Combat system is beyond saving.

[Maltothoris]

I'll only criticize the healer gameplay. It stinks cause they had something going there. There was almost some progress with healers. However there's caveats with most of the stuff. Whm's new moves are locked behind other abilities and can't be used too often. Astro lost the unique cards but also lost stupid astrodyne. Sch gets discount bane but again locked behind 2 minute cd.

Not to mention the whole slew of new mitigation upgrades where what if they didn't increase the damage but rather did it to make casuals actually use them.

[Aword3213]

You sure you want people to unsub right now?

As if anyone here is a shareholder of Sqare Enix or anything

[Tsurayu]

You sure you want people to unsub right now?

You know that graph and letter have absolutely nothing to do with each other, right?

The sales and activity charts for FFXIV have nothing to do with the financial losses that occurred because Square Enix decided to restructure where resources were going in their games. They were spreading themselves too thin and wasting resources on games that they knew were going to be marginal successes at best. The loss reported isn't actually a loss due to lackluster sales. it was the losses reported for their decision to abandon those plans rather than occur even greater losses that they knew they would take. But no, people see "loss" and think Square Enix is going bankrupt or something and somehow that having something to do with FFXIV.

[Boblawblah]

You sure you want people to unsub right now?

Are you really asking me if I want YOU to unsub right now? Really?

The sad reality is that you're more attached to this game than I will EVER be and you'll be subbed long after I've moved on.

[TaleraRistain]

What people were specifically annoyed with were healers idling for large periods of time and not helping the rest of the party when the healing was completely under control. Players that needed time to heal or who were learning mechanics not using Cleric Stance were completely fine.

All I was disputing was their claim that stance dancing was optional. It very much was not because of exactly what you said. People didn't like healers who could handle their role effortlessly and pushed them to dps, which we could only do effectively under cleric stance.

Before anyone goes there, I stance-danced just fine. I even rather enjoyed it. It's the high-paced everything happening at once type of activity in fights that I thrive on. But I knew many who were stressed out as healers because of the pressure to use it and some who left the role because of it.

It was also full of jank. It didn't have a CD to turn on but did to turn it off. And sometimes it would just ignore that you had pressed it so you would think it was off and it wasn't. That's why healing in cleric stance memes abounded. And inevitably someone would take damage the second you put it on. I was happy to see it gone and give us our much more fluid and flexible way to switch from healing to dpsing that we have now.

[KageTokage]

The two minute meta isn't fun, and adding more extensions to one-two minute cooldowns is not going to change that.

We need more stuff like BLM's new fireball that are actually used frequently outside of the burst window.

[Doopliss]

It always happens when someone mentions HW, people come in with "You're just nostalgic" or "You just have rose-tinted glasses on", god forbid someone enjoyed something you didn't.

I still think HW MCH and SMN were the best they've ever been, it's not nostalgia or rose-tinted glasses, it's a preference.

I honestly get hit with a flash of depression every time I remember I'll never experience HW MCH again.

HW was 100% honest-to-god peak for me. No rose-tinted glasses. I'm dead serious when I say I fully believe JRPGs need some goddamn jank to be good.

FFXIV has, since SHB, entered the "so refined it's boring" phase IMO--and the content for the "single player JRPG" side is so safe and easy that it feels more like a visual novel. I still play and cope because I love the world, unfortunately. Also PvP's become really fun.

People complain about "meta being too prevalent" or things being "unbalanced" but that shit just didn't actually matter. I swear, it's always weird middle-ground players who only want to play a numbers game on FFLogs that find god awful complaints for these things.

I've been a MNK since ARR--the job that was supposedly too selfish and unwanted at the time. Somehow I never had trouble entering party finders for savage or extremes.

And things like Healer changes came about because of these middle-ground players only caring about winning the numbers contest with the least amount of friction possible, on any job, no matter their difficulty. WHM was a particular target during this period, because SCH and AST offered objectively better party buffs.

Yet WHM was an easier healing job that shined in progressive sessions. It was always capable of clearing savage fights. It just made your party's "numbers" less good! I've honestly never seen an MMORPG community more against the idea of easier jobs having less payoff than more difficult jobs...and so we've gradually dwindled into this mess. With Healers being scuffed the most of all, and Tanks following.

Legitimately I loved managing TP. I loved communicating with other players for help. I loved managing aggro. I loved managing DoTs, stances, and finding places to use things like the damage from Fluid Aura.

I loved equpping VIT accessories as a MNK in cases the Tank left a dungeon and becoming a successful psuedo Tank. I loved trying to find the right time to reapply Protect after I raised someone.

I loved and still miss all the niche, situational skills that made you feel special for playing your job, and even allowed you to be a bit silly. I miss when bosses could surprise you with crits.

I miss the wacky mechanics that required us to do things like turn a Healer into a gorilla so they could punch away bombs, and others that actually gave you situational, weird tasks that were special to your role.

I miss the feel of adventure with my real friends, I guess. The Scions will never hold a candle to them.

[justausername]

You sure you want people to unsub right now?

Note that the number is still MUCH higher then in Stormblood or anything before that. Also note that numbers DO tend to drop during an expansion (Shadowbringers being an exception because of the flood of people from WoW and content creators joining in.) and peak back up when a new one drops, because many just come for the story and don't give a crap about patch content. (Also note that chart only goes up to Q2 of LAST YEAR and doesn't include the last two entire quarters of 2023. Or well... since SE does March to March technically it doesn't include October 2023-March 2024) I think they will be just fine if a few doomposters leave because they can't handle growing pains.

A good chunk of current players started the game after the systems you are defending were removed, and are totally fine with how they are, or believe it's workable.

It also says thats based on characters with new achievements... I've gone months without getting new achievements, but I've still been subbed and logged in almost every day to just hang out with friends and decorate my house.

[Rekh]

Note that the number is still MUCH higher then in Stormblood or anything before that. Also note that numbers DO tend to drop during an expansion (Shadowbringers being an exception because of the flood of people from WoW and content creators joining in.) and peak back up when a new one drops, because many just come for the story and don't give a crap about patch content. (Also note that chart only goes up to Q2 of LAST YEAR and doesn't include the last two entire quarters of 2023. Or well... since SE does March to March technically it doesn't include October 2023-March 2024) I think they will be just fine if a few doomposters leave because they can't handle growing pains.

A good chunk of current players started the game after the systems you are defending were removed, and are totally fine with how they are, or believe it's workable.

It also says thats based on characters with new achievements... I've gone months without getting new achievements, but I've still been subbed and logged in almost every day to just hang out with friends and decorate my house.

It's also the first expansion with a downward trend. So much so it even went below shadowbringers levels at some points. Raw numbers tell a lot, but so do trends. The trend downward shows xiv isn't unbreakable, stagnation can crush it; specially if the X.1-X.5 patch cycle is as bad as it was in endwalker.

[LordMcMutton]

Aggro management amounted to being in tank stance for a few seconds then being in DPS stance for the rest of the fight

I know the penalty of using tank stance has been removed and enmity has been increased by many times, but the effect is kinda similar. The difference is really just that enmity combos existed and stance dancing was a thing (at the start of a fight ).

In 3.x, I just did my enmity combo once in stance and then I was done, and we're talking about 3.x here. In Stormblood, I needed to do the enmity combo 3 times in stance, so I did start to see interaction from many DPS players to reduce their impact on my enmity generation. When they did this, I was able to switch out of stance sooner..

I can't quite remember- I wonder if I missed the time when this was the case in regards to Tanking

When was it that Tanks had to make macros to mark the kill order of dungeon trash so the DPS wouldn't attack an enemy the Tank wasn't attacking and pull aggro from them?