Ultimate demise of 14?

[KageTokage]

I really don't think the game is at risk of dying any time soon but it does feel like it's become rather stagnant due to the lack of innovation when it comes to core gameplay and I don't have much confidence the later patches are going to address that.

[xivYuiM]

I also have about 6800 hours played and have been subbed nearly non-stop since patch 2.1. I have been feeling like the game is taking a massive downturn since 5.0 and has definitely not course corrected. I think the STORY for the EW MSQ was great (6.1-6.5 was awful) but for many years the gameplay has just been a shadow of what it used to be before shadowbringers. I don't feel like the formulaic injection of content would be as much of an issue if the content itself were more engaging. You say you started in 5.3 so unfortunately you wouldn't have any idea that this was the case but almost all of the combat oriented content used to be engaging. Dungeons actually required skill (if you wanted to do them really fast), jobs were much more unique with a high skill ceiling, and the game in general required much more cooperation. For example, for all of heavensward I found tanking dungeons so fun that I would max out my weekly tome limit every tuesday just by doing my roulettes and then grinding whatever the two level 60 dungeons were at the time over and over until it was full, and I maxed out every job for no reason other than that doing dungeons was fun. Nowadays I will do all of the dungeons the one mandatory time to unlock them and never engage with them again.

I agree that the game is on a downward trajectory and I honestly don't think it's going to turn around if DT is anything to go by. Dawntrail has been so bad that even I, the ultimate sunk-cost customer, considered just unsubbing until next expac and praying that was better. The MSQ was awful, job design is either just as bad or somehow WORSE in some cases than it was in endwalker, the armor designs (other than AF armor) have been a massive letdown, and even savage is just not worth doing. Crafted/tome gear is strong enough to do all content so unless you are trying to set kill time records or get a high rank on damage leaderboards (technically against TOS to even partake in this) then what is the point in suffering through party finder misery? (especially when the gear looks lame)

The lack of engaging content in DT pushed me to try doing older ultimate fights in PF for the first time and (despite usual PF nonsense) doing UWU for the last 6 weeks or so is the most fun I have had on this game since patch 3.4 (2016). Even with the new job design/power creep it really reminded me how much better the fights used to be and how it seems like most (not all) of the raids from 5.0 until now feel like they just exist because they have to. I am now staying subbed just to finish the rest of TEA in PF (also a great fight so far). I won't write a 1000 page essay analyzing/ranting about why the combat sucks now but idk. Sorry for the disjointed and ranty post but people who call you a doomposter are out of their MIND if they think this game is going to keep expanding in player base for the next 10 years with what a pathetic release dawntrail has been.

[Magikazam]

I really don't think the game is at risk of dying any time soon but it does feel like it's become rather stagnant due to the lack of innovation when it comes to core gameplay and I don't have much confidence the later patches are going to address that.

To me, it just sound FFXIV arriving at it ''WoD/Legion era'' if we compare it to WoW. It still doing good but people start pointing out issues, that if they ain't fixed and no change is made, will eventually hit the game hard. And SE don't really have the same stability Activision Blizzard had, money wise.

[caffe_macchiato]

Stop the doom posting. Game is fine, there's a minority of people on the forums who have been negative for the past 4 years or so.

Fully agreed. It has a net positive rating on Metacritic (6.3), which is still better than the user score for Dragonflight. And more people have a positive review of Dawntrail on Steam than they did with 1.0. So we've come a long way in 10 years.

Your complaints are something that comes up regularly since at least the end of Heavensward. Yoshida& the team talked about it a few times, but the reason the game is so formulaic is because it allows for people to come in and come out of the game whenever they feel like it and know what they go into when they come back, basically.

This is correct. FFXIV was never meant to be someone's "main game" like WoW. It was always intended to be a side game that you played off and on once a year or so. Most players don't subscribe year-round, and Yoshida fully endorses that. I only wish the unsubscribe button was in-game so it would be easier to play the game as intended.

also you played 6000 hours in the last 4-5 years. Burning out of it is kinda natural.

This is also correct. We wanted you to come to FFXIV during Shadowlands because we needed to fight Blizzard amid their sexism scandals. But, come on. It's Final Fantasy XIV. It's like being burnt out of playing Cookie Clicker. Who does that? Yoshida respects your time and wants you to go play other games. The only way to win in Final Fantasy XIV is not to play.

If that is what you truly want, you could try unsubscribing for 2 years, then return at the tail-end of the expansion when all of the patches have been released. Then there will not only be the base expansion content, but also all of its patches (aka bells and whistles), available to you.

Yep, this is the way. Final Fantasy XIV is a great game for playing once every two years on a single weekend, not as something you stay subscribed to. It's not WoW and we all agree that it should never be treated like it.

[Shinku_Tachi]

Stop the doom posting. Game is fine.

Exactly. Nothing else needs to be said.

[xivYuiM]

Stop the doom posting. Game is fine, there's a minority of people on the forums who have been negative for the past 4 years or so.

L take, the gameplay started getting worse in stormblood but began a massive spiral downward since shadowbringers launch and is showing no signs of recovery. If anything they are TRIPLING down on the mindless job design and sleep-inducing normal mode/casual content with massive waits between patches where we will just receive more of the same slop.

[Avoidy]

Every two years they drop an expac and a bunch of people come back for the new jobs/new story addition and then quit until the next two year bump in activity. In the interim, modders and addicts keep the game alive by subbing during the downtime and coping about paying monthly for a drip-feed of content every 3-4 months.
I just wonder if the storybros are even gonna come back next time, since DT was such a narrative joke.

[Oizen]

The game is going to die due to Square Enix doing something incredibly stupid with it and getting too greedy.
Theres really no other way for this to end.

[AnnRam]

I didn't have to buy/farm/craft or even spend a single Gil on my character in order to get to end game in DT.

EW tomes gear is enough to carry you to 90 ->100 content what kind of insult it's this? And you dare to call this an "expansion'"

My SGE with level 90 gear it's doing expert with tanks pulling wall-to-wall and I can manage the groups without even using all my cds

[Sivante]

OP, I genuinely do think you may be a little burned out, but your gripes are not invalid to me. This has touched on some topics I've been considering: Mind you I don't think this is the demise of FF14. I'm gonna Novel a little, and I'm sorry for that fellas and fellettes.

TL-DR: I get it, OP. I get it.

I know why they said the release schedule is the way it is, but I don't honestly believe it still applies now. It was then slowed to give time to polish content, but 'polished content' looks like the Hrothgal rigging and Savage's being cleared in record time and so on and so on. There's no advantage to players being gone and returning that EX mount drop rates are so low, and there's no real advantage to the system outside of to SE itself. Do the math on it and you'll get a broad idea of my issues with it, keeping EX2 as an example: EX2 takes 15 minutes or so to clear. At a 2% drop rate, you'll have to clear it (on average) 50 times. 50*15=750 minutes. Assuming a perfect, consistent clear rate that means seeing the mount once ever 12.5 hours, running nonstop. There's room for error and luck, of course! But most players I know farm 99 totems, as you aren't assured to get that 2% drop. 99*15=1485, 24.75 hours assuming consistent clears to get 99 totems. That's enough time to prog an ultimate. Prog an ultimate.

I am fully of the opinion that the schedule is drip fed because that promises the longest subs. Genshin Impact is a free game that releases more content, more regularly, with more polish. I'm not saying this to convince people to play Genshin, but Genshin is free. By contrast for FFXIV you pay a sub, in addition to that you pay expansion fees but you are handed the Expansion contents like it’s a pre-release kickerstarter game you bought on steam. As an adult I bought a game, but I’m being told I will not be given that game save by drip feed, and I will be throttled to play it as they wish. Even forum posting is drip fed to a limit.

There's a massive prioritization from CS3 to repeat the exact methods that they deem to work, and to maintain a sense of control. Drip feed the content, drip feed gear acquisition, drip feed tomestone acquisition, force the player to move at a pace that is easy to adjust and compensate for by CS3. And CS3 is smart to do that, it makes balancing and keeping up with the game much easier – They aren’t doing it to be evil, they do it because it’s intelligent.


Equally much of the balancing in the game is handled through force. Summoner tanking Titan? Do you elegantly tweak and work around it? No, you nuke nugget from orbit. Tanks becoming too lax? You add more tank busters, or broader ones. Healers bored? Add raid wides. The repetition of force rather than elegant solutions or innovations is difficult to address in MMO's, but CS3 seems to be falling more and more out of trying to build ergonomic systems, and more into ways to force you to do things. Force you to slow gear acquisiton or content intake. Force you to bring X comp, force you to do all these things but not addressing the core issues that led to peoples disatisfaction. Is it any wonder Tanks are running solo, healers are furious?

For EX2 by example the obvious rebuttal here is true: You don't need those things, it's side content.

I see the argument here all the time, but I feel the wings in this case are emblematic of a larger issue. You don't need those wings, sure. Savage is bugged or too hard? Well you don't need Savage. Don't like Criterion Dungeons? You don't need to do them. I agree that not all content is for everyone, but the dismissal of peoples discomfort is borderline to toxic: we don't need to pay a sub. We don’t need to be coddled and drip-fed.

When I came to FFXIV I had played other games: EQ, WoW, and what I liked about FF14 was how friendly it was to my time. It felt like it respected my time. As time has passed I've found myself feeling that way less and less. As the OP insinuated it's 'Get on the treadmill at 8:30', 'Find a static at 9:30', 'Clear post MSQ at 10:30.' It's all so... formulaic, so... sterile and mechanized. There's no life in it, no surprises or thrills. Sure we get events, which seldom give much in the way of rewards anymore due to Mogstation prioritization (which is business savvy), and now and again we are thrown something like a BLU update or a new variant dungeon.

This would be fine to be clear, and business wise is entirely valid: many of you love this I'm sure and content creators love the reliability. But the rub for me is - they are falling behind. Genshin is the example I've used here but it's not the only one. FFXIV isn't failing me, I am not important enough to be 'failed' by CS3, and I mean that realistically and honestly. But they are failing to keep up with their own competition. They release less content, less frequently, and bridle the treadmills and drip feed to the point that it's hard to enjoy it. Even when they lift our level cap they carefully adjust everything in such a fashion that it doesn't... actually feel like you've grown stronger at all. I don't feel like the time I put in has 'grown' my character. Just another expansion where I'll be given another button to initiate a high-velocity lens-flare ability from a Michael Bay movie, but all the monsters have been made so much stronger that I'm equally as 'strong' as I was without that ability 10 levels ago. MMO's have to match your level to some extent, but... is this all there is? In an MMORPG, a game genre based on growing you strength over time, I don’t feel that at all?

EQ, by example, had the AA system. A system in which you could 'level' past your max, but instead of getting levels you got points to buy permanent upgrades for your character. A way to 'grow' long-term in a meaningful fashion, and a single level took ages to level in the AA tree. It wasn't a perfect solution by any means, but it was an attempt. I see no attempt here. I see... the same stats that barely do anything. I see the same gear cycle, same release cycle. Another expansion, another 5 dungeons, 3 trials, 1 month to savage drop and treadmill begin. There will be 3 beast tribes, MSQ gating all of it, 2 world spawn mobs worth tracking, and a new keystone ability. There will be 2 new classes with questionable balance, some other classes will break, and there are new treasure map dungeons. It's all the same book, over and over, punctuated by drip-fed live-letters and “Look forward to it”s.

I understand I can go elsewhere, I understand these are hard problems to address and I understand many of you don't see the same issues, or don't take the same gravitas to them and that's entirely valid. But I get where OP is coming from here. FFXIV has begun to feel... recycled. The same recycled ideas, the same recycled mechanics, on the same recycled treadmill. The same pointlessly bottlenecked materia and stat system on the same recycled schedule.

Like a stale joke, it’s scheduled that someone will throw me a recycled plastic smile in a liveletter with a recycled promise it'll be better this time. Just give a little more time. Just say on the drip a little longer, and consider buying a fifty-dollar mount in the meanwhile to support the team, because your expansion fee and sub fees don't go back into the game you love to help support it and develop it.

But this is just my (long-winded and overly dramatic) opinion. No one else has to validate it, and no one else has to share it. I understand a lot of the choices being made, and they aren’t ignorant, evil, cruel or childish. They are business decisions. I don't think FFXIV is doomed or dying, not at all. But I have begun to think the FFXIV I knew and loved might have passed away in the night and left this weird little monetary goblin behind. He seldom says anything original, doesn’t really fix problems so much as band-aids them, and keeps promising me tomorrow he’ll be a beautiful princess. But for right now, and for the past few years, he’s just been a goblin.