Current Problem Parallels

[CapaxInfiniti]

As a longtime WoW vet, like really long time, there's honestly a lot of issues in Endwalker, and the response seriously parallels the reasons WoW declined like it did.

The housing debacle which managed to satisfy only a tiny percent of the population?
There should be outrage over it, and we should hold them to a higher standard.

Job imbalance? The same thing. The current pvp situations with the constant flux? Same thing.

This isn't to complain about them in particular, but to the overall response we're seeing.

As it currently stands, any kind of player unhappiness or wanting to ask the dev team to be held to a higher standard is met by the community with one of a few things:
"If you don't like it then quit"
"I'm happy so I don't care"
"You can't expect the devs to solve this problem"

These kind of responses are what slowly sent WoW into an uncontrolled death spiral.
As issues that needed addressing popped up, the community would take to the forums, and complain and try to get the game to reverse course.

It was met with fierce resistance every single time. Getting told to shut up, or to quit, or to find a new game, etc etc.

We are seeing the exact same thing currently happening right now on FFXIV.

EW has had some absolutely serious mis-steps. But by far and large the community has absolutely demanded that there be zero criticism ever because one time Yoshi-P cried on camera or something.

The fact that there is an entire army waiting to bludgeon even the most honest and valid of complaints and concerns is the telltale sign that FFXIV is entering into it's decline period. Much like WoW did. It's not going to magically be a bad game tomorrow like people think. It's going to be a very slow, very gradual process, where one bad mistake after the other is added. People will try to say something, because they love the game, only to be met by a community who will take every single opportunity to be hostile and will defend every single bad decision like a matter of personal honor.

What happens is a slow spiral of people starting to leave, feeling like they no longer have a voice in the game they love.

The mistakes made in Endwalker point to a strong shift in ethic when it comes to what the team is putting out. This is by far and beyond the most divisive of the expansions. People can point to SB but that was mostly due to story and pacing. EW suffers from a lot of bad decisions people complained about early, that still weren't addressed.

It's that level of hubris that brought WoW down.

[Saraide]

I think you raise some very valid points but I am not so sure about where you place the blame in this post. The "if you dont like it then quit" crowd is absolutely annoying but they arent actually the people in charge. The devs are in charge, it's on them to create the game and to look for feedback. To incorporate it into their vision of the game as it fits. If they lack vision and just go by what seems popular but doesnt really fit together, then we are already standing before a lost cause. On the bright side, there is still time for improvement. The game wont just die tomorrow.

[Kranel_San]

I'm starting to think this is MMO's lifecycle, though I hope we can prevent it from becoming another WoW.

[Avatre]

I think you raise some very valid points but I am not so sure about where you place the blame in this post. The "if you dont like it then quit" crowd is absolutely annoying but they arent actually the people in charge. The devs are in charge, it's on them to create the game and to look for feedback. To incorporate it into their vision of the game as it fits. If they lack vision and just go by what seems popular but doesnt really fit together, then we are already standing before a lost cause. On the bright side, there is still time for improvement. The game wont just die tomorrow.

I think that part that gets lost on a lot of the people who say "if you don't like it then quit" is the feedback. But at the same time, a lot of the feedback isn't really given as feedback...it's mostly demands and verbal abuse towards devs/anyone who has a different opinion.

I definitely agree there is room for improvement, and some decisions make me wonder why they were actually done. And, while it would be nice for a massive overhaul of the housing system which has been problematic since the start, I don't think some things will change anytime soon

[Rolder50]

I've commented elsewhere about this, but I'm getting very strong Wrath into Cataclysm vibes from Shadowbringers into Endwalker. That's when WoW went too hard into oversimplification and pandering to metrics and the game started to degrade into the mess it is now.

[Wolwosh]

What I find weird and what worries me is that whenever something gets heavily critisized in 14 and they do listen the dev team often turn it into something even worse

[SenorPatty]

Maybr that's the destiny of all successful mmos: the glorious peak, then the slow decline due to complacency and disregard of long standing issues that contribute to said decline.

[KageTokage]

I can't help but wonder how many of the issues stem partly from executive meddling trying to make sure XIV gets as little funding as possible while still bringing in profits.

The dev team is on record as being woefully understaffed in multiple places, though they are also painfully out of touch in some regards like the whole healer debacle and the fact that the Eureka bots are making the content virtually unplayable on lower population DCs.

[Saraide]

I can't help but wonder how many of the issues stem partly from executive meddling trying to make sure XIV gets as little funding as possible while still bringing in profits.

The dev team is on record as being woefully understaffed in multiple places, though they are also painfully out of touch in some regards like the whole healer debacle and the fact that the Eureka bots are making the content virtually unplayable on lower population DCs.

Going for a just barely viable product is disappointingly common for big publishers. We dont need to look far for that either, babylon's fall is the best example.

[Adamantini]

"If you don't like it then quit"
"I'm happy so I don't care"
"You can't expect the devs to solve this problem"

This.

Everyone who says the expansion was good can't explain me why, other than "it was good for me".

Good? I spent months with a sound bug, along with a bunch of other people, and they only fixed it after I had finished the main story. Didn't they see that when they asked for more time to "polish the game"?

The grand finale of the story we've been doing for years is a huge fanservice for Emet, a bunch of cute scenes, the scions dying again, and a boss we've never heard of. Seriously, congratulations to whoever managed to cry with this fairy tale, you made whoever wrote this very happy, since there were scenes that said "please cry here".

It was supposed to end the story of Hydaelin and Zoldiark, but in the end, Hydaelin seemed like a stupid lunatic, and Zoldiark just a puppet. We don't even get to see his real personality.

Didn't anyone tell the sound team that a song with lyrics is NEVER used in an MMORPG map? How many years have they been making MMORPGs to make such a grotesque mistake?

Three years of promising to fix races from the past expansion, and they came with wigs and mega foreheads.

It's been a while since they even paid attention to the old, well-established races in the game. Will anyone here tell me that it makes sense to take off miqo'te's ear on the calfskin cap?

A huge wave of bots roam the servers. I can no longer sell anything on the market board, as the price simply drops by half on the same day. But their priority is to ban streamers who are using mods.

But its alright. I made this post here, just to come back when things are worse, to say "HEY PEOPLE! I told you so!"