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

[TKMXIV]

The things they did to AST over the years is absolutely criminal and reason enough that I refuse to play healer in this game.

I only had Stormblood AST for a short time, but I will never forget how much fun it was to play as I leveled it to 70.

[Valence]

No is not. Look how MCH performed in the last tier vs Yans phase, aka adds. Are you even commenting in good faith, because I doubt it.

But the tragedy is that MCH isn't even unique anymore and (according to you) still fails in add phases. In fact, as soon as they watered the job down and made it like any other resource spending job in ShB, it's been a terrible job almost consistently since. It used to perform solidly in SB and was totally meta in HW.
So much for the fairytale that uniqueness prevents balance...

( also can't believe you managed to drop such a sexist comment not long after in the previous page smh )

Most of the times these changes get discussed in jp threads.
Rdm ranged melee came up there, blm timers being annoying came up there, tcj getting full mobility pretty much got demanded since stromblood introduced it, ast being too complicated, as far as i know the viper changes spawned there, too
And streamer feedback sometimes gets taken into consideration, too
And then i guess they look at the overall performance in the recent savage fights/ultimates and look which jobs need some more and if potency changes would not be enough then job mechanics get changed. Like for example the gnb changes making it better at handling downtime by giving gnashing combo stacks, or rdm having ranged melee so it can do mechanics during burst while being forced away from the boss, or blm not dropping timer when they have no chance to maintain them because downtime/stuns etc.

I've often read that all of this comes from JP, then to have it immediately contradicted by someone else that says that actually JP players have the same concerns.
Since I don't read their part of the forum ultimately, I don't know what's true or not. But if it's true, then perhaps there is an irreconcilable gap between JP and westerners.

[Kaurhz]

Far be it for me to ask...

But am I understanding that a poster on the previous page was feeling so insecure about the fact he's yet to clear turn 2, and he wasn't able to dismiss a point, that he's claiming that another poster has cleared ultimate because "their boyfriend did it"?

Talk about full commitment to the circus.

[Xieldras]

Lets be real the typical mmo player has yet to find out what fun is since all they care about is grind and reward.

This is something I've noticed from the other threads about raiding in particular, but what is with this obsession with efficiency? Mind you I don't do raids at all, but seeing the annoyance some people seem to feel towards that content (and especially PF) makes me wonder why they do it at all. Once you get your clear, is it joyous or a "finally done with this!" sentiment?

I only had Stormblood AST for a short time, but I will never forget how much fun it was to play as I leveled it to 70.

See this is what confuses me about the job change. StB and HW AST had Royal Road and other actions as a way to somewhat control the RNG you received. That alone kept the job fresh with the randomness while allowing skilled play. If players hated the RNG they could still somewhat work with it using those actions and thus there was no need to remove it.

RNG, though it frustrates me at times, is fun to me. But now it's being either removed or kept to grindy content as a rare carrot on a stick (yeah I see your Gimmy Cat minion, Gargantuaskin maps).

[Gwenkatsu]

Far be it for me to ask...

But am I understanding that a poster on the previous page was feeling so insecure about the fact he's yet to clear turn 2, and he wasn't able to dismiss a point, that he's claiming that another poster has cleared ultimate because "their boyfriend did it"?

Talk about full commitment to the circus.

When you run out of arguments, insults are the next step some people like to use. In my experience the sort of insults someone uses tells a lot about that person themselves, and nothing about the insulted person. So what might "your boyfriend did it for you" tell us about this person's character?

[Xapapetsu]

I think it really depends on what you do in game and what you consider fun. I personally enjoy raiding and treasure maps, the rest of the content isn't really fun for me. The raids have been great, treasure maps are how they've always been with small tweaks. I've never really found enjoyment in exploration zones, deep dungeons, beast tribe quests, ect. so I really can't speak for what the casual audience can do for fun.

[Aidorouge]

Most of the times these changes get discussed in jp threads.
Rdm ranged melee came up there, blm timers being annoying came up there, tcj getting full mobility pretty much got demanded since stromblood introduced it, ast being too complicated, as far as i know the viper changes spawned there, too
And streamer feedback sometimes gets taken into consideration, too
And then i guess they look at the overall performance in the recent savage fights/ultimates and look which jobs need some more and if potency changes would not be enough then job mechanics get changed. Like for example the gnb changes making it better at handling downtime by giving gnashing combo stacks, or rdm having ranged melee so it can do mechanics during burst while being forced away from the boss, or blm not dropping timer when they have no chance to maintain them because downtime/stuns etc.

I've seen people try to blame JP players for all of the job/encounter changes, but then someone else will bring up how they're just as confused or annoyed as we are. Hell, it's a common meme for NA/EU players to think Square-Enix only listens to JP, and for JP players to think they only listen to NA/EU. But if we know they're not paying attention to our feedback, and it's dubious if they're taking JP feedback into account... then who the hell ARE they listening to?

The same problem happens with casual versus hardcore, where both sides keep blaming the other for anything and everything.

"It's the CASUAL players fault that jobs got dumbed down for the MSQ duties!"
"It's the HARDCORE players fault all the jobs got homogenized so they work in their raids!"

"It's the CASUAL players fault that normal content is boring and I can't pull everything!"
"It's the HARDCORE players fault that every fight is DDR and body checks now!"

Which goes back to where I questioned if Square-Enix is actually trying to "make everyone happy" when people of different skill levels and even different regions are all collectively complaining about the same problems.

[Myotis]

I get it—MMOs are inherently grindy beasts built on repetition, and that's part of the charm for some. But FF14? It's straight-up turned into a second job for me.
Years of the same raid tier cycle ( stand in the right spot dance formula )
Gear treadmill ( Do same expert dungeon over and over for tokens )
and story about power of friendship...beats on repeat with zero real innovation or fresh mechanics to shake things up even world does feel empty and lifeless as for the today's standards the maps are way too small to begin with with nothing to discover or expirience other than fates what are at least 12 years old at this point in their design.
We've been doing this exact pattern since Heavensward, and it's exhausting chasing that dopamine hit when nothing feels new anymore or it will never be anything new anymore till the new Final Fantasy Online comes out.

[Kishin12345]

I've seen people try to blame JP players for all of the job/encounter changes, but then someone else will bring up how they're just as confused or annoyed as we are. Hell, it's a common meme for NA/EU players to think Square-Enix only listens to JP, and for JP players to think they only listen to NA/EU. But if we know they're not paying attention to our feedback, and it's dubious if they're taking JP feedback into account... then who the hell ARE they listening to?

The same problem happens with casual versus hardcore, where both sides keep blaming the other for anything and everything.

"It's the CASUAL players fault that jobs got dumbed down for the MSQ duties!"
"It's the HARDCORE players fault all the jobs got homogenized so they work in their raids!"

"It's the CASUAL players fault that normal content is boring and I can't pull everything!"
"It's the HARDCORE players fault that every fight is DDR and body checks now!"

Which goes back to where I questioned if Square-Enix is actually trying to "make everyone happy" when people of different skill levels and even different regions are all collectively complaining about the same problems.

Its pretty easy to double check. The viper feedback that lead to the changes is right there in their viper megathread at around page 15.
"Too tiring, too confusing, too much staring at the hotbar"
I know i've read about rdm ranged melee and about giving tcj full mobility, i linked that to friends when i read about it. Was at the start of dawntrail in the ninja megathread.
It's pretty easy to check if you just scroll around in the megathreads over there.

Edit: more on the following pages
"The combo routes are complicated, and the optimal route changes frequently."
"You have to maintain buffs and debuffs."
"You're busy with Haste."
"There are only replacement skills."
"You have to insert Snake Tail Art and Twin Fang XX."
"You also have to be able to specify the direction."

As a result, you can't even fight properly, let alone master them (sob)
. Even when I'm hitting the wooden dummy, I can't understand it...

Edit 2: just because i found this comment funny
- Reaper's debuff maintenance
- Samurai's damage dealt and haste buff
- Monk's complex combos
- Dragoon's busyness

It seems like this job has all the annoying aspects of melee combat made even more annoying.
Are major improvements only made with expansions?
If so, will these mechanics be left as they are for over two years?
Honestly, this is the first job I've ever experienced where even leveling is such a pain.

Edit 3: this is about m7s and rdm, the threads are filled with these kinds of feedbacks

"In recent high-difficulty games like Savage and Ultimate, 2-minute bursts often required ranged jobs to separate and deal with them, so the Red Mage's requirement that a 3m melee attack be performed during bursts was so critically out of whack that a fix was necessary.

In Arcadia Savage, a physically impossible 2-minute burst for Red Mage was added to certain levels (such as Cruiser Class Savage Level 3), causing a stir on social media forums"

[Aidorouge]

Its pretty easy to double check. The viper feedback that lead to the changes is right there in their viper megathread at around page 15.
"Too tiring, too confusing, too much staring at the hotbar"
I know i've read about rdm ranged melee and about giving tcj full mobility, i linked that to friends when i read about it. Was at the start of dawntrail in the ninja megathread.
It's pretty easy to check if you just scroll around in the megathreads over there.

I don't know Japanese so I have to assume people are being accurate when they say that JP player sentiment over there often matches the Western one more than some people might think.

Even if there are topics with JP players asking for those changes though, we still somehow end up with other topics from other JP players complaining about those same changes, so it's not like they're a hivemind over there any more than we are on NA and EU.

My point in general is that people are very quick to blame other players over Square-Enix themselves even though it's the company making and implementing every decision. I've heard of the infamous "post asking for Gnoxious Gnash to be removed with 4 likes" that some people use to blame ALL Japanese players for ALL job changes now and forever. Or how the last big patch notes had Square-Enix pretty much admit that "we're changing RDM melee because of these newest high-end fights" and you still had people screaming "HOW COULD THE MSQ ANDIES SPAMMING CURE 1 STEAL ANOTHER JOB FROM US!?" even though it couldn't be any more clear that no casual player (or hardcore for that matter) asked for the change.