The reason why FFXIV is so boring and not fun to play anymore is because

[Yukimin]

Keep in mind that most of the players are the midcore crowd, so 1% players who grind their super duper raids that are 1% of content don't count!

#01 - Easy Encounters
You don't have to position the boss anymore. The boss will always move to the center of the arena. The boss will have a long, 10 second cast of a raidwide (it will never kill you). The hitbox is too big to cater to melee.

#02 - Easy, homogenized job rotations
Tanks play the exact same, with the exception of Gunbreaker to an extent. Hardly any class identity, PLD, WAR and DRK will press their shiney button and spam their big attack 3 times. Healers are the worst, just 1, 2 dps buttons at most while the rest of the kit is healing abilities you barely use. Every job, including DPS got their identity killed in both Shadowbringers and Endwalker. In Dawntrail all they got was a button that turns into another button. Very uncreative from Square Enix's part.

#03 - Burst condensed into a 2 minute rotation
One of Square Enix's worst mistakes was alligned every job to have a burst at the 2 minute mark. It's lazy, it's not exciting. I don't my favorite job to cater around other people's burst. Not everyone cares about savage raiding and having their coloured numbers displayed in a third party website. A good example of this is Black Mage who got much, much worse with the Ley Lines change in Endwalker, and not to mention all the buffs happening at the 120th second mark. Lazy design.

#04 - Removal of mob EXP / quick kill rewards
Back then you'd be rewarded for killing as much enemies as you can in a short time, as you'd get a bonus EXP reward the better you performed in a dungeon. But SE took that away. No reward for playing well.

#05 - Boring, linear and predictable dungeons
Everything is a long hall/corridor with no alternative parts, nothing interesting ever. We keep getting the same old dungeon that's a flashback about a civilization collapsing or going through the apocalypse, not original.

#06 - Less content
Back in Stormblood the patches didn't take as long to drop, we had deep dungeons, we had Field Operations, we had challenging Alliance Raids and we had more dungeons in the Expert roulette. (Apparently, way more in Heavensward and A Realm Reborn!). And please don't talk about Variant Dungeons because let's be frank, nobody grinds it outside of a few times. Not exactly repeatable content one does *casually*.

#07 - Club Advertisements
Many are sick and tired of seeing the Party Finder filled to the brim with +18 clubs ran by ugly modbeasts who on their spare time stay in Ul'dah Balmung congesting the server with their /beesknees emote, or worse yet, emoteing on top of one another doing things in public I dare not even mention.

Continues...

[Yukimin]

...Continued.

#08 - Toxic Casuals
Want to pull wall-to-wall in any dungeon, but can't because this game developed a weird culture around Shadowbringers because everyone needs to be super nice and suppress whoever wants to teach new people it's entirely possible to pull two packs, but you're seen as a toxic jerk because one the players in the dungeon has anxiety or something. (Most of the time they don't say anything and it's always a mentor wanting to slow things down).

#09 - Subpar story since Shadowbringers
This is a bit more subjective as I heavily disliked both Endwalker and Shadowbringers. Seriously, in Endwalker's case if I wanted a good story about Hope vs. Despair I'd close the game and replay Danganronpa instead. It tries too hard to make you feel sad but it just doesn't land, but I totally understand if people enjoyed it. But what I can't let slide is how awful, how disgustingly boring and stupid Dawntrail was. The only joy I got from it was making fun of it with my friend as we went along. I howled when that stupid 'Smile' song played as we armed that train with guns and heavy plates. I'm sick and tired of the Scions, but they managed to introduce a character I dislike even more.

#10 - Doesn't feel like a MMORPG
Most of the content are either 4 man or 8 man, there's no incentive to plan out and raid with a large amount of people like in Eureka and Bozja. And the only thing that came close was the chaotic raid, which... Well, you can already see how well people are receiving it. Poorly implemented, because according to Square Enix their 1%~5% playerbase are actually 50%. Mind you, I like how challenging Eureka and Bozja were, but everything is either too easy or too hard these days. The game is developed for people who don't play, and for people who do only 1% of the content to upload their coloured numbers to a third party website.

#11 - Killing old, fun content
This is what makes me the most angry. Turning old dungeons who were fun and quirky into more hallway from point A to point B slop so it can be future proofed with their stupid Trust Dungeon system. I still miss you when you didn't have orange aoes, Coincounter, I truly do. I hate that they removed Steps of Faith.

In conclusion, the game has way, way too many flaws, and I could even go more in depth as to how Square Enix is unable to prevent a DDOS and how soulless events are but I think I already have spoken enough.
I truly love this game, and I want it to be better than what we have today, I know it can improve and you know it too. Unfortunately the developers simply have lost their touch and the game is bleeding players thanks to it.

This game deserves better. The playerbase deserves better. You deserve better.

[Kaurhz]

I agree with everything, though I would say I see 06 differently..

I don't think we're getting less content, I just think the content we're getting isn't as substantive as it once was. Like, it's there, there's just no reason whatsoever to do it more than once, or in some cases the option just isn't there at all.

The biggest issue tying in with this is simply any long-form or substantive content is always done in the latter half of the expansion, almost an entire year of its release. Which is just abysmal for a modern MMO of this scale. If we had exploratory or the equivalent in 7.15, then this issue would be so much less, or at the very least if they could do relics in this manner.

Unfortunately, everything in this game with the exception of relics/exploratory and Ultimates are just short form content.. What I mean is there's no reason to care about it or go back to it outside of the patch with which it was released.

Some people might see this as controversial, but I wholly think the whole "Toxic casual", is an issue of the devs own making.

[Jeeqbit]

You don't have to position the boss anymore. The boss will always move to the center of the arena. The boss will have a long, 10 second cast of a raidwide (it will never kill you).

I agree that automatic boss positioning doesn't solve anything and takes away from tank's work. They have at least reduced how much they do it in Dawntrail.

The hitbox is too big to cater to melee.

They have reduced them in Dawntrail.

Easy, homogenized job rotations

Regardless of all this, it's not gonna be addressed until 8.0 because this expansion their focus is on fixing the battle content.

Everything is a long hall/corridor with no alternative parts

This is why they are making variant dungeons. The problem is really that they are hidden away in a User Interface with no roulette to motivate doing them long-term.

Less content

Objectively we have a lot more. The only thing we even have less of is dungeons.

Back in Stormblood the patches didn't take as long to drop

4.0-4.1 (16 weeks) vs 7.0-7.1 (19 weeks)
I guess I just don't see 3-4 extra weeks as that much.

we had deep dungeons, we had Field Operations, we had challenging Alliance Raids

We will have a deep dungeon and a Field Operation. I wouldn't say the Alliance Raids were "challenging" but just more fun in that they allowed players to rely on eachother more by dropping markers on the ground, stand on pads, needing to split bosses, not over-telegraphing. Regardless, we just got a "challenging" version too which is the Chaotic one.

and we had more dungeons in the Expert roulette. (Apparently, way more in Heavensward and A Realm Reborn!). And please don't talk about Variant Dungeons because let's be frank, nobody grinds it outside of a few times. Not exactly repeatable content one does *casually*.

It is true there are less dungeons since we have a lot now (over 100). While they could do better in making variants repeatable (such as adding them to a roulette), it is still development work going into something that can be described as a dungeon.

Club Advertisements

That's what categories and search filters are for. I use these filters, so I don't even see all these adverts. If people are seeing them it's because they choose to look at the Other category.

Want to pull wall-to-wall in any dungeon, but can't because this game developed a weird culture around Shadowbringers

I used to see people get reported for demanding things or being rude long before then, it's just that the rules used to be too specific and have loopholes, so they made them more generic to cover all forms of rudeness.

Most of the content are either 4 man or 8 man, there's no incentive to plan out and raid with a large amount of people like in Eureka and Bozja. And the only thing that came close was the chaotic raid

And Alliance Raids, the upcoming Shades' Triangle, Eureka and Bozja themselves and hunts. Not that those involve much in the way of planning, but they aren't 4 or 8 person.

Well, you can already see how well people are receiving it.

Seems mixed. Maybe it went a little overboard. It's experimental content.

according to Square Enix their 1%~5% playerbase are actually 50%

All the stats I can find/calculate from multiple sources show that out of people who beat the expansion MSQ, at least 20-30% do content like this. It varies a lot depending on world, but that's because some worlds are more into RP or have a lower supporting playerbase (like new data centers).

[Kuroka]

#09 - Subpar story since Shadowbringers
This is a bit more subjective as I heavily disliked both Endwalker and Shadowbringers. Seriously, in Endwalker's case if I wanted a good story about Hope vs. Despair I'd close the game and replay Danganronpa instead. It tries too hard to make you feel sad but it just doesn't land, but I totally understand if people enjoyed it. But what I can't let slide is how awful, how disgustingly boring and stupid Dawntrail was. The only joy I got from it was making fun of it with my friend as we went along. I howled when that stupid 'Smile' song played as we armed that train with guns and heavy plates. I'm sick and tired of the Scions, but they managed to introduce a character I dislike even more.

I agree with every point, except maybe story. At least till we took a way too long stroll to the dark world (without gettin ANY zones or anything there) and Dawntrail i was happy with it... but i totally get your point.
Especially Smile and that certain someone having like 60% the dialog lol


Im torn with the old stuff, or at least i was until they made everything dumb for trusts... i do like when they went and unified stacks etc. - idm that. But it frustrates me even more that after that, you still get lv 100 players with no idea how to stack lol


I love the game so much, but it REALLY tries to get me away... I want my 2nd ex dungeon back... and some more other stuff... they invest so much work in pointless stuff and yet... we dont even get an pvp map every patch.

EDIT:

Right deep dungeons... what made the Palace special was it was 2 parted, they should look into adding more floors later on on newer once as well - and care for the story... having finished the 90 one, but so far it was good to ok and i fear for the new one being "oh look theres some random dungeon below Everkeep!" or something like that...

[ZephyrMenodora]

My only complaint is lack of progression content for my level of play (casual). Bored as heck with nothing to do each week except 1 24 man normal.

Dying for a relic/exploratory zone.

[Hallarem]

Honestly, the gameplay isn't the thing that's keeping me in this game. Other games do a vastly better job and Square Enix doesn't seem to think its a priority to fix it / flesh it out a bit more. And honestly, a lot of players are willing to accept mediocrity or below mediocrity because they are attached. But the fact that Square Enix doesnt even communicate properly what they are working on, tells you everything you need to know. "Please look forward to it and we are working on it" doesn't cut it when most things that sentence has been said about are years into the pipeline without changes. (Viera hats, Hrotgar hats) for example.

It's the rp mechanics, story and the world that keeps me in. The game is not an MMO, it's a singleplayer RPG with a multiplayer option wearing the skinsuit of a playable MMO. The rush job of Endwalkers story and world building only to slam us with a really really lukewarm story with Dawntrail. As a former WoW player I know what it feels like to cling onto "maybe it gets better" for years.

So if 8.0's story is equally lukewarm and treats us like infants and disrespects our intelligence like Dawntrail did and is just AGAIN vastly different from the worldbuilding, its people and its politics from ARR - Heavensward - Stormblood and Shadowbringers'ish . I think its over.

"The elementals love you really" by Nophica was the line that started ringing warning bells to me. Including the puddingway zombie comedy routine after a load of people died to monsters and Garlemald being destroyed offscreen. When nuance dies, so does the story. As good as Endwalker tied loose strings up and had high moments with Venat, it was the start of the downfall in the storytelling and worldbuilding.

[TemporalFruitsAndVeggies]

The game is boring because the combat is boring. Fighting anything without complicated mechanics is completely uninteresting, but, unless you have a static group of teammates, everything with complicated mechanics puts you at the mercy of random players who may not be very good, and failing to finish or progress in those fights because of something wholly out of your control is frustrating and not fun.

There is little to do by yourself in the game other than crafting, which is somewhat niche and also generally tedious; and playing mini games, which, unless you're a big mahjong player, lose their appeal very quickly. The open world is dead, and offers no meaningful activities other than gathering, anyway, so there's no reason to be in it.

The story quality doesn't matter. The story is a one-time thing that ends. Incredible or terrible, it's over after N hours and the next N * 10 hours people play until the next expansion are dedicated to everything else.

[mangelinabrolee]

honestly havent had good mid tier content since bozja that keeps people playing. it feels like this expansion they really thought everyone just wants ultimates and savage content. they have completely missed their core audience.

[Hypnotic13371337]

Cause everything endgame is a 1hr+ commitment