for socializing at all. I do have friends in the game but i only meet with them to do ultimates and savage.

I just don't understand why you would keep playing a game that you don't find fun? If friends are the main reason you're playing then just play a game with them that is fun to all of you....

This might come across to you as not saying much, but i really mean it. Game won't just change over night. Stop playing, check again later, literally. I also spent a lot of time in eureka. That was peak content and i was hoping that OC would be more like eureka again, but the truth is that a lot of content is made with solo queue in mind and that people don't really want to communicate or strategize.

[theunhappypotato]

Do not visit balmung.

Nuke blamung

[Shurrikhan]

I hate to break it to you, but for better or worse, every single one of these is simply a core aspect of the MMO genre. I'll use WoW as an example since it's the biggest and most famous example. Every expansion features new groups that have daily quests for rep grinds (I remember doing that in BC 20 years ago). Quests that sent people around the world used to be praised, and there was much criticism when WoW revamped the zones and removed those epic questlines in favor of containing each zone within itself. Gearing up through endless dungeons is the entire philosophy behind M+.

And you can substitute pretty much any other game you want in there. SWTOR? Same deal. GW2? Yep. I'm most familiar with those two, so I'll say them with confidence. We may have differing opinions on whether each of us as individuals finds these kinds of things fun or not, but you seem to be acting as if this is somehow a new direction FFXIV has been taking when it's the direction the entire MMO genre has been taking for literally decades. If anything, FFXIV has adapted more than others by allowing today's modern MMO gamers (who are largely adults with families, full-time careers, and limited playtime) to still progress in gearing without needing to dungeon grind. Rep grinds only provide mounts and cosmetics, whereas in some games it's an important way to gear and you fall behind if you don't. Etc.

I think you're missing the point in what you'd quoted. Here, there is nothing between those mindless grinds (Daily Roulettes, Hunts for weekly tomestones, Society Quests, Exploratory Missions ending up as the same banal FATE-bound filler as anything else Open-world but without even the Hunts or side-quests stop it, Normal Raids once each per week, etc.) and Savage (likewise weekly) save for just Extreme Trials; even the likes of Chaotic and FT just repeat the same design issues that push many away from Savage, while Criterion Dungeons are tuned around already having Savage gear. There's no bridging difficulty settings between lowest and highest between each raid tier (whereas WoW has 2 extra therebetween), no variable difficulty open-world-ish content, no dungeon difficulty progressions (which WoW has in spades), etc. "Gearing up through endless dungeons" is hardly an issue when that task is tailorable and varied enough to nonetheless be enjoyable; it's then the gameplay people would gladly pay to skip to, rather than pay to skip.

And even if SWTOR and GW2 were to likewise just ping-pong us between talking to X NPC or picking Y flower or carrying Z crate, how does that lackluster quality being pervasive make it any less a wasted opportunity or a tax on the more enjoyable aspects of the game? There's a degree to which it's reasonable, yes, for giving a sense of time passing or allowing space for seemingly incidental side-conversation with a given character, but XIV too often surpasses such opportunities in its use of those filler tasks.

And what is this "FFXIV has adapted more than others by allowing today's modern MMO gamers (who are largely adults with families, full-time careers, and limited playtime) to still progress in gearing without needing to dungeon grind"? It's no more or less necessary than any other MMO. And rep grinds being necessary for gear progression is the outlier, not the norm, except in games where those rep grinds tend to support horizontal progression and/or include the same vertical progression as our tome-grinds anyways and their tasks, themselves, tend to be more interesting than herding sheep.

Finally, we don't even have to look at a different MMO to find examples of healer downtime gameplay offering more engagement than just that of "as a SCH, my main gameplay loop is pressing Broil repeatedly". The game even launched with healers having comparatively far more involved offensive kits (as portion of total) than they have today. Even if I didn't have a more interesting experience available to me as a support in WoW or GW2, etc., that'd still be an obviously wasted opportunity and a decrease even from the fun we used to have based even just off what we've seen from this game before.

[Kaurhz]

Well, i don't talk to strangers, strangers don't talk to me. Has been like this for over 12 years. Sometimes you do casual smalltalk with someone you meet in an extreme farm or something. That has been my general experience. I don't think this game is good for socializing at all. I do have friends in the game but i only meet with them to do ultimates and savage.

I just don't understand why you would keep playing a game that you don't find fun? If friends are the main reason you're playing then just play a game with them that is fun to all of you....

This might come across to you as not saying much, but i really mean it. Game won't just change over night. Stop playing, check again later, literally. I also spent a lot of time in eureka. That was peak content and i was hoping that OC would be more like eureka again, but the truth is that a lot of content is made with solo queue in mind and that people don't really want to communicate or strategize.

Generally, perhaps... Though we have got facets of content in the game where socializing is pretty good.. Even when doing Eureka with a friend, spent a lot of time just chatting with other players in there.. It's a lot more difficult in Occult with how on-the-rails it is.. But even outside of content, social interaction does happen a lot for players that do want to seek it out.

I wouldn't say my thoughts on not finding the game fun are universal across the entire space of the game, just the content in recent history, again, why I spend far more time in Eureka than I do in Occult or most other content spaces for that matter -- and then much of the incentive to actively play is mostly built around the friends I am playing with versus the content itself.. I have this same 'thing' with other games, where most of the incentive is 'who' I am playing with and not necessarily what I am playing (Which seems to be a difficult idea for some). Had the same with Astroneer, 7 Days to Die, and Dead by Daylight... Where I didn't exactly enjoy them, but a bit of banter with friends? Sure.

I don't doubt your intent, I just don't really think it adds or solves anything (Hence why I say not saying much... Or anything).. Many players are already patiently waiting between opaque developer comments.. Which they have done a lot of since Endwalker complaints, and funnily enough, for players that aren't here for extrinsic reasons (e.g., social-related), this expansion will probably be that 'straw'... For me the Eureka element is less about strategize and more about... It doesn't try to tell you how you should play it.. It leave a pretty big degree of freedom (The reason I still find it fun).

[Ankhira]

This game is more centered around raiding. It is what keeps you busy for the longest time. If you don't do savage or ultimate you obviously miss out on the best content this game has to offer.

Highly subjective tbh. I know people who ONLY do hunts and they’ll tell you that’s the best content in the game. A lot of players don’t have the time or energy for savage/ultimate, and that’s fine. I raid too, but I wouldn’t call it the best content. Raiders have been eating pretty well this expansion tbh, savages as always, ultimate(s), CoD, Forked Tower, Quantum, etc. Whether you count all of that as raid content/eating good or not, it’s still content aimed at the same side of the playerbase. Meanwhile a big chunk of the casual side got very little, and what they did get feels extremely undercooked.

Everyone pays their sub, so everyone gets to have opinions on what they want out of the game. Acting like only raiding matters is simply ignoring how much casual players contribute too. If casuals disappear, so does a lot of mog Station money, and less money means fewer resources for raids. We’re all part of the same 'ecosystem' pretending one side is more valid doesn’t really work here.

And since other people were talking about MMOs and socializing: the game honestly doesn’t give you many reasons to be social unless you go out of your way. MSQ is solo for hours on end, PF barely talks, hunts are Discord, Forked Tower/CoD...etc is Discord, Cosmic Exploration has no real interaction, dungeons are "hi/gg" and you can’t even reply to friends mid‑duty. I love the game, I’ve got tons of goals (currently suffering through Big Fishing), but the whole “it’s an MMO so be social” argument doesn’t match how the game actually plays for most content. Maybe it’s a cultural thing, and in JP people talk way more in game and not over discord, idk.

And the game also only has "MMO grinds" of which most are so out of touch that it's actual insanity. 1000 carrots in OC, the hunts, what is it, 10000 hoards? There's plenty more, but yeah, I kinda don't mind the hoard or leve one, it takes time, but grinds that are either RNG (carrots) or actively punish you for having a job and sleeping just feel bad to me, idk. I did the Diadem and that was a grind I don't mind because I could do it at any point, any time, for however long I wanted without dealing with RNG or timers.

[Valence]

This game is more centered around raiding. It is what keeps you busy for the longest time. If you don't do savage or ultimate you obviously miss out on the best content this game has to offer. That is where the dev's effort goes. The game has only become more and more raiding centered in the past years, so obviously that is the direction they are taking.

What an interesting view, if just a tad narrow.

Glad you enjoy raiding though!

The game is not braindead easy as soon as you engage with the actual endgame.

Certainly, but that also depends on what you enjoy getting challenged on and what you don't.
You speak about rotations to optimize for example, but they're in fact literally braindead for the most part. Jobs are all the same, play all the same, and encounter design is all about one single thing—and it's not its battle system.