We Really Need To Talk About The State And Path Of FFXIV

[Magic-Mal]

That's what the OP was getting at actually

Uhh.... Are you really referring to me?

[Elkanah]

According to census reports as of August 2018:
AMERICAS ACTIVE CHARACTERS: 267,629
JAPAN ACTIVE CHARACTERS: 231,677
EUROPE ACTIVE CHARACTERS: 120,959
Total active characters across all servers and countries: 620,265
***************
We're less than a million in active players logging into the game at least once/twice a week. This doesn't say anything about how many subs are active, and most of those come with a caveat such as staying subbed to keep your house and logging in once every 30-45 days before it auto destroys it.

[LauraAdalena]

WARNING! EXTRA EXTRA LONG POST

Cool, this ought to be fun. I won't quote you on everything, but just a few things.

After reading a Reddit thread about the state of FFXIV(https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...hy_squareenix/), it made me think about a bunch of things in FFXIV and it just made me want to talk about it more in-depth.

Oh. That post. The one that doesn't really say much about what it opens with and tries to rile Reddit to rally against the game and claim that Yoshi P and crew aren't managing funds properly without evidence and just assumes things. Cool to see you're inspired by LACK of evidence over evidence. Plus, 90% of the post is about the Companion App which is not what your thread is about so I don't see why you were inspired by it or why it was at all worth mentioning.

It's cool that you've been playing the game as long as I have been, but I don't see your sentiment of Stormblood being bad. You seem to have hyperbolized to the extreme and exaggerating in such a way that it's like you've never played a bad game in your life. It's good to be worried, but Stormblood isn't inherently BAD. It's FLAWED and some people can't get over the flaws.

The Open World:
---TL;DR: HW and SB maps are filled with nothing. No exploration. No incentive. No danger.

Name an open world game today that isn't this and I'll get back to you on if I should care about this long hidden point.

Flying:
---TL;DR: Can I just say that imo, flying ruined everything that FFXIV was? I had to make a section just for flight.. it has ruined so many things now that I don't think I'll ever get the feelings back unless it's removed.

Yes. Yes you can. But this TL;DR does not TL;DR your points. It doesn't explain what's ahead or behind it. It's just a summary of your feelings without the points you say after. Which, I must say are probably the most solid points in the entire post. I can see what you mean. However, I disagree that it takes away the beauty. I actually far prefer looking at Coerthas Western Highlands from high above, or the hinterlands from up above where I can take in all the splendor and small things they put into it. I can say the same about SB maps, the higher perspective gives a whole new angle to look at that's breathtaking at times (or at least, to the degree that the engine can handle). However, I'd like to use your last point here for something

• ... I kinda hate flying's existence now and would very much like it for it to NOT be in future expansions. I don't think it's compatible with the way XIV is. It just ruins the world, exploration, and the maps. Sorry.

This is your TL;DR not the "TL;DR"

Glamours and Customization:
---TLDR: We get less and less, more restrictions, and more boring

Completely disagree in many ways. First off, the new glamour plates system allows me to tie glams to the gearsets I use meaning I can just switch classes in a city (yes, I will admit that restriction is completely dumb) and change my DRK glam to my PLD glam which are now completely separate and it makes me so happy.

Also, you said "Why are the non artifact gathering gear now restricted to class?" have you ever had a blackmage below ilvl join your party then switch out to inferior gear just to cheat the ilvl? You have no right to complain, I saw that shit several times in HW and it was annoying to see tanks, DPS, and healers try to cheat the ilvl restriction using that. I don't care if it limits glamour, it was a godsend to not have people doing that thinking gear didn't matter.

Dungeons, Trials, and Raids:
---TL;DR: SE, you cut corners and I see it but you don't give us anything in return. You're just giving us less and less here.

Ah, this is where the inspiration from that Reddit post comes from. While I agree we need variety, as one post I saw above put it, people do the efficient way to do it and others get upset when it's not done the efficient way. If you want your multiple rooms, that's nice and all, but let's be honest here and just say: We need variety in HOW we get there or what we're doing between bosses (and also the bosses themselves) and not what there is to see between there because that leads to frustrated players when one decides to go exploring and the other three don't want to and just want to get it over with.

Trials do need more variety. I agree. However, Rathalos didn't. Rathalos had several intricacies that broke from the pack. The adds actually helped you damage Rathalos and was essential to keep them alive as long as possible before they started aggroing the healer, and the Garula's corpse being used to block against the fire was actually kinda clever. That being said, it was also a really big change in how the second phase went without healing.

idgaf about your opinion on raids tbh. Coils weren't that amazing, and people forgot that. There were several parts of Coils that were absolutely abhorrent design, the pad puzzle in Second coils and T3. Coils had a good story and the final bosses of each tier were top notch, but nothing else was. And I know because I just reran them recently. Whether the raids of Omega should be just fights or not I don't know, but after Alexander almost killed raiding I really don't care.

Gear Rewards, Progression, and Raiders:
---TL;DR: This might spark negativity but here's my opinion.. Raiders and raids are restricting the game and causing all gear progression to go stale.

Oh god, this topic. So many people keep mentioning the gear thing. I don't know about how to fix the gear system. However, the biggest thing I know right now is that changing it this late into the MMO's cycle would be like uprooting EVERYTHING THE ENTIRE GAME IS BUILT ON AND WOULD BREAK IT. They might have some ideas they can implement it from older MMO styles, but please keep that in mind before saying that again. I'm all for a new system, but not one that completely uproots and causes fatal balancing systems.

Also, as for "this can't happen because of raiders" it's more nuanced than that. I don't want to go into that in a forum post.

I said I played for 4 years and when I think of it, that's not even a long time lol. It's really bad imo, that many players players(not all, let me clarify) feel this way in about the same amount of time each time. I think of all the FFXI players saying stuff like "I played XI for 13 years" etc etc.. and the first thing I think of now is "XIV is not something I can play for 6 years let alone 13". It hurts.

I'm glad to know you've stayed so long. But here's the fact, if you truly think the game is so boring I suggest you break up the game with something else or take a break. MMO burnout is a real thing, and it can happen if you truly are bored of a game. Taking a break is a great way of keeping yourself from burning out in the long run and it sounds like you're close to that point. I've had this happen with other games, I suggest you take a break from it much like I've taken a break from those games.

[Ruf]

According to census reports as of August 2018:
AMERICAS ACTIVE CHARACTERS: 267,629
JAPAN ACTIVE CHARACTERS: 231,677
EUROPE ACTIVE CHARACTERS: 120,959
Total active characters across all servers and countries: 620,265
***************
We're less than a million in active players logging into the game at least once/twice a week. This doesn't say anything about how many subs are active, and most of those come with a caveat such as staying subbed to keep your house and logging in once every 30-45 days before it auto destroys it.

Thank You.

[LauraAdalena]

According to census reports as of August 2018:
AMERICAS ACTIVE CHARACTERS: 267,629
JAPAN ACTIVE CHARACTERS: 231,677
EUROPE ACTIVE CHARACTERS: 120,959
Total active characters across all servers and countries: 620,265
***************
We're less than a million in active players logging into the game at least once/twice a week. This doesn't say anything about how many subs are active, and most of those come with a caveat such as staying subbed to keep your house and logging in once every 30-45 days before it auto destroys it.

I'd like to point out that despite being less than a million, this was, if I'm remembering correctly, about where we were when HW was dying down. It's entirely possible that this is completely average during this part of the patch cycle, especially since the patch probably only brought on people interested in the trial &/or people weren't interested enough to do Pagos to return and Trials weren't important enough so they just haven't logged in. You also have to keep in mind that Stomrblood hasn't been extremely casual friendly (and no, this isn't a jab at people, this is based off of how much time they set aside for the game), so it's possible most of the people still subscribed are also of the higher interest category and that most of the more casual players aren't that interested, think that they don't have much to do on the game, or even just dislike Eureka because Eureka really doesn't appeal to the more casual crowd like it usually does seeing as they don't get to just log in, do something, log out, and call it progress to a powerful relic weapon like HW and ARR relics.

You are just posting statistics without context and making claims without real point.

[Magic-Mal]

Cool, this ought to be fun. I won't quote you on everything, but just a few things.

Although I don't agree with alot of what you said, you still made a good lengthy post so thanks.

Oh. That post. The one that doesn't really say much about what it opens with and tries to rile Reddit to rally against the game and claim that Yoshi P and crew aren't managing funds properly without evidence and just assumes things. Cool to see you're inspired by LACK of evidence over evidence. Plus, 90% of the post is about the Companion App which is not what your thread is about so I don't see why you were inspired by it or why it was at all worth mentioning.

So that.. the Reddit post just reminded me of things that I really disliked for a long time. That was pretty much it. I wanted to make my own post but felt the need to link the Reddit post when I decided to include the fact that "A Reddit post" made me think of it. Consider it as some kind of honorable mention. I just felt that since someone else's material was involved, I should at least credit them somehow. Hope that clears it up.

It's cool that you've been playing the game as long as I have been, but I don't see your sentiment of Stormblood being bad. You seem to have hyperbolized to the extreme and exaggerating in such a way that it's like you've never played a bad game in your life. It's good to be worried, but Stormblood isn't inherently BAD. It's FLAWED and some people can't get over the flaws.

I'm going to say that this is your opinion. We do all have opinions after all. That's okay. It's simply my opinion that SB and therefore FFXIV is at it's worst state though. And there's nothing wrong with that either. This was a discussion topic after all :P

Oh and I've definitely played bad games. And a bad MMO in particular..

Name an open world game today that isn't this and I'll get back to you on if I should care about this long hidden point.

DC Universe Online had a thing where you could collect these things called "Investigations" and "Collections". There were hundreds of them scattered around the maps of open world, dungeons, and raids alike. Finishing each little batch(some had like 5 a set) would give you nice items you could wear as glamour and some gave you achievements. It was an amazing incentive to fly around and explore every nook and cranny in the maps. Unfortunately DCUO changed in it's later years and became the "bad MMO" I mentioned but that's another story.

Yes. Yes you can. But this TL;DR does not TL;DR your points. It doesn't explain what's ahead or behind it. It's just a summary of your feelings without the points you say after. Which, I must say are probably the most solid points in the entire post.

This is your TL;DR not the "TL;DR"

I've never made a long, sectioned post of this level before so I apologize if the structure is off.

Completely disagree in many ways. First off, the new glamour plates system allows me to tie glams to the gearsets I use meaning I can just switch classes in a city (yes, I will admit that restriction is completely dumb) and change my DRK glam to my PLD glam which are now completely separate and it makes me so happy.

I honestly forgot about the glamour plates and prism when making this post despite using 4/10 plates myself(or was it 3...). It was a really good change though. I won't take that from them. I was mainly referring to class locks on things that were not locked or shouldn't be locked and reskinning. Basically I was mostly picking at the laziness of the devs. Everything else I said may be opinions but the reskins we get nowadays in SB are definitely real.

Also, you said "Why are the non artifact gathering gear now restricted to class?" have you ever had a blackmage below ilvl join your party then switch out to inferior gear just to cheat the ilvl? You have no right to complain, I saw that shit several times in HW and it was annoying to see tanks, DPS, and healers try to cheat the ilvl restriction using that. I don't care if it limits glamour, it was a godsend to not have people doing that thinking gear didn't matter.

A good friend of mine a few years back went into dungeons with gathering and crafting gear that but she was new to the game. Didn't even realize it was bad. Not doing it on purpose. I never saw anyone go into dungeons with crafter/gather stuff on purpose before.

Maybe I'm just lucky or you're incredibly unlucky. I don't think a few bad apples should cause everyone to lose freedom though :/

Ah, this is where the inspiration from that Reddit post comes from. While I agree we need variety, as one post I saw above put it, people do the efficient way to do it and others get upset when it's not done the efficient way. If you want your multiple rooms, that's nice and all, but let's be honest here and just say: We need variety in HOW we get there or what we're doing between bosses (and also the bosses themselves) and not what there is to see between there because that leads to frustrated players when one decides to go exploring and the other three don't want to and just want to get it over with.

I guess as someone who enjoys the immersion aspect of going into rooms and who also enjoys doing full runs for low level players, I just would really love the option to explore rooms.

idgaf about your opinion on raids tbh. Coils weren't that amazing, and people forgot that. There were several parts of Coils that were absolutely abhorrent design, the pad puzzle in Second coils and T3. Coils had a good story and the final bosses of each tier were top notch, but nothing else was. And I know because I just reran them recently. Whether the raids of Omega should be just fights or not I don't know, but after Alexander almost killed raiding I really don't care.

This was the only part of your post that I disliked. Saying you "dgaf" about my opinion is very disrespectful especially when this is a discussion thread. Everyone's opinion is valuable and I would never say that kind of thing to you.. but in the end my opinion is that I don't like the current raids. But the fact is that raids are definitely trials now and they are not larger places like in the past. There's no denying that because it's in-game right now. The devs cut work by not making anything before the boss

Oh god, this topic. So many people keep mentioning the gear thing. I don't know about how to fix the gear system. However, the biggest thing I know right now is that changing it this late into the MMO's cycle would be like uprooting EVERYTHING THE ENTIRE GAME IS BUILT ON AND WOULD BREAK IT. They might have some ideas they can implement it from older MMO styles, but please keep that in mind before saying that again. I'm all for a new system, but not one that completely uproots and causes fatal balancing systems.

I don't think more i370 options would break the game. It would just give people i370 options A, B, C, and D for example, given from different content in the game. Basically a tad of horizontal progression. Can't hurt...

I'm glad to know you've stayed so long. But here's the fact, if you truly think the game is so boring I suggest you break up the game with something else or take a break. MMO burnout is a real thing, and it can happen if you truly are bored of a game. Taking a break is a great way of keeping yourself from burning out in the long run and it sounds like you're close to that point. I've had this happen with other games, I suggest you take a break from it much like I've taken a break from those games.

Except I've already taken a break... I came back in June after an almost 7 month break :[. Playing on and off to try and not blow through the content. Still have story left even! I made this post because I want to keep playing. But I will eventually get bored again. Unless I wait out again until 4.4.

[Elkanah]

.

The stats doesn't tell us how many active subscribers there ACTUALLY are (since they're not really posted anywhere outside of the business to see). Just the average logging in. Most logging in are either 1 of 3 categories:
1) New players playing the game
2) Vets doing active content daily/weekly
3) Players logging in to keep their house (as some people do).

I would even likely take out #3, since those are just quick log ins and boils down to two really. For all we know, the amount of subscribers with a subscription whether prepaid or auto renew, could be in the millions. But the active player base is less than a couple million. The active player base logging in vs what their ads are still saying, such as "come play with the 10 million players in Eorzea" doesn't add up. If we can clearly see that the playerbase is less than 750k, and they're still shouting from the cliffs about their 10 million subscribers, somewhere between the date of the launch for the expansion and today, they're lying by a couple thousand miles and that fish is probably not as big as they keep mentioning it to be, and need to stop.

[NessaWyvern]

I just wish they didn't gut PvP.
PvP at the end of heavensward felt really fun and challenging, with mastery over your class really showing. Now? Not so much, with the abilities so few and restricted as they are now.
We also need a larger variety of modes, WoW PvP does it much better.
They need to bring back PvP gear that actually matters (I could easily gear my alts with pvp gear for leveling, and now all new pvp gear is just glamour items.)
However, I doubt this will happen, as the PvP community is so small because of the lack of updates, and that whenever PvP is finally given the tiniest scrap, the much larger PvE community always complain, saying they should have put more time into another raid or something.
(I remember how much people complained when PvP got an exclusive hairstyle, as if PvE hasn't ever gotten one).

The lack of actual fun in pvp is a huge issue this game needs to sort out. And give me back my abilities I had in HW, godsdamnit!

[LauraAdalena]

snip.

Okay, I misunderstood your point then. I thought it was claiming the game was dying like a lot of people claim.

With that point in mind... what is it? Like, the point? All games do this. If they said the actual numbers new players and stuff wouldn’t play as frequently. Just a fact. It’s an advertising tactic. It’s a half truth. Humans like big numbers. Humans think “oh, 10 MILLION people are playing?! I must play too!”

Also, I think when they say “10 million” they are including the Korean and Chinese servers, which are separate servers from NA, EU, and JP and are about a patch behind most of the time. I don’t know what the statistics are for active players on them, but my guess is they are pretty decent.

[einschwartz]

I don't really care much about raid/gear progression as much as the open world (and glamour) so I'll just share my take on the latter.

The open world.
While reading that section it reminds me when I went exploring the Lochs after finishing SB. I flew to The Song of Kings, only to find an unreadable tombstone in a secluded area.



Oh this is nice discovery but what does this mean? The fact that the tomb is unreadable by itself frustrates me. I enjoy exploring these little areas but I feel they can be improved by adding a simple interactive notes to explain the significance. It doesn't have to be the entire lore being told in a series of subquests. Just a small tidbit would be sufficient similar to Gubal Library dungeon with the readable books on the floor (inb4 server limitations). Sure, this doesn't make the map anymore alive but at least it gives players such as me, who enjoys exploring feels more accomplished and connected rather than "ok I found this but what is it? why?".

The sea/lake diving is a lot worse. The most 'exciting' creature to find while diving is just sharks. Really, SE? No mystical sea beasts or terrifying looking giants? 90% of the deep water is very empty. No reason to go diving tbh. I have said in a different thread that it would entice me a lot more if they add giant sea creatures lurking in the waters. They don't need to be interactive. Just be there and not make the vast sea so empty like it is now.

I do agree the reason they make maps so huge and empty because the implementation of flight. However, to me flying is OK as it is. I agree with another post that said the beauty of map designs can be better appreciated when you're on higher altitude. I care about how the map is made out of. I care what enemies are out there (well, kinda. For hunt reasons). And I do care about how beautiful the maps are. All this can is more conveniently achieved by hop into your mount and fly. Another limitation that makes flying more convenient is SE's love for invisible walls. Most of the cliffs or ledge appears to be climbable or could be jump over but nope. You have to walk around even if it means double the travel distance. If it not because of the 'walls', I'm more than happy to drop off my mount and climb the steepest slopes and hills available just because I can!

What about lost in "sense of danger" in certain areas just because one can just fly above the monster's heads? That's what they intend to do by the need to acquire Aether Currents when you first stepped into the map. Apart from that, yeah. There's nothing else. I do agree on the ridiculous flying mounts tho. But eh, I simply choose not to use mounts that can break my immersion.