Okay, maybe saying it is Dying is overexaggerated and a bit click baity, but it is definitely in trouble. Why? Well because of its bland, old and tired end game model.
In this video I talk about why I quit FFXIV and why as of late it is receiving a lot of hate and criticism from its once loyal fanbase. Yoshi-P Take note and come with me if you want to live.
Don’t forget I stream Tue, Thur, Saturday (more days may be added later) at twitch.com/gmw_raziel
If you are interested in debate and debauchery in my snowflake melting discord, feel free to join!
https://discord.gg/t8JtSES
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Not gonna lie. I hit subscribe the instant I heard "I am Raziel" in the intro. Nostalgia is a hell of a thing.
But real talk, you're pretty much right about the state of the game. I've been around since 1.0, and … yeah, I too have quit the game fully at this point. The developers have proven they are no longer willing to take risks nor listen when the playerbase tells them in one voice the dumb crap they're doing is not good.
A hahahahhahaha you already killing me with that intro
Still tryna wrap my head around how they went from FFXI's(2007) godtier gearing system to XIV's nothing matters. Ever since I started playing the game a bit more seriously in Stormblood with raiding, I instantly quit the hardcore life when I found out your gear is worthless once the new crafted gear comes out with the new raid tier. It's entirely pointless outside of bragging rights, and glam. It amazes me people are actually just fine with the same systems with a new coat of paint every single expansion(and throughout). I will say, they have taken SOME risks before via Island Sanctuary, Eureka, the new PvP mode. But the biggest issue with those is they(devs) have a tendancy to just stop expanding on said content once the next expansion is out. It's crazy to think the exact definition of Expansion doesn't apply here outside of MSQ, Level Cap, & New Areas. The gameplay loop has gotten stale, and I'm huffin' copium with Arthars at this point with his line of thinking: The reason EW is this lackluster is because they're working on something(s) new for 7.0 and onward. So right now none of these things matter, so it's a w/e thing to fill out what's expected in an expansions patches. Major copium yes, but remember the articles/interviews Yoshi-P had earlier this year…."A BIG change is coming" and we still dunno the full scope of that. Not here to defend the Devs, but I do believe there is still hope for the game. It's changed SO MUCH these last 13 years alone, I believe it can change even more given time for the better. Just a matter of what that change will be lol Hopefully more content to get us more engaged with the Overworld, a better gearing system, and to switch up the pacing of the gameplay loop in-general. Also, my vote goes to Merit Points being implemented, especially since they're considering what to do for Levels now that we're capped at 100 in 7.0 and assumingly beyond
Why take a risk? Their money is coming from people who don't even dip their toes in content and buy a vast majority of the microtransactions. These pigs don't value gameplay and will spend more time than the hardest of hardcore raiders AFKing/E-fucking on Crystal. You bet your ass I'd wring them out for every rotten penny if I could
My biggest problem with FFXIV was always the narrative that people could leave WoW and come to it as a replacement. A few years ago everyone was representing the game as something WoW players could come to as "refugees" as if it provided the same MMORPG elements, which it clearly lacks as far as meaningful gear progression goes. Yoshi-P saying that people should just quit playing and come back when they want to play the game again is kind of a head scratcher given the concept of what an MMO is supposed to be (in my opinion) with things to progress towards.
Why does everyone insist on this clickbate BS?
It's annoying. No, FFXIV is not "dying". It's not even "definitely in trouble". It's in a rut, and that could lead to stagnation, but even there it would be profitable and "successful" for years. It would be nice to get some changes, but a lot of the hate and criticism isnt' from "its loyal fanbase" and is from people trying to stir up drama and rampant hyperbole employment.
FFxiv is not dying, in trouble, experiencing a mass exodus, etc. Ironically, one of the videos you referenced in the start, Xeno's, JUST recently shut this narrative down. Yes – the game has some issues, but it hasn't had any MAJOR issues come to fruition. Simply put, it's just business as usual. (some) Players with hundreds/thousands of hours at the "end" of the game are bored and chose to become jaded and complain vs. moving on. This is nothing new for any game.
short answer , is the cycle of every mmorpg.
matt mercer? i found your address on imdb, the yoshi p.olice are coming
I didnt know content creators were all growing this desperate to get views on ff14. Even the usual ones i watch just dive bomb into clickbait and negative spirals without offering much context.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinions and its perfectly fine to outline issues one has with any game or the games direction in story etc.
But as yoshi-p has said and the game is designed as "play it when you want, how you want" (not exact words but the gist of it). Besides dailies on alts and island sanctuary i didnt touch the game story for like two patches and did other games.
Long comment short, i hope this trend dies down and the creators at least give their opinions instead of this desperation, as its.. Well, what i said above.
I’ve played since original Shiva first got released and I don’t know if I can really go on. It just doesn’t feel “fun” anymore! But I still love the game. I’m super torn!!!
Square'll be fine once they spin up the next arc. I'm concerned they'll take too much of the doom and gloom to heart, though– adjustments need to be made, but a lot of what's being suggested will fall flat on its face.
The main problem with FF14 is that you need to pay a monthly sub for a couple of hours of MSQ, time-gated gear progression and raids and no worthwhile side content in patches released every 3-4 months. No wonder ERP is so popular in the game since standing in Limsa is 80% of what players do.
Guild Wars 2, a game with almost no gear grind at all, has more meaningful gear than FFXIV. Because certain builds and play styles require very specific stats on your gear or else they will not function. You need different sets of gear for different types of content. There are builds that are tailor made for open world content but simply will not function at all in instanced PvE (fractals, strikes, raids etc.) and WvW (karge scale PvP). You need different stats for condi (DoT) builds and power (crit damage) builds. Variations can be made in builds to give you more defense but less damage and vice versa. All of this requires you to get different sets of gear with different stats in order to enable specific play styles for specific content.
The opinion of a raider doesnt matter they dont understand casuals. Raiders are not even 5% of the players and most casuals love ew it finally caters to them
Lot of people don't realize that while the game might not be dying if it goes on with its formulaic patches/content it could very well be put in that downward spiral of losing it's old playerbase while not retaining new players.
The people leaving FFXIV = WOW players, they're fake anyway. The migration to XIV wasn't even the first wave of sheep either , i remember when they tried to migrate to ESO when Elswyre released and we told them to GTFO. FFXIV ppl are too nice for that though. And a lot of us are balls deep in BG3/Armored Core VI/Battle Bits and a bunch of other great games that released, but we're still subbed. Reminder "content creators" aren't a part of the real community anyways, they're paracites who make a living off the product. As far as "boredom" goes, its the same issue for anything in life, if you're bored, it's because you are boring. Now the final take, it's a game. Play, or don't play. Toys don't matter, if you were talking about how shitty new power tools are from Black and Decker , and how their batteries don't seem to hold a charge like they used to, then we would have something worth talking about.
To be honest, FFXIV, which respects players' time, is not a suitable MMORPG for solo broadcast creators. There are numerous MMORPGs and various RPGs in the Twitch category, but the MMORPG FFXIV has recently seen a significant decline in viewership and popularity.
As always, WoW and LostArk are still the two main MMORPGs, followed by BDO. The two major games, WoW and LOA, are popular games with a large average number of viewers, and when a large-scale update is made, more than 300,000 people flock. However, FFXIV is inferior even on average, and even with large-scale updates, it lacks topicality and firepower compared to the games I mentioned. There will definitely be some differences between FFXIV and the games I mentioned.
Personally, I think that the popularity of FFXIV has decreased significantly due to various complex problems since COVID-19 was lifted, but the precursor to that was about a year ago. And this phenomenon is still ongoing.
Looking at the listed categories, FFXIV is located in the lower to middle range. The same goes for YouTube live streaming. There are fewer people broadcasting and fewer people watching.
Due to the nature of MMORPGs, there is a repetitive cycle in which the number of players increases when a new expansion pack is released and then decreases after a few months. However, as FFXIV goes through this cycle, the number of players is decreasing, and the number of creators and viewers is also decreasing. This means there is something wrong with the game.
Does FFXIV combat still need to target the enemy and press skill? It's not action rpg?
Soon as that clip of Quantum Leap started, I laughed so fuckin hard….thats how its reboot feels btw goddamn smh.
I'd like to think Square knows that something needs to change but given that they have made close to no improvements to how loot works for 10 years I think they have a heavy slant towards playing it safe and usting this game to make up for the losses of their other releases that turn out to be financial flops. It feels like they are fine with FF XIV being "okay enough" instead of trying to future proof it.
Know what could have made a great Final Fantasy MMO? Crystal Chronicles. It already had a very Final Fantasy environment, action gameplay mechanics that would have worked with the time's already faster-than-MMO internet access (action RPG Phantasy Star Online was out on the Dreamcast before it!), and designed with multiplayer AND replaying earlier areas in mind! They should have moved forward with that series; instead they demake the first game into a half-baked multiplat.
Seems like the same old problem every long-lasting games have
they did take risk with Island Sanctuary and Criterion Dungeon for Endwalker. The content is a miss for some and a hit for some (your case it's a miss but they did try). So your first argument could make people doubt your next points even though most of your points afterwards make sense (for example the gearing system).
I haven't played WoW for a long time so I don't know how people despise Chorgast, but for IS and CD, most of my friends like them tho. However, I do aggree with you on there is no incentive to gear up in FF, it's just pointless ^__^.
It is nearly 30 years after Chrono Trigger and still there is no game like this…
What's especially frustrating about the gear issue is that the game already has systems they could use to fix it!
Take eureka/bozja actions, make different gear sets enable different actions, and boom – You have Monster Hunter's infinitely better gear loop.
As it stands there's absolutely nothing that sets gear apart aside from ilvl and pointless stats. It's so BORING!
FF14 has indeed become way to generic.. or rather more formulaic.. Like the Assassins Creed games.
Another clickbait title huh
They're still not ready to hear it. The complaints everyone have now is still things like 2 minute meta or lack of content. It's not even cutting into the real problems. My thoughts are that most XIV players never played pre-wow MMOs so they don't know how having an actual MMO world feels like or how cool gear can be. They can't want something they don't know exists.
The game is not dying, but become stale and boring. You log in into the game, think, that I can do that, or this, then just have a thought that you can do it later and just never return. Like those kind of games you buy on steam thinking you're gonna play it later and never actually do.
Also very good points on the video.
I do agree with the gearing issue. A new patch comes out and boom there is new BIS which I don't care all that much about because I don't do savage or ultimates. I just get the tomestone stuff from daily roulettes, gear up one or two of each job class (tank, heals, melee, caster…) to unlock and enjoy the newest content available. My go to's right now are GNB for tank, WHM for heals, BLM for caster and RPR for melee so no point in a unique materia'd out set for SMN or RDM. After this, I go back to those older grinds like Eureka, mount collecting and relic weapons.
I also agree with the homogenization of jobs. This is the reason I only bother with gearing up one or two of each job class. The small differences currently in tanks or healers only really show up in a savage or ultimate. In the day to day routine stuff a set of lowest-to-enter unmodified gear along with knowing how to properly play the job is enough.
My only question is since I started playing in the summer of 2021, how would this compare to the general complaining that occurred between SHB 5.XX and EW release? The content creators I watched at the time were excited for the huge influx of sprouts and were being patient due to the previous year of set-backs. Plus I was only watching content that was relevant to where I was in the game so I didn't see the end game creators that were in the lull between major content releases.
Overall good honest take.
It makes me so mad that they never bothered experimenting more with crafted gear in how it relates to raiding. We got one attempt at the start of HW (which was horribly botched to be fair), and since then they just gave up. We have expert crafting now though that prevents EVERY CRAFT IN THE GAME JUST BEING A MACRO. Why have they not tried to at the bare minimum have a raid or other content drop loot that can be crafted into raid-equivalent gear with enough good RNG? I desperately want crafting to be more than just a pyramid scheme, since "high end crafting" just don't exist in any form right now. If you want to make money with crafting you're often better off crafting old stuff or furniture, both of which don't even require good gear.
No matter how well-written an mmorpg can be, the games themselves all live the same life. It's a pattern.
since 2015 i havent been bored of ff. I couldnt wait to log in actually. Once shadowbringers hit that last patch though before EW, logging on to ff was the last thing i wanted to do and it hasnt changed for me yet. It sucks still feeling that way lol
Edit: i also hate how every job is in baby mode. they all feel too alike
Good I can't wait until all these people leave so I can play the game in peace.
one thing i will point out, I'm perfectly fine with PvP nullifying the effects of gear. PvP should be about who is the better player, not who has the stronger items, the rest of the complaints about gear though i'm with everyone complaining 100%, it's boring af