Dear Community what even holds you in this game

[ZephyrMenodora]

Attachment to my character is my primary answer. I do like visiting the world of FFXIV and I enjoy having a house.

Second was having goals. Since I ignored most classes until Endwalker came out, it took me almost 3 years to max out all jobs and crafts/gathers and that kept my interest. After that I did some old Relic weapon questlines for Glam that took up a lot of time, and then also checked out a bunch of content I ignored over the years. There is a lot of it.

Now that that's done, I am playing less. I do enough daily roulettes to hit cap on the 450 tomes and do my weekly normal raids once a week. I do enjoy the combat in this game and the jobs I like to play, which is varied since I can pick out anything and just play it as I feel like it and sometimes gearing a new job will keep my interest for a while.

Outside of that minimum time investment I'm playing other games (BG3, Clair Obsure, ESO) until the relic weapons come out, then I will play more for those.

$13 a month (bundled) still feels worth the enjoyment I get overall, but if it wasn't then I'd just unsub.

[Commander_Justitia]

I am not subbed since some time, I used free login to play a few days PvP lol.

I think what isn't really talked about is how the game is preparing for the end of life status already. You will need trusts or squadrons to clear content. And all the dungeons that were redone, suddenly have mechanics that are solvable by NPC party members. At the same time new dungeons are made in such a way, that they are directly clearable by NPCs.
I fear it limits the creativity of devs in how to make mechanics. Like a self fulfilling prophecy that no dungeon will ever be totally different again. And this doesn't motivate as a player.

Did PvP ranked occasionally, it is no longer to my taste. And the series rewards are coming back, so it no longer matters really to participate.
Deep dungeons are nice, but hoped for something radically different from previous deep dungeons.

I also feel like it is difficult to join more difficult content, like cloud of darkness extreme or criterion dungeons hardmode, or eureka/bozja raids. Many things are organized by discords, players are scared to enter it just casually. And everything gets explained on voice chat. I just want to play the game when Im playing it - I do not want to plan my gaming time like its work. In other MMO this is more straightforward. You just login and can do whatever. You dont have to wait hours for a fate to appear - you can just directly queue into it without punishment of losing levels to grind hours again to relevel...

Game increases to be catering to casual playerbase, I think since Stormblood. I can understand why, but I am not that target group. And it was not when the game was launched.

The game is visually pleasing and has nice audio, but gameplay and system design wise it no longer grips me.

[Jeeqbit]

I think what isn't really talked about is how the game is preparing for the end of life status already. You will need trusts or squadrons to clear content.

It's not talked about because that's not their intention with it. Obviously, this was their intention with FF11, but in FF14 there were a number of other reasons for it:

• AI was being developed for the NPCs for solo duties anyway. You could already see them working on it throughout Stormblood as the NPCs became really good at mechanics such as entering stack markers, spreading, etc. This culminated in a demonstration of the soon-to-be AI in Ghimlyt Dark.
• There were so many dungeons that people were waiting ages to get a queue pop. Not due to lack of people doing roulettes, but simply the sheer amount of dungeons was making any individual one harder to pop.
• A lot of FF players just play the single player FFs, and they want to lure them in by saying they can just do the story first, which is obviously a trap because along the way many of them will end up socializing and come out of their shell. That's how socializing is for a lot of people. They're afraid of it until they get pulled into a group - such as an FC, and a significant amount of FF14 players can relate to having been shy at first and then getting dragged into the social fabric of the game. It was a smart business strategy to do this when the technology was already being made for solo duties anyways.

And all the dungeons that were redone, suddenly have mechanics that are solvable by NPC party members. At the same time new dungeons are made in such a way, that they are directly clearable by NPCs.

Mechanics have always been solvable by a computer in FFXIV. There are bots that clear ultimates. Most of the changes to dungeons were actually to make it intuitive/obvious to a new/returning player, whereas their old philosophy was to make it so you have to wait behind the purple line and discuss strategy, read status effects and figure out the mechanics such as untelegraphed stacks.

Many things are organized by discords, players are scared to enter it just casually.

Game increases to be catering to casual playerbase

You see the contradiction in what you said, right?

[Nana_Bear]

My reasons:

STORY: While at times story (mainly in some side or job quests) has been irritating (or worse) for various reasons, overall I've enjoyed all the stories, and some I've absolutely loved. (Same for many NPCs.) (And yes, I do go read a lot of backstory stuff online as well, like the "Tales from ..." short stories, for instance.) There's been no expansion I "hated," but definitely I have some favorites, heh.

FAMILY AND FRIENDS: I have RL family and friends who play too, plus friends I've made in-game. It's fun doing things with them, helping each other, comparing notes, etc. Shared experiences make good times and memories!

HOUSING: I love decorating housing and creating places for people to tour, visit, enjoy. I also enjoy seeing what others have done, especially the Museums and Aquariums. (Shoutout to the Eorzean Museum Network especially, heh.)

VISUALS AND MUSIC: I'm still in awe of how beautiful so much of this game is, and how so much of the music I love. (Applauds the visual artists and the composers and musicians!)

[Doomed_Raven]

I totally forgot about that one, the Marauder quests were even worse than the Warrior's.
"Look, this boy's family has been killed by a flesh eating buffalo and his jolly band of various predators. I'm a level 50 Warrior and could easily kill said buffalo - but it's your task to do so, for whatever reason. So please level up fast, before the flesh eating buffalo kills more people. Which I could easily prevent, but won't. Go figure"

Black Mage and Red Mage were both good in my book, while most of the DoH/DoL quest lines were horrible (can't remember the Culinarian one, it's been ages since I did them).

Sorry that's the one, Marauder not warrior, where you're avenging the boy you've no reason to care about. And yeah the skilled marauder's leave the bull to rampage across La noscea. I actually need to do red mage, so I'll try that next I think, I've heard form others they liked it.

The Paladin 60-70 I just did was decent, we actually get to fight in the coliseum finally (kinda funny they abandoned Jenylins and went back to the Gladiator characters)

[Doomed_Raven]

I should probably answer this thread too.

I still have a lot for content to get through, but currently Eureka content and playing as Paladin has been good, as well as Fordola and Yotsuyu's storylines, really good characters.

[Commander_Justitia]

It's not talked about because that's not their intention with it. Obviously, this was their intention with FF11, but in FF14 there were a number of other reasons for it:

• AI was being developed for the NPCs for solo duties anyway. You could already see them working on it throughout Stormblood as the NPCs became really good at mechanics such as entering stack markers, spreading, etc. This culminated in a demonstration of the soon-to-be AI in Ghimlyt Dark.
• There were so many dungeons that people were waiting ages to get a queue pop. Not due to lack of people doing roulettes, but simply the sheer amount of dungeons was making any individual one harder to pop.
• A lot of FF players just play the single player FFs, and they want to lure them in by saying they can just do the story first, which is obviously a trap because along the way many of them will end up socializing and come out of their shell. That's how socializing is for a lot of people. They're afraid of it until they get pulled into a group - such as an FC, and a significant amount of FF14 players can relate to having been shy at first and then getting dragged into the social fabric of the game. It was a smart business strategy to do this when the technology was already being made for solo duties anyways.

Not sure what you describe as "AI". To me it is just scripts. We in gaming called any NPC simulating something like intelligence as AI in the past, but nowadays, it is not real AI like a model AI that can make their own decision based on the situation. A NPC will never go to a different spot to evade, it will always be the same in my experience.

And ehh too much handholding, it is a MMORPG, it is online with other players by design, it shouldn't cater so much to players playing solo the whole time.
Ofc it is smart when you expect less players in the future. But you get less players by having uninteresting same dungeon designs.

Mechanics have always been solvable by a computer in FFXIV. There are bots that clear ultimates. Most of the changes to dungeons were actually to make it intuitive/obvious to a new/returning player, whereas their old philosophy was to make it so you have to wait behind the purple line and discuss strategy

Yeah, they said it to make it more "intuitive for new players". I can't remember too many examples right now because I haven't played for months, but one example is copperbell mines - the slime boss mechanic is gone, it was such a simply mechanic, but "AI" anticipating where a tank brings the boss, is not reliable enough. So it got removed.
Same way the end boss used to have adds that break the wall to new adds to appear? Guess can't have that, too "dangerous" to new players. Yes, you went from using brain 10%, to mindlessly pressing buttons ignoring what ever happens, you cant die, you cant lose, just press your button like a bot.
One of my favorite bosses was the snowcloak 2nd boss. The snowball mechanic where you push it into the boss to instantly kill him more or less if executed well. Now that fight takes a few minutes, because it has become another mindless button smasher. NPCs don't know how to hit a snowball facing the boss at the right moment. They don't know if it is better to use a small or a big ball. That kind of decision making requires a human. Because SE didn't code for it. And instead of coding something so difficult, they just removed the mechanic.

Calling it more "intuitive/obvious" is really just an excuse for dumbing down dungeons for NPCs. As well as dumbing it down for casual players, who find out in a lvl80 mainstory end dungeon how to do aoe rotation, back then during shadowbringers expac...Instead of earlier.

You see the contradiction in what you said, right?

I noticed it when I wrote it, that it may sound that way. But still kept it. Because it doesn't contradict to me - I want the difficulty of the content and how we use skills to be higher, but I do not see a reason to make actual access to content difficult. Because that is not really a "difficulty" - it shouldn't exist once you have unlocked a duty. It is like an artificial resistance from doing it. Making players unsure if they are prepared enough, when they could just go and do it.

[Gwenkatsu]

(kinda funny they abandoned Jenylins and went back to the Gladiator characters)

That's another thing I dislike about the job quests so much - they constantly loose their focus (pre 30 everyone: "The Alacran, the Alacran, oh my god the Alacran - run!", post 30 everyone: "Alacran who? Never heard of them")

Red Mage tells not only a consistent story, but also a good one, with some nice little background info of the world and all. And you even get to visit one of the mage cities of eld (they reused raid assests for this quest, which I did not know back then, as I never did these raids ). So I hope you enjoy it!

[TheDustyOne]

Not sure what you describe as "AI".

Let's not get too caught up in semantics over what's "real AI" or not. Jeeq is still using the term AI correctly regardless of modern computing using the term for general AI as opposed to games using scripted "AI". I wouldn't be opposed to it being called scripted intelligence (SI) instead, but everyone and their mother has been calling computer controlled characters AI for decades, so any other name for it would just be confusing at this point.

Semantics aside; I'm of the similar opinion that dungeons have less complex mechanics partly thanks to Duty Support/Trusts and their AI either not being able to handle them, or would lead to less interactive gameplay if they could. The 2nd Snowcloak boss being a good example you provided; it'd require the AI tank to decide a snowball to aim the boss at (it's not hard to decide to aim for a larger snowball, just tell the bot to aim for the snowball with the highest "size" value), and another AI bot to smack the snowball towards the boss when it's charging up its AoE (tell the bot to smack the ball with the biggest size value from an angle that aims at the boss). This isn't impossible to make, just cumbersome, and the end result really just lets the player not have to actually interact with the mechanic because the computer will do it for you.

I think Square just doesn't want to program for these unique mechanics rather than it being "impossible". Easier for them to just redesign the boss from the many design templates they probably rely on and call it a day.

The biggest problem with modern dungeon design though is just their current design directives and philosophy. They're too concerned with shoving a bunch of "think fast" AoEs where you can't stand still for 3 seconds, with which they'll justify obliterating caster design.

[JohnLakeside]

I'm at the Elpis portion of Endwalker and I decided to make a new character and replay everything from scratch. But this time around, I'm going to do all the side quests, all job quests, and beast tribe quests when its appropriate with respect to the main story. Doing side quests outside of their appropriate time periods really was immersion breaking and unsatisfying. I don't want to finish the Hydaelyn saga in Endwalker feeling like I still have unfinished business from the world and story as it existed in previous expansions. Doing the side quests from ARR or Stormblood, for example, just feels off when I'm already in Endwalker. It feels like I'm not really making an impact on the world because that time has passed.

I'm also curious about whether I will like Shadowbringers more on my second playthrough. I found it infuriatingly overrated when I first played it.