Genuinely, What am I missing?

[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.

[JohnLakeside]

Need to play the game and make your own opinions. Like when I got into this game (right before EW came out), if I ever went online I’d see how ARR is boring and ShB is really good, and funny enough it happened to be the opposite for me and I was baffled. And I liked Dawntrail a lot despite how people on the forums and reddit talk about it, although I do end up agreeing with some complaints about the game like how jobs are getting simpler, and the overworld design.

If you’re into Dark Souls at all, it might remind you of how fans of the series talk about Dark Souls 2: many will talk about it as if it’s one of the worst games in the world, while fans of it will say it’s the best in the series, and the people who think it’s “fine” don’t really talk about it online lol. In the end you find out whether you’ll like a game by actually playing it.

Taking strangers’ opinions too seriously about games that you’re interested in but haven’t played yet will lead to big disappointment when you’re not into something that’s allegedly amazing, and will make you pass on games that are “bad” that you’d otherwise have liked.

I also enjoyed ARR as a whole more than Shadowbringers. ShB is probably my lowest rated expansion. I'm still on EW.

What did you think of Stormblood?

[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.

[IndraSyngiwyb]

I'm not gonna trash the game or be like some people in this thread and disregard ALL criticism as just "people being buttmad the devs didn't do what THEY wanted." Because those two extremes are unhelpful. I can only give you MY perspective.

And for me, I just outright didn't much enjoy Endwalker's post-expansion patches. They were... okay. And after the highs that ShB and EW had, just 'okay' kinda brought down the mood. So when Dawntrail was finally announced, I got hyped, thinking, "Okay, the EW patches were kinda meh, but we got a new expansion. This'll be great"

Only for Dawntrail to deliver the worst story, worst characters, and worst overall experience out of every expansion I've played so far. Your character as well as the Scions you've grown to know and love are shoved to the background to make room for a new character who never shuts up, never gets off screen, and practically BECOMES the main character while you are basically her guard-dog/storage container.

Now this wouldn't be an issue if she were an enjoyable character, but she is not. She is lame. Over-the-top cheesy. She doesn't earn anything she gets, and she's honestly just obnoxious to be around. On top of that, her English VA is just not very good. So you have this character who is around ALL the time, AND she has a grating voice.

Add to that serious story beats and plot points that are handled in such an overly-simplistic, juvenile manner and it's a recipe for disappointment. Dawntrail felt like what would happen if modern day Disney tried to make Hunchback of Notre Dame. We all know they'd soften every story beat to keep from 'discomforting' people too much, and that's how Dawntrail felt. Soft. Safe. Corporate.

My advice to you would be to keep playing but temper your expectations when you get to Dawntrail. Don't hype it up like I did because you might be disappointed. Just take it for what it is, and I think you will be able to find enjoyment in it that I couldn't find after months of hyping myself up.

And just as a more positive note for the end of this, I finally actually played 7.1. And I mostly enjoyed what they were starting in that patch (except for the "find my parents" sections which I thought were kinda unneeded). It seemed like they were starting to take their own plot points a bit more seriously and maybe steer away from the "friendship conquers all" messaging that permeated 7.0. So, for my part, I think there is hope that the patches might redeem 7.0.

Take my opinion how you will. I don't think the game is beyond saving or that you are wasting your time if you keep playing. I think the devs just need to keep a better eye on their writers and do better quality control for future patches/expansions.

[Nero-Voidstails]

I'm not gonna trash the game or be like some people in this thread and disregard ALL criticism as just "people being buttmad the devs didn't do what THEY wanted." Because those two extremes are unhelpful. I can only give you MY perspective.

And for me, I just outright didn't much enjoy Endwalker's post-expansion patches. They were... okay. And after the highs that ShB and EW had, just 'okay' kinda brought down the mood. So when Dawntrail was finally announced, I got hyped, thinking, "Okay, the EW patches were kinda meh, but we got a new expansion. This'll be great"

Only for Dawntrail to deliver the worst story, worst characters, and worst overall experience out of every expansion I've played so far. Your character as well as the Scions you've grown to know and love are shoved to the background to make room for a new character who never shuts up, never gets off screen, and practically BECOMES the main character while you are basically her guard-dog/storage container.

Now this wouldn't be an issue if she were an enjoyable character, but she is not. She is lame. Over-the-top cheesy. She doesn't earn anything she gets, and she's honestly just obnoxious to be around. On top of that, her English VA is just not very good. So you have this character who is around ALL the time, AND she has a grating voice.

Add to that serious story beats and plot points that are handled in such an overly-simplistic, juvenile manner and it's a recipe for disappointment. Dawntrail felt like what would happen if modern day Disney tried to make Hunchback of Notre Dame. We all know they'd soften every story beat to keep from 'discomforting' people too much, and that's how Dawntrail felt. Soft. Safe. Corporate.

My advice to you would be to keep playing but temper your expectations when you get to Dawntrail. Don't hype it up like I did because you might be disappointed. Just take it for what it is, and I think you will be able to find enjoyment in it that I couldn't find after months of hyping myself up.

And just as a more positive note for the end of this, I finally actually played 7.1. And I mostly enjoyed what they were starting in that patch (except for the "find my parents" sections which I thought were kinda unneeded). It seemed like they were starting to take their own plot points a bit more seriously and maybe steer away from the "friendship conquers all" messaging that permeated 7.0. So, for my part, I think there is hope that the patches might redeem 7.0.

Take my opinion how you will. I don't think the game is beyond saving or that you are wasting your time if you keep playing. I think the devs just need to keep a better eye on their writers and do better quality control for future patches/expansions.

Endwalker post patch could have made a great expension in itself they felt rush like way to rushed to be enjoyable

[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!

[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.