Thread: Thoughts and observations from a 1.0 player about the current state of FFXIV

@jeeqbit & @Striker44
At the end of the day I get that this is a business players don’t own anything here, SE does. But we’re ignoring some key history.

@Myotis this one is for you!
One example is the old direction survey from like 2012 I think: the community split was roughly 62% vs 38%, and the majority did not want to be locked into a hamster-wheel progression loop that doesn’t respect limited playtime. In practice, it’s the same routine every tier: you log in, clear your weeklys for tomes, gear up 1–1.5 jobs, and by the time you’re “caught up,” your progress is invalidated and you farm again. There’s no breathing room for players who can’t no-life the game. Despite what a majority wanted you went against their wishes. Why even bother with a survey if you're not going to respect what your players want?

Another example: at the first EU Fan Fest, Yoshi-P was asked almost exactly what you mentioned about crafting and coordinated gameplay. The proposal was to have multi-role, multi discipline objectives e.g., go to Dungeon X, clear certain conditions to spawn an alternate boss that drops a unique item; hand that to a crafter; have gatherers bring complementary materials; craft a key item to spawn a world boss or unlock a special fight/dungeon(This sounds like MAPS I get it but this was meant to have a bigger purpose than maps.. The idea was dismissed as “too complicated for newer players.”

But… isn’t this an MMORPG? Isn’t the genre fundamentally about interdependence combat, crafting, gathering, exploration creating content together that no single role can complete alone? If we only want solo-friendly, single-path content, there are fantastic single-player RPGs like The Witcher or Skyrim. FFXIV can (and used to) be more than a weekly checklist treadmill.

When you backtrack statements across the years, the pattern often reads as goal-post shifting: things said to the community vs. what’s actually implemented later. That doesn’t have to mean malice but it does come across as contradiction without accountability. And for many of us especially 1.0 veterans that erodes trust.

TLDR: The player base repeatedly signaled it didn’t want perpetual treadmill design. Systems that could’ve fostered lasting, cooperative MMO depth were waved off as “too complex,” while the game doubled down on time-gated weekly loops. Over time, the gap between stated intent and delivered design makes long-time players feel misled and that’s the core of the frustration you’re seeing now.

Anothering thing Jeeqbit, I doubt that you're that gullable to believe that Yoshi P doesn't know that WoW had housing. News about housing travels fast and I'm sure plenty around him informed him of Blizzards next moves for their mmorpg. It's transparent that he does live in his own little bubble when it comes to FFXIV but I'm sure he knows very well what WoW had planned but had to be diplomatic about in a interview if that actually happened (haven't checked the interview).