If you continue to dumb down the game, you will lose half your player base

[Serious-Cat]

https://dotesports.com/news/nearly-1...illion-in-2021

the easier the mastery barrier seemed the more profitable is it. Complexity in games is a thing of the past as corporations wanted the biggest share of the market . Difficult games are a labor of love and from what I heard, FF14 isn't going the way of min max profits, I think the current outrage on button condensation is a knee jerk reaction as devoted players have their muscle memory trained but assuming the trend of skill per expansion, we should be getting like 10 new skills in the next 10 years xD

Although its worth noting that age of the WoL supposedly reflect the playerbase average age. I'm not sure If I can play Apex as well rn when I'm 40 xD but fr, the skill condensation will allow a better impact on play and easier on the more senior gamers

[Vahlnir]

WoW's problems started a long time ago, and it was NOT with pruning and simplification. That is but a drop of water in a nearly endless sea of design issues.

[Deveryn]

Yoshi P said in a video that FFXIV wouldn't exist were it not for WoW. The game was a major inspirational source for this game. My question really is: Is the dev team willing to learn from the mistakes Blizzard made?

Blizzard literally went on a raging simplification spree. Notably pruning and removing tons of abilities from each class and specializations in the name of "accessibility". Shortly after the game went downhill big time. Skill expression is today completely gone in WoW. Every class plays braindead 1-2-3 button smashing that literally dulls your brain as you play.

I truly do not understand why the developers want to do the same thing to FFXIV. Heck, Blizzard even recently stated that pruning was a mistake. They're now trying to "undo" the damage, but that's likely going to take multiple expansions of work. Why on earth would you want to repeat this same mistake in FFXIV?

Having easy jobs is perfectly fine, but there needs to be jobs that offer also medium difficulty and high difficulty. Pruning and dumbing down existing jobs is not in any way acceptable, and is an insult to players who main those jobs. If you want to make something simple, then you need to create new jobs that are simple from the beginning - period. People are invested in their jobs and you're actively disrespecting their affection by making changes none of them asked for.

By all means, continue to remove abilities and make the game play itself. You will not gain more subs; but you will lose half your player base from your arrogance.

Numbers have actually gone up as they've tried to improve quality of life. Anyone that's been around long enough speaks of when things were more punishing. That's clearly not a good direction if you want a game to have longevity and attract / keep more people around.They're not dumbing things down, but making them more consistent. It's been needed for the longest time, especially cleaning up the markers in older zones, so we remember when to stack and when not to. I'm most looking forward to that boss in Sohm Ai being corrected to stop using that red marker for a stack mech.

I get that change is difficult to accept, but it's generally been for the better. It's an MMO things are bound to change. Learn to stop taking things so personally and try to enjoy what's given to you.

[VentVanitas]

Numbers have actually gone up as they've tried to improve quality of life. Anyone that's been around long enough speaks of when things were more punishing. That's clearly not a good direction if you want a game to have longevity and attract / keep more people around.They're not dumbing things down, but making them more consistent. It's been needed for the longest time, especially cleaning up the markers in older zones, so we remember when to stack and when not to. I'm most looking forward to that boss in Sohm Ai being corrected to stop using that red marker for a stack mech.

I get that change is difficult to accept, but it's generally been for the better. It's an MMO things are bound to change. Learn to stop taking things so personally and try to enjoy what's given to you.

Barely any of the changes they've made to job design reflects consistency. There are still a large number of jobs that lack global quality of life and all SE does is skirt around the problems they've made themselves.

SAM has a few useless buttons caused by unnecessary additions like Shoha 2 and Senei, despite SE giving PLD an AoE upgrade that doesn't take its own slot for no reason.
DRK and MCH still lack a charge system on Blood Weapon, Hypercharge or Wildfire, despite SE doing just that for other ping dependent abilities like Delirium, Perfect Balance, Inner Release, Bunshin, etc.
GNB's Gnashing Fang combo being condensed into one button, yet not doing this for other abilities like Ikishoten -> Ogi or Iaijutsu -> Tsubame.
BRD being given charges on Bloodletter for leniency, yet doing nothing for MNK's Chakra which has been dealing with overflow since Stormblood.
WHM's MP and cure potency problems, despite SE fixing that same issue with AST.

I could go on for days about this.

[Lunalepsy]

Yoshi P said in a video that FFXIV wouldn't exist were it not for WoW. The game was a major inspirational source for this game. My question really is: Is the dev team willing to learn from the mistakes Blizzard made?

Blizzard literally went on a raging simplification spree. Notably pruning and removing tons of abilities from each class and specializations in the name of "accessibility". Shortly after the game went downhill big time. Skill expression is today completely gone in WoW. Every class plays braindead 1-2-3 button smashing that literally dulls your brain as you play.

I truly do not understand why the developers want to do the same thing to FFXIV. Heck, Blizzard even recently stated that pruning was a mistake. They're now trying to "undo" the damage, but that's likely going to take multiple expansions of work. Why on earth would you want to repeat this same mistake in FFXIV?

Having easy jobs is perfectly fine, but there needs to be jobs that offer also medium difficulty and high difficulty. Pruning and dumbing down existing jobs is not in any way acceptable, and is an insult to players who main those jobs. If you want to make something simple, then you need to create new jobs that are simple from the beginning - period. People are invested in their jobs and you're actively disrespecting their affection by making changes none of them asked for.

By all means, continue to remove abilities and make the game play itself. You will not gain more subs; but you will lose half your player base from your arrogance.

This game is not complex by design, so there's no point in showing complexity when it doesn't exist.

[Serious-Cat]

Honestly I would rather them condense the combos on the tank and dps classes. They already did it during the roleplay quests on MSQ. It would reduce the button bloat. pressing one button 3 times isn’t any easier than pressing 1-2-3.

it wouldn’t even matter for healers because they have two dps skills anyways

I'm curious if 1-2-3 to 1-1-1 will affect any co-op gameplay? I don't think it will affect much in MSQ tho

[GrizzlyTank]

Thinking about it... Rhythm, sound design and responsiveness probably play a bigger role to making a job/rotation satisfying, not the quantity of buttons.

• Least the jobs i have most problem with is those i can't get a good rhythm/pattern with their rotation, notable job being Dragoon and their 11 step base rotation which doesn't translate well over to controller.
• Sound design for skills affects just how fun it is to use an ability.
• And responsiveness... well Ninja is a good example of what can happen with poor responsiveness with their mudras, slight latency and now your rotation of messed up.

[KizuyaKatogami]

Numbers have actually gone up as they've tried to improve quality of life. Anyone that's been around long enough speaks of when things were more punishing. That's clearly not a good direction if you want a game to have longevity and attract / keep more people around.They're not dumbing things down, but making them more consistent. It's been needed for the longest time, especially cleaning up the markers in older zones, so we remember when to stack and when not to. I'm most looking forward to that boss in Sohm Ai being corrected to stop using that red marker for a stack mech.

I get that change is difficult to accept, but it's generally been for the better. It's an MMO things are bound to change. Learn to stop taking things so personally and try to enjoy what's given to you.

I don’t understand how you guys can make statements like they aren’t dumbing things down when the healer situation exists and they’ve literally gone on record saying they want to streamline future dungeons…They objectively are dumbing things down.