Dawntrail Doomposting Megathread

[Gurgeh]

...Still puzzles me that boss design has been downhill for several expansions.

To be fair, my perception is that the bosses in dungeons has been consistently good, and even slightly better with DT. The Trials have been knockout (apart from the last). The first normals were knockout. (With the exclusion of Deadwalk boss 1 wich was awful. Brave, new, but awful).
The problem with dungeons is that everything between bosses has got worse, *and that really matters*.They have even en-shitified previously good dungeons in their push to cater for solo players while avoiding having to do any dev for it.
And it WILL bec stimying dungeons, badly. Every design will be "is this going to be hard to turn into solo?"
'They can have anything they want in dungeons as long as we don't need to develop new AI for it. i.e., nothing very new at all.'
My god, could you imagine the outrage if they started enshitifying ultimates to make them easy to convert to solo instances. The content creators would be issuing progroms and declaring holy wars. Organised via discord no doubt.

Of course still nothing compared to the effort that goes into savage. They could put that much richness into normals while lessening the brutality (adds, phase changes). They just can't be bothered is all.

[ZohShia]

I did not mean happy in that sense. I obviously meant happy with the game because they were defending it and ridiculing the negative individuals.

I..... suppose I see what you're driving at? Still, what it is you showcased doesn't really feel as if it's a thing that should be given publicity, unless it's to show players how NOT to treat those they disagree with. Again, all I saw in your statement is a bunch of bullies who practically forced a relatively mild critique out of an instance. It's nice that some people are happy with the state of the game, but there's no need to be rude and frankly kinda awful about it when expressing this to others.

Right, but that's what people tend to do anyway. And my point is that the pendulum swings towards people being against negativity in the game itself, and that maybe that is a reflection of unhappy people having unsubscribed.

I mean.... that's a bad thing, innit? Doesn't exactly reflect positively on this game's community. I only continue bringing this up because afaik if I recall correctly quite a few posters in this thread brought up the communities' general reaction towards criticism of Final Fantasy XIV being found lacking from their perspective. In my own experience, if critiques are being routinely labeled "doomposting" then something has already gone horribly wrong to begin with.

[Jeeqbit]

I..... suppose I see what you're driving at? Still, what it is you showcased doesn't really feel as if it's a thing that should be given publicity, unless it's to show players how NOT to treat those they disagree with. Again, all I saw in your statement is a bunch of bullies who practically forced a relatively mild critique out of an instance. It's nice that some people are happy with the state of the game, but there's no need to be rude and frankly kinda awful about it when expressing this to others.

Right. My reason for showcasing it was to show that when I interact in the game, I am seeing people happy with the state of the game, defending the game and against the doomposting that everyone else says they see amongst their friends/FC. Because people didn't believe me that I see this in the game itself.

I'm not necessarily saying the game is in good state or isn't. For example, it could just be that the people unhappy with the game mostly unsubscribed or AFK at limsa/house. But they don't seem to be in Occult or High-End PFs otherwise they'd probably jump at the chance to doompost the way they do here. I don't even think I've met unhappy people in my dungeon runs, which do actually have interaction sometimes - I had Praetorium today where there's lots of time to chat. Well, except that they hate the first Stayborough boss - that's a commonly expressed sentiment.

I actually didn't even include a few people in my party's chat who did not like the debate going on (and it was the doomposting they particularly didn't like ). They kept out of it.

In my own experience, if critiques are being routinely labeled "doomposting" then something has already gone horribly wrong to begin with.

I agree that not all critiques are doomposting. Nevertheless, it's a simple (and seemingly viral) buzzword to encompass any sort of critique at the moment.

What is true though is that often if someone is unhappy about one thing they have a tendency to be unhappy about a large amount of things if not everything; in contrast, people who are happy seem to be content with almost everything and thus rebuke any sort of criticism. That's why I have to think some of this is a "glass half full, half empty" situation in many cases where two people, in a general sense, just see optimism or pessimism in things they look at, in a general sense.

[Kozh]

I agree with you in principle, but equally entering content, joining a party, and then criticizing said content in chat seems a little off to me.

Like a major reason so much of the content is crap is that people dutifully queue into it as if it's some sort of moral obligation. If you don't like content, leave reasons why here, and don't engage with it.

SE is obsessed with participation numbers. Non-participation is one of our few pressure points to create change.

It just won't work unless it's super duper broke content (maybe like forked tower?). It's the same thing as people advocating for "vote with your wallet, don't play the game anymore", because the casual players will offset those loses. Or, when the unhappy players left the game, the only people remains are people who's happy with it, therefore creating illusion that the game is fine.

It's basically lose - lose situation for unhappy players, because despite what yoshida preached, they no longer listen to those who left/criticize the game.

Sure, sometimes people are being mean or unreasonable, but they're the loud minority among those unhappy people. And honestly, imo the extreme complaints are born from frustration over the devs not listening to feedback for years plus the GCBTW bullying.

[MitsukiKimura]

Pretty much agree with most of the fair critique against Dawntrial as an expansion. The raids and first tier of savage were good and worth the time invested along with FRU. The other content however, I am pretty sadden with. I was looking forward to the cosmic exploration and the Occult crescent to keep me busy in the downtime till next patch. Sadly this is not the case as I have yet to be back in both of those areas. The 30mins of having to repeat the same point and click on the upgrading base fates in Cosmic were some of the most mind numbing fates I've ever experienced. Coming from someone who loved Bozja and did multiple relics since the logo actions made it fun to always switch up what I wanted to play in there at the time and the raid was a simple que in and go that made alliances work with one another. The Phantom jobs disappointed me I was really looking forward to more experimentation and playability but it's been reduced to a simple swap to this job for these skills. 95% of the time the fate would be dead before I reached it and I had the faster map mount scroll with. Hardly no one socializes in there since everything is just go go don't stop. My drive to play this game in downtime has degraded even further to the point where I can't be bothered to cap tomes or level jobs. Just feels like to me some of the dev team is just tuned out till next expansion. Now me and my friend just joke around finding other games to play so we dont have to be bothered with 14 when there's nothing to keep our interest.

[Gwenkatsu]

Personally I'm here mainly for the story and the world building - and I can only say that for me DT failed to deliver on an epic scale. But people more interested in gameplay and challenges also sound very unhappy - what I can perfectly understand, with absurd decisions to release a raid that requires a lot of coordination, then making it impossible to enter with a fixed group of players.

Now we all know that in MMOs the current xpac is always the worst of all times; until the next comes out, then the last one suddenly gets a lot of praise, while the current one is now the worst of all times.

I'm relatively new to the forums, so I wonder if what I read here is the normal level of criticism? Or is DT in fact the Shadowlands of FF14, an xpac that basically made every player demographic unhappy?

[PercibelTheren]

OC is not at all sociable. Not on EU.

Exactly. There are 5 possible messages you see in shout. Those are.

1: lfg
2: lfg gold farm
3: lfg ce
4: rez pls (coordinates)
5: omw

That's it. That's the extent of social interaction in OC. If you're lucky, the people in your CE farming party say hi and then tyfp when they leave. That's it.

[Jeeqbit]

I'm relatively new to the forums, so I wonder if what I read here is the normal level of criticism? Or is DT in fact the Shadowlands of FF14, an xpac that basically made every player demographic unhappy?

I can say that these forums were full of criticism even in Stormblood. I used to try debating in the category-specific forums but that was seriously exhausting because they are an even more concentrated echo chamber of people repeating the same few things that SE will never do.

Since you're new, my advice is this. No matter what SE says or does, it won't be received well in this forum, so being here can sour your mood and make you feel negative about the game when you otherwise wouldn't be. I had to find a way to think of it that won't affect my mood. Actually playing the game fixes that for me, because people you meet in the game are, on average, usually not like this, as I explained throughout this thread.

[Mawlzy]

I can say that these forums were full of criticism even in Stormblood. I used to try debating in the category-specific forums but that was seriously exhausting because they are an even more concentrated echo chamber of people repeating the same few things that SE will never do.

Since you're new, my advice is this. No matter what SE says or does, it won't be received well in this forum, so being here can sour your mood and make you feel negative about the game when you otherwise wouldn't be. I had to find a way to think of it that won't affect my mood. Actually playing the game fixes that for me, because people you meet in the game are, on average, usually not like this, as I explained throughout this thread.

There are exceptions, such as some of the recent changes in PvP, but it still begs a question.

If no matter what SE says or does, it is not well-received here, is that the fault of SE or the players?

You tend to view this as a player issue. I do not.

[Basteala]

I was looking forward to OC...

...Until they murdered BLM.

...And I'm kind of glad I haven't done OC, with how many negative things I've heard about it and Demiatma.