Positivity!

[Velvet_Lunarfang]

MMORPG's are dying either you get gatcha games coming from Asia or Korean markets or you get Western MMO's that fail to deliver i.e. New World. Growing up I always wanted to play a MMO then when I finally got into FF14 back in 2014 I was excited at first. Now I feel like the light of MMO's are fading out, communities are lackluster and making friends online is near impossible. The genre is dying and maybe MMO's are better off just fading out of existence since none of them can do anything exciting or new.

[Alexandre_Noireau]

Now I feel like the light of MMO's are fading out, communities are lackluster and making friends online is near impossible.

This isn't the genre's fault tho.

[Aravell]

Just as we don't need threads that are negative for the sake of being negative, we also don't need threads that are positive for the sake of being positive. People come to the forums when they have complaints, this is natural. Not everyone that's negative is a troll, people have legitimate complaints too.

[Deo14]

People come to the forums when they have complaints, this is natural. Not everyone that's negative is a troll, people have legitimate complaints too.

Problem is that after some time, legitimate people seem to give up on constructive criticism since it seems like we're screaming into void, so they just quietly leave, while trolls stay.

[Iscah]

You figured out what the forums are meant to be for, voicing your complaints and criticisms about the game.

Forums are for discussing the game – what you like as well as you don't like.

The devs need to hear what people are enjoying about the game, not just what they want changed.

And fans (or at least the ones who enjoy talking about the thing they like with other fans) need a place to gather and do that.

That's what the forum should be for. Not just the negative reactions without the other side, or how can the devs know what the majority want?

If nine people like a thing and the tenth person complains that it should be changed, the devs should ideally be aware of all ten people's opinion before deciding whether to change the thing.

Unfortunately the lack of moderation – perhaps in the idealistic intent of letting everyone have an equal say – has just frustrated and driven off a lot of the previous forumites who were here to talk about all aspects of the game and not just their grievances with it.

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

Remember how someone said that Positive Threads Never Get Attacked, but only Negative Threads do?....lol

[Antharaes]

Remember how someone said that Positive Threads Never Get Attacked, but only Negative Threads do?....lol

And they even question his sincerity. I do like to come to the forum, to sometimes speak up, rattle a cage or yank a chain every now and then, but some of those people, should have their internet permanently removed.

[Absurdity]

Combat feels better than say the 4 button rotation in wow (outside burst / cds).

It's most likely because you haven't reached the stage where you look behind the curtain yet.

If you played WoW for 16 years then you unfortunately kind of only experienced the twilight years when it comes to their class design (at least in my opinion) but what we've been experiencing in XIV is basically what WoW players experienced when going from Cataclysm/Mists of Pandaria class design to Warlords of Draenor/Legion class design.
With every expansion we get more and more nuance sucked out of our jobs and the difference between the barrier of entry and the maximum potential of gameplay is increasingly flattened.

While WoW might only have 4 or 5 core abilities you use constantly their class design is often reactionary, it switches up your gameplay with random procs and buffs that you need to deal with.

Rotations in XIV on the other hand are basically static. Especially in this expansion there is a 60 second loop of abilities you execute in the exact same sequence every time, with every 2 minutes being the big window where all the raid buffs come off cooldown and everyone spams their big potency attacks at the same time.
It becomes stale and monotonous incredibly quickly, like you're working on a factory belt doing the exact same motions over and over and over.

[Nizzi]

Nothing comes across as more disingenuous for praise when it has to be justified by bringing up WoW or another game and saying that "this game is better in every way!"
Is it impossible for former WoW players to discuss anything without constantly bringing up the fact that they played WoW? XIV does have a lot that is worthy of praise, and also a lot that is worthy of criticism. Having to put down another game that you clearly enjoyed enough to spend 16+ years on to say that you like this one is anything other than genuine, in my opinion. It comes across more like you're really trying to stick it to Blizzard more than anything.

Like it or not, this is where the developers tell people to come to give complaints, criticism and feedback towards the game. "Everything is awesome and amazing and so much better than WoW!" is equally as unhelpful to the developers as "Everything sucks and Yoshi-P is a hack and needs to be fired and SE should be destroyed". I come here to voice my complaints and criticisms towards healer gameplay as someone who took Yoshi-P up on his "go do Ultimate" response to healer feedback and still find that everything I was thinking before is still true even after clearing DSR. That's literally all I care about, and I'll continue giving my feedback until I unsub or they revert this terrible design philosophy towards this role. Does that mean I hate this game and am always negative towards it? Of course not.

You also say this:

Maybe they are exclusively raiders and ignore the 80% of the other stuff in the game.

which, no offense, shows that you really don't understand the broader complaints from players towards this expansion because raid content has been the vast majority of the meaty content that has come out this expansion. Most of the people complaining about having nothing to do aren't the people who've done DSR, TOP, Pandaemonium or Criterion, they're the people who don't want to or cannot put in the time for raiding. Outside of job design, "raiders" have had it good this expansion relative to other groups. It's the people in the middle who didn't start playing in the past year or two that don't have content with longevity being designed for them. If someone found a majority of their playtime in content like Bozja or Eureka, they don't have anything for them this expansion.

For me, almost all of my playtime this expansion is spent raiding Savage/Ultimate so I'm not too bummed that there's not a Bozja/Eureka this expansion, nor do I find Island Sanctuary or the relics upsetting, but I can see how players that don't enjoy raiding but did enjoy a grind would find it upsetting and I agree with them. They had what they liked taken from them and were given nothing in return, and that's definitely worth being upset about. These expansions last a long time, and "just wait for the next expansion" basically means "wait for 2-3 years and maybe things will change."

As for all the clearly bait/troll threads that constantly litter this forum at this point; the people who flood in to circlejerk and post about how "totally not trolled" and how aware they are that it's a troll thread and how blocked the OP is are worse than the people making them, because they're giving the threads life and constant activity. The threads are clearly doing their purpose no matter how self aware people think they are being by making their 45th snarky comments about it or the OP being an RMT bot.

[SomeGuy22]

And they even question his sincerity.

Not a strange reaction when the OP lists some of the most common complaints in the forum and then somewhat dismisses them (to OP, not even accusing that it was on purpose, it's just very easy to read it that way). I guarantee you that the response to this thread would be extremely different if it looked like it wasn't made in retaliation to negative posts.

Two positive threads off the top of my head that have been very well-received were the "What do you guys do for fun" one that was posted recently (https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/483942), and the "Positive Feedback" one posted soon after 6.4's launch (https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/482641), and both of them were just that. Regular topics with non-inflammatory opening posts. I struggle to think of a more vocal critic than Stormpeaks, for example, and they left positive feedback in both.