Few close friends quit FFXIV, one wants to explain why, hopes SE improves the game

[Hamada]

The following is a friend point of view on FFXIV that discontinued stub/ quit rather recently, after the second week of 4.4. the sub lasped and did not renew.

So it is likely meany will view this as long, but the short version is they are tried of doing the same thing over and over, one of them started of ARR's release date. This post is by the friend that started on 2.0 release date while playing 1.0 on and off here and there (has legacy)

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Reason for these pictures to show how long I enjoyed FF in general and how long I been playing. When I started FFXIV, it was purely crafting. I wanted to take a different approach that I did in FFXI. So for FFXIV i wanted to craft and make sure my linkshell (or free company now) had someone to go to (for those that played FFXI in the old days, you would know how nice that was to have, finding a good meta crafter was a bit ruff.


So that is what i did, I reached 50 in all my crafting and gathering jobs, while having a 24 combat class in 2.0. Most of ARR I was purely crafting, making stuff for my linkshell (my ffxiv company came from ffxi) and general requests for melds and so on. Dyes was semi big back then. point is I was enjoying helping people though my crafting.


Fast forward to near the end of ARR, around the time snowcloak was the expert, I was debating what to do for combat classes. I debated to take DoW/DoM on my crafter character because of inventory space. Because i did not want to be overwhelmed in that aspect i went with doing a second character. So I finished ARR with having a PLD and WHM level 50 with completed relics before going to HW.

I took a break because I got into mario kart but will still come on FF time to time, talk to friends, and slowly progressed in the MSQ. I really wished my crafter character was not MSQ blocked from gathering the new nodes and such so I just took everything on my new "main" (I had both chrs DoH/DoL at 50 before HW, I used my crafter "main" to do turn ins so my DoW/DoM chr could repair her own gear) So I went though HW meant a few close friends like the one wposting this for me, and another that is quitting for the same reason I am. We are tried of doing the same thing over and over and over again. Like this new patch of 4.4, it is no different what we did on 4.1, 4.2, so on, nor is it different then 3.4 and so on. Even HoH is palace of the dead, 2.0 with less floors.

Back in HW I was aware of the treadmill but did not truly "experience" it because I focused on crafting. (more so for ARR) so it was more "new" to me more or less and learning the genre in general (I had no clue about 100% uptime ideas before hw) so exploring that was new to me and prob prolonged the life of the feel a bit more, then if I would of played like that during ARR.

Crafting in SB is no different then HW as well. Now since ARR was evolving and finding itself, ARR to HW had SOME differences but SB is HW 2.0, there is nothing different about it outside reskining. If we look at the process of making the 340 gear, getting the materials IS EXACTLY the same as HW, something from a beast tribe, gold ingots are still being used (really? materials in lv 50 content is still being used?) it feels like SE is only doing this because they want to fund the game as least as possible.

Coming from wow, seeing the number of battlegrounds here is shocking. Heck I think FFXI Pvp is more entertaining though strategy over ffxiv. In feast you took chat away from what I suspect is your GMs are overloaded with calls from it. Even with Wow's reputation, you do not see them banning chat. I was very, very shocked to see a change like that. How can you have an ONLINE game without communication?

Now reading the korea letter thing, complaining about SERVERS yet again makes me worry. Already the game feels it belongs out of the 1990's with how slow the response is, even worse in pvp where you really feel it. With all the money people pay with the overpriced music scrolls and other mog shop items, retainer MONTHLY fees, app fees and micro transactions, I am tried of hearing server overload problems. Upgrade the servers and netcode already, your player base deserves more then this with all the money they give you.

With the overhype that was told with eureka (will not be like diadem only for us to get diadem) , overhype for SB in general ( this is the 3rd expansion, if we do the same thing again people will get tired - yoshi-p) and yet here we are, HW being an EXACT CLONE of HW, nothing different, HoH is a bare bone palace of the dead, instead of having to go 100 floors and at some points needed foresight so you do not wipe, we got this brain dead 30 floor face roll to win mode. Crafting is the same treadmill, I was able predict all the releases in Sb because it did the exact same thing in HW

[Question] What should I be looking forward to now? -2 years ago - Repeat the same grind to get 10ilvl. same answer I have for 4.4, same answer late ARR had, same answer throughout HW. Why is the game reskinned this much?

So before I thought i would buy extra retainers and other things to support this game and help it grow, hoping for change, showing SE i wanted more. Well Se got the money from the extra stuff manages to charge us more and not put anything back like upgrading servers and fixing the netcode. Till SE shows they care about their products (FFXV is very guilty of this too) I will not be buying anything from them. Just seems SE cares about milking the playerbase at this point over giving us a real experience. (the ONLY reason I pulled my FFXI sub was purely over the top cash grab app. Yes it is flagged on my account, I downloaded it for the teleportation, uninstalled it after.)

SE did a lot to change FFXI, where is that for FFXIV? Also how out of touch does the development team have to be to release a second eureka without putting in level sync? That was heavily requested from my understanding. SE really needs to improve in knowing what people want, what people need, and their customer service, in general.


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Phew, that was long post from one of my friends. Even though I am still playing XIV, I find my self playing less and less each week because of the reasons they mention in their post are affecting me as well along so other reasons.

I used to like achievement collecting but lately it become more and more grindy that i almost stop bothering doing them. I also wish if there's more side story in the game. I loved stories XIV and the world lore , which remind me i really want them to enhance [? is this the right word btw, didnt answer] the undying diary to cover more details of the past mission and quests.

Like my friend I am big on crafting as well, though I have poor skills in managing my space, they even helped me at times in that area. Anyways back in ARR I did all those hard to get tools, it felt new back then, I was collecting those achievements, and getting new tools.

Now it feels pointless. Even if they had achievements like that now, or even doing 4.4 crafting, it wears off fast since I know it will just be easier to get/and or made pointless in a few months. Going back to my other friend that is quitting (not the one that made the post above) goes back to run escape and massive grinds for some really low drop rate minion, despite it being 10 years old. Why? Because it still has meaning, they know it will not be nerfed in 3 months.

[Stormfur]

I'm not a programmer, but I think this "fixing netcode" thing isn't something that can be done in a weekend. We'd likely have to give up an expansion for the time it would take to even make a dent in it.

That being said, Feast PVP is a lot faster-paced now. And I guess now that it's separate from PVE, there are more things to come that they can do with it (at least I hope so). But yeah, the treadmill...they've found something that works and they're going to ride that wave -- any company would do the same if they faced the same circumstance.

[Risvertasashi]

But yeah, the treadmill...they've found something that works and they're going to ride that wave -- any company would do the same if they faced the same circumstance.

Yoshi P actually talked about this a bit in his book. The gist of it was that while there are players that desire change and experimentation in systems like this... there's a huge number that take comfort in a steady, predictable pattern - and would quit if SE upended things too much there.

[Aerlana]

I'm not a programmer, but I think this "fixing netcode" thing isn't something that can be done in a weekend.

This is not a thing we know being a matter for 1 week... ... not for 1 year... more, really more

[Hamada]

I'm not a programmer, but I think this "fixing netcode" thing isn't something that can be done in a weekend. We'd likely have to give up an expansion for the time it would take to even make a dent in it.

That being said, Feast PVP is a lot faster-paced now. And I guess now that it's separate from PVE, there are more things to come that they can do with it (at least I hope so). But yeah, the treadmill...they've found something that works and they're going to ride that wave -- any company would do the same if they faced the same circumstance.

There is another message here, I guess it was missed.

Upgrade the servers and netcode already, your player base deserves more then this with all the money they give you.

This can also mean, if it is TRULY not feasible to fix, STOP MILKING the playerbase! charge a fitting price what you are giving. the ap, retainer fees and mog station items should not cost those prices if they are unwilling to put money into the game.

[Dzian]

You're friends certainly aren't the only ones. It's becoming a more and more popular opinion that players are getting tired of the treadmill and meaninglessness of the rewards given. game is to easy and boring. predictable etc etc.

I came to FFXIV in 1.0 initial release along with 40-50 of my friends. Pretty much my XI endgame linkshell. We are/were a very close knit group of friends. and have been since well basically the millenium. we've had massive parties and get togethers over the years where we'd all go celebrate the new year together at la macumba in france or having almost 40 of us meeting up in london / cardiff / paris for a weekend.

Since 2.0 though that circle of 50 friends in XIV has shrunk smaller and smaller and smaller and at present is down to about 10 maybe 12 that play somewhat regularly. generally speaking the other 40 have quit because they hate the treadmill and futility of everything along with the game being so damn easy its just not rewarding to play. There's no satisfaction clearing a dungeon trial or raid that you literally cannot possibly fail to complete.

As for Yoshi's comment about losing players if they changed the system the problem is they're losing players by the bucket load anyway... wasn't so long ago they were boasting 10 million plus players but literally 5-6% of them are active at best... 94% of those players don't play....

There's a changeing trend in the business world where companies are starting to focus more on former custoemers than current ones. and I think SE should really invest in listening to former players. I mean if it turned out the treadmill was the reason 5 million players stopped playing that would tell se a lot more than the relatively small active playerbase can.

[Kazrah]

I think the biggest issue Square-Enix has not just with this game, but seemingly all of their games these days, appears to stem from a greater priority of being a better business over being a better product maker.

In the case of FFXIV, it's pretty easy to notice that what money is expected to be going in really doesn't seem to be returned to the game: all the money from all the various subscriptions and mogstation wares, and while the game is still going, we get less and less adequate content and plenty of valid claims that the game is now being run by a skeleton crew of a dev team that regardless of whether or not such claims are true, the state of the game is so subpar that they sadly make sense.

So where's the money going if not FFXIV? Other projects. While FFXIV has given Square-Enix a ton of money, that unfortunately looks like the company has understood things as "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", and has no problem pulling people and other resources off of that project because of such a mentality. Meanwhile, Square-Enix has definitely had their eye on mobile games for a while now because they know that's where the market is, so they'll happily take out resources away from riskier projects like FFXIV (and MMORPGs generally are really risky investments) and place them into games that are far simpler to design, much cheaper to maintain and yield far more potential profit due to a greater reliance on micro transactions.

In short, Square-Enix likely won't fix FFXIV (and may risk making it worse) because they're acting more like a business rather than the company renowned for its masterful works of gaming art.

[Hamada]

You're friends certainly aren't the only ones. It's becoming a more and more popular opinion that players are getting tired of the treadmill and meaninglessness of the rewards given. game is to easy and boring. predictable etc etc.

I came to FFXIV in 1.0 initial release along with 40-50 of my friends. Pretty much my XI endgame linkshell. We are/were a very close knit group of friends. and have been since well basically the millenium. we've had massive parties and get together. and years were we'd all go celebrate the new year together at la macumba in france or having almost 40 of us meeting up in london / cardiff / paris for a weekend.

since 2.0 though that circle of 50 friends in XIV has shrunk smaller and smaller and smaller and at present is down to about 10 maybe 12 that play somewhat regularly. and generally speaking the other 40 have quit because they hate the treadmill and futility of everything, along with the game being so damn easy its just not rewarding to play. there's no satisfaction clearing a dungeon trial or raid that you literally cannot possilby fail to complete.

As for yoshi's comment about losing players if they changed the system the problem is they're losing players by the bucket load anyway... wasnt so long ago they were boasting 10 million plus players but literally 5-6% of them are active at best... 94% of those players don't play....
There's a changeing trend in the business world where companies are starting to focus more on former custoemers than current ones. and I think SE should really invest in listening to former players. i mean if it turned out the treadmill was the reason 5 million players stopped playing that would tell se a lot more than the relatively small active playerbase can.

Oh yeah I forgot about replying to that:
https://gamerescape.com/2016/11/15/f...-fan-festival/

Y: It is the second expansion pack, and if we were to do the same thing all over again, a lot of people would get tired of it. Like I said earlier, the base design of FFXIV will not change. It’s a game made for this age, but that’s exactly why even if it were to change in the future to fit the future trends, it won’t return to the past. And even if a past trend were to become a modern trend, it still must include a “modern vibe” to it. It is not negating the past, but rather extracting the interesting elements, and inviting players who like them. That’s the product we are a
iming for.

And yet we where given a complete copy of HW, does not really fit on the same page as:

Yoshi P actually talked about this a bit in his book. The gist of it was that while there are players that desire change and experimentation in systems like this... there's a huge number that take comfort in a steady, predictable pattern - and would quit if SE upended things too much there.

So yeah I have doubts with the quote above, or at the very least, the people want change and are quitting far outweigh that wants to keep this mess for reasons what Dzian said.

[Fate_Testarossa]

One of the problems also stems from the fact that some players are so adamant about defending SE. Whether it is Pagos, the current server issues (which granted aren't entirely SE's fault) or lackluster content in general. There's always a bunch of people saying nothing's wrong with it. I really wish some people would just stop being fanboys. Newsflash: You can like a game/company but STILL bring up legit criticism.

[Riardon]

While I don't plan to quit this game any time soon I can see what your friend is saying.
FFXIV suffers for developer's fatigue atm.
They found out that this treadmill works so they gonna use it until the sun goes out.
They don't want to risk or put extra effort on breaking their habits. It's much better when you go to your work office and know exactly what you will do and what exactly the ones above you want.
And for the higher position staff it means less risk and less trouble. Easy profit makes everyone happy.
As a player things went a bit too repetitive and boring after SB.
We know exactly what's coming and we can safely predict all the upcoming patches.
The only surprises left are the small QoL improvements.
Dungeons became smaller and easier. I remember how dungeons used to be more challenging.
Eureka is bad. Anemos was ok due the nostalgia bring back feeling but Pagos was a major letdown.
HoH was a reskin of PotD with a few new gimmicks.
I really don't see any real effort on improving the game and further advance it.
If the next expansion don't improve anything XIV might have some trouble in the future.
For now XIV is safe. No real competition in the market for its category and it's still have it's own unique strengths against the competition.
And let's not forget that there are the same issues on all MMORPGs. Repetitiveness is a core ingredient for the genre.