No content for 1 year :)

[True-to-Caesar]

Go outside. You may find new adventure awaits you. FFXIV is not meant to be the focal point of your existence.

Is that your only argument when the game has barebone patches and content with no longevity at all ?
Hey ! Pay a sub for patches that come every 4 to 4.5 months with basically nothing refreshing to do such as new maps or actual piece of content that would last more than a week or worse, hours.

Look at supposedly full-time FFXIV streamers, they gave up since it’s hard even for them to make fun and engaging content from FFXIV. They only can when some crusts of MSQ drop and that’s about it.

How can you call this a MMORPG ? The excuse is, it has a good story but even that is starting to fail and other MMOs have great stories aswell. So nothing puts FFXIV ahead of the competition, actually it’s the contrary with crappy systems as their gearing or housing.

Unless you own a house.

I own a medium house in the Mists right in front of the beach. I was tempted to keep my sub but in the end, like I mentioned above… for what?
Yes it wasn’t easy to get it but what’s the point when I don’t play the game. A false hope and heavy dose of copium deluxe thinking 7.0 and beyond will be different ? Honestly I’d wait an expansion or 2, sub for a month to catch up and leave again. It’s indeed a story game/seasonal game instead of an actual good MMO or even good game…

If you compare their graphic update with WoW, you realize they hardly touched the meshes (especially characters meshes) and it’s basically some retextures and shading added in there, with a focus on flora. Yes it’s better than before but still not impressed. Some modders or even crappy WoW have done better jobs with visual updates. The funniest part is, you get 1 year of content drought, 4 months between patches and they tell you the graphics update will come slowly, fragmented and not on the release of 7.0…

[CStrife912]

..

I mean its all subjective whether you think its a good MMO or good game...clearly a good amount of people think it is and it seems to be enough for better or worse to keep its current trajectory. Also slightly exaggerating if you left 2 expansions worth if you paid attention to everything and didn't rush through it would take much longer then that to go through but you do you. I will agree its starting to blur the line of is this an mmo or is this a big single player story you can play with friends...but its not quite there yet on either fence. Your opinion of the story failing and your opinion of other MMOs having good stories to...maybe but its all opinion..cant go swinging it round like its fact.

Now the real weird bit is character meshes in the faces have improved on some model types its clear to see, granted they said this will still improve before release. Ideally I want the hair mesh to be smoothened out if they are sticking with just HD textures for example. 14s models are more detailed then wow its a bit of an odd comparison especially when say wow chest pieces lack depth and look like painted on abs where as 14 actually has modelled armour (There are some wow bits that aren't but broadly yes they are) WoW also had its first visual overhaul much earlier on in its cycle compared to 14. There are way more assets collectively in 14 at its current point for the graphics overhaul then WoW when cataclysm came out...on top of that wow has a much larger team and budget. I will agree to an extent some modders can do better work..but some of the ones I've seen clash with the art direction of the game. Until we see raw video youtube compression streamed videos aren't the best indicator of it all.

I also predicted they would of done this anyway with 7.0 and 2.0 being the brunt of the visual work (Got to make new players or free trial players see how nice the game looks before hitting you with the HW onwards wall downgrade :P ) and then addressing expansions during patch cycles. I mean shaders, lighting, shadows, fog effects, god rays, fauna is being systematically put in to the others just actual object density, textures etc wont be touched yet (alongside npcs and gear) which makes sense. They announced this 17 months back...they do have finite resources you cant allocate all that to a visual overhaul when your making an expansion, now xbox port, reworking the foundations of the base game for the now even further extended free trial...blah blah blah.

Call it copium...white knighting...simping...I'm just thinking broadly what may be happening. Or yeah they could be half arsing it but neither of us can prove whos right.

[True-to-Caesar]

...

When I saw the characters I didn't see any meshes improvements, only shaders and improved textures.

As for the story, yes it's subjective, but a look at the forums and other medias and I see I'm not the only one thinking the story and some characters are just... not good nor super interesting. for Post-expansion story quests, we had better, even in Stormblood which is seen as one of the worst expansions (imo Endwalker does take the crown for that, since we had Eureka at least).

At the end of the day, if you're fine paying a sub for this game, rewarding their design choices and the way they work on it, it's on you. I'm not here to say what people must do or not, not my place nor am I interested in doing that. Just saying my piece before the sub runs out and I'll stay on other games where I have more fun with better content in my eyes. Still have the hope that a CM or dev member can at least report some complaints here, because yes there's an issue when your game can't even keep dedicated streamers as it has barebones content (even for those doing the harder group content). It should ring some bells.

It will only take a shiny new and well polished MMO to siphon some FF players, and for the most weebies/kawai ones, a good asian MMO to siphon the rest (unfortunately I doubt it exists since outside of FF they're all P2W trash). If they keep their same old formula for 10 more years, with the same artificial housing issues and 4 months to get 1 dungeon and maybe some raids... the game won't get that far in the long run. So they better step up and shake things a bit with the dusty design choices.

[Jojoya]

How can you call this a MMORPG ? The excuse is, it has a good story but even that is starting to fail and other MMOs have great stories aswell. So nothing puts FFXIV ahead of the competition, actually it’s the contrary with crappy systems as their gearing or housing.

Does this give you the clarification that you're looking for?

Live Letter 68 10 year roadmap: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2TWmsce_eg&t=1746s

[CStrife912]

When I saw the characters I didn't see any meshes improvements, only shaders and improved textures.

As for the story, yes it's subjective, but a look at the forums and other medias and I see I'm not the only one thinking the story and some characters are just... not good nor super interesting. for Post-expansion story quests, we had better, even in Stormblood which is seen as one of the worst expansions (imo Endwalker does take the crown for that, since we had Eureka at least).

At the end of the day, if you're fine paying a sub for this game, rewarding their design choices and the way they work on it, it's on you. I'm not here to say what people must do or not, not my place nor am I interested in doing that. Just saying my piece before the sub runs out and I'll stay on other games where I have more fun with better content in my eyes. Still have the hope that a CM or dev member can at least report some complaints here, because yes there's an issue when your game can't even keep dedicated streamers as it has barebones content (even for those doing the harder group content). It should ring some bells.

It will only take a shiny new and well polished MMO to siphon some FF players, and for the most weebies/kawai ones, a good asian MMO to siphon the rest (unfortunately I doubt it exists since outside of FF they're all P2W trash). If they keep their same old formula for 10 more years, with the same artificial housing issues and 4 months to get 1 dungeon and maybe some raids... the game won't get that far in the long run. So they better step up and shake things a bit with the dusty design choices.

You can literally look at the chins and see less 'faces' ears included it is quite easy to see the subtle changes but like I have said its hard to critique on it because its not the final product. This happened with FF16 as well...a year from release people said oh it doesn't look that great and the finished game texture quality, lighting etc all got bumped up and you could see the difference (regardless of questionable performance etc)

I view stormblood as the worst expansion story wise but one of the best content wise as it had some very interesting trial fights and I enjoyed Eureka granted I played it when it was 'revamped' I think Endwalker needed to still be longer to really hammer home half of its ideas but I think its ok as a companion piece to shadowbringers (Its like how I think Avengers Endgame isn't really great unless its accompanied by Infinity War)

I have only done a daily frontline to do the PvP rewards as I am feeling a little burnt out of years of playing and new content or more content isn't going to remedy it for me. However and I know not everyone is in this position...my sub fee costs the price of a Mcdonalds meal (its £7.69) and I sometimes have it twice a week or once a week depending on my work schedule and I think to myself I can just let the sub lapse as its negligible to me. I do have a large FC house with a friend of mine so I am happy to keep it going for that as well. I am also keeping the deep dungeon, new variant and likely the next variant along with the relic steps for crafter/gatherers as my gap filler....even then FF7 remake part 2 early 2024 as well so woop woop for that.

14 is a game I wouldn't really watch a streamer for it just doesn't have the content types to get that attention hence why most of them run the course or go away from it. I also don't think a game should mandatorily demand my time to keep up with everything, if things are optional that's great. But when every single game is trying to put systems in place to keep you there it gets exhausting. Also in no way shape or form should twitch/youtube influencers or streamers indicate the health of a product, I hate how the hobby of gaming is now being changed because of these sorts of people. The other thing is...until the player numbers drop then you won't get your answer...the metrics are showing that if people have had enough of the content they would of ditched a long time ago, well before covid era.

[Avoidy]

This game has the strangest defenders, its defence for the long patch cycles is, why are you playing this game?

The official forums are basically a place where "just play other games" type-people meet people who are only here to air grievances until they unsub and can't post here anymore. If these forums allowed unsubbed players or even trial players to post, you'd see way more criticism than we're even seeing now, but most people actually do just unsubscribe and play other games. I'm playing another MMO currently, and there are so many former XIV players in it that they're calling us "refugees." And all of them have cited similar reasons for leaving the game behind. Like, I'm getting WoW refugee vibes from the whole situation. Remember when WoW players were flooding into XIV, saying the future for their old game just seemed bleak? Same situation here. It's uncanny. Of course, none of them can post here because their accounts are no longer active or whatever. I think for a more holistic picture, it's important to look at the entire thing. Yeah, there are a lot of people who still love this game and they come here to defend it. The people who'd disagree with them are largely barred from posting here, but they're quite vocal (if you ask them why they quit xiv) when you run into them in other games. TLDR I think if the forums let anyone with a SQEX account post, a lot of these frivolous "just play something else" type arguments would get overwhelmed with derision from an ocean of people with basic sense. Like... obviously the option exists to play other games. People want to play this one. That's why they're here, paying monthly for it.

[Seraphor]

This game has the strangest defenders, its defence for the long patch cycles is, why are you playing this game?

Maybe stop treating everything like a battle and realise that people aren't "defending the game", they're simply giving you some healthy advice.

No game can pump out content faster than players can consume that content, that's just a fact of media creation in general.

It's insane to me that people should expect to have brand new content every single day, 365 days a year.

[TheNight]

If these forums allowed unsubbed players or even trial players to post, you'd see way more criticism than we're even seeing now, but most people actually do just unsubscribe and play other games. I'm playing another MMO currently, and there are so many former XIV players in it that they're calling us "refugees." And all of them have cited similar reasons for leaving the game behind. Like, I'm getting WoW refugee vibes from the whole situation. Remember when WoW players were flooding into XIV, saying the future for their old game just seemed bleak? Same situation here. It's uncanny. Of course, none of them can post here because their accounts are no longer active or whatever.

This has been the case in Lost Ark before as well, before that game went into the gutters. It still has superior combat and fun raids though as long as you refrain yourself from actually trying to get to cutting edge.

To your point, it is extremely ironic that the simps would declare that this negative sentiment is in the minority when it's actually probably the majority of everyone who has played FF14 before. Everyone I know IRL who tried FF14 quit because it was boring. And I have literally never seen any positive sentiment about FF14 outside of FF14 other than its story and its perceived positive community. FF14 itself is now at a point where people openly criticize EW's lack of content. People say that unprompted all the time in game and here's the kicker: unlike on the forums I literally don't see anyone ever disagreeing. It's far more common for people to join in agreement.

[Lunalepsy]

Except we have fall guys and 1 hr of main story consisting of Zero staring at another man's abs, that will surely last for a year

And? People are so obsessed with "content," they've forgotten the basic elements of what an MMO should be.

[Supersnow845]

And? People are so obsessed with "content," they've forgotten the basic elements of what an MMO should be.

You mean a live service always online game that gives us content