Is there a point in caring about the game?

[Kaurhz]

100%.

A huge part of why even dungeons felt interesting in ARR and HW was because back then jobs had a very high skill ceiling. There was always something to do and something to think about even in dungeons.

With that high skill ceiling and depth, jobs become content in and of themselves. Learning to master a single job became fun. And it helps make content like FATEs and alliance raids interesting because even when you've seen the same mechanics a hundred times you may not have really thought through how to optimize on each job mapped to the fight.

At least for decent players this does not exist anymore. Every job just feels like carbon copies of each other, especially the healers and tanks. I swapped to Red Mage and Gunbreaker in EW and just casually got 99s and 95s in Savage and Ultimate after mainly playing healers even though I've literally never played them before. This shouldn't be possible. It's because jobs are so braindead and so similar to each other now then once you have mastered the core ideas of keeping uptime there is nothing else to master on each job, except BLM before all the gutting. Now I actually struggled on that job in EW and it took effort to get good and learn nonstandard. But alas that is the only job where it takes any effort to become good at on top of the skill you've acquired from raiding in general.

This 100% wasn't possible in Heavensward and to a lesser extent Stormblood. I toyed with Summoner in HW and just reading Hai Hai's guide and learning the triple weave opener took weeks to get to an acceptable level of performance. Now you want me to swap to MCH and pick up the job in a day or so before we do a week 1 kill of Savage and meet the DPS check? Fat chance back then! You'd be completely griefing your static. In EW and DT? I literally don't even need to practice on a dummy before going in.

This is probably one of the biggest factors I missed honestly when making a judgement on anything.. But when I looked more at how crafters were, versus how they are now from my own experience, I can at least relate to many of the problems that people have with combat. It was a game that asked for your attention and rewarded you for it if you gave it that attention. Like the inane amount of time it took to figure out how to utilize WWYW without completely obliterating your CP pool, or how long it took to figure out how to pull off a Byregot's Miracle > Byregot's Brow, or at which point it was best to use Brow over Blessing, or just in general the amount of debate going on to find optimal rotations, and with how varied many of them were because control scaled in such a way that it rewarded you for sinking millions of Gil into melding.

I would honestly say though, it's not really for decent players where this issue exists, I would actually say it exists for casuals too.. I mean, I'm probably average or slightly above average if not for the fact I don't really engage with it, but functionally there's no difference regardless of the class I decide to play, bar the aesthetics of it... Viper and BLM were probably the exceptions to this, where BLM feels like a lot of it was intrinsically tied to the content you were doing, especially to make use of mobility. - I just generally don't get why they are insistent on removing versus reworking or fixing.. It's why I don't really have much faith at all, regardless of whether people say it's a step in the right direction, because that fundamental mindset is going to remain the same.. Don't fix it; remove it, then try and add something else to compensate for it, whether that's the introduction of ultimate to accommodate for making savage accessible, seemingly? Or whether it's putting crafters through the shredder and then releasing expert recipes to try and appease. It's funny here, because I would consider myself part of the core audience for expert recipes, but do I find them fun? No, because there's very few abilities to actually utilize where I can gain control of the recipe.

It definitely wasn't intuitive at all back in HW or SB, (Why aren't you using Bane, bro, it's awesome), as there were always little things that would slip through.. I can understand why people took an issue with certain things, but with anything it's best to try and rework it to find the middle-ground versus removing it outright, and even when they don't remove outright, then it's usually subtly plunging into irrelevancy (e.g., GCs), remember back in HW you actually needed to run dungeons, be it sync or unsync, or had to spend enormous amounts of time farming Gryphonskins because the game actually made things like Arachne Web relevant to both recipes and the market, even well over an expansion later, and even if you didn't want to, because it was effort, then you could still sit there and sell Titanium/Level 54/55 gear.

[User202503201232]

But when I looked more at how crafters were, versus how they are now from my own experience,

Casual (in terms of raiding) players definitely had a great option in crafting if they didn't want to raid. It took so much time and was so rewarding. You could unironically be a crafter main in HW and maybe SB. It's a whole stream of content that they just gutted completely.

Not everyone wanted to raid and it's OK. I had fun just making Ironworks gear to sell back then because it was so rewarding for the effort you put in. And the system had so much depth that it feels like there is always something new to learn right around the corner.

Even if we reverted back to HW systems I think it's already too late. There are not just crafting simulators now but fully optimal crafting solvers that will find the minimum step rotation.

https://www.raphael-xiv.com/

With some little extra effort you could also easily alter the code to take into account conditions and use that to solve expert recipes for every proc you get.

The sense of discovery is just completely gone now from all the game's content, and it's not just SE's fault but also because the community has grown so reliant on third party tools. There is a counter to this and it's to produce innovative content that people don't know how to optimize yet. But that's probably something you can't expect from SE.

[Kaurhz]

Casual (in terms of raiding) players definitely had a great option in crafting if they didn't want to raid. It took so much time and was so rewarding. You could unironically be a crafter main in HW and maybe SB. It's a whole stream of content that they just gutted completely.

Not everyone wanted to raid and it's OK. I had fun just making Ironworks gear to sell back then because it was so rewarding for the effort you put in. And the system had so much depth that it feels like there is always something new to learn right around the corner.

Even if we reverted back to HW systems I think it's already too late. There are not just crafting simulators now but fully optimal crafting solvers that will find the minimum step rotation.

https://www.raphael-xiv.com/

With some little extra effort you could also easily alter the code to take into account conditions and use that to solve expert recipes for every proc you get.

The sense of discovery is just completely gone now from all the game's content, and it's not just SE's fault but also because the community has grown so reliant on third party tools. There is a counter to this and it's to produce innovative content that people don't know how to optimize yet. But that's probably something you can't expect from SE.

Definitely agreed..

Generally speaking it is too late unless they seriously gutter it and built it from the ground-up using mini-game-esque abilities as the core of the system, rather than using it like something you could learn and do insane things with like crafting Twinsilk on level 15, and/or reaching a 999 step count. That, in my opinion should be the core. Like, realistically with the right abilities, crafting could function on as little as around 11-14 abilities and still be exceptionally fun to engage with (but alas we know that won't happen), even if it was utterly broken to do those things, you really had to deepen your understanding -- and the game rewarded you for it with insane things like that.

It had a lot really, even if you didn't want to raid, you could still pretty actively do content like Coils undersized, they were pretty fun, and they gave players a lot to work with between Neo-Aetherstones. Diadem for as fatally flawed as it was, still gave some people a lot to do as well, and really sent home FC-based content.

Ironworks crafting was absolutely peak, it generally was anyway, I had an alt back then which I kept on entry standard stats, and just bank a significant amount of Gil selling gear progression items, before Scrip and co., took over from 60+. Same with crafting items like Star Velvet, and then you even had the accessible crafted versions with +5 item level released later on like Sky Rat and Sky Pirate gear... I told myself this expansion I would neuter my own stats by going with pure Scrip for everything end-game, but can't even be enthusiastic about that because it's just so shallow, that the only discrepancy between that and going completely bonkers is an additional 1-2 HQ materials from dissolvents.

You can definitely rework something like Raph for expert recipes, if you want to find the on-step optimal ability to use. These days there isn't really much discussion, it is just whoever gets the first-best rotation out of Raph, then it's a straight C+P.. Someone said crafting is still one of the more nuanced versions of any MMO, and it just might be, but functionally it doesn't even matter as the end result is just press 2 buttons and be done with it.

I think the problem really just stems from both the third-party aspect and with SE.. When you deliver the same rote content, with the same foundational systems, then it becomes less about the sense of discovery and more about just achieving the fastest result, everything else be damned.. Now obviously third-party is the reason for that, but we honestly wouldn't be in that state if they weren't so risk averse.. Since it's just a matter of applying that blueprint to the update.. Same with guide-making, you will never really find guides like OG crafter/gatherer guides which went in-depth into the intricate systems (thanks Ingenuity), it's just a matter of template and then adjust source material, e.g., things like Desynthesis.

[SongOfTheWind]

And on that front, why do they make unsubbing so difficult? Isn't the official policy to play other games after all?

Yeah, to play other games while being subbed. Devs never offered us to unsub, just very generously suggested taking a break while still paying.

[Hallarem]

Fun detail from the famitsu interview. Question was "Hey so what about the whiteboard function and chat bubbles feature?"

Answer from Yoshi P "So yeah about those whiteboards x 4 paragraphs" chat bubbles mentioned zero times.

[Kaliesto]

I would say unsubbing is not difficult.

We just need to convince the players that Housing is really not the end all be all.

For Individuals:

I get it, you got lucky getting the house but at the end of the day is it really that important when you spend 90% of your time outside of it?

For FCs:

Its not the FC building that makes the FC, its the players themselves as cliche as it sounds.

For FC Empires (you know who you are):

You all got nothing left to prove; you all formed your gil fortune and with all the gucci mounts, and rare stuff one could ask for that tend to be expensive.

What more you all got to prove really? Think about it.


What ultimately makes unsubbing difficult is disconnecting from your friends and even for long while.

[Jojoya]

The sense of discovery is just completely gone now from all the game's content, and it's not just SE's fault but also because the community has grown so reliant on third party tools. There is a counter to this and it's to produce innovative content that people don't know how to optimize yet. But that's probably something you can't expect from SE.

Or players could break their habit of immediately going to the outside tools/guides, choosing to discover the new content through their own experience instead.

I doubt any game developer is going to be able to come up with innovative systems that stymie the third party tools for more than a brief period at release. What's created by code can be changed/revealed by someone writing additional code.

I'd also say it's not SE's fault that players have become so reliant on third party tools. It's a habit they've usually brought with them from other games they've played.

IF they don't like the way it's impacted game experience, then it's up to them to move away from using the third party tools and content creator guides.

Yeah, to play other games while being subbed. Devs never offered us to unsub, just very generously suggested taking a break while still paying.

I have yet to see them ask any player to keep paying while they're on a long break.

That's the player's choice to keep paying, not a request of SE. And most of the time, it's because they're too obsessed with owning a house they wouldn't be using but are too selfish to give it up so an active player would get a chance to own a house.

But it's up to them if they think the house is worth the $90 or however much they'll be paying to keep it while they aren't playing the game.

[Kandraxx]

They don't care, they are already in the process of transitioning out of this game. Their gacha games like the Saga ones are reeling in more cash in Japan than they know what to do with and the FF14 mobile game will likely kill it in China and elsewhere in Asia specifically.

This doesn't mean that the servers will be shut down anytime soon but it means that the game will go into sort of a low-effort maintenance mode just like Guild Wars 2, with scraps of content here and there and most importantly an elaborate cash shop laid out as a convenient trap for any ambitious, dopamine-pumped newcomers who might think the game is still in it's glory days.

No point in dealing with a bunch of disgruntled gaijin in their 40s when you can just sell chances to obtain virtual figurines $5 a pop.

[Supersnow845]

I would say unsubbing is not difficult.

We just need to convince the players that Housing is really not the end all be all.

For Individuals:

I get it, you got lucky getting the house but at the end of the day is it really that important when you spend 90% of your time outside of it?

For FCs:

Its not the FC building that makes the FC, its the players themselves as cliche as it sounds.

For FC Empires (you know who you are):

You all got nothing left to prove; you all formed your gil fortune and with all the gucci mounts, and rare stuff one could ask for that tend to be expensive.

What more you all got to prove really? Think about it.


What ultimately makes unsubbing difficult is disconnecting from your friends and even for long while.

Ironically on the housing front I actually wouldn’t miss losing my house but I WOULD miss losing my garden as that’s the “point” that my friend and I meet to do roulettes, chat and just randomly whack my striking dummy when we have nothing to do

I recently won (out of 231 bids) house 14 in the goblet (you know that little small in the brimming heart that’s off by itself with the waterfall behind it, the only brimming heart house on the west side) after moving from house 2 (a beige cookie cutter small on the north west rim) and that move did wonders for my enjoyment of my garden even though the move wiped my interior

If they added instanced “meeting gardens” (again what island sanctuary could have been) I’d be totally happy to donate my housing plot to the venue hosts (I believe my house is the most popular one in the goblet)

[EusisLandale]

What ultimately makes unsubbing difficult is disconnecting from your friends and even for long while.

That's pretty much what kept me going, but it's been months since I've seen a single one of my friends on and we had been playing together since ARR. Even the few I made this expansion all up and disappeared.
No friends, tanking sucks now, healing sucks now, I've never cared for DPS all that much nor crafting and gathering, the current story is absolute trash. I've got only a couple days left before my sub runs out, and I'm not even sure I'll care enough to renew to save my house again.