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.