Been seeing a lot of doomsaying in forums/in-game lately

[Ranaku]

Blame WoW for it, they let Titanmen out of the Shadowlands and now he is back to haunt our forums.

[TheGrimace]

There are definitely issues in the game right now, but the OF skews heavily to the disgruntled side. While I agree that the dev team could do more and is failing in many aspects, I still appreciate plenty of things they do well. Just looking at a random page on the forum since 5.0, an outsider would think the game's immolating itself. It's exhausting to view for a long period of time.

[Thorio]

Is everyone okay, does anyone wanna talk, like for serious is everyone doing okay, need a break or anything?

Rule#1 You don't come to the forums if you're okay.

[AaronSound]

I think the Doomsaying is really just on the forums. I don't see it in the game at all. Not in NN, linkshells, FC, parties I join for farming, BLU, maps or hunts. They are all having fun.

I've seen people talk about their frustrations about healers in the game for years but that's about it.

A lot of people don't talk in-game, many times i tried starting conversations in Limsa in good hours and barely got a response, forums is literaly the place u can only talk

[Reap00]

There's some good points made here and there but its mostly just people and their hot takes.

<sigh> and now I'm gonna be labeled as a toxic positive person...great...

If someone labels you it if very easy to ignore them. Why would you accept a title from a random dimwit on the internet.

[Kaurhz]

Some people genuinely do need to take a step back, and with that take a break. It does border on the unhealthy at times.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

I don't think creating endless and repetitive threads for every nuance really resolves anything and just further exacerbates peoples' feelings towards the game, and arguably feelings towards the developers themselves. Not that criticism shouldn't be stated or anything but it's entirely ineffective when you make little micro-threads that die in a couple of hours -- Or if it results in childish arguments that inevitably lead... Absolutely nowhere

[Liam_Harper]

The forums are starting to look more and more like the WoW forums, where it's constant bickering between the "it's fine, shut up" crowd and the people complaining.

I've seen a lot of game forums and I've learned is that it actually is possible to have a community that is mostly happy with a game. FF14 used to fall into this category too and while complaint threads existed, "game is dying" thread were usually ridiculed. I've also learned that no matter how bad a game is, there will always be a crowd of players who defend it to the death. I've even seen that in bad F2P games that went downhill and had to shut their servers down, the more the game died the more it felt like the majority of posters defended it. Most likely because the complainers gave up on feedback and left.

The reason I complain about FF14 is because I actually like the game, it has a brilliant development team and Yoshida's mindset of actually caring about his players is extremely rare. But just caring about players doesn't automatically make all your decisions good ones. Every expansion it feels like multiple things I used to love are ruined and a number of things I strongly dislike or have become bored of are reused and pushed on me. It's narrowing down the number of things I can do for fun here. It's at the point where the game is worth the sub, but if a better MMO was released with the good points of FF14 but also the things I miss that they've lost over the years I'd jump ship in a heartbeat.

I feel like Yoshida almost cares too much. He's poking his nose into every part of game design, even if he's not qualified for it. He's so heavily focused on making the game friendly for the most casual player he's even become blind to non-hardcore players with a braincell or two. He's afraid to take risks and churns out some of the same designs and systems they've used for a decade and probably intends to play safe another decade. He's afraid to say no and keeps churning out 2 jobs per expansion, tried to shove 2 races into one expansion and keeps trying to churn out housing wards instead of just going instanced and the team are working flat out but always falling behind.

The reason I keep leaving feedback is because I want them to succeed. But I'm a former WoW player and I know once a game goes too far downhill, it's done for a lot of people. WoW waited too long before trying to fix their game and they could release an absolutely solid expansion and I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole.
If a better game came out and they lost me for a full expansion or two, it's unlikely I'd go back to FF even if they polished it.

This is just how I feel and I see no point in pretending it's not just because the aggressive positivity brigade don't like it.

[Ranaku]

snip

Problem is that if the devs listen to the really small hardcore playerbase all the time then the other players get annoyed and complain. And it saddens me to tell you that but raiders ain't paying the bills here. Casuals do and especially those casuals which leave much money in the cashshop.

The game will never be perfect for every single player so if you are really unhappy then unsub and play a game that has a better focus on the content you enjoy, for example if you like raiding just go and play world of warcraft. There is no reason to cry for changes when you are obviously the minority and there is no need for the devs to change the game just to keep some few players, who just turn the game on once every 4 months to raid one evening, happy.

And we saw what the focus on raiding does to a game. WoW is struggling to keep casuals playing without the use of fomo tactics and stupid borrowed power systems that are just gigantic timesinks. They don't get that most gamers are indeed casuals and completely ignoring them leads to exactly what you fear for XIV with raiders, except that XIV does really well...like really really well.

And no i don't deny that XIV has problems, every game has problems. The thing is that a problem =/= denying a games core philosophy. If a game is basically made for casuals and a casual playstyle then it is really silly to jump into that game and scream for a change that is not needed nor wanted by the majority. Just play something else.

[Lieri]

The people who actually play and enjoy the game dont have a lot of time to post on the forum. So its natural that most of the threads ate negative. These are the minority that spend more time on forum than playing.

[SherlottaEryut]

Is everyone okay, does anyone wanna talk, like for serious is everyone doing okay, need a break or anything?

I have a right to be furious at female Viera having clown feet. It's easy for you to say this, because its coming from a lalafell who have the shoe size of a bottle cap.