Black knighting on the forums

[Hallarem]

I agree, lets stop criticizing the multi-yen company and just wait patiently for them to pick up on our brainwave telepathy to fix the game or make it better.

If you want 0 critique and only happy joy joy feelings about FFXIV, the main reddit is your spot. You can go upvote the 200 000th repost of either Haurchefant dying and the player crying. Or the "welcome to shadowbringers" O_O moment.

[Wasselin]

I think Black Knight is an appropriate term. At this point, I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s nothing the devs could do to satisfy the people who claim the game is ‘dead.’ They seem to latch onto any bit of news they can twist into something negative, almost as if they’re actively rooting for the servers to shut down. It feels less like constructive criticism and more like a personal vendetta against the devs, willing them to fail.

Don’t get me wrong—I’m not against critique. But when the goalposts keep shifting, or the demands become increasingly unrealistic, it’s hard to believe these critiques come from a genuine desire to see the game improve. It makes me wonder about the psychology behind it. Are they players who want to quit but feel ‘stuck,’ so they hope the game fails to force themselves out? Or are they just deeply unhappy people who want to spread that misery to others? It’s hard to say, but it’s exhausting to watch.

[Hallarem]

I think Black Knight is an appropriate term. At this point, I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s nothing the devs could do to satisfy the people who claim the game is ‘dead.’ They seem to latch onto any bit of news they can twist into something negative, almost as if they’re actively rooting for the servers to shut down. It feels less like constructive criticism and more like a personal vendetta against the devs, willing them to fail.

Don’t get me wrong—I’m not against critique. But when the goalposts keep shifting, or the demands become increasingly unrealistic, it’s hard to believe these critiques come from a genuine desire to see the game improve. It makes me wonder about the psychology behind it. Are they players who want to quit but feel ‘stuck,’ so they hope the game fails to force themselves out? Or are they just deeply unhappy people who want to spread that misery to others? It’s hard to say, but it’s exhausting to watch.

Thats a communication issue. Because the devs do NOT communicate what IS and what ISNT possible. The whole "Ooooh, no datamining and everything is a surprise" was cute at the start, but you REALLY need to communicate with your playerbase so they have .. yes, SOMETHING TO LOOK FORWARD TO.

We have no info on hats, we have no info on graphical updates, we have no info on what their focuses will be for this "10-year" plan? Where are the ROADMAPS, hell even INDIE DEVELOPERS have roadmaps they publish every now and then? SE is lacking a huge amount of transparency, this secretive veil makes the playerbase confused not excited. It even makes some think that they have NOTHING being planned and are just winging it till the next expansion according to the formula or whatever they knit together just to keep our subs going.

Why people stay could be a mixture of anything from "Sunk cost fallacy" due to us building communities, having friends in the game, achieving a lot over the years, having a house you want to keep. If its exhausting to watch then don't watch it or the threads that are full of critique? Critique improves the build. If you see a shakey pillar in the foundation of a house, you go at them until they fix it or that house might crumble down in the future.
There's been plenty of constructive criticism, but they haven't picked up on it and just go their own way. Nobody asked for Viper changes, nobody asked for these BLM changes.
So until they give us some transparency, I'm afraid it will keep getting more and more toxic.

[brinn12]

"there’s nothing the devs could do to satisfy the people who claim the game is ‘dead’"

To say that they cannot be satisfied implies the developers have been trying to satisfy them. By doing what, exactly? Telling people to play Monster Hunter, when they ask for content? Removing BLM's timers? Increasing patch cycles? Keeping the same formula after 10 years?

[Wasselin]

"there’s nothing the devs could do to satisfy the people who claim the game is ‘dead’"

To say that they cannot be satisfied implies the developers have been trying to satisfy them. By doing what, exactly? Telling people to play Monster Hunter, when they ask for content? Removing BLM's timers? Increasing patch cycles? Keeping the same formula after 10 years?

I’ll give you an example: Throughout Endwalker, one of the most common complaints was the lack of a field operation. People brought it up constantly. Then, when the devs announced that a field operation would be coming in Dawntrail, the complaints didn’t stop—they just shifted. Now, people are upset that it’s not coming soon enough.

To me, this starts to feel unrealistic. If the devs could have released a field operation in Endwalker without compromising other content, I’m sure they would have. But these things take time, resources, and careful planning. Now, instead of acknowledging that, the demand has simply changed to ‘we want it sooner.’

This is just one example of many. If people truly want to be constructive, I wish they’d take a step back and try to be a little more reasonable—or at least acknowledge that the devs aren’t personally out to get them. It’s okay to critique, but by grounding those critiques in reality and recognize the effort that goes into creating the content we enjoy I think that would improve communication for everyone and not harm the game by creating an echo chamber of ever escalating negativity.

[Voryn]

Anyone who has a positive opinion that I disagree with is a white knight, and anyone who has a negative opinion that I disagree with is a doomer or a black knight.

Jokes aside, we don’t really know where people are coming from. Are some people like the fanboys who will act as if something they like is completely perfect? Are some haters who will jump at the chance to say something bad about anything they dislike? Or are they people who just happen to like a lot of things about the game right now, or dislike a lot of things right now? And there’s also the people who only really say something when they have a complaint.

We gotta just do our best to talk without being weird so we can share our opinions. Even if we don’t agree on so many things, it’s probably helpful for the devs to know that, for example, some people really like the more challenging msq encounters while others either hate them or are even walled off by them.

[ovIm]

I’ll give you an example: Throughout Endwalker, one of the most common complaints was the lack of a field operation. People brought it up constantly. Then, when the devs announced that a field operation would be coming in Dawntrail, the complaints didn’t stop—they just shifted. Now, people are upset that it’s not coming soon enough.

To me, this starts to feel unrealistic. If the devs could have released a field operation in Endwalker without compromising other content, I’m sure they would have. But these things take time, resources, and careful planning. Now, instead of acknowledging that, the demand has simply changed to ‘we want it sooner.’

Then you have misunderstood the criticisms, i fear. People asked for a moderately grinding bit of content early in the expansion (something that is kind of an MMORPG staple), which the field operations is. Something they can spend hours in, if they want to, to work towards any kind of goal.
Now the first bit of content that allows you to spend a lot of time in (and that is not a room with boss raid) comes a year after the expansion release, which is definitely too late for a content that is designed to be played over a longer period of time. Non-Raid players will have had 11 months of no real repeatable battle content at this point. 11 months is a damn long time.

If CS3 had released something else in the meantime, like for example a Deep Dungeon in 7.1, or a smaller relic step, then those kinds of complaints would have been somewhat mitigated. Its not that the players want "field operations" sooner, they want "something to play" sooner than a year after expansion release.
Hope that makes sense!

[Wasselin]

Then you have misunderstood the criticisms, i fear. People asked for a moderately grinding bit of content early in the expansion (something that is kind of an MMORPG staple), which the field operations is. Something they can spend hours in, if they want to, to work towards any kind of goal.
Now the first bit of content that allows you to spend a lot of time in (and that is not a room with boss raid) comes a year after the expansion release, which is definitely too late for a content that is designed to be played over a longer period of time. Non-Raid players will have had 11 months of no real repeatable battle content at this point. 11 months is a damn long time.

If CS3 had released something else in the meantime, like for example a Deep Dungeon in 7.1, or a smaller relic step, then those kinds of complaints would have been somewhat mitigated. Its not that the players want "field operations" sooner, they want "something to play" sooner than a year after expansion release.
Hope that makes sense!

Don’t forget that releasing a deep dungeon in patch 6.3 didn’t seem to mitigate anything for those who wanted a field operation.

It doesn't clear anything up for me that people requesting a field operation in Endwalker shifted their complaints to asking for it sooner once it was announced. While it’s fine to express a desire for it to come sooner, the underlying issue is that many still don’t acknowledge the reality that these things take time to develop. The implicit criticism seems to be that the developers have a field operation ready to go but are choosing not to release it, which feels like an unfair assumption. In practice, it simply appears to me that people are looking for anything to criticize.

It’s important to give feedback, but it’s equally important to be reasonable and recognize the constraints of development.

[Kozh]

When you have a probable gil seller with a dozen accounts constantly making threads trying to convince people to quit, things aren't exactly normal.

Pretty sure I heard "quit the game" wayyyy more from the white knight than the other guy. Isn't that all you guys said all the time?

People used to leave constructive criticism, but there's only so much they can take being ignored by the devs before they don't bother with it anymore.

[brinn12]

I’ll give you an example: Throughout Endwalker, one of the most common complaints was the lack of a field operation. People brought it up constantly. Then, when the devs announced that a field operation would be coming in Dawntrail, the complaints didn’t stop—they just shifted. Now, people are upset that it’s not coming soon enough.

To me, this starts to feel unrealistic. If the devs could have released a field operation in Endwalker without compromising other content, I’m sure they would have. But these things take time, resources, and careful planning. Now, instead of acknowledging that, the demand has simply changed to ‘we want it sooner.’

This is just one example of many. If people truly want to be constructive, I wish they’d take a step back and try to be a little more reasonable—or at least acknowledge that the devs aren’t personally out to get them. It’s okay to critique, but by grounding those critiques in reality and recognize the effort that goes into creating the content we enjoy I think that would improve communication for everyone and not harm the game by creating an echo chamber of ever escalating negativity.

The expansions before Dawntrail were all financial successes for Square Enix. You mentioned that things take time and resources, but SE has repeatedly shown that it has no intention of reinvesting those profits back into FFXIV. First they removed 15-week patches, then 16, and then 17. Despite being highly profitable, the game lacks resources.

Stormblood was released in late June, and Eureka arrived in March with patch 4.25. If you apply the same timeline to Dawntrail, the issue becomes clear: we haven’t received patch 7.2, when by this point in previous expansions, we should be in .25, maybe 1 or 2 weeks behind it. What did the majority of the playerbase get in exchange for waiting two extra months for the Operations Field? Nothing.

People are getting louder with time due to SE doubling down on their decisions of delaying and recycling content, but none of these complaints are actually new. People do not complain because they want new content. They complain because they want new content released at a reasonable pace. As someone mentioned above, if you think complaining about time between patches is a shift, you're misunderstanding the situation.