Raid buffs and combo actions should go.

[Ransu]

Right - So that means that Aether has 30k? No, it's like 2k. There's around 50-100 of each class/job on any given active server.

Either way, you can't have your cake and eat it too. There are almost no players on XIV at the moment due to the lull. So it's either okay there's a lull and all of the players are gone, or we have all of the players. Can't have it both ways.

You think all of Aether is only 2k players? LOL. There's literally over 1800 people just on Gilgamesh right now and its not even the most populated server anymore.

New data centers take time to build up. You're not going to convince many current players to move over outside of the ones that want easy access to housing and new players will trickle in over time, especially during newer content updates. Or did you forget we're on the tail end of the current major patch and in the middle of the expansion? Its perfectly fine for there to be a lull in the game, but it doesn't mean its dead. Servers averaging well over 1k players is MORE than healthy.

You can have chaotic playstyles with all kinds of random elements in them AND you can have more methodical playstyles where you're mapping things out well in advance.

Those playstyles already exist in the designs of DNC/MCH/BRD/BLM

[R041]

You think all of Aether is only 2k players? LOL. There's literally over 1800 people just on Gilgamesh right now and its not even the most populated server anymore.

New data centers take time to build up. You're not going to convince many current players to move over outside of the ones that want easy access to housing and new players will trickle in over time, especially during newer content updates. Or did you forget we're on the tail end of the current major patch and in the middle of the expansion? Its perfectly fine for there to be a lull in the game, but it doesn't mean its dead. Servers averaging well over 1k players is MORE than healthy.

Even if Gilgamesh had 2k alone, that's still really bad and yes it's one of the most populated servers. This is no longer an excuse, when we lose the majority of the players after only a week of major patches. It doesn't really matter where we are in the patch cycle anymore, because the only time we actually see activity is the week before, and week after a patch. This tells us we're doing a bad job of keeping players active, and for an MMO that relies on player-driven activity to fuel the interactive content, that's pretty horrible. We are now a single-player visual novel.

Besides, most of those players are AFK anyway - Add the 5min AFK kick again and prove me wrong.

[Ransu]

Even if Gilgamesh had 2k alone, that's still really bad and yes it's one of the most populated servers. This is no longer an excuse, when we lose the majority of the players after only a week of major patches. It doesn't really matter where we are in the patch cycle anymore, because the only time we actually see activity is the week before, and week after a patch. This tells us we're doing a bad job of keeping players active, and for an MMO that relies on player-driven activity to fuel the interactive content, that's pretty horrible. We are now a single-player visual novel.

Besides, most of those players are AFK anyway - Add the 5min AFK kick again and prove me wrong.

In no way is 2k players on a single server bad...That is incredibly active for a server. Most MMO's can operate with only a few hundred players on a single server. The level of cluelessness from you is amazing.

[R041]

In no way is 2k players on a single server bad...That is incredibly active for a server. Most MMO's can operate with only a few hundred players on a single server. The level of cluelessness from you is amazing.

That's fine, we can agree to disagree and move on with our lives. You believe we're in an active and healthy spot. I wish I had such a delusional mindset.
(If your home world is Gilgamesh, I can see why you believe these things - A ton of players Wander/Travel to Gilgamesh from all of the dead servers)

Cheers!

[Canadane]

(post1/2)

(post2/2)

If you edit your initial post you have an extended character limit for your post.

[IkaraGreydancer]

That's fine, we can agree to disagree and move on with our lives. You believe we're in an active and healthy spot. I wish I had such a delusional mindset.
(If your home world is Gilgamesh, I can see why you believe these things)

Cheers!

Idk if you're trying to hit a middle ground calling others delusional doesn't help much tbh. I don't believe most people play on Steam tbf and frankly Lost Ark is a free to play game. It only makes sense that it'll have alot of players because access to it is far easier.

[R041]

Idk if you're trying to hit a middle ground calling others delusional doesn't help much tbh. I don't believe most people play on Steam tbf and frankly Lost Ark is a free to play game. It only makes sense that it'll have alot of players because access to it is far easier.

Yeah that's fair, I went a bit too far.


Have you heard of the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV? With an expanded free trial which you can play through the entirety of A Realm Reborn and the award winning Heavensward expansion up to level 60 for free with no restrictions on playtime.

[Azlith]

Those playstyles already exist in the designs of DNC/MCH/BRD/BLM

Yes I did mention that the casters (and ranged phys though I didn't mention them) do have quite a bit of diversity with the core of their rotation. They still all suffer from forcing all of them to play into specific raid buff timings. BRD has to hold apex arrow even when the gauge is full, it has to end its songs early to play into raid buffs and when raid buffs are being held it just has to throw away even more of soul voice gauge. on DNC it is better to miss half a gcd than to let standered step drift (which would only really happen if your skill speed isn't set to the correct amount) due to wanting to keep everything lined up for raid buffs. MCH has its own problems with battery gauge when buffs need to be held or when the boss goes away.

As I said in my original post I believe that while raid buffs contribute to constrained job design, combo actions as the core part of a jobs rotation (every melee and tank job) is the biggest offender. ALL of the melee jobs in this game have combo actions as the core of their rotation. The casters all have diverse core rotations that have you doing very different things whereas the melees are all just cycling through their combos, pressing a non combo button every now and again while they wait for the big burst.

[ForteNightshade]

Great, multiply by 3 MAYBE? Most games on Steam are cross-platform too. Do you actually believe we compete with those numbers outside of Steam? Do you ever do a Player Search and see thousands of players on each server? Because I do, and there's maybe 600 players on Dynamis total.

Not only does FF compete with those games, it actively surpasses the very game you're directly comparing it to: Lost Ark. The estimated amount of active characters as of October 2022 is 1.45M. Using Steam as a reference is all but useless when it comes to FFXIV considering the overwhelming majority of players don't use it. Meanwhile, Lost Ark's own website literally directs you to their Steam page. There is no other option. WoW would see equally low numbers if it were to ever release on Steam for the precise same reason.

A brand new data center they made because the demand was supposedly there. Apparently not.

Establishing a population takes considerable time. Mateus becoming the second roleplay server took several months and active community to get off the ground despite Balmung being completely closed off. The roleplay community is a faction of what an entire Data Center holds. Expecting Dynamis to be breaming with activity a month or two after it's existence is wholly unrealistic. Now Square could do a better job incentivizing transfers but that's an entirely different argument. Unless they outright pay people to go, it will take several months to potentially a year for Dynamis to have enough of a community it isn't reliant on DC travel. To be honest, I doubt SE is all that concerned. The whole reason they launched Dynamis is to prevent another Endwalker scenario. If in 7.0, we have insane queues again. They can now point to Dynamis as an alternative either through transfer or travel.

In no way is 2k players on a single server bad...That is incredibly active for a server. Most MMO's can operate with only a few hundred players on a single server. The level of cluelessness from you is amazing.

No, actually. That is incredibly bad. Way back in the day servers like Lamia and Zalera had populations comparable to that and they were complete ghost towns. It was straight up impossible to queue for a good chunk of content. Fortunately, every single NA sever is well over 20,000 nowadays. So it's a moot point. There are no "dead" servers on previously established worlds. In fact, the aforementioned Zalera and Lamia have more active characters than Gilgamesh per the statistics I linked above. R041 really has no idea what he's talking about.

[Atelier-Bagur]

Right - So that means that Aether has 30k? No, it's like 2k. There's around 50-100 of each class/job on any given active server.

Either way, you can't have your cake and eat it too. There are almost no players on XIV at the moment due to the lull. So it's either okay there's a lull and all of the players are gone, or we have all of the players. Can't have it both ways.

You have to be quite (in your own words) "delusional" to believe that FFXIV literally has no active players doing content at this exact moment. Its very obvious you have a personal frustration over people who dont see the same issues you think you see and you are so far in that belief that you feel like your opinion is fact.

I have a buttload of opinions about what I want for this game and its direction. A lot of it is complete personal and biased as most opinions tend to be yet I try not to be that "guy" who's self-absorbed in their own takes they're blind to everybody elses. What I think its good isnt always true or best for the game imo. Wish more people can at least be a little more self-aware about this.