Dear SE: Please listen to actual players, not just content creators

[Mawlzy]

It's not a misplaced term. Doing savage and ultimate is work and the rewarding part is achieving the goal at the end and seeing the fruits of your labour once you have the reward.

I'll accept the term is not misplaced, but that suggests the content is misplaced.

You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter, don't you call me, 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store

[Kozh]

I'll accept the term is not misplaced, but that suggests the content is misplaced.

You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter, don't you call me, 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store

Yeah, because no other games have this kind of thing /s

Tackling challenging content for the reward and /or for the challege itself has been a thing since the beginning of gaming.

You want ultimate weapon? Go dodge 100 thunders. Want to unlock this skill? Grind until you are level 99. Want this outfit? Go play minigame that the game clearly isn't designed for.

Savage is optional, the rewards are optional (heck, the only difference is you can dye them unlike the reward from normal. Ylu don't have to do them unless you want a specific reward (to flex perhaps?).

[Valence]

It is basically saying "I want a salary of our CEO as a blue-collar". It doesn't work like that in real world. Same isn't working in games. Every type of content have different rewards for it.

Okay so, I don't disagree with the opinion necessarily (actually pretty neutral on this), but can we avoid vile classist comments such as those?

Thank you.

[Valence]

The irony of you saying this while you yourself is incapable of reading the room.

Who the hell says anything about being above the rest. That's not the person you quoted was talking about. Just because you pay the same with others, doesn't mean you're entitled to the same reward.

Do you think all raiders are young healthy people who has all the time in the world to waste it on games? No. Or maybe you think all of them are so good at this game that they clear hard content effortlessly? Also no.

You envy those raiders, demonize them while not realizing that those people actually do make sacrifices to get to where they're now. Lots of them are adults with job, famil, responsibilities, etc.

Back in EW I used to prog raid with my static until late at night. I am also very easily get migraine and carpal tunnel from those session, it isn't always fun.
Now that I don't raid anymore due to health issue, I understand that I can no longer get all those savage rewards even if I like them very much.

Tldr: stop being entitled. Especially when ff14 actually give a lot of rewards for the more casual contents.

Also, stop using the old players on your argument, when in reality you're doing this for your own sake mostly.

I'm a little confused at the accusations of entitlement always being thrown at the casual base.
The point being made, if I understand correctly, was about another paradigm where rewards simply exist outside of content types and are accessible to anyone, with specific content having higher chances or being more efficient to get said rewards depending on the challenge, or other factors. Who's really entitled here? The players that'd like to access said rewards by their own means, or the competitive players that want to keep them exclusive to a smaller elite by gating them behind their harder content?

[BigCheez]

IMO the problem with the reward structure in FFXIV is that anything worth getting generally comes too easily and does not feel earned, while anything that requires effort to get is just a vapid trophy piece that isn't really worth the effort.

MMOs need a carrot on a stick. FFXIV is just a bucket of carrots and a pile of sticks. Neither the hardcore nor the casual players are winning.

[Avoidy]

For real, I actually enjoy watching Xenos rant about the game, but he's obviously coming at it from a raider perspective. To him, Dawntrail's content rollout has been fantastic. He's said this on stream. And he feels this way because he likes to raid, and most of the content that's been released has been with raiders in mind. But if you don't like to raid, then Dawntrail has been absolute dogshit with barely anything to do for nearly a year. And development decisions like "we couldn't do FT normal because of costs" just say it all. They had to choose between satisfying hardcore raiders who have the time and the desire to make these groups and prog, versus satisfying potentially everybody (remember, things like Bozja's Castrum and DRN, despite being "normal" difficulties, DID have elements to them that hardened players could enjoy as well), they chose to only satisfy raiders. And I think it's because streamers raid, and raidstreamers are very loud in their praise when they get what they want.

Seriously, imagine the player who just wants to decorate their house and enjoy some engaging casual battle content after work, but isn't out here trying to form a static or do serious raidprog. For that kind of lightweight player, there hasn't been a whole lot. A simple DRN equivalent could have satisfied someone like this for a while. I know that, for me at least, when DRN came out I ran it over 300 times because I'm not hard to amuse. There were rewards worth running it over and over again to try and get. There were different lost action builds to keep it interesting. Other players dying was amusing to watch. It had staying power. But now? In DT? They're just not giving me shit, man. They promised all this cool sounding stuff, but then they kept "accidentally" tuning it exclusively for sweaty people with statics to gush over on stream and it's tiresome af. If you're not into that coordinated dance slop, there's really nothing for you to do except log in, run EXPERT, and then go do the same 5 CEs in Occult Crescent or run your dailies to get your stupid tomes because the relic's another tome grind. Like, come on bruh. A competent devteam would've put out a FT(normal) for people who aren't interested in the savage version, and then followed it with a variant dungeon or something, and all of this would have happened AGES ago, like in .1, so that all these bored "after work" types would have something to be doing in the background of all this downtime. I could bitch about this for hours and hours and hours. Not even asking for "easy" stuff, literally just out here asking for something that isn't coordinated PF/static raidslop but nah can't have that. Nine months and still can't have that.

And because I just noticed how heated this thread's getting, don't @ me like I'm attacking you for enjoying raiding. I don't care what people enjoy. I just think the DEVELOPERS are dumb af for failing to account for the vast majority of players who don't care about that stuff, and now they're wondering why their sub count is falling off a cliff. But hey! At least some raidstreamers gave them a kudos on stream, so it's worth it, right? Jesus dude, we couldn't even get an allyraid with good glams. WTF were those jeuno glams. Christ, man. If we had an alliance raid with nice glams, I would've probably ran out the following 4 months just farming that raid. When Aglaia came out, I reran that so much that my friends were asking me if I was okay. This demographic is not a difficult one to satisfy; SE just sucks at doing their job.

[Kozh]

I'm a little confused at the accusations of entitlement always being thrown at the casual base.
The point being made, if I understand correctly, was about another paradigm where rewards simply exist outside of content types and are accessible to anyone, with specific content having higher chances or being more efficient to get said rewards depending on the challenge, or other factors. Who's really entitled here? The players that'd like to access said rewards by their own means, or the competitive players that want to keep them exclusive to a smaller elite by gating them behind their harder content?

And what rewards are you specifically talking about? Gear with higher ilvl? Exclusive mounts?

As I mentioned before, your mindset doesn't make any sense because ff14 does provide alternative rewards when it comes to ilvl (which we can argue is the most needed, as mounts etc are basically cosmetic). People who aren't currently raiding can still get gears, either via tomestone or doing OC. Or if you want quicker catch up, go buy crafted gear from MB and upgrade them using tokens.

See, now while you aren't BiS, you can still tackle high end content as your ivl is sufficient.

[Heavenchild]

... But if you don't like to raid, then Dawntrail has been absolute dogshit with barely anything to do for nearly a year. And development decisions like "we couldn't do FT normal because of costs" just say it all. They had to choose between satisfying hardcore raiders who have the time and the desire to make these groups and prog, versus satisfying potentially everybody (remember, things like Bozja's Castrum and DRN, despite being "normal" difficulties, DID have elements to them that hardened players could enjoy as well), they chose to only satisfy raiders. And I think it's because streamers raid, and raidstreamers are very loud in their praise when they get what they want.

Seriously, imagine the player who just wants to decorate their house and enjoy some engaging casual battle content after work, but isn't out here trying to form a static or do serious raidprog. For that kind of lightweight player, there hasn't been a whole lot. ... If you're not into that, there's really nothing for you to do except log in, run EXPERT, and then go do the same 5 CEs in Occult Crescent or run your dailies to get your stupid tomes because the relic's another tome grind. Like, come on bruh. A competent devteam would've put out a FT(normal), and then followed it with a variant dungeon or something, and all of this would have happened AGES ago.

Yeah that's it. I played 'Fantasy Life i: The girl who steals time' over the last weeks. It's not perfect but it's fun for me. In FF14 there is nothing I want to do right now. Nothing feels really exciting, funny or rewarding enough. And I can't see that this is going to change.

If you people are like me and are stupid enough to pay the sub to not lose your beloved house, then try to pay not every month and exploit the 45 days as good as you can. Go into your house before the sub ends and come back after about 40 days. So we can save at least a little bit money over the year. Money that we can use to buy games that are actual fun. ^w^

Maybe SE is going to make it better in the future. If not.... den R.I.P. all the money for the virtual house. :x

[Kaurhz]

I actually don't think it's because they are catering to -- Or listening to content creators specifically...

It is because there is this deluded idea of... That because people wanted stress in the game again, that therefore, everyone wants to do raids, so they've been frantically trying to push everyone into that sphere...

and really the only difference being from the last expansion to this expansion is that they are catering less to a solo experience, and more to a raid experience... The general content is still as shallowed and as stress-free as what it was in Endwalker, frankly.

Their feedback collection, and how they've actually actioned that feedback has always suffered from this, and to be honest it's the reason why this game will never get better, because they are always operating in extremes and trying desperately to funnel players into content they have no interest in, rather than seeing how they can make the game generally speaking, more substantive.

[Gurgeh]

Just saw JMulls Youtube "FFXIV Responded"
Makes me think i will be back one day.
Makes me think i will be excited to see the charge when i get back. But really all that excitement is about how the speech bubbles might reinvigorate social and how the raidplanner might get people communicating rather than just abandoning.
I'm still going to dissaapear though. I doubt it's 8.0 l'll be back for.