All The Doom Threads Are Strange To Me

[TheShadowsOfVanity]

Alright, full disclosure: I play alot of games. Side benefit of being a tour guide is really nice hours, leaving plenty of time to play. So before anyone tells me 'I haven't seen what's out there' or 'I don't have enough experience to know what I'm talking about' or whatever else they can come up with that doesn't actually address the substance of my post, know that I am preemptively rolling my eyes and dismissing your reply as lacking in any return substance.

Having said that, it seems very strange to me that people are trying to proclaim the imminent doom of this game. Above and beyond, of course, the simple fact that people do that everywhere and it is very rarely proven true (unless the game is, like, The Day Before), it just doesn't seem like a reasonable view of what is going on.

Is this game perfect? No, of course not. But is it a grind-fest like WOW, where you literally can't stop playing if you want to stay relevant? No, and thank God for that. It's not supposed to be and it shouldn't be. WOW is WOW, FFXIV is FFXIV.

People claim the game has no content. I find that to be fundamentally untrue. I have been playing since the beta for 2.0, and I haven't done everything there is to do. Not on my main, and not on any of my alts. There may not be content you are interested in, but there is plenty of content.

People claim Endwalker, specifically, was limp on content. Without Eureka or Bozja. Ignoring the fact that people never stopped complaining about them when they came out, though I feel we really shouldn't ignore that, I could agree that non-story content was somewhat lacking. Didn't bother me much because I play for the story and RP, not high end raiding, but to each their own.

People claim (and this was a weird one) that the keynote made them not want to play because it didn't reveal the story for Dawntrail. That is baffling to me. First of all, the team has never exactly been prone to spoiling storybeats, so I dunno why people are acting like that is new. Secondly, yes, we don't know much about the entirely new story arc that hasn't even begun yet. I should think the reasons for that are obvious.

People claim that this is going to be a content-less 'anime island beach episode', despite the fact that we know for a fact we are going to be involved in a competition (how 'friendly' that will be is, of course, unknown) and that it is a competition that will have the Scions on opposite sides from one another. I'm not sure what about that says 'anime happy beach episode' to people.

Now, I could address the complaining about the classes, but that seems to be a better fit for a thread of it's own, should I feel so inclined. Needless to say, I am beyond thrilled about Viper (no, not because of SAO, because of Jisho from Flame of Recca, thank you very much) and Pictomancer. Beastmaster being a limited job, like Blue Mage, is perfectly sensible because they would make balancing fights a nightmare.

FFXIV isn't meant to be a grind-fest like WOW. It's never been one, it never should be one, and I thank God that it isn't. Having to do a dozen dailies a day to farm rep so you can keep playing the main story line, that's not content. That is tortue. That's retaining players by putting a proverbial gun to their head by saying 'you have to do dailies, or you can't stay relevant in story or PVE content.' It's not something to aspire to.

[EZGIL]

[Heroman3003]

People who have just burnt out on the game or are drastically unsatisfied with direction game took to achieve popularity it achieved are grasping for any reason to justify their dissatisfaction other than "its just not for me anymore" because that'd be admitting that its not the game's fault but their own brain's. That's it, that's the source of eternal doomposting.

[ThaCa]

I think a lot of us who complain are just tired of the direction some of the core design is taking or systems that end up being built up and then not put into good use.

I enjoyed most Jobs vastly more back in Stormblood even with its issues for example.

Currently there's massive hole in side content that isn't just one and done. Sure when you are newer to the game you have absurd amount of things to try out, but a lot of them you do once and that's it. Variant and Criterion sounded really interesting but ended up kinda wasted. They seem to abhor any kind of midcore content so Variant is easy mode and Criterion basically needs Savage gear and neither really have all that good rewards aside maybe from the one set of glam.

Stuff that I enjoy such as PvP and Mahjong that actually have player interaction and human element can only go so far with the small amount of support they have. They could easily extend them by having a more comprehensive reward system with very little time and effort spent into making the rewards. Just giving Mahjong a hefty MGP reward for playing that increases the higher you place would make it a lot more lucrative. Using armor recolors and cumulative titles would be very easy way to reward constantly high placing Crystalline Conflict players. And those are just very base examples.

If instead of churning out yet another Island Sanctuary spreadsheet simulator they would commit in bringing stuff like Chocobo racing up to modern standards or creating new player centric modes, they could really help bridge the downtime people have between patches without making it a grind that forces people to login. They could also easily tie new modes to collectibles like Orchestrions to give more value to collectors and in turn liven up the other older content.

I'm already repeating myself but the game truely has its good parts like the story, it's just that it is one and done deal for most of the time, which is fine for some systems but when almost everything becomes such it leads to situations where people sub for expansion and take a break until the next one to have enough stuff to play through to make it worth it.

[ArcaviusGreyashe]

It's pretty much as Heroman said... I'd add that it's not always the same people that are doom-posters, aside from some strange people that keep saying they'll unsub for the fifth or sixth consecutive year. But the post below theirs is a pretty good example of how people may not even be conscious of why the game changed that way, or just don't feel its appeal anymore.

I enjoyed most Jobs vastly more back in Stormblood even with its issues for example.

At the time, people used to complain so much about balance that they actually called for the very same 2min meta "everyone" now hates.

Currently there's massive hole in side content that isn't just one and done. Sure when you are newer to the game you have absurd amount of things to try out, but a lot of them you do once and that's it. Variant and Criterion sounded really interesting but ended up kinda wasted. They seem to abhor any kind of midcore content so Variant is easy mode and Criterion basically needs Savage gear and neither really have all that good rewards aside maybe from the one set of glam.

Rewards are an issue, but Criterion is midcore, keep in mind it's released months after savage, so you can and, if you're a midcore player, you have maxilvl - 10 gear, so yeah, even with a loose expectation for midcore, it is midcore. It still is one and done, as they say, but that's because people complained about bozja and eureka being grindy.

Stuff that I enjoy such as PvP and Mahjong that actually have player interaction and human element can only go so far with the small amount of support they have. They could easily extend them by having a more comprehensive reward system with very little time and effort spent into making the rewards. Just giving Mahjong a hefty MGP reward for playing that increases the higher you place would make it a lot more lucrative. Using armor recolors and cumulative titles would be very easy way to reward constantly high placing Crystalline Conflict players. And those are just very base examples.

It's really not hard to hear people complaining that pvp locks too many rewards in, so yeah, once again, doom posters are not people that hate the game... they're just not the people the game is adressing right now.

I won't continue this, because I don't want ThaCa to see me as targetting them or anything, but the main idea is that, really : the community grew larger, devs can't, at the same time, create sanctuary island, criterion, eureka 3, and new pvp modes, they also can't make a pve meta that wouldn't be two minutes based, but at the same time make every job playable in every team setting... MMOs are a mess, and although XIV is doing a pretty great job at it, it's easy to see why people may not feel like it adresses them.

[Metalface_Villain]

I dunno about doom and all that but after base Endwalker all the patches had almost no content for non hardcore players and that's simple facts. I found myself paying a monthly sub on patch releases and ending up playing two days to a week every time. Saying things like just play something else or take a break when people want to play this game or saying just grind every old relic so you would force yourself to have content to do, is as ridiculous as it gets imo. I came with the WoW exodus and in a year and a half or so, I pretty much did everything in the game excluding savages, ultimates and grinding every piece of pre-Endwalker relic. If I'm gonna pay a monthly sub in a game I already paid money for, which also has a shop in it, then it better have enough new content for the duration of that god damn sub. They could have easily (and lazily if we're being honest) fixed this with a Mythic+ system and a relic zone but instead we got the disappointments that were Criterion and Manderville.

[Mostly_Raxus]

knowing that this thread is just bait; here we go..
i hear plenty of valid criticism of the game, not so much doom saying.
you say there is loads of content, but lets take the patch thats dropping as an example: What are we getting?
-2 hours of a MSQ (probably being generous)
-1 hour of a hildi quest
- 1500 tomes requirement for relic upgrade
- 6 month wait+ till next patch

this isn't repeatable content, just because you dont want long term goals does not mean this game is fine.

[Orinori]

Tfw you admit that you only RP and do the 1-off MSQ and then make a post about how everyone else (who actually plays the game) who isn't happy with the state of the game (that you aren't playing) are crazy. Never change 14 community, never change.

[Doozer]

I dunno about doom and all that but after base Endwalker all the patches had almost no content for non hardcore players and that's simple facts.

Island Sanctuary, variant dungeons, Eureka Orthos, MSQ normal dungeons/trials, alliance raids, tribal quests... there was plenty of 'non-hardcore' content. Especially considering the hardcore content was basically Savage and Ultimate.

Also, have you done literally every single thing there is to do in the game up to Endwalker? Everything? Every single quest, achievement, etc.? Because you can still do old content in Endwalker. You're not locked out. I seriously doubt there's absolutely nothing for you to do currently in-game. If you find there's nothing you want to do, yes, go play something else. That's normal behaviour. If you're so attached to the game that you're mad because you can't find anything to enjoy anymore, that's not SE's problem. It's you.

[Supersnow845]

One phrase I notice a lot of people who make these style of “the game is fine what are people talking about threads” using is some variation of “there is plenty of content, there just isn’t plenty of content you personally want to do”

In the eyes of a paying customer in a live service game what is functionally the difference?

I’m a person who likes varied job design, decent grinds (something like the emblazoned is a good grind to me) and MMO style content, for me EW gave me nothing, I got boring homogenised job designs and 3 pieces of content with no replayability that died the day they launched

Now can you make the argument that if square is making said content to appeal to a particular faction of the playerbase that’s not me that they don’t have time to make what I want? Yes 100% you can make that argument and I’d even agree with you on it. However that doesn’t make my argument that EW gave me nothing wrong, it just means I wasn’t the target playerbase, which doesn’t preclude me from complaining that I didn’t get what I wanted in a game I pay for (I’m saying this in the least whiny “what about me” way, I just can’t think of a better way to phrase it)

Complaints on the forums centre 99% around either this phenomenon; that people are paying for content that they don’t particularly want; or around the even more simple idea that content that takes 4 months to come out shouldn’t be able to be finished in 4 hours. Nobody is arguing the game is actually dying, but people are arguing the game they want to play is dying, which is a totally different argument