It all boils down to one stupid decision

[Fawkes]

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.

People complained about Pagos on release because the devs tried to force exp chains on people as the standard way to play after the Anemos non-stop FATE train. They tried to close pandora's box, but people just wanted to do the NM train again. The NMs in Pagos were spawned by chaining the mobs in that area. The people mad about people standing at the aetherite were the people chaining the mobs that felt entitled to the NM they popped and didn't want to wait for all the "inv" spammers to show up.

[Hallarem]

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.

It's really hard to figure out because they dont communicate at all, there is 0 transparency in their actions. Its like this mystery box that you have to pay for monthly and it can be anything. It's really hard not to be jaded at this phase. Its either them lacking direction or simply not having the talent to actually put out anything good. I hardly believe SE is holding them back, though its a popular theory that all resources are taken to other games and so on and so forth.

But I will say, it will be hilarious to see the reaction when FFXIV mobile will have more fleshed out systems than the mainline one.

[Taranok]

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.

That's basically modern fight design. A nightmare of DDR vomit where almost every actual mechanic can be made orders of magnitude easier by using sprint. And in the process they killed off caster gameplay.

Hell, that stems from another really stupid decision. When everyone is forced to do everything equally, no one is allowed to be different. And this is why M6S is a nightmare, M7S makes me want to quit the game (and yes, I have cleared it on 2 separate roles,) and I have literally no excitement left in me to even do M8S. I'm more than good enough to do it, it's just...not fun. Awful mechanics, awful frenetic pace. Awful netcode-related issues. Just...awful gameplay. Way to suck all the fun out of the game, devs.

[Mawlzy]

That's basically modern fight design. A nightmare of DDR vomit where almost every actual mechanic can be made orders of magnitude easier by using sprint. And in the process they killed off caster gameplay.

Hell, that stems from another really stupid decision. When everyone is forced to do everything equally, no one is allowed to be different. And this is why M6S is a nightmare, M7S makes me want to quit the game (and yes, I have cleared it on 2 separate roles,) and I have literally no excitement left in me to even do M8S. I'm more than good enough to do it, it's just...not fun. Awful mechanics, awful frenetic pace. Awful netcode-related issues. Just...awful gameplay. Way to suck all the fun out of the game, devs.

Agreed, the PvE in this game has sunk to the point where PvP is far more enjoyable and interesting, with jobs having a distinct flavor and combat relying on factors other than memorization and speed.

Were it not for the fact that two of the four FL maps are essentially PvE, meaning I only have a reason to login every other day, it might have been enough for me to maintain my sub.