Infantilized Aesthetics

[Sebazy]

I've seen this decline in previous MMOs. As the game aged the creators loosed the strings on what players could make their characters look like and it always marked the beginning of the end for that games “prime”.

The two things are typically related in MMOs, but perhaps not in the way that you think they are.

Successful mmos tend to be led by one or two people with firm vision of what they want and the will to exercise that creative control and direction over the rest of the team. This tends to keep things feeling coherent and focused. Pretty much all the genre leading MMOs are great examples of this, Vanilla WoW, 2.0 ARR, even Everquest maintained a very coherent feel throughout it's earlier tiers of content despite the underlying technology evolving so rapidly.

MMO's tend to start to falter and fall into their twilight years as these people pulling the strings in the background either lose interest or simply get moved onto new projects. This is usually accompanied by rapidly shrinking art and development budgets causing the game to both drift away from the original artistic intent (aka those neon dyes in UO) as well as massively dropping in terms of art consistency and quality (Later expansions in some MMOs often look like college grade art projects compared to earlier content. Everquest was a massive offender for this).

As far as the PKing thing goes, having both factions and the fear of death and loss to rivals scratches that little tribalism itch that is an old part of human nature.

[MomomiMomi]

Stream of consciousness:
For example, to me riding a dragon should be significant and not something everyone would have access too. To me it seems that the creators have decided everyone should be able to make their character look anyway they want and ride any mount they want regardless of any connective to a world narrative. Each player is a visual island unto themselves and their appearance is entirely at their discretion. This provides great freedom to the individual but undermines any semblance of a cohesive world that we’re all in on.

Before even getting to this point, you must put it into the context that every single person you see running around is THE Warrior of Light who is saving the world. At this point, any semblace of a cohesive world has already fallen apart. Cue suspension of disbelief.

Of course, everyone has their own limits of how far they are willing to suspend disbelief. For example, on the subject of mounts: my suspension of disbelief reached its limit the moment the yokai watch mount came into existence. And then I simply stopped caring. Flying elephants, t-rexes, warsteeds? I don't care, do whatever you want. At this point they should just make everything fly!

[MomomiMomi]

On the topic of item value and being able to lose them, such a system would actually make the items have less value to me. I would take the game less seriously than I already do and would not even bother to obtain them in the first place.

[DevonEllwood]

I'm tired and I read the first part as "onion piece".

Now that I'm more awake I realized I can't take this seriously.

[Iscah]

I also agree that there's no "added value" to an item (or certainly not enough to outweigh the frustration) because you're forced to keep it safe.

Are your real-world possessions not precious to you unless you're actively guarding them from burglars at all times?

Someday I'll stop playing the game, and the items will be meaningless, but until then they're in my character's possession and I get to enjoy them whenever I want. If I have gear item I like wearing, I think about and enjoy it when I feel like wearing it, and the rest of the time it's just there. If I had to guard it... (A) I'd have to be thinking about it when I'm not wanting to wear it, instead of thinking about something else I do want to think about, and (B) if I lost it, I wouldn't have it when I did want to wear it, and I would miss out on the enjoyment I could have gotten from it. And then I'd have to waste time reaquiring it instead of doing something I want to do and haven't done before. (On top of the wasted time guarding it only to lose it anyway.)

I haven't played other MMOs, but I hate the idea of being able to be killed by other players. I'm not competitive like that. The fact the FFXIV doesn't allow it is one of the reasons I was drawn here in the first place.

[Nora_of_Mira]

Yes, I think the game should include pacifiers and more pastels altogether. And maybe bibs.

[Bonbori]

I don't quite understand the OP but... I paid a lot of real money (twice!) for the maid and princess outfits the moment they popped up on MogStation, and spent months crafting, spending millions of gil, RNGing and grinding for all the silly outfits, mounts and minions in my collection.

So unless the OP volunteers to pay my sub and reimburse me for all the time, money and effort I've invested into acquiring all those "infantile" vanity items, I can't bring myself to agree or even remotely sympathise with any of their points. Sorreh, I'm afraid all that maturity isn't worth as much as the contents of my glamour dresser ^^

When I do actually want to immerse myself in the world, I switch to my down-to-earth RP glamour, find an RP venue where everyone else is wearing their down-to-earth RP glamours, and go strike up some serious in-character conversation. I love doing that too and there are definitely people (at least on Mateus) who work together to create such environments.

In fact, the fact that I CAN make my character look however I want any time I want depending on my mood is one of the reasons I continue to play this game. To me, it's a selling point and I want SE to do more to capitalise on it, not less. I'm a big proponent of both adding more silly stuff as well as more RP friendly outfits (I'm still waiting for SE to give us all the Hingan kimonos and Sekiseigumi tunics that all NPCs everywhere wear but I can't ._.)

Those things are NOT mutually exclusive. We can have the cake, eat it and then order a different cake and invite friends to eat it together.

[HakaseNyan]

I only have one issue with mounts and it's not the rarity or design; it's how all of them have to fly now. I get it - if a mount can't fly, then players are less likely to use it. That may limit design choices in fear of making a mount worthless. SE first tried to make sense of mount that could fly. The Fenrir mount, costing one million MGP, was unable to fly at first, but was quickly changed and given and animated effect to make sense of how it's flying. Now, we've got a flying Tyrannosaur.

Remember back in Heavensward when you had do a quest so your chocobo could remember how to fly again? That's a bird with wings remembering how to fly. Now we have flying dinosaurs.

[InkstainedGwyn]

I've always felt like Final Fantasy fit into the "high" fantasy brand (unrealistic weapons, less focus on physics/'logical' details), even though they've been going weird places with it (imo) by adding more modern details lately. It fits the sort of story they're telling, which focuses less on the minutiae and more on the story, which tends to be epic-proportion (i.e. if we don't stop this the world will end, vs. 'evil bad guy wants to take over village', even if the bad guy tends to be what gets the story started.)

FFXIV has toned it down somewhat, to be sure, but it's still part of the final fantasy brand and in a game in which we have King Mog, I'm not going to question the size of a weapon someone can wield (also, *side-eyes Cloud*). Sure, FFXIV has a lot of odd, cutesy stuff that doesn't quite fit in with the "main aesthetic", but that's always been in the game and is certainly not "added because the game is dying".

It really comes down to, this is an "accessible-to-all-and-friendly-to-casuals" MMO and if that's not the style of game you're looking for, then you're probably better off looking for a different game that has the sort of "high-danger" mechanics you want. And, to be honest, the fact that FFXIV is accessible is one of the reasons it's not going to be in danger; those of us who had 12-14 hours a day back to play MMOs back in the early 2000s (and even people who never got into 'hardcore' MMOs) look at this game as something they can play and have fun at without having to constantly worry about "keeping the things we paid for" safe, because we no longer have that kind of time.

I always have to look at these threads with massive, "change the entire way the game works" outlines and wonder, do you really think they're going to go back and rebuild the game from the ground up? And if you really dislike the game as it is to the point that you want it rebuilt from the ground up, then this... probably isn't the game for you. They're not going to rework it. We can't even get them to redo the glamour or housing systems or give us more faces because "server limitation". There's a lot wrong with the game, and a lot I like. And because there's a lot I like, I stick around. I bring up the things I want changed, but even I know that if what I want would significantly change gameplay, it won't happen. These threads feel like the equivalent of walking into a fast food drive taco joint and looking around and going "if you just gutted the building, redid the decorations, and hired different chefs you could have a really nice sushi bar in here." If you have suggestions as to how they can make better tacos, that's good. If you want sushi, you should probably go to place that... serves sushi.

And now I want sushi.

[Elamys]

It really comes down to, this is an "accessible-to-all-and-friendly-to-casuals" MMO and if that's not the style of game you're looking for, then you're probably better off looking for a different game that has the sort of "high-danger" mechanics you want.

A lot of these complaints have always struck me as somebody trying to be intellectual with a faux sense of superiority because they like "the gritty stuff" as opposed to something brightly colored or less "realistic". It's bothersome to me.

This game has always had cutesy, weird, jokey elements. It's nothing new and certainly not some sign that the game is dying.