Genuinely, What am I missing?

[Drimn]

Hi,

I'm a newer player and have been playing for a little over a year now. I joined the game around the release of patch 6.5. And took a break from the game to finish UNI. Now that I've graduated, I've had a lot more time to run around as my cool cat caster. I am almost done with post HW patch quests and my highest lvl class (at the time of writing) is a lvl 68 whm with a lvl 67 blm close behind with trying to do as much of the content from each expansion as possible (Extremes, Coils, Alexander, relic weapons, unlock all dungeons, etc.). I am greatly looking forward to Stormblood. I would say I'm a fairly casual player but do enjoy the extremes and tougher content. I have been greatly enjoying the game so far.

I like to log on here some mornings at work once and a while to see if I can find any fun tips or strats as I'm exploring through the world of Eorzea. Yet, every time I log on here (or to a lesser extent try to watch anything about the game on YouTube) I see nothing but disdain and very vocal harsh criticisms. I can't see any of it reflected in my own experience. A lot of the criticisms I see appears to be:
boring repetitive content, not enough content, the devs playing it too safe, wuk lamat(?), reminiscing of the glory days, "we need another reboot," (inadvertently comparing the current state of the game to XiV 1.0?), not enough reciprocation from developers, "live letters" being too stale, not feeling heard, current raids aren't rewarding enough, YoshiP actively killing the game, being scared of WoW, unanswered questions, and many others.

Is this all I have to look forward to? Should I just stop playing the game after Shadowbringers? After the peak of Shadowbringers the quality just drops off a cliff? Should I not waste my time and quit now to avoid heartbreak? Maybe I will understand with time? I'm not sure.

If you loved Shadowbringers (and please at least play up until that point), you'll probably like Endwalker, even if Endwalker does feel like two expansions in a trench coat. It's not last season of Game of Thrones levels of a disservice, but it is a step back from Shadowbringers, which admittedly doesn't necessarily make it terrible. I enjoyed it, at least.

The writing after Endwalker/6.0 takes a very serious nosedive and I'd mainly continue if you like the game's content, want to get to level 100, enjoy crafting, or things like that. There really isn't anything that new offered in Dawntrail that other expansions didn't already do better. I honestly don't think the writing is just bad, but out and out culturally offensive in it, but that's just me.

I know what it feels like to be so devoted to a game and slighted by it, after pouring so much time and effort into a hobby all for it to be for nothing or to get burnt out. I recently quit playing competitive MTG for this very reason. After playing for 8 years, (as a hobby) letting go felt so good (then i jumped ship to this lol). I invested too much for too little return after realizing the developers were just going to keep making better and better cards and strats that pushed out my favorite cards (*very bad swear word here* modern horizons + universes beyond). Adapt or suffer.

I felt this pain too. Seeing my Badlands and Wheel of Fortune and the rest of my collection I'd been building since the mid '90s get peddled to a comic book shop hurt, but I didn't want to keep investing money in creatures only to see better creatures come down the pipe, and then entirely new and more broken card types changing the game as we know it was the breaking point. Towards the end when I'd take on players I didn't know, I'd run mono-blue just to slow the game down because the new creatures and creature-centric strats were that much more powerful than my collection was capable of keeping up with and I wasn't about to dump money into boxes of packs after I settled down, got married, and had to put it towards bills and food. I just had to sell all of my old games and game systems not too long ago because it's either get a bulky CRT to play them or a $500 lagless converter, and I had to go out of state for a family funeral and didn't have the money to do so otherwise. It's just a hard part of growing up, you know? If the stuff you love doesn't change, the stuff around it changes and impacts it until it's not the same anymore. I think I'm starting to get the same way about XIV, but I really don't want it to ruin your experience, and I still say subbed because my wife still loves it and I have friends online that are slowly making their way to the current content that I play with.

That being said, what am I missing? I want to be filled in as to why the community feels this way. I want a better perspective so I can understand I don't want pointless baseless accusations; I want statements and I want a "i feel x way because of y," or "because of x change from however many years ago." I understand some players have been playing for over 10 years (which is a lot of time!) so I will be taking longtime players thoughts and criticisms to heart the most.

Thank you,
Ms. Emral

I can't speak for some that have been at this from the beginning since I joined in the middle of Stormblood 5 years ago or so, but it's just a matter of having more of the same. If you had your favorite food every day for a few months, it probably wouldn't be your favorite food anymore, right? Try 4 years (the game has been largely unchanged since Shadowbringers) with the recipe getting less refined. You went from homemade buttermilk fried chicken, to (class simplifying/streamlining/homogenizing) KFC, to (dungeon streamlining/homogenizing to accommodate NPC party member AI) microwave tenders, to (bland, uninspired, unrealistic writing that worships the writer's waifu rather than telling a story and voice acting going from professional West End theater actors to the head localizer's Twitter/Bluesky buddies) Aldi dino nuggies.

People have a right to be frustrated, but you're not there yet. Maybe you'll even like it, I don't know, just enjoy where you're at and tune out the negativity for now. At least play through 6.0, you won't regret it, and curb your expectations after that.

[TBerry]

Hi, etc etc

What you miss is a proper method to purge any an all memory of this forum's existence from your memory.
Leave now and never turn back.

[Lizzit]

What you miss is a proper method to purge any an all memory of this forum's existence from your memory.
Leave now and never turn back.

Yes ma'am! right away ma'am!

[Jojoya]

Is this all I have to look forward to? Should I just stop playing the game after Shadowbringers? After the peak of Shadowbringers the quality just drops off a cliff? Should I not waste my time and quit now to avoid heartbreak? Maybe I will understand with time? I'm not sure.

Play the game because you're enjoying it. What others think should have no bearing on whether or not you choose to play.

If you get to the point you're no longer enjoying the game, that's the time to quit.

[MoofiaBossVal]

Disregarding the issues, the game provides a decent singleplayer JRPG/visual novel experience. If you are in Stormblood, then I would say you would probably enjoy the rest of the story, perhaps not as much as ARR through Stormblood but still overall worth finishing. The are still some neat story moments in there, and there are good aesthetics and some good tracks to look forward to. It is once you get fully caught up and there is no more story or side storylines left to do that it becomes difficult to remain subbed to the game, since the game is fundamentally not a good MMO with longevity that keeps you logging in day after day like with oldschool MMOs. There are other JRPGs and VNs in there that provide a much more potent experience than FF14, but you could also do a lot worse. Tales of games I would say a worse experience, and again FF14 has some unique stuff going for it like the aesthetics and the music. I can think of few other JRPGs and VNs with a higher hitrate than FF14's.

If you want an elaborated list of issues:

- After Stormblood, there was a change of writers and narrative trajectory. ARR through Stormblood was a grounded story about geopolitical conflict, and things that could not be undone. Nanamo cried in Raubahn's arms because despite being a monarch and wanting to save everyone, she couldn't. Merlwyb breaks a treaty because it is the least bad option available to her. It is an imperfect world and there is not always a happy ending, and long lasting blood feuds and deeply head convictions are not handwaved away overnight. Starting with ShB, that realism disappears and all of the problems in the setting start getting handwaved away. As of the current expansion, there is hardly any conflict or drama or pretense of realism or consequences. It feels very stale.

- After Stormblood, the Scions of Seventh Dawn become the main cast for the rest of the game. They are all well spoken, affable good-hearted white haired scholars from the same island, and they are all in agreement and never argue with each or dare suggest taking preemptive action to kill people, etc. It is a very disinteresting party you are stuck with for 200+ hours.

- The long awaited Garlemald expansion was cancelled and the Garlemald story ends in disappointment. The adjacent IVth Legion storyline that began in the Stormblood alliance raids and continued through the ShB Bozja storyline also had an abrupt and unsatisfying ending.

- The technical execution of Endwalker and Dawntrail's story experience leaves a lot to be desired. There is very little tension at any given moment. You go several hours reading nonstop visual novel text before anything dramatic happens or a gameplay segment happens. Dawntrail is the longest expansion story yet but only had three solo instances.

- After playing the game for a while, you realize that the most fantastical and coolest looking environments are confined to being merely 15 minute long corridor dungeons you sprint through, as opposed to the huge open zones. The open zones tend to be relatively boring and not as good to look at on a technical level.

- After playing the game for a while, you realize that the soundtrack is not as good as it is hyped up to be. The main leitmotifs are rather simplistic. They are not complex enough to be able to withstand listening to them over and over. The leitmotifs are also heavily reused with little to no real variation. The tracks also do not have enough variety in segments within the song compared to Uematsu's 1.0 tracks. You also realize that almost all of the night themes are grand piano arranges, so they becomes samey and stale. Starting with ShB, there is weird stuff going on with the soundtrack such as extremely climatic story bosses only getting one song for both boss phases, lots of tracks from other Square games being reused, etc.

- The aesthetic look of the game has been changing. It used to be a serious fantasy world, but then over the past few years there has been more and more unimmersive modern day clothing and silly stuff added like the Loporitts. I am not conceptually against modern day clothing - I think the new Xenoblade esque clothing in the upcoming 7.2 raid tier looks neat - but most of the stuff we got just looks tacky, and we are seeing NPCs wearing these clothes in seasonal events in Ul'dah and it is very jarring.

- After playing the game for a while, you realize that the combat is unenjoyable. It is a pseudo action game where you are pressing a button every second to deal damage to a boss, but you and 7 other people are attacking the boss who is tuned to live for at least 2 minutes, so with each button press you only deal 0.1% damage to the boss' HP bar. It takes what should be an exciting encounter and makes it boring. The difficulty amounts to zooming your camera out far away from your character and the action to look for orange circles on the ground and to run away from them. There are no interesting gameplay scenarios like in singleplayer JRPGs or in WoW's many, many memorable raid encounters.

- Because classes have no real meaningful differences mechanically, the only thing that really differentiates them is visually. The expansion DPS jobs (Ninja/Samurai/Red Mage/Reaper/Viper/Pictomancer) are the ones that look the best visually, while the other classes look meh.

- There is an aggregate of gameplay frustrations/disappointments, such as not being able to slow or sleep bosses, no elemental damage, Summoners not being able to keep a huge summon of their choice out on the field like in FF11, no character class customization so your samurai can't tank or your Dark Knight can't be a damage dealer, your minion disappears when you mount up or enter an instance, etc.

- The game sucks as an MMO, as the game requires you to go through a 400+ hour long visual novel JRPG. You can reach level cap having never made a friend. There is no incentive to socialize in this game, and the presence of duty finder and server travel prevents the formation of a recognizable server community. You just don't feel like you are in a MMO or pressured to make friends like in FF11 or other oldschool MMOs.

- Once you have finished the stories, there is no real reason to remain subbed unless you bought a house and don't want to lose it.

- I have not been able to get any friends into FF14. People are turned off by the gameplay, and then the question comes up of when we will actually be able to play together. The answer is that there is no real meaningful content to do together until they beat Stormblood's story and unlock Eureka, which is 200+ hours into the story. That is a massive time commitment for anybody with a job or a family. In that same time frame, people could have started and completed several much better acclaimed JRPGs and VNs (classic Final Fantasy games, Xeno series, Trails, etc). Or we could have played a different multiplayer game and had spent most of those 200 hours together. It is also a bad idea to to tell people "spend lots of time doing this thing that you do not enjoy right now, in the hope that it will "get good" much later on.

- As time has gone on, you get less bang for your buck. You used to get three dungeons per patch, then two, now one. You used to get four endgame grind zones per expansion, then two, then none. There used to be a trial storyline, and now there is none. Etc. Furthermore, the time between patches have been increasing.

- PvP feels frustrating because of the server delay for Americans.

[Kazuke_Miso]

I have not been able to get any friends into FF14. People are turned off by the gameplay, and then the question comes up of when we will actually be able to play together. The answer is that there is no real meaningful content to do together until they beat Stormblood's story and unlock Eureka, which is 200+ hours into the story. That is a massive time commitment for anybody with a job or a family. In that same time frame, people could have started and completed several much better acclaimed JRPGs and VNs (classic Final Fantasy games, Xeno series, Trails, etc). Or we could have played a different multiplayer game and had spent most of those 200 hours together. It is also a bad idea to to tell people "spend lots of time doing this thing that you do not enjoy right now, in the hope that it will "get good" much later on.

Everything you've said is 100% true, and this one in particular is something that people keep forgetting.

This game is horrible for new players. The game is literally a glorified visual novel all the way until endgame and yet Yoshi P expects that their tinkering and trimming off the edges, sanding down all the friction is going to magically get new Fortnite gamers into the game??

It's insanely stupid and speaks to how SE as a whole has lacked vision for nearly two decades now. They just chase trends without understanding the trend and without even understanding their own products. That culminated in the disaster that is FF16, which pissed off traditional FF fans and yet failed to attract hardcore action game fans since it was so braindead and unfun. The only thing CBU3 knows how to do is create meaningless spectacle.



Spectacle over gameplay, I wonder who was the person who once criticized that!

[MitsukiKimura]

There's a lot of complaints from veteran players over the years and rightfully so. Im sure you heard most of them already however, I believe you should experience it yourself and come to terms if FF is really worth your time at the end. I personally would of been unsubbed if it werent for my FC mansion and personal house because over the years I have watched my friends either quit or go their own ways due to the lack of gameplay, story, and their favorite jobs being changed and not for the better. People feel like they're not being heard and this place now feels like their live letters. It's a damn shame cause I used to really love playing this game but I've had to come to terms with everything that's happened over the years and now I feel like thing's aren't the same.

[TheBigE]

Just play the whole thing. And this is coming from me, a huge Dawntrail hater who is officially unsubbing as of this week.
It doesn't matter how others feel, if you enjoy it then that's all that matters. And if you hate it, you'll have plenty of people who you can talk to about it. It's a win/win.
I will say that a lot of the folks who are upset are long time veterans who have largely completed most of the content they're interested in. Having a new world and story with new experiences ahead makes the game way more enticing to a sprout, as opposed to someone who's done everything they like in the game for years and are feeling as if they've lost the spark.