We have officially reached maintenance....

[MonteCristo]

At this rate, we're gonna reach a point where the only living community in the game is the club/social scene, and it's kept alive by daily player-driven updates (if you get my drift) while Square gives us a recolored dungeon twice a year, charges us once per month, and then pats themselves on the back in a JP-only live letter for their hard work this year.

We'll be there after 7.0. Party finders on most dcs already show proof of this

[Elissar]

Obviously FFXIV is not under maintenance mode but certainly feels like! Every update feels the same: MSQ, minions, mounts and...new challenges with no meaningful rewards!

I hope we get more activity after FFXVI launch.
I do have more fun doing tribal quests and HoH than anything else, in shadowbringers i had more fun with Bozjan and Nier raids. For some reason i don't have the same hype for the Twelve or Eureka Orthos.
Lazy relic grind is not helping too.

However, i am not sure if it's FFXIV fault or my fault.

I miss how MMORPGs in general felt more immersive in the past with competitive pvp environments for territories (perfect world, cabal, lineage 2, ArcheAge), planing and necessity of interactions to grow up.
The "oldschool" MMORPG idea was based on leveling grinding and the journey...i still don't know which approach is better. Eureka and Bozjan satisfy this concept for a while but they are short.


I miss logging in, opening my friend list and calling friend A, B or C to farm something meaningful... in FFXIV what we can do? roulette? some specific mount farm? and when i can use mounts except for island and open world? how much time we spent in open world environment except for gathering, hunts or rare fates? i feel like we have too much diverse content with no depth at all, our rewards is excessively disperse.



I feel like tomestone gear is OP and kills open world quests/farm/challenges...you can one shot anything with a few exceptions like fates and hunts.

My rotted brain miss the old dopamine "i farmed like a maniac for this equipment and finally its paying off" while big numbers jumps in my screen =p

[EvieLilou]

I tend to agree. I've been so bored lately, and I'm a bit of a casual, even. And let me point out that it's the community that comes up with very lovely solutions to things like lighting, poor character quality, and house decorating tools. Sometimes I wonder what SE does with our money when I see these types of solutions that exist outside of the game. Obviously, many of these problems are fixable, but SE refuses to address them. I've been gaming on & off since college in the 90s (yeah boomer/grandma/whatever you guys want to call me), and we're in a place that most games of this generation are...they need a desperate overhaul and much more attention to survive. If I saw anything more promising coming down the pipes, I'd likely be gone, but overall, I think the state of the MMO genre is sad right now. I will forever hope it improves. I hope SE starts listening to its community and making better choices. There is a lot of good to work with, but the game and its systems need improving.

P.S. The housing and glamour systems are trash and continue to be trash.

[Xaruko_Nexume]

I think that's fine that people just enjoy the MSQ and lore. Unfortunately I think some people (myself included) are getting frustrated that the mid-tier players are getting pushed out, in favor of pure casual MSQ or high-end. There doesn't feel like there's really a middle ground right now. Hoping it's just an Endwalker issue, but class homogenization over the years has made basic dungeons pretty bland to me now.

XIV has evolved in an extremely frustrating way to me personally.

I wouldn't call it maintenance mode though, maybe maintenance prep because of the old expac bot updates. lol

This game is far from maintenance mode. Id argue it the second most successful MMMORPG on the market today, even with the obvious and undebatable drop off in subs we have seen in EW.

Regarding yours and others points about midcore content IDK I mean different people have different interpretations of what even midcore content even is. To some people, their lack of skill, confidence, social abilities etc. is a barrier to even extremes that would be seen well beyond midcore.

[Avoidy]

I tend to agree. I've been so bored lately, and I'm a bit of a casual, even. And let me point out that it's the community that comes up with very lovely solutions to things like lighting, poor character quality, and house decorating tools. Sometimes I wonder what SE does with our money when I see these types of solutions that exist outside of the game. Obviously, many of these problems are fixable, but SE refuses to address them. I've been gaming on & off since college in the 90s (yeah boomer/grandma/whatever you guys want to call me), and we're in a place that most games of this generation are...they need a desperate overhaul and much more attention to survive. If I saw anything more promising coming down the pipes, I'd likely be gone, but overall, I think the state of the MMO genre is sad right now. I will forever hope it improves. I hope SE starts listening to its community and making better choices. There is a lot of good to work with, but the game and its systems need improving.

P.S. The housing and glamour systems are trash and continue to be trash.

I think your point about the community coming up with solutions to the game's problems is spot on and probably has a lot to do with why the social scenes are still very active while the gameplay parts of the game are more sparse or full of people complaining and wanting more. I'm definitely not advocating for this or anything, but player-created outfits and hairstyles get released every day. Several a day. That's how prevalent it is. For a vanilla player, you're waiting like 6 months for a hairstyle you might not even like. The community "came up with a solution" to this problem, and for everyone who embraced that solution, there's suddenly new aesthetic content. Every day. Multiple times a day. And most of it is free.

All I'm saying is rather than ban these people, SE should thank them for doing the job SE should've been doing this entire time. I'd be embarrassed as hell if my own players showed me up this hard, this often, for free, and my only recourse was to ban them and then implement their QoL fixes a year later anyway.

[Hatfright]

snip

My lad, I'm literally replaying LoTRO right now. Half of Epic is running, talking and reading. One particular expac is almost all about "go there, talk to an NPC, move to the next location; you can do side quests there if you want, but you don't have to".
Half of SWTOR story is flying around and talking, tho all cutscenes there's voiced, I give it that.
Half of ESO story is running and talking.
I dunno what other or new MMOs cool kids playing these days and don't really care, but in my expirience? It's always has been like that with main stories, no need to pretend like ff14 is somehow worse in that regard.

[Elissar]

I think the state of the MMO genre is sad right now. I will forever hope it improves

I agree 100%. Glamour (in the sense of aesthetics/appearance) is cool but they have little meaning if everyone has the same power... in the old days, appearance represented your power. Strong character = cool looking character. I am not saying that casual looking like FFXIV does is bad, i am just saying that something is missing.


I hope the next gen of MMORPGs (2030+?) find a equilibrium between both concepts (gear progression vs casual progression).

[Xaruko_Nexume]

I feel like a lot of the complaints that I see about the game on these forums, from the same half dozen or so people, feels like going into League of Legends and then complain that there isn't enough capture the flag or if they keep coming back to McDonalds, every single day only to post online how ridiculous it is that McDonalds doesn't have steak. No. They dont have steak. Its McDonalds. IDK I mean its just weird. This is Final Fantasy XIV. It's never going to be WoW or another game, because WoW and other games already exist.

I mean, I guess on one hand they have the right to come here and complain and ask for the game to be whatever they want, but it just feels lilke a bizzare waste of time to me.

On the other hand, ive been that guy for years on the WoW forums, until I realized I was playing the wrong game.

[R041]

My lad, I'm literally replaying LoTRO right now. Half of Epic is running, talking and reading. One particular expac is almost all about "go there, talk to an NPC, move to the next location; you can do side quests there if you want, but you don't have to".
Half of SWTOR story is flying around and talking, tho all cutscenes there's voiced, I give it that.
Half of ESO story is running and talking.
I dunno what other or new MMOs cool kids playing these days and don't really care, but in my expirience? It's always has been like that with main stories, no need to pretend like ff14 is somehow worse in that regard.

I've also played those and most popular MMOs. I'm sure others here have as well.

It's not the same experience, as much as you want to sit here and believe that. Most of those games even let you coop the story.

It's like your brain forgot 90% of XIV MSQ somehow. You also forget the fact that XIV basically forces you to run through the whole MSQ before you're allowed to even do any side-content for that expac. Island Sanctuary? Variant? POTD 3? Give me a break. lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPWueMnAqkM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXxnh8HRsvE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHjzpiiNrCs

Also idk wtf you're smoking. "Kids these days" - Brother, older MMOs didn't even have MSQ. You ran outside and got dumpstered in the first 5 minutes of the game.

Mf Gary Gygax spoke sweet nothings in my ear while I was getting my ass beat in DDO. THAT MSQ? lol

[Elissar]

I mean, I guess on one hand they have the right to come here and complain and ask for the game to be whatever they want, but it just feels lilke a bizzare waste of time to me.
On the other hand, ive been that guy for years on the WoW forums, until I realized I was playing the wrong game.

You are not wrong.

As i see, the problem is the market tendency. Every modern MMORPG is doing the same thing.

Like in the past competitive pvp or levelling grind was the rule, today, the new rule is casual content and skin/glamours/transmogs everywhere.

The conclusion is obvious "don't play MMORPG for a while then"

Well..outside of FFXIV, i am spending my time in AoE 1, Stellaris and Warhammer =p