Quote Originally Posted by Lizzit View Post
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.
The forums have always been full of negativity. Back in 2019 I was posting here as well. At the end of the day, most people don't bother posting on the forums unless they are unhappy about something. Also, posters on forums are often not professionals, so they say some pretty harsh and impolite things. To be completely honest with you, being on these forums can make someone who is positive feel pretty depressed about the game. So it's not a good idea to read the forums unless you're the type of person that can handle that and not let it affect you. I can handle it because I'm a naturally positive person, so after posting here I just actually play the game and have fun like normal.
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" - they mean it's a script. If you do the same dungeon 20 times, it mostly unfolds the exact same way. The only difference is if you play a different job, or the player dynamics in the dungeon (such as them getting killed). They've slowly made it harder for them to mess up by giving more survival tools though, you see.
  • "not enough content" - this is mainly an issue for veteran players. New players have plenty. A lot of the people who say it don't actually do all of the content, either (for example, they avoid High-End duties such as Extremes). So they want more non-raid type content that isn't exactly the same every time.
  • "the devs playing it too safe" - They actually admitted quite recently they played it safe with which mechanics they add and are going back to Heavensward style designs for bosses. There is some evidence of that in the latest expansion, but it still remains to be seen.
  • "wuk lamat(?)" - You will see when you get through the most recent MSQ. The biggest complaint people have is she features too much at the expense of other characters.
  • "reminiscing of the glory days" - This is common for any long-running MMORPG game, because they change over time.
  • "not enough reciprocation from developers, "live letters" being too stale, not feeling heard" - Live Letters are how they talk to us, but it's one-sided and there's not really acknowledgement of the feedback here, despite that they ask us to post feedback here regularly.
  • "current raids aren't rewarding enough" - They agreed and said they are addressing certain raids not being rewarding enough. But it ultimately depends if a person sees value in the reward. If they don't, then from their perspective, it won't be rewarding enough.
Is this all I have to look forward to?
It's common for "long-time" players of an MMORPG to experience burnout and nostalgia for "the old days". Whether you will depends on you really. Maybe you will experience this same burnout someday, but I would suggest enjoying the game until that time actually comes.
Should I just stop playing the game after Shadowbringers? After the peak of Shadowbringers the quality just drops off a cliff?
You should at least play through Endwalker. Some people did not like its quality, but for many, it was actually their favorite story above Shadowbringers. So it depends who you ask.
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.
I've played for 10 years. What I said above are some of the reasons.

A big issue that has caused a lot of veteran players to quit are job simplifications. Simply put, jobs used to be full of bloat that felt "buggy" or "useless" or "unpolished". They had a lot of very challenging mechanics: we had "keep-up" buffs/meters and if they fell off we lost a lot of damage and abilities, positionals contributed a lot more damage, elements were removed, damage vulnerabilities used to mean some jobs benefitted from other jobs being there, players could regen eachother's MP and TP and influence their enmity, it was easier to mess up and press something at the wrong time, combos expired after 3 seconds, ranged attacks interrupted combos, you had to face a target to auto/block, Warrior's Raw Intuition would parry from front but crit from behind. Tanks had stances and would stance dance between damage and mitigation.

There was a lot of sophistication in the jobs, but now it's been reduced to where someone brand new to the game can play it correctly and understand how it works. To achieve this, you mostly just press press what lights up and press any abilities on cooldown. A lot of these players valued the sophistication and it was their reason for playing.

There are lots of other little issues, such as menus have been added to for years and never condensed, there is no incentive to do old Extreme and Savage raids, old content doesn't always sync well (should use Minimum Item Level settings), housing is limited despite that other MMORPGs do not have this issue, they have infrastructure excuses for why they can't do things and relatively simple tasks fixed by the modding community are difficult for the developers to fix, abilities don't feel good to press at high pings, casts can only affect like 32 targets and amount of buffs are limited in large-scale content, etc.

There are always going to be issues though, with any software. It's just a lot of these have been issues for most of the game's life yet completely ignored and allowed to persist.