The state of the Game

[RoyLucaria]

Part 10:
Cant even attend a wedding when your from another Home world hence why people need to make Alts for that. The friend-list is also an even bigger disaster if you consider friends from other Home worlds as well... I know its scary to work on those systems cause they could break everything. But ignoring em wont make it better. People who also dont live right next to a data-center also have trouble with snapshot and getting hit by attacks they swear they weren't in. Mobile also fixed those issues. And yes I will always compare FF14 with FF14 Mobile now. They themselves opened that box. Lets us not forget that Mobile apparently has cut out many Dungeons. Changed some things around like making Mount available at lvl 7. Teleporting you to NPC who you need to talk with after a quest or spawning in a mount that carries you to em. You can also teleport to all City Aetherytes from anywhere without needing to go to one if you are in the area. FF14 Mobile had tons of QoL changes and I can just say go to FF14 Mobile Reddit cause someone there made a huge list of changes between the 2 versions. It is worth a read and I am not even a fan of Reddit.

[RoyLucaria]

Part 11:
Another big Issue I have is difficulty and how split the community is. Sometimes I feel like there's only Casuals and Hardcore players and no in-between. The natural progression of a game is to slowly increase the difficulty. A game should expect its player to be familiar with its mechanics. With his Options. FF14 somehow seemed to have missed that memo. We are 5 Expansions deep and here we are still arguing with people in Dungeons who only use half their move-set. Completely ignore that they have mitigation, self heals or even Tank Stance. And if you say something your toxic and “you don't pay my sub” Why should I as a player not expect that someone with 5 expansions worth of content can play his class in a decent manner? And no I don't wanna hear excuses like oh maybe the person has a handicap or something that makes him play worse. I do not expect em to play on Savage or Ultimate Raider levels of precision. But a basic understanding of their Jobs should be there. Also for the love of god pls make the change that people at lvl 30 are forced to always wear their Job stone. I don't wanna queu into a dungeon and have someone run around as Gladiator or Rogue because they forgot to equip their Job stone. But yeah the devs definitely need to make new ways of bringing beginners and casuals closer to extreme and savage level. Again FF14 Mobile lets you run dungeons in a “Hard version” where mobs do not highlight their AoE attacks anymore just as they do in higher levels of deep dungeons or savage raids. Gotta learn to read attack names. The games tutorial and explanations also need an overhaul. Often stuff only gets explained after you unlock it....

[Mawlzy]

Ah, sorry. Still going.

[RoyLucaria]

Part 12:
What else is there? Well communication between the dev team and the players.
Sure the live-letters are nice and all. But it is not too much. We here in the west honestly have no clue how much feedback reaches the dev team. Why are there no surveys being done in each region? Do the Developers still play the game? Are there better ways to communicate?
That is something that should be improved. Japan also seems to be getting a lot of events as well. Na often gets the short end of the bargain and EU often feels completely forgotten. Oceania who?
I get it its a Japanese company mostly operating in japan. I am also against any kind of form of harassment for the devs and fully support a hard stance against that. But they need to face some harsh truths. I honestly would love to know how much FF14 roughly produces in income. How much of it is being put back into the game. Tons of people are speculating and people are loosing faith. We need the team to communicate with us. Dawntrail is not doing well. We know player base is shrinking. Many people abandon it while other games who were doing bad before it are now celebrating big comebacks. Taking the lessons FF14 failed to learn and adapting them for themselves. Taking Risks, Listening to players feedback. We need that as well.
I do not believe FF14 is a dying game. Heck MMO are like the hardest to kill games there are. A comeback is always possible and FF14 already proved that once with ARR. But yes Square needs to take risks again and make huge changes.
I also don't believe that anything mayor will change during Dawntrail anymore. That ship has sailed. What we all should be curious about is how the plans for the next expansion or possible new MMO are. If the next MMO would also play in FF14 universe and we can port our Mounts/achievements/weapons and outfits over I would be fine with it as well. An overhauled character creator would also be insane. But whatever the plan is. They need to figure it out soon. And communicate with us. Cause as it stands. People are worried. We have a lot of Doomsayers. Many people are leaving the game. There are fears that the developers are not listening. We need someone to take those fears from us. None of us want to invest into a game that might not be around for much longer or whose quality is dropping fast. All we need is a road-map.

[BigCheez]

When you're comparing 2.2 content to 7.2 content, as well as there just being more content in 2.2, it's important to remember that this was all truly new content; including many entirely new features. While the list from 7.2 is exclusively formulaic approximations of content that we've already played through half a dozen times before.

They have legitimately just been re-releasing Stormblood every 2-3 years for a decade. How are we getting less content when they aren't even spending time developing new ideas?

[RoyLucaria]

Part 13:
So yeah. Here I am before you. There are probably way more topics I could talk about but I just cant think of em at the moment. But I truly believe that at its core FF14 has a lot of potential for greatness. They just need to nurture it and bring it out. And I want the developers and Square Enix to believe in that as well. I want the game to succeed. I have invested more than 10 years into it.
But I can also see it from the outside. I am not playing much ( not at all almost) because I suffered a stroke last year. My right arm was completely useless for a couple of months cause I lost all movement and feeling in it. I am fighting back to get back into raiding. That is why I also think a lot of excuses when someone plays bad are overstated. I cant play for long but when I play I can perform. Even if I barely have any feeling in my arm/hand. We also have 2025 and there are tons of controllers, input devices and organizations that try to come up with solutions. I also hope the FF14 devs will invest more into handicapped support for FF14 as well. But yeah, at the end of the day. This is the game I love. And I know the developers have more to give. There is so much potential. Please dont waste it. That is all i am asking.

Peace out!

[BigCheez]

Oh, god. He's still at it.

[RoyLucaria]

A lot, but now im sad i dont have a part 14....
Would have been kinda poetic this game being Final Fantasy 14 after all ._.

[ShadowyZero]

basically when you realize that this game is basically the SAME every time since its early inception you realize that they don't care to sustain you long term they really don't everything is basically just for the new players an the 5% of the population that wants strenuous difficult content to do. its pretty depressing an pathetic
casuals don't even get any new content anymore just new items and thats it they ignore their casual base like a fly on the ceiling they know its there an its buzzing at them loudly but they just plain don't care. but hey they sure can trap you with a predatory cash shop an predatory housing system though am i right?

-and to reveal your point on 2.0 they had a much larger staff number back then and they outsourced help as well to carry the game for a total of five years max and HW was their last chance to show the higher ups the game wasn't a lost cause or flop an it succeeded and thats why things went downhill staff was reduced, resources were cut thinner, an funds were kept to a bare minimal all because of "success" why fix whats not broken right? why innovate when the "formula" the special sauce on the menu has been tried and true?
course this isn't just on the business' stupid decisions though no not by a long shot look to your fellow players too who became nothing but soulless husks or bots who drovew out criticisms of the game an chased away anyone who didn't praise the game to all holy god almighty an their fandom cult faith lmao
honestly this is karma collecting its due people screamed for changed and it was chased out or outright ignored an now we have a terrible game as a result LOL and its much deserved. just a tragic shame and its too late now unless people boycott en-masse and refuse to pay their subscriptions to force SE into another desperate situation.

[All_Nonsense]

I think people who say "State of the game" are silly. Japan doesn't have states, they have prefectures