It all boils down to one stupid decision

[Valence]

SE wants everybody to be able to participate at all times. They don't want people to be left on the side of CEs, etc. They also want people to walk up to the actual CEs and not just queue up for them out of nowhere like in Bozja.

-> Make every piece of content inside, whether it is CEs or fates, uncapped, which means that the whole instance can participate at once.
-> 144 players is way too much for this, dial it down to 72, it lags like in limsa or hunt trains, a lot of bodies won't even visually spawn, but we think it's a good compromise, don't we?
-> We can't have multiple fates or CEs running at once, else people are gonna run to one, will not be able to enter if they are capped at 24 like in Bozja, and if we don't cap them then people are just all gonna follow the train and go for one after another anyway and you'll end up with lopsided CEs (CE 1 run with 100+ people, CE 2 run with only 8, etc), so we need to spawn them one by one after the other.
-> Just let people rush from one to another as they shotgun spawn in a huge hunt train like they do enjoy. They do enjoy this, right?
-> Forked Tower? Don't worry they'll start being able to enter it once the content has calmed down to one or two instances at once, right?

I can bet you anything that this all boils down to this and they doubled down on it even though it's full of obvious issues as soon as you get in.

[Mawlzy]

Combining this design with that of cosmic exploration, it would appear the devs believe we all like running around under time pressure clicking on things.

[ShirakoShinkai]

That's the problem lately, is they keep doubling down on things and going to extremes on everything. It's really not the right way to go about it, but it seems they don't care to actually pay attention to the players. They just listen to a word or two and think they understand the whole picture or something. They need to implement a proper survey or something at this point to actually understand what players want....

[Arohk]

At least it is not a big deal if you miss a fate or CE, because the next one will spawn right aaway

Remember when you missed Pazuzu, great see you again in 2-4 hours

[Jeeqbit]

I mean, it makes sense.

Combining this design with that of cosmic exploration, it would appear the devs believe we all like running around under time pressure clicking on things.

It's because people complained about Eureka Pagos in Stormblood and you struggled to find anyone positive about it back then. Back then, players would come home from work and wait at the aetheryte, sometimes for 1-2 hours, waiting for an NM to spawn. They were frustrated that, in the 2 hours they have available to play, they could only get 1 NM. Anemos had that too, and sometimes you would actually be waiting 30 minutes, but I don't think it got so many complaints because this was mostly isolated to the highest level NMs and the terrain was easier to navigate like Occult is.

To solve that though, they made it like Bozja and Occult Crescent, where they spawn constantly in a cycle. This makes the content work for working casual players who don't have time to wait for NMs/FATEs/CEs.

The result of Bozja was actually one of positivity. People were happy that it was more casual friendly and didn't make them wait ages and properly synced them in CEs, so it's no wonder they've kept all that and double downed on it.

The only negatives I remember people really having about Bozja was a certain field note, initially the duel, certain relic steps, the relic being more efficient to get outside Bozja, and some people thought it was too casual, in that you got through it in a day. But there were grinds you could do, like the relics, mounts, cluster farms, field notes, duels, +10 stats and dino mount. So really you can see why they kept what worked.

[Mawlzy]

That's an interesting rationale, but the combination of Cosmic Explo and Occult Crescent reveals a massive disconnect between devs and players, with the former content frankly being insulting.

It's certainly the case that few people are fond of waiting for things to happen (sorry, Dynamis), although it does allow socializing. But combined with the frenetic pace of DT dungeons, it feels like those creating recent content are stuffing crushed adderall up their noses making sure players never stand still.

[Alyx-Greywind]

That's an interesting rationale, but the combination of Cosmic Explo and Occult Crescent reveals a massive disconnect between devs and players, with the former content frankly being insulting.

It's certainly the case that few people are fond of waiting for things to happen (sorry, Dynamis), although it does allow socializing. But combined with the frenetic pace of DT dungeons, it feels like those creating recent content are stuffing crushed adderall up their noses making sure players never stand still.

It's like Yoshi-P took his statement on the game being too stress free to the extreme and now everything has to be stressful. I've been playing other MMOs and so many of the popular MMOs on the market drop Story Mode versions of their content on top of the more difficult Challenge Modes you know? FFXIV isnt accommodating every player, it's trying to funnel everyone into higher end content and more and more players are dropping off.

[Kaurhz]

It's like Yoshi-P took his statement on the game being too stress free to the extreme and now everything has to be stressful. I've been playing other MMOs and so many of the popular MMOs on the market drop Story Mode versions of their content on top of the more difficult Challenge Modes you know? FFXIV isnt accommodating every player, it's trying to funnel everyone into higher end content and more and more players are dropping off.

I'm not even sure in many instances their intent is too induce stress in the ways they have, I just generally think they are fairly creatively bankrupt, as more often than not the stressors they are creating usually just boil down to bad design as opposed to intentionally, and well designed stress.

[Obi-one]

It's like Yoshi-P took his statement on the game being too stress free to the extreme and now everything has to be stressful. I've been playing other MMOs and so many of the popular MMOs on the market drop Story Mode versions of their content on top of the more difficult Challenge Modes you know? FFXIV isnt accommodating every player, it's trying to funnel everyone into higher end content and more and more players are dropping off.

It has enteres the death spiral of HC players , casuals leaving just makes HC crowd louder as the playerbase decreases untill more and more people leave and HC crowd (that will not leave) will have more and more say in the community.

Wow already had it happen few exp back from what i seen on the news , they basically have to do an ARR now just to stop that.

I dont think square has the money for ARR2 anymore..

[ForteNightshade]

I mean, it makes sense.

It's because people complained about Eureka Pagos in Stormblood and you struggled to find anyone positive about it back then. Back then, players would come home from work and wait at the aetheryte, sometimes for 1-2 hours, waiting for an NM to spawn. They were frustrated that, in the 2 hours they have available to play, they could only get 1 NM. Anemos had that too, and sometimes you would actually be waiting 30 minutes, but I don't think it got so many complaints because this was mostly isolated to the highest level NMs and the terrain was easier to navigate like Occult is.

This is somewhat incorrect. Pagos was a direct response from the dev team not liking the NM trains players formed in Anemos in lieu of mob grinding ala the XI design they were trying to replicate. The result was ridiculously bloated requirements that pretty much killed the content. Some NMs took upwards of 300 mob kills or very close to it. In a game where basic mobs are incredibly boring and the whole rotation system simply isn't built to be spamming your rotation that much on mobs with huge hit boos, it's no small wonder why players hated this change. In fact, Pagos was so widely despised it was nerfed four times while current. Which is entirely unheard. To make the reception even worse, the Logogram actions were delayed because "we didn't want to overwhelm the players with too many new systems." Considering the over 50% drop rate in participation. We can safely say that was a colossally bad decision.

In other words, the guy they brought over from XI to bring Eureka to life almost single-handedly killed it. Pyros spent the better part of its lifecycle desperately trying to fix the sheer number of mistakes Pagos made. Which, to its credit, did a surprisingly decent job turning opinions back around.

All this to say, it wasn't that the players didn't like NM farming or waiting around per se. The devs have seemingly learned the wrong lessons from their own bad decisions. That, or they're listening to only the players who disliked xyz instead of the players who did. The later has become all too common with job design.

I'm not even sure in many instances their intent is too induce stress in the ways they have, I just generally think they are fairly creatively bankrupt, as more often than not the stressors they are creating usually just boil down to bad design as opposed to intentionally, and well designed stress.

This or SE has slotted in a mostly B team to simply manage the game almost akin to a skeleton crew on a DLC. There are just too many mistakes being made going back to EW for me to believe it isn't one of the two. Five expansions in and we shouldn't be seeing nonsense like Forked Tower's entry requirements. Even the grind of simply upgrading your Occult gear is such a blatantly obvious stopgap because they desperately need to keep Occult alive for a year. Which is just inexcusable.