Final Fantasy XIV Hot Takes

[KariTheFox]

My "hot take" is that large amounts of gamers have a very unhealthy relationship with their game or gaming in general, to the point that such an unhealthy relationship is uncomfortably close to a perceived norm and if you mention it people look at you like you grew heads.
Competitive raiders (as well as competitive PvPers) can often be your quintessential loud minority and disproportionately affect games compared to how small their scene actually is. They can damage communities with their streaming influence. Historically, they have also been highly toxic.

Look I don't know about any of this insiduous influence of hardcore streamer stuff, I just like being challenged by difficult fights.

[MidnightEquinox]

Look I don't know about any of this insiduous influence of hardcore streamer stuff, I just like being challenged by difficult fights.

I'm not sure how that relates to my point.

[Minato777]

Cid is one of the most annoying characters in the game and sucks the life out of the story when ever he shows up unannounced. and the game would be better if he just died....or got anal fissures or something.

[LisSquid]

....or got anal fissures or something.

Can we talk about this and why this would improve the MSQ? I do not doubt you, but I need to see how this workshops.

[Shurrikhan]

Can we talk about this and why this would improve the MSQ? I do not doubt you, but I need to see how this workshops.

Cid has just been our hackneyed MacGuffin / Deus Ex Machina provider for the last few expansions. Need something to fight? Cid does a dumb and thereby gives you something to fight. Wouldn't be able to progress through X? Cid makes something to get you through X, removing that would-be complexity.

Now, that's hardly unique to him, but variety of sources (more not-Cid, in its varying forms) at least provides some reprieve, so I can see why some would want him pushed out the door.

[LisSquid]

Cid has just been our hackneyed MacGuffin / Deus Ex Machina provider for the last few expansions. Need something to fight? Cid does a dumb and thereby gives you something to fight. Wouldn't be able to progress through X? Cid makes something to get you through X, removing that would-be complexity.

Now, that's hardly unique to him, but variety of sources (more not-Cid, in its varying forms) at least provides some reprieve, so I can see why some would want him pushed out the door.

That's all well and good, but what does that have to do with

anal fissures

[Jybril]

Another one is I feel like the games getting more boring/stale the more expansions we go through.
Probably because the formula is unchanging for 10 years. This was fine at the beginning
but the SAME things and removing things with nothing in return quite frankly, sucks.

[Shougun]

Another one is I feel like the games getting more boring/stale the more expansions we go through.
Probably because the formula is unchanging for 10 years. This was fine at the beginning
but the SAME things and removing things with nothing in return quite frankly, sucks.

There are so so so many variables in play so everyone please take this as a range of mountains of salt, but I've long a sense for what is like wind or water over long ages of rock that includes all else that ails the game (issues flowing on the streams)... just simply age makes familiarity and is the enemy for many players in games that are meant to 'never end'.

Sure there are some old games that some people still play, and by old I mean not last 5 years. But, as something ages and is in some way required not to evolve 'too much' yet things around it do (because they're new).. I think this is one major factor to WoW constantly in search of the glorious days. Yes, YES of course there are many other issues to point at... but I feel for 'most' people around 10 years is a long life span for a game. It's literally around the age of many pets.

I guess I can make this my third attempt at a hot take, 'MMORPGs are not meant to last forever', it's okay they don't. Certainly you do want them to last longer than a couple years lol, and taking breaks can make it easily last longer- particularly in MMOs that allow you to take a break without getting punched in the face. In a general sense FFXIV allows that, though not financially if you own a house lol. Cataclysms might help, but given you can't stray too far from the source without angering people is also dangerous and potentially less fruitful than just making it different enough they can coexist. Say for example if in 2-5 years SE announced another MMO, my bet would be it'd have a substantial departure from FFXIV somehow that allowed FFXIV to live on like FFXI did (and FFXI still has a good chance to live on with it's small crowd and perhaps even more if they did ever pick up that mobile concept again).

Such a thought is why I occasionally openly wonder if they're secretly working on "titan 2" and hopefully they don't pull a WoW and kill it lol. My personal belief is WoW was going to slowly corrode no matter what, but given certain actions they've done both recently and not so recently have helped speed that up. Hence the water / wind analogy and what extra deeds are carried on the current. Like WoW did I'm certain SE can keep FFXIV making good for many years to come, and I've no doubt they can keep making expansions, but it makes me quite curious how they're going to batter and fortify against the river of time (and I'm not even sure if that's possible). No doom is coming to FFXIV soon, imo, I am talking in the frame of multiple years..

Maybe another analogy is eating at the same restaurant every day, without break. With break it'll help, with the restaurant changing the menu up it can also help (or hinder even lol), but there is still this sense of diminishing returns (slowly, very slowly, it's a many many year process, hopefully), and the shadow of the golden days growing taller when it was still a new experience.

Just my thought that MMOs do have a half life that is exceptionally hard to maintain the desired users through (you can /absolutely/ carry the 'never quit' fans though, like FFXI probably has players from the original days, there are some people who never stop playing the same game over and over and over, I think most people are not exactly like that though). I note that often the 'over and over' games are usually PVP, which helps keep a sense of variability throughout all else- I think that is probably a HUGE constant in most of those games that are quite old and yet still played a lot.

I personally don't find FFXIV currently boring, though I of course love to imagine hence I enjoy the forums as well lol, but I also have a decent amount of work and will make time for other games occasionally (like right now I am enjoying God of War now that is on PC). So I'm more paced than perhaps someone who finishes everything on day one patch or streams a game as a job lol.

[IdowhatIwant]

Another one is I feel like the games getting more boring/stale the more expansions we go through.
Probably because the formula is unchanging for 10 years. This was fine at the beginning
but the SAME things and removing things with nothing in return quite frankly, sucks.

Content formula is a double edge sword. On one side we have a consistent patch schedule. On the other hand the patch cycle gets stale when it is unchanged.
I think the worst problem with it all is the sheer fact that we have had the same patch cycle, but with less content included in these patches as we get more expansions. Not sure why this is, maybe they complete the expansion and leave a very small crew to do the patch cycles while the rest of the team starts development on the next expansion? What ever the reason does not matter as something does need to change regardless.

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

we have a consistent patch schedule.

Frankly, I like Structure. I like knowing and being able to Predict when X content is coming at X patch. And I like having a (mostly) consistent Patch Cycle.
Not a fan of the idea of not knowing when stuff is going to happen.
Plus this Predictable Structure tells me the Machine is Well Oiled and Running.