At this point will FFXIV collapse if all mods and third party tools disappear?

[Sebazy]

The only reason why MMOS is and still is played for so long..is because of the competitive nature of humans..

Eh not really. For a lot of people, MMOs are glorified mIRC chatrooms. It's a quick and easy social fix. There are huge swathes of the FFXIV community that aren't even remotely competitive nor are they interested in that aspect of the game. Even amongst some raiders there are plenty that are there purely because they enjoy tackling the content puzzle with friends.

[Akibaws]

What kind of people are playing the game long-term?

How many people use ReShade? How many people use mods? We can now say that a significant portion of this game's playerbase are only here because of the mods, which allow them to fix the game's issues, like Viera hats, or for more, shall we say, mature activities. And what about more advanced mods that synchronize your modded appearance? Or poses that depict characters in... suggestive poses with others?

What about raiders? What even drives people to do reclear after reclear once they get BiS? FFLogs and going for high percentiles. And most of the game's clunky systems and opaque mechanics like the damage formula could not have been figured out without the aid of third party tools. The openers and rotations that you copied from the Balance are partially the product of ToS-violating third party tools.

Even many non-raiders depend on ToS-violating third party tools to fix this game's atrocious systems, such as being able to double-weave without clipping, or to be able to block out a persistent stalker completely from the screen.

Even third party tools that are not ToS-violating:

Crafters and gatherers depend on having Teamcraft and simulators to create rotations and macros + set up crafting lists, then share their macros through Discord.

BA and DRS depend on Discord to coordinate runs. Even Savage and Ultimate depend a lot on Discord especially if you want to get an early clear.

Achievement hunters compete on leaderboards like lalachievements.

I ask you: If all these fixes and features that the community developed disappear, with not one iota of help from the game developers, will the game even survive? To who do we owe our gratitude really? The community creators or the actual devs?

- Crafters and gatherers depend on having Teamcraft and simulators to create rotations and macros + set up crafting lists, then share their macros through Discord.

Not everyone does, some youtubers and streamers I watch create their own using excel calculations. But yeah the vast majority use sims you're right.

[DixieBellOCE]

- Crafters and gatherers depend on having Teamcraft and simulators to create rotations and macros + set up crafting lists, then share their macros through Discord.

Not everyone does, some youtubers and streamers I watch create their own using excel calculations. But yeah the vast majority use sims you're right.

The sad thing is, day 1 of each raid patch i just make my own rotations and macros to use, as well as my own melds.. and that just comes from a basic understanding of how the game system works.

All those tools are not needed, and honestly the game would be better off without them so the people that actually take the time to learn the systems would get rewarded for their effort.

Crafting in its current form is just 'wait for guide, press macro'. These people would have never survived heavensward crafting.

[raelgun]

Game will be fine if all of the modders left the game.

If anything we need those people gone esp the ones for RP and ERP purposes.

Its not like any increased subscribers to the game actually amounts to the budget going back to the game so I am fine if 40% of the playerbase up and goes ( not like the the development direction will change at all )

[Stormpeaks]

Game will be fine if all of the modders left the game.

If anything we need those people gone esp the ones for RP and ERP purposes.

Its not like any increased subscribers to the game actually amounts to the budget going back to the game so I am fine if 40% of the playerbase up and goes ( not like the the development direction will change at all )

say you want to see the game die without saying you want to see the game die

[Theodric]

say you want to see the game die without saying you want to see the game die

It depends. If the 'venue' and 'mod' crowds left, the development team would be forced to design content with staying power. It's something that they've proven capable of doing in the past so I don't doubt that they could do it again if backed into a corner. They just lack the incentive to do so when a not insignificant portion of their subscriber base play the game as something completely different to what it is intended to be.

I do think it's something that'll backfire in the long term. I know quite a lot of people who have mentioned, in passing, that they never bothered checking out FFXIV precisely because of how much explicit modded screenshots of the game are floating around on social media.

[DPZ2]

It depends. If the 'venue' and 'mod' crowds left, the development team would be forced to design content with staying power.

The development team has designed content in the same manner for 9 years without a thought about the modding community.

[Jojoya]

say you want to see the game die without saying you want to see the game die

Modders leaving won't cause the game to die.

It's bizarre how many think that gaming revolves around mods.

[raelgun]

say you want to see the game die without saying you want to see the game die

The game was profitable with less then half the current player base and at a time when it delivered more content per patch on an actual 3 month cycle.

[CStrife912]

The game was profitable with less then half the current player base and at a time when it delivered more content per patch on an actual 3 month cycle.

FF11 and Everquest even SWTOR got new content regularly or still do even now with a fraction of the player count...it takes a massive drop for a game to die...even if they had 100k players in total not even at once I bet the game will still live on in some capacity. Maybe a refocus onto something new but yeah...the game would need to loose a loooooot to constitute that as a possibility...the modding numbers would be a chunky loss but not enough.