This game has lost it's identity again.... (Ranting Thread)

[Paladinleeds]

Story is the main set of content for this game, and for a lot of players (from my understanding, though I could be wrong on this), they do indeed enjoy the story. Not everyone is going to enjoy the story and that's OK, but instead of trying to get Square Enix to turn Final Fantasy into something it's not, maybe it's time to look elsewhere like you've said. I've absolutely loved the ShB story so far (not quite finished yet though). Dancer is a lot of fun, and I'm going to be picking up my healers after. Are there areas where they can improve? Certainly. But, I will vehemently disagree on it losing its identity. One of the things that keeps me coming back to FFXIV: I feel immersed in the world through their storytelling. I played WoW, and I couldn't get immersed in the world there. Now that's not a knock against WoW (its focus is more the endgame content, and that's fine), and things could well have changed since I last played (Pandaria), but WoW just wasn't for me.

With regards to the parsers, that's a twofold thing to refute.
1. If you're seeking a casual static, they don't really care about logs for the most part (if they decide to become midcore, then yeah, they'll start caring, but that's a player phenomena), and casual statics exist in droves from my experience. Have been in them and indeed run one myself.
2. Parsers are a thing in every game. But if someone mentions actual numbers to you saying "You did this much damage", you can report them, as SqEx operate a "Don't ask, don't tell" policy. Parsers aren't going away anytime soon. Not unless they find everyone making the parsers and fire legal action at them. The amount of bad PR that would generate though would be astronomical and be the equivalent to shooting themselves in the foot, with a nuclear rocket launcher (not just a standard rocket launcher). But most people don't give two hoots about DPS, as long as the content gets completed. A lot of those who do, also do not care outside of Savage/Ultimate (where it matters more, they may slightly care in Extreme primals though), so your casual content will still be very much OK. Only a few will cause issues in casual content and that's just donkeys being donkeys.

[LiteBrite]

Damn... People are really ganging up on the OP. lol