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

[Jybril]

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.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5941650

They have 4 people in their battle team when we're sitting here with 17 jobs.
So there we have it. Possibly 3 out of the 4 said to remove Kaiten because majority ruled LMAO.
Ain't none of 'em played healer I can tell you that much.

I was actually pretty surprised when I read this I'm not gonna lie but this explains a lot.
That is WAY too little people to try and figure out over a dozen jobs they need to hire people
if this is the case. There are small legit indie companies that have more people than this.
This crap is sad man.

[TaleraRistain]

It's from the last census which is based on players that have the savage mount, and the pet from normal raids. JP servers highest completion was 46% NA server was 22%. JPs lowest completion server was 22% NAs lowest was 1%. So yes depending on server it can be 1% but this is all on RP servers. Gilgamesh is the highest server at the 22%. These numbers don't include people that have not gotten the mount or have not completed all 4 sections, it's soley the number of players that have completed all 4 sections and won the roll on the mount. So the actual number of people that completed savage would be higher, and the number that participated would be even higher. So at least for some JP servers you can easily say a majority of players participated in savage raiding. NA/EU is another story, I guess theres a higher % of players that are into doing nothing in the game.

One thing to note though, and I saw this in the past on the forums here more than once from players on Japanese servers, is that the JP try things because the developers put the content out and put effort into it and they feel they have to try it. You don't see that as much on NA/EU. So it's not a matter of doing nothing in the game. It's that NA/EU choose the content they're interested in and spend time doing other things while they're in the game that interest them more than Savage.

[Laphicet]

Your argument says a lot more about what you like to do as a healer than anything about FFXIV in general. Having to play whack-a-mole with an addon in WoW, I wasn't enamored with healing in general but find it to be fine in this game. That says a lot more about what I like to do as a healer, by the way.

Considering that Tera currently has an average of about 20 players a day this month after Gameforge announced the shutdown of servers at the end of June 2022, one cannot say that the game was super successful in drawing players with its gameplay. Still, #32 out of the top 134 MMOs isn't bad for the genre.

Blaming Gameforge for mismanagement, rather than lack of profitability for this free to play game is a bit much ... it was already beginning to show its age.

If anyone is interested in looking at Tera on console (Gameforge doesn't handle the console version), you can look this up to see what you think: https://bluntlyhonestreviews.com/mmo...aying-in-2022/

The downfall of TERA was not due to class design, but rather a series of decisions that went back on original promises of the dev team. It was originally promised that modding tools and add-ons would be allowed for the game, only for the devs to take away the ability to use such on the game and actively punish it, resulting in a sharp decline in the population since such were used both in high-end pvp and high-end raiding. This was followed by them adding gender-locked classes and race-locked classes to the game after saying they wouldn't do that originally, followed by race-locked classes that were exclusive to the Elin race (imagine a new class being added to the game but only lalafell could use it). It was this that drove down the game's population and the rest is just natural decay with age that happens with KMMOs like this, I'm just surprised the game lasted as long as it did tbh. Maybe it being really easy to max classes in that game (by grinding notorious monster equivalents) and having incredibly satisfying combat are why its managed to limp on for this long? Either that or the Elin, but I doubt a couple of whales could keep a game running by themselves. Hell, Divine Souls, another mmo like so was able to limp on and continue being hot-potato'd between developers for years because there was just enough potential profit in it on the combat front alone.
But none of this had anything to do with job design, in fact the new jobs were well-received gameplaywise, the main complaints were the fact they were gender-locked and race-locked. And as a game like that with a notable RP base and hard content base you kind of don't want to do shit like that which would piss off veterans, especially something like nuking addon use (In fact TERA is a good example as to why Sqeenix shouldn't do that for FFXIV). The cancellation had to do with job design.
At least, that's my understanding of it as someone who played for a few months and has checked up on the game every now and then.

[rachcouture]

I know this is difficult to comprehend for the crowd that simply won't accept any criticism about Final Fantasy XIV, but I'll try to make this as simple as possible: no one is asking for a 90s clickfest with six hotbars on their screen. We're asking for job identity to be respected, and playstyles to be untouched when they were already fine to begin with. There's no reason healers should be the way they are now when they were most perfect between Heavensward and Stormblood, but subsequently gutted to the point that AST and SCH don't even relate to their story quests and lore anymore (old card system, Selene), nor should useful and/or iconic skills have been pruned when skill bloat would have been better dealt with by merging combos into single buttons like PvP has been for years, and dropping left behind crowd control skills—a far more efficient means without stripping away everything people cared about. Bard isn't even a bard; it's a glorified archer. Dancer, while at least letting you dance occasionally (something BRD has always failed on), has too many RNG attack skills and not enough support. Why can they rework SMN to be an actual Summoner true to the series, but not do either of these the justice they also deserve?

Currently, the only jobs that still have enough going for me are tanks, and I constantly worry how long it'll be before they too, are crushed under overbalance and needless streamlining. I already miss things like stance toggles as-is. A story alone won't be enough to keep me here, and I sincerely doubt I'm not the only one.

[Skiros]

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5941650

They have 4 people in their battle team when we're sitting here with 17 jobs.
So there we have it. Possibly 3 out of the 4 said to remove Kaiten because majority ruled LMAO.
Ain't none of 'em played healer I can tell you that much.

I was actually pretty surprised when I read this I'm not gonna lie but this explains a lot.
That is WAY too little people to try and figure out over a dozen jobs they need to hire people
if this is the case. There are small legit indie companies that have more people than this.
This crap is sad man.

Honestly don't think the battle team even plays healers or tanks.

[whitemoonflower]

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5941650

They have 4 people in their battle team when we're sitting here with 17 jobs.
So there we have it. Possibly 3 out of the 4 said to remove Kaiten because majority ruled LMAO.
Ain't none of 'em played healer I can tell you that much.

I was actually pretty surprised when I read this I'm not gonna lie but this explains a lot.
That is WAY too little people to try and figure out over a dozen jobs they need to hire people
if this is the case. There are small legit indie companies that have more people than this.
This crap is sad man.

All of my questions about SAM's loss of Seigan, Merciful Eyes, Kaiten, the Fuga/Fuko cone, etc.; MNK's bizarre (and far from feeling true to MNK) NIN/MNK state; the continually worsening condition of healers; and more answered in one comment.

[kpxmanifesto]

While half the playerbase leaving might be an exaggeration, a decent number will leave and move onto other games. However, I think FFXIV sub counts will still do well because new players will keep coming into the game to replace those that were lost.

[iluke77]

while end game is everything but playing the game like most games eg: house parties , glamour etc etc ...
gone are hard core mmo's its either casual or pay to win ( of which ffxiv is not pay to win ) there is no way its going to lose half its player base not even a 3rd will leave unless something truly amazing comes out !!

even then like josh strife hayes stated in one of his mmo vid's community is what makes a mmo fail or succeed .. people are less likely to move to a new mmo while there friends are playing one that they have invested alot of time in to
i have left it for a few months to a year but always come back because its a solid mmo !

[Ranaku]

Thing is casuals are the majority and raiders are the overwhelming minority. The people here on the forums are not even a tiny fraction of the silent majority who just enjoys the game.

So it saddens me to tell that to people but the game will do fine even if half of the crying (!) playerbase leaves the games behind forever. Raiders don't pay the bills anyways, i know many who just login into the game every 4 months to raid the current savage and then leave again.

The game is made for casuals, that was the core philosophy of XIV from 2.0+ on cause look at WoW and look at what happens to an MMO when it just has his only focus on the raiding scene.

[Shurrikhan]

Thing is casuals are the majority and raiders are the overwhelming minority.

These two categories are not mutually exclusive.

Most raiders ARE casual.

Your personal dislike for 8-man content does not suddenly force an ultimatum upon the entire playerbase. It does not force players to obsess over or loath some fourth of available content.

And let's be very clear:

The game is made for casuals, that was the core philosophy of XIV from 2.0+ on cause look at WoW and look at what happens to an MMO when it just has his only focus on the raiding scene.

The game was "made for casuals," too, back before it had any easy mode. Back when the first two endgame 4-man dungeons were actually a challenge for some people.

So, did XIV just utterly fail at its "for casuals" goal until... just recently? Hell, will they not have reached that goal until every raid has no enrage, no OHKOs, no real conditions for success except enough time ground away, despite that having no consequence if, as you propose, "casuals" cannot raid anyways?

Modern WoW, meanwhile, is the opposite of an example of a raid focus. The most raid-focused the game has ever been... was in Burning Crusade (Jan 2007 - Nov 2008). The majority of additions, including the various forms of AP, have been to give casual players something to (the the devs' minds, enjoyably) progress outside of raiding, or as catch-up mechanisms to seasonalize (and thus devalue) reasons to raid.

The addition of LFR? Literally the opposite of hardcore raiding. Dailies? World quests? Are we somehow going to chalk those up to "raiding"? The addition of Suramar? Pure story content. What was the point of Argos, Nazjatar and Mechagon? Essentially, Exporatory Missions -- casual stuff to do and by which to shrink the gap between those who raid and those who do not. Islands? Casual side-content. Essences? Collectibles with fun powers attached. Covenants, as opposed to just using Tier Sets or an additional row of talents? For, first and foremost, casually progressible storylines.

Outside of one difficulty setting --Mythic, WoW's equivalent of Ultimate-- it has progressively made raiding less and less a focus of its content since its first expansion while widening more accessible and less mainstay content in turn.