I'm Frustrated with FFXIV's New Direction

[Taytay]

Unless Wuk wants to get an actual job that doesn't involve being a nepo baby and start paying my subscription fee, I absolutely do not want to be a supporting character to her story.

[Lollerblades]

...... you realize that 90% of the monster and race modes in XIV were ripped straight out of other games, right? And tons of races were borrowed from other games? Them having Pelupelu isn't ripping off another game, it's an homage to that game. Same way Triple Triad and the Ivalice raids are.

XIV is called the Final Fantasy theme park for a reason.

I'm all for fan service. Hell, majority of enemies are ripped straight out of XI, which always gives me a nostalgia trip. Even your character design is based off of Mithra in XI, but if they're going to copy and paste NPC races, at least give them the XIV sparkle.
The majority of races in DT are copy & paste reskins and recolours. Devoid of an oomph to set them apart.

I'm really not sure what point you're trying to debate, but I'm open to more of your thoughts and opinions.

[honest_psycho]

Part of me is starting to wonder just how many veteran team members were pulled off of FF14 and put on FF16. The cracks are kinda showing

The cracks showed in FF16, it was a decent standalone game but did not deserve to be a 'numbered' entry and it was certainly not good enough to leech dev-recources off from FF14 to create a Game-of-Thrones rippof hiding behind a Kaiju-spectacle.

[honest_psycho]

This is an incredibly crucial point that I think the Wuk Lamat defenders keep forgetting: we've been a side character before. This isn't a new thing. Other people have had the limelight and not copped anywhere near as much flak as Wuk Lamat.

It's how she's written that's the problem, not that she's the protagonist of the expansion.

Not only do some of them forget, some of them deliberately ignore these facts and sidestep that arguments with essays about what Wuk Lamat's story-arc is supposed to be, implying we are all idiots.

This begs the question of WHY they defend this MSQ so much. It can't be just 'bad taste'.

[BakoolJaJa]

The cracks showed in FF16, it was a decent standalone game but did not deserve to be a 'numbered' entry and it was certainly not good enough to leech dev-recources off from FF14 to create a Game-of-Thrones rippof hiding behind a Kaiju-spectacle.

Also showed that the team makes all the same problems every single time, regardless of what sort of game they're working with.

- Fetch quests that only serve as filler? Check! Go collect literal dirt. In a single player story focused FF game.
- Brain dead easy combat? Check! We'll take DMC's designer and his godly combat and we'll turn it into a pointless mind numbing clicker!
- Boring, empty open world that has nothing worth exploring for, serving only as a pretty backdrop? Check! Who wants to actually have fun in between picking up and handing in quests? How does a corridor game like FF7 Remake have a million times more exploration?? I don't know!
- They even did the "Wuk Lamat kills boss for you" in FF16... On almost every boss... Because you don't actually get to kill most of them, the cutscene does it for you. Just get the boss to 25% health, the game does the rest. Who wants to actually beat bosses, right? Right? All those games like Dark Souls and Elden Ring and stuff, LAME I tell you.

Before that game, I used to cope that many of the ffxiv issues were carry-overs from 1.0 days. Old MMO problems. That sort of thing. After FF16 I understood - it is not a bug, it is a feature. CBU3 makes those design decisions. Again and again and again. They like those design decisions. They like their filler fetch quests. They like boring, homogenized, easy job design. They like not having exploration and fun. They don't know how to make games differently. Whatever next game they're working on will prove it all over again. I guarantee it.

[Daralii]

The cracks showed in FF16, it was a decent standalone game but did not deserve to be a 'numbered' entry and it was certainly not good enough to leech dev-recources off from FF14 to create a Game-of-Thrones rippof hiding behind a Kaiju-spectacle.

Most of those people never got moved back to XIV either, just promoted off of directly working on games. Dawntrail is a preview of the future.

[HeyMcFly]

I would have accepted how rushed and disconnected the story felt, how sphene was just a nice emet-selch.
What made me start to dislike everything truly, was why were the Scions there? And why did it feel like they no longer cared for the WoL or as if we didn't save them in Ultima Thule? I'm sorry but I ship my catgirl with Thancred and DT gave me NOTHING.
Why was Krile made the poster child for DT but given very little in terms of the spotlight she actually deserved?
It should have been Krile we followed, not Welcome-Mat.

[genuine_stranger]

Not only do some of them forget, some of them deliberately ignore these facts and sidestep that arguments with essays about what Wuk Lamat's story-arc is supposed to be, implying we are all idiots.

This begs the question of WHY they defend this MSQ so much. It can't be just 'bad taste'.

Want to understand people who play MMOs?
Look at them from the viewpoint of being in a relationship, it makes more sense.
Especially if it's a toxic one.

Boy will you find similarities.

[Hallarem]

Its a desperate cling because theres nothing else to move onto. I clung to WoW for ages without complaining until I quit before shadowlands. I had tried FFXIv back at Heavensward, but Praetorium and Alphinaud made me cringe.

So this time I wont stick too long if its clear they are just going through the motions and ruining the story on the side while not innovating. But also this time Ill shout as much as I can to see if any of our shouts go through the crowd and reach the devs. Maybe, just maybe there will be changes to the stale gameplay and systems, and jobs and the story gets back on track.

As a Final Fantasy series fan, its always been about innovation, but right now? I feel gatekept by the devs. Insert meme/reality about a crunky engine they need to work around, but some direct communication besides. "Its difficult, please look forward to it/please give us more time" would be appreciated. If 8.0 is the same formula or a mini dripfeed and the patch content doesnt give any meaningful QoL Think its an unsub.

[At0msk]

The direction of this game has been going in the wrong direction ever since SB, ever since they began removing job interaction and complexity and identity. The MSQ has shifted quite heavily away from it's roots of political maneuvering and some actual nuance in favour of... what? Friendship is magic and fist clenches? Hamfisted attempts and philosophy that require at least a whole expansion + post patches to properly explore but are never given time and room to germinate. It's not all bad but most of it is. What gets me the most is that these changes were spurred on by making the game more accessible and less intricate for a majority who would never have an interest in getting better at playing it no matter how easy you made it for them. Take ARR, people complained first coil was too easy, so second coil was very challengeing and people complained about not only that but the fact that it didn't have a story mode. Third coil was laughable by comparison and people complained AGAIN demanding harder content. Well, they got it with HW, the gordias savage was so hard it all but killed the raiding scene but there was a story mode now, right? Soooo... next came the knee-jerk overcorrection moving into SB - that said, i think SB was probably the best content the game ever had to offer even if i didn't like the shift the game took going into that expansion.

Unfortunately its been downhill from there ever since and over the years i've been accused of all sorts of things from it "not being my game" to "do you hate fun or something?" and I'll say this as my parting comment; A game--especially an MMO--lives and dies on it's integrity and i'm sorry to say that FF14 has been lacking integrity for a very long time. I don't expect it to return and especially not if Yoshi-P isn't hands on with the steering. He's clearly working on other projects and delegating to untested devs. But what can you?