The Problem with Yoshi-P | An Honest Critique

Everybody loves Yoshi-P. Everybody loves Final Fantasy XIV. Hey, people even love Final Fantasy XVI. Creative Studio 3 is the best game developer in the industry. They have never made a bad product. Please continue to provide them with your hard-earned money in exchange for their products. I love Yoshi-P! I love Dawntrail! I love Wuk Lamat!
#finalfantasyxiv #mmorpg #gaming
SOCIAL MEDIA:
/ embersarcade
/ embersarcade
MUSIC:
I make all of the music you hear on the channel.

[@embersarcade]

9:43 Shoutout to my wife for holding my phone up against my forehead to get this POV shot. CORRECTIONS: 1. Some of you have pointed out that I called Yoshida the “director” of XVI. I misspoke, as I meant to point to his position at the studio, rather than on that specific project. 2. Others have pointed out that I do not, in fact, have my best-in-slot equipment. You are correct, I am missing the weapon. Apologies, I was under the wrong impression, as I’d been told that I’d reached best-in-slot by others. Still, that’s my mistake for overlooking that final piece of equipment. As much as I’d like to complete my Sunrise progression and the tier, I have since unsubscribed. Thank you.

[@ggmasterguiltygear6315]

lol, im jealous

[@mehdiperrel4941]

Yay for supportive partners ! ♥

[@fredy2041]

Does your why know your a transphobe?

[@fredy2041]

Does your wife knows your a phobe?

[@dviceix]

gigachad wife :nocringe:

[@DerioTheArtist]

They gave up on quest design when too many players said the quest “This is Thancred” was too hard even on easy mode. That was the nail in the coffin

[@m0fn668]

Man the quest where you played as that half dead soldier through a gauntlet of enemies was so refreshing. Then I woke up and had to talk to Wuk Lamat.

[@CrispBaker]

Yeah sorry bro but this is the issue with video essays like OP's and comments like yours: you are vastly overestimating how many people are as good at this stuff as you are. Catering to you people is business suicide, so Yoshida rightly doesn't do it.

[@proxy6330]

​@@CrispBaker a quest being difficult and rightfully angering the casual players does not excuse not trying to make interesting quests at all especially when the baseline dungeons are objectively more difficult in dawntrail anyway lol

[@castor_u]

@@proxy6330 I don't think you're wrong but cbu3 DOES heavily look at analytics and player feedback when trying to design content; it's why they were so shocked when people started begging for bozja 2, the amount of sheer bitching and crying from players day in and out when that content was relevant was inundating even in game. They're afraid of overwhelming friction and try to mitigate it as much as possible, even if it means stripping away interesting ideas or concepts.

[@JJ-gq6qo]

I loved the unknown imperial quest because that too. But apparently It was hated by a lot of players

[@MrSpiderspider12]

Idk if it was an FFXIV video or another game, but what i heard was something like "If the selling point of the game doesn't sell to its audience, the existing flaws become more visible"

[@cabl7787]

pretty much this. Dawntrail's story was sub-par. Therefore it was much more apparent what the game had been doing wrong for a while now

[@Tom-Pendragon]

amen.

[@Grakesch]

I feel this. When they were talking about Dawntrail and described it I imagined it being about exploring and adventure - so basically a "we tone down the story and give you lots to play with". But in the end it lacked both to some degree.

[@captainmuffin1]

@@Grakesch Very much this. If every zone was more similar to the Shaaloani intermission, I probably would've enjoyed it more.

[@Channy_8761]

unrelated

[@Quester91]

Dawntrail fixed my almost 10 years long ff14 addiction, so i can't be too mad about it.

[@UmatsuObossa]

Yeah that's the one upside... Even when I was taking a few months break I couldn't undub because of my houses, and I still had to log in for events to not miss out on limited items, and the cash shop stuff was just too cool sometimes. Halfway through Dawntrail I had to take a break...and realized the thought of playing again felt demoralizing... i never went back. Let my sub lapse and my houses demolish... i can't imagine this game redeeming itself afyer Yoshi-p failed to understand the criticism

[@Channy_8761]

Get a life

[@LainP7]

@@Channy_8761 Sounds like he did

[@magus9180]

Endwalker did that for me. :D

[@fredy2041]

Attencion please. Ember's Arcade is a phobe and a na who uses religion as a justification of why he doesnt recognize certain people as human beings according to their gender and or ideals. He is a liar, he farms and engages only with the most vitriol and toxic people, people who wished the va of character on ffxiv gone, he agreed, liked and talk with this type of people as horrible as him. Despite his claims, he never ever reached Dawntrail, he Stoped at Endwalker, all of his rant videos were made not for the intend of constructive critism, he never experienced the expansion himself, also saw other's videos and engage on their trend. He also has been participating on the harassment said va had. All of this its on his social media, he did not errased almost any of his comments.

[@DrakGamestein]

I love Yoshi-P, but that doesn't mean constructive criticism is never valid. Your points are critical, yes, but they're constructive; they have purpose. It's not blind hate. If I didn't have my friends to raid with, FFXIV wouldn't have my sub as it is now. The thing that stood out to me lately is the latest beast tribe/society questline where you have to deliver something from point A to point B. But there are maybe 1 or 2 monsters on the way making it trivial. Compare that to 2.0 Sylph transport or stealth quests and it's such a stark contrast. Not that beast tribes were ever really "hard" but you at least had to pay attention. With XVI my biggest gripe was how linear things were. No risks, no diversity of playstyle aside from which eikon you decided to use. Even then, combat can't even compare to DMC levels of combos. But most of all, the "legendary" weapon you get at the end is just...there. Nothin is out of the way to find, no challenge is attached to it, you just kinda get it. I understand them wanting to cast a huge net to keep as many players as possible which I worry has created a culture of players that only want to log in, collect rewards in the easiest way possible and log off (the Endwalker relic quests were a joke). Not sure why they use an MMO for that when idle games exist, but they're here and I think a lot of backlash will happen if SE tries to correct course. It'd be worth it in my opinion, but it depends on what the corporate heads say, which is the only area I'd slightly push back. Yoshi-P is at the helm of this, but I wonder how much pressure is kept on him to keep the game as simple as possible because XIV IS the game keeping SE afloat right now. I'd guess that they think taking risks means risking the financial wellbeing of the company. Purely speculation, though. As a closing thought, I've been playing POE2 here and there and, oh my goodness, it's hard. The first awakening or whatever questline where you have to make it through a gauntlet of challenging rooms with "no healing" took me several tries (especially as a melee). It was so refreshing. I got to unlock something and feel like I earned it. I have to properly avoid enemies or get wrecked. I have to use my abilities with proper timing and spacing or I get swarmed. It has power fantasy moments which feel good but you also get punished hard if you let your guard down. FFXIV can only do that now in the raids (which have been bangin' this expac). The rest of the game, though? A shadow of what was, unfortunately.

[@thomasnguyen4427]

oh, it's kzbin.info/www/bejne/bHaspK2bgr-dpLs. Pepperidge Farm remembers. Thanks for bringing back the memories of SHB & EW talesfromDF drama!

[@SomeGuyFromUtah]

IMO he's too attached to the main cast of characters and the game would have benefited from using Dawntrail as an opportunity to attract new players with a new leveling experience that didn't require new players to go from ARR to Endwalker. Even if that didn't solve every single problem the veterans are experiencing, it would have at least brought a new batch of players to the game who likely never would make the grind from ARR to Endwalker. It would be tricky, and it would have required a lot of work, and I definitely don't agree with WoW's approach of just streamlining the leveling experience to the point that old expacs don't even matter, but IMO they missed out on a major opportunity with Dawntrail. New players playing current content would have brought more energy and fun for the veterans as well, I think.

[@Disapointedmellencol]

to be fair DT is ment to be some folks FIRST start into the game instead of arr if they buy the skip so they can be right with everyone in a new storie, so they probs didnt want to make it all that to hard

[@Disapointedmellencol]

@@SomeGuyFromUtah my bro i see level100 SPROUTS daily folks that bought their way into being able to start the game FROM DTs start, so no grind fromm arr and non of the back story to think dts story is weak af incompairsin

[@SomeGuyFromUtah]

@@Disapointedmellencol I think the majority of potential players would not be willing to pay money to skip. It feels like cheating to many. I'm sure many do it, but I still think it's the minority

[@solitonmedic]

The "In from the Cold" instance from Endwalker was one of the most intense moments of the MSQ for me, having our character be forced through that must had been traumatic I was hoping Dawntrail would have these moments

[@Caladir]

And one of the most complained about also. Because people had big issue with difficulty. That should show you what kind of players are mostly in XIV.

[@klabence]

The biggest difficulty for me was trying not to get lost at the more open part. I got so lost I timed out...

[@thinlizzy9032]

Yes! I really was hoping for more challenging solo duties but they were so underwhelming in DT. Maybe the post msq patches will be slightly better about this but I'm not gonna hold my breath.

[@JJMomoida]

Honestly one of my favorite sections in Endwalker. Only thing I really disliked about it was how it sorta fizzled out. Zenos takes over your body and just... does an evil grin. That's it. Your body is soon under your control. I just feel like the idea of having a villain wear the hero's face has SO much potential, and they just kinda brushed it aside cause WE GOTTA GO GO GO GOTTA GET TO THE MOON GOTTA GET THE PLOT MOVING. I remember reading somewhere that the devs were initially planning for a Garlemald expansion to go in between Shadowbringers and Endwalker... and I really wish this had been the case. The Garleans have been an ever-present threat since pretty much the beginning of the story, but we have always met them outside their turf... in Eorzea, Ala Mhigo, Doma... etc... I feel like there was a good opportunity in dealing with them in their home turf but it was wasted.

[@CptJack-ws8nz]

The problem is that many complained about the Quest from many different angles either was it the difficulty, lack of a clear path/route or the complete lack of narrative impact. Personally for me it was the latter as it was basically a complete nothingburger moment as nothing of consequence actually happened at all and shortly after you just returned to your body without side effects or consequences, it bothered me because the event is clearly supposed to make the player uncomfortable and scared at what's going to happen but then nothing happened as Zenos didn't do anything while controlling your body and its NEVER brought up again at all as if it never happened to begin with... God forbid they actually made Zenos kill one of the Scions but no nothing bad will ever happen to the Scions, instead you were basically trolled as if something of narrative impact was actually going to happen. The worst part is that despite the specific problems people had with the quest, they would be ignored as Creative Studio 3 would just chalk it up to: "Oh the players didn't like the quest."

[@AzureRoxe]

The fact that Yoshi P ADMITS that it's so simplistic that he falls asleep, yet actively refuses to change and continues to make things simple and homogenized, really says it all.

[@Kanaleah]

It's simple really. Naoki Yoshida has been swallowed up by a corporatist named Yoshi P. Sometimes the original personality bubbles up to the surface to exclaim something that resonates with people, but at any decision making, it'd the safe corporate PR speaking Yoshi P at the helm. Naoki Yoshida is just along for the ride.

[@addiction4062]

@@Kanaleah i dont really think his original personality bubbles up. hes a big part of the games marketing so he was intentioally doing lip service for a part of the community that was complaining about how laid back the game is. same thing happened in the runup to dawntrail release. "trust us guys, well make the jobs more interesting next expansion". hes a business man in the end, not your friend.

[@Lastninjaxoxoxoxox]

He makes what he think we want. He has said multiple times in interviews he considers real mmos things like Ultima online where its all open world and you team up with players to fight other players over things in the world, but he thinks thats not what players want from an MMO anymore.

[@Blahblah-oo7lk]

@@Kanaleah Not exactly, but what happened is that he became of a big corporate figure who has to balance between his duties between the players and the executives and most importantly (due to actual laws) the company. The problem is that what he actually thinks MMOs should be like are the olden days like Everquest or Ultima Online, but doesn't believe that is what the players wants. The community of FFXIV only reinforce it as when they introduced any sort of olden like MMO where you have to interact with others extensively it gets MASSIVE criticism (Diadem though it was bad, Eureka, Bozja, Chaotic, etc.). The problem now that DT is a 5/10 story instead of SHB's and EW's 9 to 10/10 story for an MMO, like this video said, you notice how much they are relying on the narrative to carry the gameplay design choices they made over a decade ago.

[@rjwojo1]

It’s because casuals cried, whined and bitched when the slightest thing was even remotely hard they HAD to dumb it down. Take Celric Stace for healers… when we had it, it made healing fun, exciting and interactive… then the casuals cried it was “too difficult “ so they removed it. The ONLY ppl to blame here are the casuals that cried at any opportunity that Yoshi P tried to make the game harder.

[@DonutSwordsman]

I wish devs would start a new character and see how bad it is

[@SiriusPharos]

But on the other hand they have updated ARR to at least match the current game structure and it appears to be working as intended since the game has no issue attracting and keeping new players despite the wall that is trying to even buy the damn game. For them to see it as a problem new player numbers would have to fall off massively. I also think they would need not the developers playing the new character but opinions from someone who is actually new because the "We investigated ourselves and everything is fine!" mentality will apply when the person in question made the content.

[@1337penguinman]

@SenkaZver Also something a lot of people don't talk about with 14 is that they are VERY good at keeping older content relevant so new players can actually experience it.

[@Shamshouka]

@SenkaZver But the biggest letdown and timesink isn't dungeons and trials that needs to be reworked tho? It's the MSQ, amount of chit chattering in dialogue and absolute absence of anything but chore quests? What's the point of upping XP gain? I mean okay let's say you hitted 100 lvl in Heavensward and have a whole 3 expansions ahead to read - how's that helping with new player experience?)

[@TyX25]

Trick is, if YoshiP and Soka leaves, Square Enix dies and is sold off to Sony or God forbid Microsoft, and if you think FFXIV is bad now, wait till Blizzard gets their hands on it

[@kiritama48]

I started new not long ago and ff14 is the best mmo I played and still play by lightyears. I feel players aren't really grateful anymore. Yoshi P. isn't the whole company behind ff14. He doesn't get to decide everything. And what the game is doing I think is the best the team can do under the shadow of a massive company.

[@vwayls4892]

Agreed. I miss FFXIV, but there is nothing pulling me back anymore.

[@orpheus1138]

The game hasn’t taken any actual risks, there’s barely any difference between it now and shadowbringers. You just miss the excitement you had for it.

[@Channy_8761]

Sounds like a you issue

[@Ellyll8T]

Nope. I loved it more than I can say, but DT killed it for me. I’m never going back.

[@fmlitzchristian]

@@Ellyll8T So you love a game they have a bunch of good expansions and make one boring expansion and that makes you overall never go back to it? It's insane people have this mindset. Just like restaurant customers leave reviews they ate here 1000 times and it was always perfect then one bad experience and they will never be back, thank god I'm not this dense.

[@foxyfoxington2651]

3:49 It absolutely has not changed. Take a look at the one-on-one Preach did with YoshiP on the media tour before Dawntrail launched. Every time Preach asks if they can do X thing differently YoshiP says something like "We can't do that because we would have to change our template/process/pipeline/etc." Their design philosophy is based on Excel spreadsheets and Gantt charts instead of what players might find fun. You touched on it in your intro, but YoshiP is not a particularly talented or creative game designer (and he's admitted it himself on at least one occasion). He is where he is because he happens to be probably one of the the only employee at Square-Enix who is capable of bringing in a project on time and on budget and ultimately that's what matters most to the suits at the top. He's a project manager, not a game designer. It also doesn't help that the hard-core fan-base for this game is *exceptionally weird*. Like, deeply deeply strange. If you need proof of that look at the weird cult of personality that has cropped up around YoshiP among the FF14 fan-base. There's a sizable chunk of the fan-base that thinks that YoshiP is their friend and to criticize the game in anyway is both a personal insult to him and to them. Any criticism, no matter how well thought out, is met with open hostility and now the game degenerated into this weird cult.

[@KawaiiFive_O]

I don't want to diminish Yoshi-P's achievements and what he's done for the game. I think there are very few people in the entire industry that could have achieved what he did with the transition to ARR. However, I think that speaks to where his true strengths are--project planning and team management rather than game design. FFXIV has had several longstanding critical issues that Yoshi-P and co. have never really seemed to figure out such as healers. Another big issue is that I feel that he's become far too complacent with leaving many of the games systems and progression untouched while repeating the exact same iterative cycle for years, because it's worked well enough in the past. I've said since the advent of Shadowbringers that I think it's high time that Yoshi-P hand over the reigns to someone else. By all means, stay on as producer, but I think FFXIV would benefit immensely from having a fresh perspective in the director seat.

[@Kurainuz]

Dungeons used to have things to do on them and there were more per patch, we used to have 3 month patches, more casual content, exploration areas, better colabs (mh and nier). Now its sorry, and be excited for whats to come since endwalker, i liked the arcadium savage, but most people have no content to do in group that is relevant outside of savage/ultimate/chaotic. Yoship saved the game and has given me hundreds of hours of enjoyement, but i dont understand how people is fine with less and less content taking more time while the story has became mid at best. All while saying that the longer patches are to not exploit the devs, but said devs are having to work on more projects of the bu3 :(

[@m16dude967]

Yoshi-P needs to end production on FF14 and move onto another IP. Endwalker should have been the last expansion because its in the name and continuing it just undermines the impact all together.

[@F_Yale]

Don't big him up so much. He's definitely not the hero you imagine.

[@snazzydrew]

​@@m16dude967endwalker dev should have been the last expansion. The game should have shifted away from story content and more towards fleshing out the already existing world

[@AzureRoxe]

@@snazzydrew Which is ironically what we thought Dawntrail would be [fleshing out The New World that we've heard about for years].

[@sold0ut210]

Yoshi-P has said it best himself when discussing the lack of Viera hats, which translated to: 'Even if we hired 100 more people, Viera would still not have hats due to my leadership style.' Maybe we should take him at his word.

[@FredericckPesetas]

Attencion! This guy ember's arcade is a complete phobic. He has been harassing the voice actor of wuk lamat and any who show any comment of posivity towards the game. Look for his social media. He agreeded with toxic comments who wish the va dead and fired. Arcade confirmed to be an anti t catolic

[@mister-x2]

Billion yen studio vs A lonely modder on his free time.

[@drkaiser26]

also the reason why we can't have cross class glams

[@pinkwings5592]

Or long hair

[@Kasuta_Ikite]

get over your stupid hats already. The game has bigger issues

[@darkmage102]

The fact that jobs received actual nuance and interesting changes but only in pvp during endwalker says a lot. They CAN do interesting job identity. They just choose not to because it might rock the boat of balance too much.

[@cameronsnow4470]

Clearly it's not a balance issue since pct exists. They just are so afraid of offending both the hyper casuals and the shitty parsers who care more about an orange number rather than fun gameplay

[@ArtandApoc]

Whats crazy is how well you get to the bottom of an issue I have been struggling to give word to for years now. All I could think to say is that the game felt too easy or dumbed down. You take this basic sentiment and really deep dive into why it feels that way and what could be done about it. Unfortunetly there is a flip side to this which you have not mentioned. The fact that ALOT of the dumbing down of gameplay in recent years rests at the feet of players who complained too much about difficulty level. When I first started playing this game I remember when wall to wall pulls in ARR were the norm and whipes were something that happened regularly even in dungeon content if you were not on your A Game. It was in that era where people took the time to teach each other how to play better and it often felt like we were all overcoming the games challanges as a community. Some of my best memories during that time are from running even basic dungeon content. Now it feels like the game has been built to the lowest common denominator and it takes alot of the joy of playing the game out if it. I think this is likely a large contributing factor to why I have transitioned to being more of an RP player than anything else. With the games main value being narrative I feel the best way to get enjoyment from it is to write my own story along with my friends which takes place in that narrative space. I do hope that the dev team takes everything you have said to heart and the number of articles coming out now with high level members of the dev team coming out and saying they think they over corrected too far gives me hope. I hope to see this game get back to something which at least in some small way recaptures the glory and challange of Heavensward when it was on content while keeping the fantastic story telling of Shadow Bringers... and as you said... some actually meaninful choices when it comes to gear would be nice too. I think the trade off of materia slots vs raw stat points of the wand and shield vs staff was a major missed oppertunity, and as a crafter I would love to see crafting have more practical use than as simple filler gear between dungeon runs.

[@SenpaiXcore]

Well said. I, too, think that the issue with FFXIV is if the narrative falls apart like it did with Dawntrail, there is hardly anything engaging. I come from a nearly 20 year WoW Background and when I first played XIV in late Shadowbringer I really enjoyed the play. Everything was new and fresh but now after 350 days ingame playtime, finishing all jobs and crafters / gatherers I can see only two hard sides to name them. There is the relaxed and chill casual side who gets NOTHING to do in Dawntrail and the people who actually do the hard content like savage, ultimates etc. For me it was a massive leap going from "Okay, so this is normal raiding" to "Oh shit, this is savage? How will I learn all of the mechanics?" While at the same time, the gameplay itself feels super boring. The entire skillset of every job is predertermined and there is nothing to mix it up to make it more interesting. I mained Samurai most of the time and I can't for the love of god play that job any longer. Other jobs also just feel the same. Do combo until burst window, have great 15secs, wait for another two minutes.

[@ElShogoso]

If I were to put it simply, the only issue I have with XIV is that it's formulaic to a fault. I don't mind a casual game that doesn't particularly have challenge in the story stuff, as long as they at least try to keep it novel and engaging. My favorite parts of XIV are usually the stuff that breaks the mold a bit. Deep Dungeons, Eureka and Bozja, criterion dungeons, that sorta stuff. Because the entire rest of the game has been identical since heavensward. Dungeons shouldn't even be called that, there's nothing dungeon-like about those corridors.

[@MinecraftMartin]

And the "wall to wall pulls" really ruins dungeons. They appeal to the most impatient gamers. If you want to have any kind of feeling of "adventure", you basically gotta put out a classified ad. I know it's a theme park MMO, but even with that it's just so cheapenedm. Such a beautiful game, but really experiencing it at a slow pace just gets people criticisizing you and surprised that you're actually trying to explore the content.

[@merrilllee4878]

​@MinecraftMartin well the wall to wall pulls only came about because the dungeons are just so damn easy that players started doing this to make it more fun and faster.

[@merrilllee4878]

As much as i like those deep dungeons, Bozja, etc. Their existence is just that of a theme park, it doesn't feel like it's part of the world already built.

[@MinecraftMartin]

@@merrilllee4878 Yep, that's the problem. They designed the dungeons so easy that wall to wall pulls become the standard. Anything less and you'll often get someone complaining about going too slow. I understand why wall to wall pulls happen, but what I'm saying is they suck. What's the point of a dungeon if the mobs are easy? But if millions of people are enjoying that, I guess it's a great thing.

[@anteprs7908]

​@@MinecraftMartinthst was because hardcore players wanted to push to much mobs and made the casual one stressed and unhappy so SE made a compromize

[@dmwrobinson]

Mad respect for mentioning that companies/developers are not your friend and your relationships with them is transactional, so many gamers have this emotional attachment to the latter and its beyond pathetic.

[@Reialine]

Pretty much most of the issues of the comments and videos about this is acting on behalf of the devs or thinking we owe them or they owe us. Funny enough i do think that his points are fair but there is no perfect game, and you can look for a game that brings aspects that are lacking on the other game then come back, variety does good to kill the need of a perfect game. For example, want challenging gameplay and tough progression compared to 16? Play monster hunter or elden ring, any atlus game will do if you want more strict rpg mechanics.

[@dmwrobinson]

@@Reialine This post makes no sense.

[@slatkikontiki4696]

Yoshi P fanboys always made me cringe, regardless of the quality of story of current expansion

[@AzureRoxe]

FFXIV and Warframe's playerbases are the kings of having these disturbing and pathetic emotional attachments with people from a game company.

[@Reialine]

@ Was away for a week, but I'll explain the point. It's kinda insane thinking all games have to be perfect, most people want the game they love the most to be perfect, and on dev side they simply don't have the interest or the capacity to make the games as fans want it to be, and this is a fact. Therefore we don't owe anything to devs and neither they owe us anything. Things go weird when you see them beyond a "transactional relationship". You like game you buy it, you don't you don't buy it. You'll only get more stressed obsessing a game for it's flaws and thinking screaming at devs, such people also need to lower their standards and know there are other games out there and they cannot be expecting every game they play to be perfect. Whenever we buy a product we cannot be expecting that it's gonna carry everything we expect it to do.

[@occiderisaethiopissa3702]

A lot of the points in this video needed to be said, and for a lot of people in the community to hear it, toxic positivity is what is killing this game. The devs see that and think the community is happy with stale content, a boring sub par story so they see no reason to change. If you truly love FFXIV then you'd see that this toxic positive attitude a lot of the community has is hurting not helping the health of the game.

[@JAIGH83]

I agree I made a lot of points in this video although less articulate and some others. People kept vaccine of being negative because “there’s always something to do” and my response was “yeah but it’s all crap.”

[@leighg9o]

Problem is yoshi P comes out with a "heartfelt" apology and everything is forgiven. People need to remember this is a product they are paying.

[@tideash]

To be fair, the tone shifted recently. The story became shiet in Dawntrail (it was already shiet in Endwalker patch content, thats why there was a lot of arguement about being a filler arc, but thats another topic entirely), so it became plain to see that the emperor has no clothes. You barely see people defending the story anymore, not even on the forums let alone ingame. Hell the last 2 patches were a disaster, offering next to nothing outside of hardcore raiding. The game is imploding real time, the positivity is gone for the most part. You don't really find people out here who do not agree that: - the patches need to be more frequent and meaningful - the story is falling off a cliff - gearing sucks, lack of options, substats outside of Crit + Determination or Direct hit is a waste, - glamour system needs a complete rework - character creation needs an extensive update - jobs need more identity The game has a toxic positivity issue, but that dosn't seem to be the case anymore, or at least not at the moment. The plot armor of Square Enix is gone.

[@Kurainuz]

@@leighg9o A lot of ff14 need to play other games to see how much the game has been lagging, ESO for example has multiple instanced housing with decorations and a npc companion system thats thousand of times better than 14 (being able to take them almost everywhere) and the monthly subscrition is 100% optional) We get less content, worse events, and everything takes a looooot more time to release, while the devs do not get more rest as they had to work on ff16 and they are working on 2 projects more at least.

[@Kurainuz]

@@tideash funny enough the mobile port of ff14 has a great glamour system

[@iknothatukno]

There was once a time where the idea of letting my FFXIV sub expire was unthinkable to me. Now, I'm weighing if I even wanna play this expansion.

[@m16dude967]

Im letting it end with endwalker like it should have.

[@Asle_Kaspersen]

Dude, i checked this guys KZbin channel and its nothing but negative videos about FF 14 and other RPG games, don't let some guy desperate for views change your mind, do it only if you think its what u want. FF 14 will always be there, the negative channels will not.

[@iknothatukno]

@Asle_Kaspersen I don't think you understand what I meant. My feelings are unrelated, entirely, to this video. I took time off work to play dawntrail. I have been subbed continuously since heavensward. I've seen the game at its best, and I'm witnessing the game at its current worst, and I truly believe it only gets worse from here if they continue this writing style as they have shown in the release of the expansion and the subsequent story update. It's one thing to say WOL isn't the main character this go around, but it's another thing to have actually, unmistakably, terrible writing. I ended this expansion with just a feeling of "really, what's it?" I played the recent story content release and for the first time ever felt an unmistakable urge to skip a cutscene. In relation to dawntrail... The characters are written like trash, most of the characters are bland and uninteresting. I genuinely could not suspend enough disbelief to care about any character, much less the half assed attempts at doing "redemption" stories and "tragedy" stories for the characters. Before 7.0, I liked wuk lamat as a character. Clumsy, tomboy, kinda funny, needed help to grow. What we got in dawntrail was far and away from that. She was an idiot, useless to a fault, inept at anything outside of being friendly. I don't even care that every quest featured "talk to wuk lamat". But, I'm rambling. Long story short. Dawntrail needs to 1.0 itself and disappear. Its hardly worth the name, and prestige of this game that I love deeply in my heart. This guy's video wasn't what swayed me. It was just a place where I could post what I've been thinking for months. Thanks for reading, pardon typos of grammar issues, I'm not the best at posting comments with my phone.

[@Masterpain22222]

I'm glad ff14 is a dead game while world of Warcraft remains kings

[@iknothatukno]

@Masterpain22222 I wouldn't say dead. But dawntrail has done grave damage. Looks like the game hit less than 1m active players recently.

[@cloudy4lockharty]

I'm someone who is a gaming fan first. I got into Square Enix because of Kingdom Hearts (an action jrpg, relevant for later) and then tried Final Fantasy. The Final Fantasy series has been one of my most loved series because of the challenge it gave to me and the sheer amount of quality gameplay and the integration of story with gameplay. When ff14 was getting ready for 2.0 I was hyped, saw this person named Yoshi-P put his blood, sweat, and tears to fix this mess. And I loved a Realm Reborn. FF14 will always hold a special place in my heart, and it is where I met my husband. But fast forward to 3.0, where me and my whole linkshell thought this would be his REAL vision for the game cuz 2.0 got a bit stale but suitable. Then by Stormblood I knew ARR/HW was the best we were gonna get...I will not lie the story beats of ShadowBringer and Endwalker are some of the most peak FF moments, but the story to get to those beats are brutal if not, like you mentioned, pure torture. Playing hide and seek with npcs in a red radius on a map, walking I kid you not 5 steps to right click a sparkling item to give it to an npc, typing in all chat to emote or cheer on an npc, endless endless talking. And I promise you I'm someone who loves visual novels but visual novels gives you choice, FF14 does not. I got jaded and began to dislike the game I would spend hours on just gardening because it felt like I was working towards something. But ff14 makes it all pointless or just a wardrobe simulator which ff never was. Queue in when it was announced ff16 would be directed by yoshi-p and his team and I became skeptical. And what happened? I was accused, ridiculed, yelled at and shamed by my linkshell and ff14 peers, the same peers who ALSO are jaded with the game content. They told me I hated new, I hated action rpg, I wanted ff to stay turn based, etc. When I finally got my hands on 16 cuz I do play every ff game I was so amazed the sheer amount of boredom I felt. My husband often seeing me fall asleep while playing. Games like Until Dawn felt like it had more player agency and control than ff16. I get told even now that I didn't try to do cool moves or combos, and I explain why would I ever draw out the battle more when I can kill in a faster time using button rotation cool downs. And 16 just feels like single play 14, I go to a radius, find shiny, talk to npc, do mundane fetch it quests. The worst part is I didn't care for the characters or story, it wasn't till ShadowBringers I even like the characters in 14, I just like the gampley till then. Of course story and characters are subjective and the least important of my hatred of 16, but it single handily strips everything interesting about gaming to a walking simulator with cool cutscenes. Then it feels like a lot of the gaslighting or toxic positivity comes from ff fans of 14/16. Most have never played an FF game or if they did hated it was turn based. And it just baffles me that square CAN make amazing action jrpgs Kingdom Hearts, FF7Remake Trilogy, and Star Ocean being just 3 of them, but those games have it where if you play the game the same from start to finish you will be curb stomped. I never felt I had to change how I played ff16 to steamroll through the game. I don't need turnbased, I just need an actual challenge or reasons to change up how I play to beat certain roadblocks. Get me invested in the world through gameplay, not by showing my example 1003 on why people hate their slaves and the Branded. Gaming's stories are much more than just the narrative plot, as you even mentioned sometimes its the journey in the gameplay. How I root for my team members in a party cuz they have a vastly different build to help with support, or a how a party member can save a gameover, how I get lost in a cave and have to fight my way through hordes, grinding, finding secrets because I went off the beaten path (by accident). Games can show its story and journey in so many ways, and Yoshi-P has so little faith in gamers that he gives people movies. I don't hate him, and if anything I find he has great talents in creating polished works, but he is not a creative man nor does he care to push gaming or the series into an innovative space. But if he makes the next FF game, it may be the first FF game I never play. I just can't go through the boredom again. Tl:dr Yoshi-p is the equivalent of that Spongebob episode where the krabby patties are made out of gray goop with that corporate guy. It is sanitized slop. He is great at business and meeting deadlines, but the products are soulless.

[@drumjod]

I whole-heartedly agree with everything you said here. Very well put. Usually detailed explanations like this will have at least one little nuance that I differ on slightly, but what you said really nailed it for me. I also appreciate the positive aspects of Yoshi-P and definitely feel like he seems to be great at project management but probably not great with coming up with thoughtful and engaging game design or creativity. Also I strongly agree that FF7R is a great step in the right direction and I've been loving what it's doing. 7R's combat has got to be my favorite combat of all time, including any turn based or action game I've played.

[@ArkGenesys]

I couldn't possibly agree more. Everything you said resonates with me.

[@OizenX]

I think the steep player count loss that XIV is currently experiencing definitely highlights the weakness of the "Story above all" approach CS3 goes for. If they flub the story, there are no safeguards to keep people arround. According to Lucky Bancho, XIV has already fallen back to Stormblood levels of players only 6 months into dawntrail, I truly do not know if the damage can be repaired.

[@AShadowedGamer]

dpnt count your chickens yet, the players are notorious for praising mediocrity an massive hypocrites they will never fully commit to abandoning the game to help it become better, soon aqs 1 single good thing drops they'll flock at it like its some grand prize an makes the game "somehow" the best thing ever. this game is pretty doomed i'm sorry to say due to the consumers being such sheep.

[@shimapanzer9930]

​@@AShadowedGamer i mean i quit in shadowbringers cause of how shite everything but the story in that expansion was and havent been back, most of my FC did too, some went back to ff11, some to WoW and others just dont play mmos anymore. We all know other FCs who had similar outcomes, i wouldnt discredit the idea that people wont come back if they dislike it enough. They just dont announce their departure.

[@artjom94]

@@shimapanzer9930 You quit the game half a decade ago, yet you are still consuming clickbait slop about it and driving engagement.

[@shimapanzer9930]

@@artjom94 how was any of this video clickbait? Why do you react so aggressively to what is equivalent to innocuous opinions of one person?

[@shimapanzer9930]

@artjom94 also, obviously, if I'm still watching videos about the game, I'm interested. I've submitted feedback numerous times on the forums, and been met with the usual responses of "why do you care?" "If you don't like it, leave" "if x game is so good why don't you go play it?". I do care, dawntrail has made me more apathetic towards the game, and I don't really expect much of the feedback outside of casual content to be acted on. People can have criticisms, unsub, but still want the game to be better and be willing to hear opinions about the game.

[@zhijun9550]

The interviews that came out leading up to FFXVI's release started my disillusionment with YoshiP. In particular, when he talked about how he would be happy even if players didn't think too deeply about what the story as long as they made it to the end credits thinking "Wow, Clive was cool." And also when he mentioned that they didn't make any secret hidden content for the game because it would be a waste of dev resources to make something that very few players stumble upon. He seems to have an incessant need to appeal to the lowest common denominator. I'm very curious to see a game with Ishikawa in the creative directorial seat, divorced from YoshiP. I suspect that a bulk of the most memorable creative decisions from Shadowbringers to Endwalker including stuff like In From the Cold can be attributed to her vision.

[@MysticLuka]

I would be very down to see Ishikawa create her own narrative driven game, but that would require Square to give her the freedom and resources to do so. Obviously I don't think she'd be designing the combat or actual gameplay all that much, but I do have faith she could create a very good narrative experience like she did with Shadowbringers and EW. Say what you will about them, but they were both very solid in their own right and I believe the only real faults with them lie in the fact that Ishikawa wasn't the one writing things since the beginning.

[@fredy2041]

*The interviews that came out leading up to FFXVI's release started my disillusionment with YoshiP.* Show prove, your nothing but making up stuff out of your but

[@zhijun9550]

​@MysticLuka yep, which is why I specified her as a creative director, not a gameplay director. Even so, gameplay and narrative are very intertwined. In from the cold is mechanically one of the coolest sections in XIV, and it wouldn't exist without a solid narrative reason. She could cook something crazy paired with an ambitious director like Hamaguchi. A dream combination for me.

[@AzureRoxe]

@@fredy2041 Here we see a Yoshi P fanboy, with his horrid grammar.

[@fredy2041]

@ we have a troll here who never played ffxiv

[@Snozzle52848]

I agree with all your points, I think there is one thing missing though, cost. FFXIV is designed by project managers adhering to an extremely strict schedule, Yoshi has said as much and described the innovation process as small budgeted offshoots while the main ‘project’ continues as it has for 10 years to exactly the same timeline and cost schedule. There’s no joy or soul when your decisions are made entirely from a cost perspective. Yoshi was the right person to create the game because he was able to lift a bunch of features from other games and drive them to completion on a cost efficient lean schedule, he is NOT the right person to take the game forwards because he is not a creative, he’s a project manager. You can see this in FF16, it’s built based on the most efficient formula that theyve honed in 14, but incredibly evident how little soul it has under the polished graphics.

[@BalthasarAlighieri]

As someone that played XI for 25+ Years and XIV since first Closed Alpha in 1.0 i agree with all your Points. Gear means nothing to me anymore and i dont Care about it anymore. But nothing is going to be changing. Only we as players can chose to play Other Games. Very simple

[@artofchang]

Gear is meaningless in XIV. Most players just go for the highest ilvl gear they can get then just glam over it anyway.

[@kegosan7622]

​@@artofchangjust like in every MMO these days.

[@embersarcade]

I'll never forget reaching the highest item level during a Savage tier and realizing that the gameplay experience felt identical to when I was wearing crafted gear.

[@OriginalRockCandy]

@@embersarcade that's odd tho, it's not like gear is supposed to change your gameplay besides bigger numbers right? That's the case for the majority of games, or am I misunderstanding what you're saying here?

[@asmophet]

@@embersarcade Well, of course it does. Gear doesn't change the mechanics of an MMO class, it allows you to hit harder and clear fights faster.

[@kdraws123]

You explained in words what I couldn't describe, the feeling that Final 14 has left me in these 3 years that I have been playing. I have seen so many wasted opportunities in the game, where the player could have been more involved and had better experiences that it is painful. The only thing that invites me to continue playing Final 14 is my taste for glamour and housing, beyond that there is nothing that really drives me to continue

[@GstateChri]

Honestly the big thing is they need to try something different from the usual formula I love story from games especially well thought out story but like said in this video, we need to have more interaction with these story steps that make them more meaningful to us as the PLAYER. Still the best MMORPG ever made and one of the best final fantasy main lines I've played but always room for growth and hopefully good change :) long live our FINAL FANTASY

[@FredericckPesetas]

@@GstateChri Attencion! This guy ember's arcade is a complete phobic. He has been harassing the voice actor of wuk lamat and any who show any comment of posivity towards the game. Look for his social media. He agreeded with toxic comments who wish the va dead and fired. Arcade confirmed to be an anti t catolic

[@Lugo_Luv]

This is why i started playing ESO and got addicted to all the story and even side quests cause they’re fully voice acted by good actors and interesting. Plus you can usually make a choice who you help and how. Dont even get me started on housing potential…

[@wintlona1736]

I think another aspect of XIV that is indicative of this problem of lack of innovation are the jobs. A lot of the jobs have had a lot about what made them unique worn away by rework after rework of both universal mechanics and their own personal ones. Jobs perform relatively the same per encounter, with little room for innovation by the player base. Jobs must stick to pressing their buttons in very linear ways unless they risk messing up their 2 minute window. It feels like as a samurai, I do nothing particularly different than a viper or dragoon, besides very, very minimal number differences. It feels like there's little to no job fantasy anymore outside of maybe black mage and red mage. It feels really lack luster that the only thing that separates jobs sometimes is if they have a raid buff to give and if they have to wear a lot of buttons between GCDs.

[@cloudkitt]

Completely ruined Astrologian. Why are the cards even there? And the changes to summoner are *thematically* good, I should love it, and yet it's become more boring to play.

[@kamanira]

I will never forgive SE for listening to all the people that complained about Viper's Noxious Gash. The class went from so fun and genuinely engaging because you had to afford a tiny bit of brain power to keep your damage buff on the target up without breaking your rotation (literally Reaper's Death's Design if it was done well) to another "Do it. Press the glowing button. Simpleton." class. Literally took everything I loved about Reaper and refined it in the form of viper, and then tore out the heart of what made it engaging and somewhat free-flowing, making it just Reaper without Death's Design.

[@snazzydrew]

I pretty much lost all faith in this game with the Astro rework that took away all their cards and weird effects. If the game wants to be boring, I simply won't play it.

[@crazy8slayer]

The problem with continuing a long running mmo that keeps adding classes every expansion is making new ones fit into roles without making them necessary as every class should be viable for any content. There is a reason why ew was going to be the end of 14 and a new mmo was gonna get made to solve this issue but fans didn't want to start over in a new mmo, as for dt you have to look at it as the new arr it's the start of a whole new journey

[@storiesofindiana]

Yes, I have felt the same way about Jobs since Heavensward. That's the amount of time it took for me to get acclimated to the game to a point when I started realizing that the different Jobs within their trees (healer / tank / mDPS / rDPS) were basically the same but with different flavors. But hoping for Jobs as unique in play style as using different weapons in Monster Hunter is probably never going to happen in a MMO, sadly.

[@aequila_carbuncle]

I am a deep die hard FFXIV fan and this video has opened my eyes on many things. This constructive criticism is valid and I hope they'll adress some issue forward.

[@FredericckPesetas]

Attencion please! This guy ember's arcade is a complete phobic. He has been harassing the voice actor of wuk lamat and any who show any comment of posivity towards the game. Look for his social media. He agreeded with toxic comments who wish the va dead and fired. Arcade confirmed to be an anti t catolic

[@206Zelda]

The pessimist in me says 'no' because any critical feedback would be considered defamation from what Square pulled in its PR, but the pragmatist in me says 'yes' because FFXIV is the only cash cow they can milk from and they can't afford to let it die lest all other assets dry up and there would be no income coming in at all. Pragmatist also says 'yes' because of the increase of Shop items being released and sales being pushed on the online Store versus the micro-patches we've been getting.

[@yep8058]

"Disconnected" is the one word that describes SE perfectly.

[@odindarkll3706]

They've been disconnected since FFXlll trilogy and have yet to recover.

[@Clavitz1]

@@odindarkll3706 PREACH!!!! idk how you go from the depth of FF IX to where we are now. People loved having choice and stats mattering but no, lets just drop it. though i did enjoy FF X for the most part, it did have design flaws that lead to a lot of problems for future titles imo.

[@odindarkll3706]

@@Clavitz1 funny you mentioned FFlX, for that is the most recent FF title I've played, thanks to my bro allowing me to borrow it for a little. The story beats and character designs were just peak and is one of my top favorites along with FFlV, FFV, and FFVl. Once I saw FFXV, I turned my back on FF for good. I can't believe Octopath Traveler, Bravery Default, and other smaller games can make me laugh at the franchise, nowadays.

[@Clavitz1]

@@odindarkll3706 it was a great game. reminded me of the old pixel FF's and the skill system was awesome. XV had more potential but they just fell short. Being in development hell doesnt help and the CEO at the time having trouble playing it causing Tabata to have to make it easier sucked a lot.

[@Ephremjlm1]

I would say more CBU3 because Rebirth felt incredible.

[@Achance2c]

The game "sucks" right now because the devs would bend over backwards for the players and give them everything they wanted, which ruined the difficulty of the dungeons and identity of the jobs. I was so happy when Yoshi-P said that he regrets making the game so easy and that they are going to bring back difficult content and give the jobs their identity back. I believe he also said he is going to stand back and let the devs do their job and let them experiment. DT is just the beginning of change is all.

[@siritachi31]

The thing is they aren't even doing that. Players have been screaming about Viera hats, job changes that matter and they cherry pick things. The game is only now after 6+ years getting normal content that is even remotely difficult at all. They don't do what players want they do what is easy for them, make things easy, make all gear bought with shitty currency, make big story scenes in a cutscene cause what if you don't wanna play it or what if you fail it? They don't want to innovate. It's why jobs all feel the same. hell Viper literally is press whichever button glows and you're set. There's almost no thought into it

[@doggyboggy1]

DT didn't change anything though, he even said DT will be the first expansion where they rework encounter design but it's all the same

[@Achance2c]

@ what do you do in the game? I do all content from fishing to ultimate and I can def say DT has changed a lot of the game when it comes to how they do the battles especially, hit boxes are smaller, content is less forgiving, and less telegraphed with the new way they are telegraphing, which a lot of people find difficult because they now have to watch animations of the boss instead of the ground. It’s only on patch 7.1 so of course the changed content is not going to show as much unless you are currently at end game or going through DT content

[@Achance2c]

@@siritachi31 that’s because people complained about the jobs when there was thought in their rotations and we ended up with what we have now, Hrothgar and Viera were not planned, but added, due to player demand and we were fully informed as to why we can’t have hats, it sucks yeah, but they have been very transparent with us, this is a dev team who, for fun, added features to the game. People say stuff like what you said because the specific feature that you want hasn’t been added or changed yet. The same people who complain about the hats, complain about clipping which means they would have to recreate almost every hat and helmet from scratch or at least halfway from scratch to avoid any backlash or accusations about them half assing it. My whole thing is that they admitted to over simplifying the game and are currently working to make it better, that’s not something you can just flip up, it has to be done slowly or the backlash will be worse

[@cameronsnow4470]

He said that then proceeded to remove jumps and weaves from drg lmao. The 8.0 job changes are gonna be abyssmal dogshit

[@Mysterious_XIV]

Ah the illusion of choice. I like how when dialogue prompts in XIV outside of cutscenes let you simply press escape (not even choosing a line of dialogue) and your character still speaks, advancing the conversation. I also want to add that the EW quest In From the Cold is by far my favorite quest ever added to the game. The timer counting down mixed with the area that has no established path to follow makes you feel a sense of helplessness and urgency even though nobody is actually in any danger. Very disappointed in how many people gave negative feedback about it at release because it was honestly the right step forward for the game.

[@embersarcade]

In From the Cold was incredible. It was the perfect mixture of gameplay mechanisms and narrative context resulting in a tense, engaging, and fun experience.

[@IceboyMyName]

In From the Cold is THE best solo instance in the game. I wish we had more of those when the world was literally ending in the story, you know, give us a sense of despair? which was the role point of the final zone + boss and everything

[@Daltheer]

I am very happy to hear other people praising In From the Cold, such a perfect quest that it's the only quest I remember the name of (not counting expansion named quests).

[@1337penguinman]

I think at the time a lot of people were frustrated with it, but in hindsight it is a remarkable bit of storytelling. Yes it was extremely linear in reality, but it hid that well. The fact they put you in the body of a Garlean soldier with known power and abilities meant they could balance it for the EXACT level of difficulty they wanted.

[@cariandi]

I loved this quest. The day after I did it, I was on call with my buddy who was going through it. I was so excited to see his reaction, but he HATED it. He was so frustrated the whole time. So, it didn't surprise me when I learned that apparently a lot of people didn't like it. It's such a shame because it was easily one of my favorite parts of the expansion.

[@Xport9]

Square Enix funds this game on a shoestring budget. This game needs to evolve or it'll die.

[@AzureRoxe]

This excuse stopped working when they made Naoki Yoshida one of the core people in the company, he can easily tell them "i need more budget or the game starts to make less money".

[@avrax3497]

To me, FFXIV's worst enemy is its own community and I would not want to be in CS3's position having to deal with this. This is not excusing the game's current state by any means, but a lot of things that have been going wrong for a while are due to the loud minority's feedback. I would have loved instanced quests like we got in Endwalker, but that was apparently too hard and too much in the way of the pretty cutscenes. I would love to have more gear variety, but that would mean grinding more but some believes the game is already too grindy for having to run 5 experts a week to cap tomes. I would love to sink time into building a relic weapon and have a long term goal, but apparently optional items should be obtainable instantly with no effort required. I'd like to go back to old dungeon design where some of them could actually kill a party that don't pay attention, but how dare they to have a dungeon make them work harder to get to the rest of the story. This has gone for too long and because of that, whatever change CU3 tries to make, in whichever direction, will cause them to get yelled at by a part of the community and that sucks.

[@RushSykes96]

Exactly. 100% this!

[@HCSR2]

This is a good point. Their own player base loves it. It’s unfortunate to see a studio that could be so much more but their own audience holds them back. Truly the worst thing about FFXIV is its own community, in almost every aspect.

[@AzureRoxe]

A good dev team KNOWS not to fully listen to the loud minorities. Meanwhile Yoshi P and his team have bent over backwards for them over and over.

[@ridleyroid9060]

Honestly I'd love to see where this loud minority is cause to me the 4 types of players I've encountered in 14 are: - Casuals that don't really care about interacting with the community in any loud way, they know that they just go back to the game every now and again and don't try to impose shit - Toxicly Positive "there is never anything wrong with the game people should just go play something else, of course you have nothing to do, you do everything as fast as possible! It's all the hardcore players fault!" - Actual hardcore raiders who login and do PF or glams all day, and began playing recently so they still are fresh to the game and everything is new to them - Grumpy vets who are tired of all of this shit and just don't want to play the game anymore or are very pessimistic about its future, or do play the game but basically understand that what we used to love will never be again. That is my personal experience as a 7 year veteran.

[@HCSR2]

@@ridleyroid9060 Forums, social media, and Limsa. You know you've met these people in seven years. I have in six years of being around.

[@BloodVixen]

I had a similar feeling through my playthrough. The world didn't feel dangerous. It didn't feel like Tural was as intimidating as it is beautiful because I'm too busy talking to Wuk Lamat.

[@GutsOfRivia]

I played XIV on and off since launch the only expansions where the story was good enough for me to ignore that MSQ is basically walking from npc to npc for 200 hours was Heavensward, Shadowbringers and Endwalker. Wuk Lamat was the final straw for me to ignore the fact the XIV had pretty barren gameplay and RPG mechanics with its gear and class system.

[@T3hBadger]

I actualyl enjoyed a lot of the minor detaisl in DT more than the major plot, i enjoyed that the world didn't feel dangerous for once after the whole ordeal our WOL went through and they kept nodding to how strong we are because of it, all the major players who are renowned for their unrivaled strength in this new world would see us and just straight up say "They're gonna be a real problem...i don't think i can fight that." and i loved it I do wish it felt a little more of a vacational adventure instead of being thrown straight into what was basically a political tournament though.

[@Luna-1re]

@@T3hBadger Agreeeeeee I was hoping this will feel more like a vacation, as it's built up since EW that we deserve some huge rest and should get to adventure freely on our own will. Instead got pulled into another political struggles and it's not even us deciding to come from our own or for our benefit. We kinda just got gaslit by Graha coming here lol

[@leighg9o]

​@@Luna-1reknew we should have left that cat boy sleeping 😂 ohle have avoided dawntrail and this food fetish these devs seem to have at the moment

[@phillemon7664]

@@GutsOfRiviafinally someone said it. Maybe if movement were faster on mounts by default (why does it feel like I’m moving with training gear on in a Midgar motorcycle?) and enemies populated the landscape more. It really feels like they could just tweak a few things and it will at least be a little interesting

[@USMC49er]

To be fair, initially ARR had explorable segments in the dungeons but the subscriber base were more interested in speedrunning the dungeons than actual explorations. Sometimes you have to give the fans what they want. Example: Thousand Maws of Toto-Rak had explorable areas, along with Dzemael Darkhold. But the treasure wasn't worth it considering they weren't end game dungeons and the rewards became obsolete.

[@TKMezo]

I wouldnt say side rooms in a small dungeon would be exploration. People speedrunning the MSQ would be more comparable since theres no one exploring and fighting and people always sit at the cutscenes

[@ExceedProduction]

You can only explore a dungeon so many times before you've seen it all and just speedrun. That's just a matter of finite content.

[@Clavitz1]

with the duty support system now in place, they could bring back less linear dungeons and side areas so that you can go in on your own. or they could grant significant bonuses to those that do side stuff

[@HayGurHayyy]

How about you then make them also doable as endgame dungeons, and increasing the rewards while leveling to make the items have more longevity.

[@sirnonsense5033]

Welp a lot of stuff ff14 did expecially after stormblood was cuz they followed player trends. Now oldschool players have done that stuff to long and got bored of it but even if the devs realized it will take at least until next expansion till chances are shown cuz dawnttail was already in development… I get the critic and its good so the devs change their ways but it was also clear that problems in endwalker would consist in dawntrail.

[@somnolence5339]

Releasing FFXVI with the side quests like that considering Witcher 3 came out in 2015 is insane.

[@Animus_Altia]

Those are completely different types of games with entirely different objectives. FF16 was not looking to be a dynamic choice driven experience, and comparing it to one is wholly disingenuous. That said, the quests do have their flaws and drag on, but making bad comparisons helps no one.

[@zeroskaterz92]

@@Animus_Altia Not the point. FFXVI DLCs were pointless especially when not only it set before the finale but also the fact that the finale never acknowledge its existence. It's lazy to a highest degree.

[@Animus_Altia]

@zeroskaterz92 Criticizing the DLCs for not changing the ending, while something valid that I wish had happened too, has nothing to do with what was being discussed, which is making comparisons to a very different kind of game like The Witcher 3 which had completely different narrative and design goals. It's fairer to compare FF16 to other linear RPGs that did things better instead of criticizing it for lacking an open-endedness they never tried to have.

[@zeroskaterz92]

@@Animus_Altia Again, has nothing to do with changing the ending or not. Has nothing to do with different narrative or design goals either. It was never about lacking of open-endedness, I don't know why you bring that up when that was never the point to begin with. Even other linear J/RPGs reduced the copy pasting formulaic fetch quests and attempted to follow Witcher 3's sidequests for years now. Something that FFXVI never did and instead just lazily reused the same formula as MMO-ish quests. Even the rewards were terrible. The quality of sidequests have nothing to do with how open or linear the game was.

[@moiseiloo3809]

​@@Animus_Altia How is it a bad comparison? They are both action RPGs. The quest design in XVI may be the worst I have seen in a game these last five years (though I like the stories in these quests). Even the Witcher 2 puts XVI to shame when it comes to side quests.

[@benjaminwatson9930]

Not going to lie, I started the video thinking I was going to dislike it, but found myself agreeing in the end. The point about not participating in the cooking, invasion or boat chase really got me. It's very true. Bring back minigames and such.

[@UGOTNUKED]

Honestly, what ruined their quest design are the players. Or better: them listening to the players. Everytime they try something interesting people will complain. Any interesting solo duty? Too hard, too different. Challenging exploration zones like Eureka? Too hard, too much grinding, get rid of it. Hell, dungeons in Dawntrails finally had some modicum of challenge where you had to use at least two brain cells. What happened? People cried about it. So yeah, we get the dichotomy: Super casual content for idiots, and hardcore raid content for a few players. Ultimate and savage being hard is accepted, the rest of the game is not allowed to be challenging or different. Why would they even try anymore? People are fine with a visual novel. That of course backfires if the story sucks like DT.

[@8BitOctorock]

I have played XIV for only a bit over 2 years, started in late Endwalker, and loved the story and what it had to offer. But then I was really shocked to see how little progression or player agency there is, for a so called MMO. I played a lot of MMOs in my time, started out with Maple Story when I was really young and while I didn't enjoy it that much even back then, I would just think back to the ways you could grow stronger in that game while trying to keep my interest in XIV. I'm glad you brought this conversation to light! I just found your channel because this got recommended to me and I couldn't agree more with your points. Creative Studio 3 suffers greatly from their design philosophy and I think Dawntrail and FFXVI show that more than anything. Sadly, I also know nothing will ever change but I am glad more people are "breaking the veil" so to speak

[@FredericckPesetas]

Attencion! This guy ember's arcade is a complete phobic. He has been harassing the voice actor of wuk lamat and any who show any comment of posivity towards the game. Look for his social media. He agreeded with toxic comments who wish the va dead and fired. Arcade confirmed to be an anti t catolic

[@jewii3824]

ff14 has always been a story-heavy game that held the player's hand, but none of yall complained when the story was good. Now that the game has fallen off a bit due to the lackluster story, suddenly everyone has been critical of the game all along.

[@Miketation]

The story was all it had going for it. It's bizarre to me that people actually pay subs and buy expansions just to experience the story and nothing else. Now that the story quality isn't up to par anymore, the flaws are even more noticeable.

[@jewii3824]

@@Miketation I wouldn't say the story was "all" the game had going for it, because the raids were pretty decent in my opinion. Although I'm mostly a casual player, I've completed savage raids and TEA. Although the story might be what drew a lot of players, it's the raids that kept the remaining players. But obviously if the story is so bad, it would fail to draw a lot of players in the first place. It's why I dropped dawntrail 30% through the expansion.

[@Miketation]

@@jewii3824 sorry but if you clear savage and TEA you're definitely not a casual player lol. But I agree the raids for FFXIV are what made me love the game. But once I stopped raiding, I quickly noticed the game has nothing else to offer besides story. I don't care about island sanctuary, or ishgard restoration. Don't care about housing either. PVP sucks. There is nothing to grind for. We don't even grind for relic weapons anymore, its just a few easy fetch quests. The current state of the game doesn't offer midcore content for casual players or accessible content that offers a gameplay loop via combat. And now that the story is shit, the game now has nothing else to offer to casuals. Doing extremely difficult content is the only thing the game offers in that category. Not everyone wants to do savage nor has the skill/patience for it. We need something in the middle.

[@jewii3824]

@@Miketation you might be right. I didn't even finish 30% of dawntrail's story so I know nothing really of the expansion lol. And I said I'm mostly a casual player because I only raided during late shadowbringers (E9S-E12S) and early endwalker (P1S-P4S, and TEA). For the decade that I've played this game on and off, the hardest content that I've played was extreme primals

[@idrilzorc8789]

People actually did complain and received the same responses like 'Oh, wait until you reach Heavensward it’s so good' or 'Oh, wait until you reach Shadowbringers it’s so good' and so on. Not to mention, this game has a cult following that scrutinizes anyone who dares to critique it. They just couldn’t defend Dawntrail with how bad it really was, and now the complaints are finally coming to the surface.

[@sinom]

6:40 the mobile game is NOT made by CS3 and isn't even made by square enix. It is made by a chinese company called "lightspeed studios"

[@Bert-simpson]

Came here to say this. Also Yoshi-P wasn’t the director of FF16, he was a producer on that game.

[@proxy6330]

*they also made PUBG mobile

[@Boethion]

And thank god for that, it really wouldn't shock me if the Mobile version ends up becoming a better play experience than the actual mmo at this point.

[@siritachi31]

@@Boethion Their glam system and stuff is actually better tho

[@chucklesmcbuckles]

Dude i read the title and gasped. I figured the whole comment section would decapitate you for this glad to see the community actually acknowledging things

[@Altharionn]

A pleasant surprise! I was expecting the same

[@Blahblah-oo7lk]

And even then it wasn't THAT scathing. He is mostly pointing out how Yoshi P's triage tactics and management style which is particularly great for ARR to SB is biting the game hard and that the talents of the narrative team under the likes Koji-Fox and Ishikawa who are both not really working on FFXIV anymore for Dawntrail, carried the gameplay design choices andwhen they do try to push how narrative and gameplay goes in EW they got pushed back into the box.

[@dragonmangames2523]

If I see myself abandoning FFXIV for anything, it wouldn't be going back to WoW. My time would go to Minecraft, Monster Hunter, and PSO/PSU private servers.

[@neh1234]

Pretty much. WoW lost me for good in BfA.

[@dragonmangames2523]

@neh1234 WoD killed WoW for me. I tried going back for later expansions (Legion and BfA), and while the lore interested me, grind, playerbase, and server stability didn't. Why did WoD end it? They nuked crafting being viable for early endgame gearing. You could only wear ONE piece of crafted gear that was content-relevant.

[@Dharengo]

The reasons I left WoW still exist. There's no way I'm ever going back. The notion that WoW is somehow better baffles me.

[@jonamar3965]

Ironcally, the new Chaotic raid reminds people who raided in WoW of "all the bad parts of mmo raiding". With that said, its time the mmo raid evolves in some way that doesn't require 500 hours to enter.

[@n0b0d1-rc6dz]

Hopefully an XI rebuild is in the works...

[@rifway22]

Tetsuya Nomura is the true GOAT. Give that man the budget of FF16 to make mainline FF. Nomura made 7 Remake and Rebirth, both are masterpieces. And Versus 13 could be a masterpiece. That guy is genius.

[@embersarcade]

Actively playing Remake and I have to agree, he’s cooking with gas.

[@billyboleson2830]

Someone praising nomura for once nice

[@GHzS]

First things first, I'm ESL so sorry about any English grammar errors! I agree that FFXIV is at a crisis point (and contrary to what many say, form e this point has already started in Endwalker, especially the post-patches, who plays the endgame as I do know what I'm talking about, but I disagree with many points addressed in this video. It's not Naoki Yoshida's fault - it's the fault of the Final Fantasy franchise and the Square Enix company as a whole. This problem of invisible walls already happened before FFXVI. One of the biggest criticisms of XV is the amount of it and the map being unexploreable in a whole, and considering the last FF games released (XII, XIII, XV and XVI, XIV being the exception because it is an MMORPG), XVI is probably the best one. XV per example needed DLCs to solve its narrative problems and had a large amount of contente removed in the final version of the game (like Insomnia). You were also unfair in some things - compared the map design of ARR (which yourself mentioned in the video to be from the PS3 era), when we have amazing map design in later expansions, and then I would only agree with the lack of interactions on these maps (although understandable for being na MMORPG, I already think this game, especially after Dawntrail launch, is poorly optimized, let alone what it would be like if it had more map interactions). You also said that the hunts don't offer difficulty, but compared it to low level hunts, which to me makes sense it doens't offer harder fights, because we are max level, so it needs to be easier. Even so, most S rank hunts can hithill you with the mechanics and aoes offered by them, even at lower levels, and in general I don't want an Absolute Virtue 2.0 fight. Hunts are farmable contente, it is made to be easy, people make hunt trains, no one wants to got through an "extreme fight" every single time. Also, rare FATEs (like Chi on Endwalker) are still harder fights, mainly due to the level sync, and only suffer some kind of "cheese" against Blue Mages on level 80 and below. Even with criticism involving the ease of the current contente, in fact the opposite effect is happening - many people, in forums and outside, complained about the higher difficulty spike in Dawntrail's dungeons and raids (harder aliance, harder normal raids, harder dungeons, the expert one Strayborough Deadwalk with the first boss being one of the most "stupid" bosses in the game). About progression, imo it's a matter of perspective. I had a lot of advantage with DRG BiS (ex I solo farm SB EX, especially Tsukuyomi, making profit with the materials, selling the shiny weapons). I'm also a player who likes to optimize my gameplay (yes I care about shiny numbers from a site), but clearly the gear helps in killing faster even in Dawntrail (faster kills = faster farming = faster items = faster profit). I agree that the game is not immersive, but that's a problem in the entire game, not Dawntrail. Even HW and SHB (best exp imo) have many quests where you help a person X with Y problems that has no relation to the bigger problem, Endwalker being the worst in this regard when in the middle of the end of the world you have to talk to Loporrits or look for 6 scients in an area of Labyrinthos in a very boring and time-consuming quest. Overall, I believe Chaotic is a good step, also we will have Beastmaster that will expand the contente horizon, the return of Field Ops that is something excelente (Endwalker have the WORST relic imo), so Dawntrail (atleast for me) is on a positive path, better than the path that Endwalker was taking. Dawntrail is, umtil now, being an exp focusing more on QoL and things like that. I don't think it's wrong to criticize, regardless of wether we agree witch each other or not, because everyone desserves to have a good time with this game, because both you, me and everyone else pays the same montly fee, so we desserve to have our good experience. The problem is, as I mentioned before and used several examples, it is not something exclusive to Yoshida, but to the company itself, and unfortunately I fear that if they fires Yoshida and put another guy on his place, this game would probably go bankrupt, because given the situation of several life servisse games in recente years, Yoshida is probably the best diretor among them. I'm not a fan of Yoshida myself, I've made several criticisms of him in the past (especially in the Endwalker period), but I admit that he tries a lot, and a lot is also not in his control, especially Square Enix being a company with a negative reputation in ecent years. Anyways, good video in general! New sub!

[@embersarcade]

I’m also ESL, you did great.

[@GHzS]

@@embersarcade Thanks!

[@GabrielNascimento-jx6dm]

bekkaa-san

[@fredy2041]

@@embersarcade Your a transphobe

[@Amocoru]

FFXIV has been the exact same game with no changes for so damn long. Same boring repetitious patterns of story, dungeon, raid, etc release. Same boring, limited tomes. It never changes.

[@Labbish1]

It's been like this since 2.0. But we actually got 2 new dungeons in every patch. Now only one. But yeah, FF needs to change. It's now for hardcore raiders, and casual players gets nothing.

[@1337penguinman]

The tome cap is really annoying. Like, I get that they don't want power gamers steamrolling the rest of the playerbase, but with all the new jobs that have been introduced over the years we need more gear, not less.

[@MasterOssy]

If it isn't broken, don't fix it. You fix it, say goodbye to that product and millions in investment.

[@zelohendricks51]

​@MasterOssy every time they do change things the community fights it. CBU3 is just trying to balance it

[@christopherbailey3547]

@Labbish1 This comment makes no sense. The only new hard content they added was chaotic, everything else always existed . 4 savage fights 1 ultimate , that makes up a very very small portion of the game . Casual players don’t even have a real definition of what casual content is for them, they just know they don’t work to put any kind of effort in. If that’s the case, why add anything , they can just do the same mindless dungeons over and over no?

[@NaturalEntertainer85]

Hey this was a good video, thanks for making. Some thoughts that came up while watching it: - I disagree that emergent story is as important as written story. I definitely dig when crazy stuff happens in a game unintentionally and ends up being fun, or in like oldschool WoW all sorts of emergent things happening by grouping up with other players. But when it comes to STORY in particular, I can't say any of that emergent gameplay has ever made me shed a tear, whereas this happens multiple times in FF16/FF14 main storylines, the entire Final Fantasy series really, which is why for me it's so beloved. So again agreed valuable/interesting, disagreed that it's as important - I def agree that the games are not very hard, but don't agree that they aren't at all challenging ever. In FF14 Dawntrail for example, yes every standard monster you walk by in the world poses zero danger, but for me the danger came from the MSQ Duties, which I often died at least once before winning, in trying to do the dungeons solo w/ NPCs blind which again died several times because if you are killed the whole party wipes, and in the standard dungeons/raids once you get to endgame. You must just have leet skills to find no difficulty ever in any of that, I regularly die as a Dragoon or Samurai and I've been a gamer since childhood. It's definitely not SUPER hard, it's not Dark Souls level, but dying is absolutely possible. I think that pattern is somewhat the tradition in many RPGs before the advent of FromSoft games' popularity (which I also love btw, but they are a different style of game), generally normal monsters in ___ RPG game don't have likelihood of wiping your party, but the bosses might. So I don't see how FF14/FF16 are all that different from the mold. Also def agree that FF16 should have allowed Hard mode to be available immediately, that was a dumb choice. - FF16 in general - as much as I agree about the super bland equipment and lack of secrets in the world etc, you can't tell me that it was ONLY a dull and painful experience when the boss fights are literally the pinnacle of spectacle that I've yet to encounter in a video game. The graphics + music + yes action of them even if you found it easy yet I died several times in the boss fights, is next level stuff, the highs in my opinion were very high. And when the main storyline in my opinion was genuinely very poignant. So the lows yes definitely sucked, more interesting side quests and status effects would have been better, but the highs were also very high imo - Cinematics - this must be just a personality difference between people I imagine, and therefore hard to compare apples to oranges - I actually actively WAIT FOR and look forward to the next cutscene when playing these games, because the cutscenes are to me the best part. In FF7 when I was 11 years old for example, yes the game was great/fun in general, but the thing that made it unlike any other game I'd played at that point were the epic story/cinematics. Hence that's mainly the part I care about when it comes to Final Fantasy. BUT I will def grant that some aspect of the game could be so unfun that it overrides the story, absolutely, that happened to me in FF15 unfortunately because I hated the combat so much, it was a chore to get through to get to the next story beats. But all of that isn't to entirely just make excuses for Yoshi P, I agree that both 14 Dawntrial and 16 were not incredibly inspired in all aspects and the team needs to not rest on their laurels and try at least a handful of genuinely new things in each expansion Thanks,

[@avalonvt]

The emergent gameplay line at roughly 8:00 hit me hard. Because I've had that experience with other MMOs. I was playing PSO2:NGS and happened to attack something the game labeled a target. Then another one appeared when I defeated the first one. Fast forward 15 minutes and I've discovered the main way to grind for gear. Massive droves of people roaming around the map killing monsters that spawn. If you meet certain kill requirements harder monsters spawn. Until eventually at the very end of the train you meet a version of the game's end boss. It's a ffxiv hunt train on steroids that instead of these weak milquetoast encounters where you get small amounts of nuts and tomes they are big region spanning hunt trains with massive amounts of loot. Even if the vast majority of the loot is useless you still have a huge amount of fodder to power up the gear that is good.

[@yosephrezahe2534]

YoshiP was not the director for FF16 by the way, he was merely the producer. The director of FF16 was Hiroshi Takai, who directed The Last Remnant, Square's infamously bland Xbox 360 era JRPG. Longtime Square fans could see 16 was going to be meh long before it came out, and it has little to do with YoshiP. A lot of people were fooled by Square's marketing stapling YoshiP onto 16

[@Steuererklärung76]

me and my friend have been playing xiv for a long time, we started together at the end of heavensward expansion, we loved ffxiv and honestly it was a fun game after playing the game for years, we stopped at the end of post-endwalker, the thing is it’s not only because the story or cutscene, it’s just slowly the game becoming too repetitive and lazy at least for both of us we used to talk about the lores and gearing for bis, but slowly i think it’s silly that with so many classes we currently have, gearing them all is almost impossible in a short period of time, the job system itself is great, but leveling them all takes a lots of time too and also filling up a spot in pf is a hassle when your ilvl for those specific job isn’t enough and you just have to use your “main” job, and then take longer time to wait until the pf is filled, i think that’s a waste of time, but really what i mean is that, with that kind of job change systems we supposed to enjoy every each jobs that we want to play, and even help to fill pf spots with other people that want to clears specific raids, especially when you’re really busy with irl schedules, it’s almost like you have to spent half of your life for the game which you’re already not sure that what will happen to the game in 5 or 10 years and one more thing what we meant about the devs becoming lazy is that some of the quests and cutscenes isn’t really improving for the past couple of years, even if it’s improving it’s really subtle, hell even hildi’s quests are more expressive than the msq most of the time, and quests.. are just like how it used to be.. there are times that i wish wol can be more expressives too, i wish they have more personalities and flaws, the wol itself is too strong or even nearly godlike its hard to relate to that kind of character and characters models, also hasn’t really changed over the years, we used to have characters like minfilia, yotsuyu, lyse, gosetsu, yugiri, zenos, gaia or ryne and etc these characters are unique modelled, they have their own face models, hairstyles, or even body types, i wished there’s more originality in creating new npcs, but nowadays it seems they will just mix matches existing resources or models in character creation (which is already feels limiting in this year and age) and reskin or recolours existing outfits and call it a day, even the main character scions members rarely went through the same development that wol already has like growing a beard or longer hair or new outfits, it takes 1-2 expansion for some scions members to get new outfits or styles also one more reason is that the idea and concept of dawntrail itself to be an opening of “New” saga isn’t something that interesting, it’s literally just an overstretched story of the old saga, nothing is really new or a start of new beginning kind of thing, this likely not a criticism i know but an complaints it’s just that some people stopped playing the game isn’t only bc dawntrail, but some are just like me and my friends who also stopped playing bc the situations ingame itself, now that we also know dawntrail is still using the same formulas, we might just have to wait and take a break till 8.0

[@lordgarrey7593]

I've been saying most of this to friends for years, not as well as yourself. but every time my opinion was met with "You are wrong" I wanted to like the game but it puts too much faith in its story to distract me from why I am there in the first place, to play a game.

[@CineGoodog]

This video summarizes 95 % of how I feel about FFXIV. It doesn't feel like an RPG anymore because all RPG systems were removed from the game or they were never in it. (elemental resistance, accuracy, gear with different abilities, etc...). Gear progression is just more HP and more damage, I feel nothing getting a new weapon. The only thing that keeps me playing the game is the encounter design of savage/ultimate fights, which I still find fun.

[@AlexStarl1ght]

OK, there's just one small issue with your entire argumentation: RPGs - actually, JRPGs, are games that are, at their core, media to tell a story. The narrative is king and the core purpose of a JRPG, and all its gameplay elements will be secondary to it, and serving the purpose of presenting the narrative to you. That was true since the early days of Dragon Quest and the NES Final Fantasy games. It's the core of the genre. It's what makes a JRPG a JRPG. These games ARE about the narrative. They aren't about the gameplay or the challenge. They never were. So maybe you just don't like the genre, and that's ok. But your complaints are about literal genre conventions that are not going anywhere and that have attracted millions of people to it over 40 years.

[@Carolyne_games]

I have many friends who are so in love (or maybe just used to?) the game and would just do the repetitive boring tasks over and over again everyday, while I log in just to look at people's houses and talk with friends as none of the content really excite me. For quite a while I've been thinking that there's probably something wrong with me, but the points you bring up here really make me think otherwise. I started less than a year ago and really fell in love with the game up until Endwalker. I personally find the Dawntrail story "tolerable" so far (I play with JP voice btw), but once the storytelling and world-building became mediocre, the weaknesses of the game really start to show.

[@Avoleth]

I started playing ffxiv since ARR launched I was already fedup with EW post patch lifecycle and story and DT is what made me quit. Its not just the disaster the story was but the absurd slow pace and lack of content and no clear indication to revaluate the core problems that have been building for over a decade now. Ex. Patch cycles getting longer, sever lack of mmo evergreen content, essentially the same content over and over again. I could go on

[@fukunaga-kane]

The problem with Yoshi-P is that he's too safe. Sure, he's the best director when it comes to making things work; just look at how he saved FFXIV. But he has his faults. He's no Sakaguchi, no Kitase, no Matsuno. FFXVI should be his playground to showcase his own authentic ideas and develop his own style, but what we got was basically FFXIV in action format.

[@Hexyuko]

I recently started playing GW2 again and did story missions in which I died like 20times and when I beat the mission, I felt great! In ff14 I never ever feel challenged in story mode or felt like I accomplished anything substantial. But with the story being bad in Dawntrail it made me realized I really only play the game for story.

[@Sithishe]

Oh yeah, when I see in chat "Help me with story boss" I know that this is good MMO. Because story bosses and encounters should prepeare you for raiding and endgame.

[@DaveGreco]

Finally someone saying what I’ve felt for awhile now. Beautifully crafted video, consider me now subbed.

[@NERIFES88]

I posted this exact comment on another video but I'll post it here too: Personally, I just got tired of not having a reason to go into the world besides FATEs. I recently went back to GW2, and I came across a mini dungeon just existing in the map, complete with puzzles, traps, and a mini boss at the end. It just existed, not even instanced, and that was cool as hell.

[@CrimSolitude]

Very much agree. I started playing FF14 when Shadowbringers was out. When playing ARR I felt that 14 was a really interesting MMO with some flaws from its roots. And I thought that later on in the expansions things would get better and better. Well, that was true in some ways. Story got better and certain aspects of gameplay and gear outlook. But I also noticed a regression. ARR for example has a really high density of enemies due to all those hunt logs that you can do. But this went away. Also the map areas in ARR are more diverse in shape, elevation and visibility. Now almost all maps are square, divided by story progression and not by enemy difficulty (level), you see most of what the map offers immediately and there are barely any enemies outside of Fate spawns. There is no sense of discovery and killing mobs has almost no meaning as they only drop a material for crafting at best. The Fates also have regressed or have not improved. There are a few Fate chains in the game, where a Fate moves to the next and the next etc. in a natural way (by seeing the npc move in real time). This system has not been expanded at all or even utilized properly even though it is a reslly good one to have in a MMO. Gear and build crafting is not a thing anymore even though there was a few choises to be made before me joining the game. And the choises in cutscenes in Dawntrail msq were so useless that you question why they where there at all. The lack of agency and possibility of making mistakes, of having any challenge and of danger in the world is eroding the fun of playing a game out of FF14. And it is sad as I love the world and the characters in FF14. We need more agency and the feel of presense in the games world. Otherwise people will drift even more out from it. And if the story stays on the level of DT so far, well people wont come back to even play that as they can just watch a video about it.

[@Theihe]

This game has devolved into asking for my money while offering nothing in return. When I started back in Stormblood it felt like a genuine privilege to waste my time in FFXIV. Every expansion since has made it feel more and more like Square Enix telling me that it should be a privilege for me to give them money. I went ahead and downloaded Menmas TERA. I've given up on FFXIV. Game is old and show's it's age- but healing and tanking is absolutely unmatched in today's mmo market.

[@embersarcade]

That's _precisely_ how I used to feel; it once felt like a privilege to play XIV. Man, I wish I would have thought of that.

[@UmbraWeiss]

Well when they got a big boost of players, they did exactly the opposite of what they needed to do... they cut development time and updates from the game, and this was not enough , they transferred a bunch of people from FF14 to work on FF16.... I think for some time anyone who plays this game long enought feels like the devs just lost the fire to do anything in the game, every update they push out is half-assed, when people started to criticize the story in DW the first thing they did is double down on WUK... and they think some side story will help their case... when everyting about DW story is garbage and they just don't want to admit it... when i heard how Yoshi said the team lost motivation because how people hate DW and shit, i knew we are going down in the drain... and i don't think any new update at this point can help what they started. We don't get anything meaningless with updates, just the same thing over and over again, no innovation, they don't even try, this is why i respect what WOW devs do, even if they f up a lot of times, they try to innovate... FF14 devs are just some template workers who do the same thing over and over again, and their design department right now is the most garbage ever... i can't name almost anything new in the game that looked nice enough for me to say WOW i want this... nothing... I have my sub non-stop active from the beta, but for the last 3-4 months i never logged in... i just run my sub for my house in the game, and i don't know when i will just cancel it and be done. And this never happened for the last 10 years... there was not a week i didn't play the game.

[@CivilChev]

Agreed! StormBlood was the peak of FFXIV. ShadowBringers - while giving us the best story - was the start of the downfall of content.

[@khatdubell]

@@UmbraWeiss japanese don't take criticism very well.

[@ultrAslan50]

​​@@UmbraWeissThey should have finished the Game after patch 6.0. So we would have remembered the game as a masterpiece. the story has reached his peak already by saving the world. i mean, what bigger climax could you use in a story than an apocalyptic event where all major antagonists are either destroyed or pacified one by one .I don't want to dive in too much into the story to avoid spoilers, but imagine, even the Void was defeated in an afterstory. for me personally the darkest hours of the game was 6.1-6.5 there was almost nothing to do, normal raid content was faceroll,relic weapons in exchange for 6000 poetry stones ?😅 island sanctuary was a joke which i abandoned after 15-20 hours. even though 7.0 was even worse than that 7.1 revived the game for me.i love Jeuno and the chaotic alliance raid.still a lot to improve yes, but a step in the right direction. they say after 7.3 the yawntrail will saga finish, 7.4-7.5 will be the introduction to 8.0 story.lets see..

[@finestcustard5647]

I wish the jobs were more unique :/ A lot of the special things that make the jobs special get stripped down over time until it’s all so plain.

[@ZzVirus]

The people who live and breathe FF14 only are gonna have a hard time coming to terms that every mmo eventually declines. With the new changes being made to FF11, for those of you who have not played - I urge you to. It’s much more enjoyable than what 14 is atm.

[@MysticMike]

While many of the stuff is very valid like combat, difficulty, and bland gameplay, there is some things that need addressing. @7:20 Limsa map was made in 1.0 and not under Yoshi-P watch. @7:31 Games dont need to be pure open world. It's been done a little too much now and were getting less of them now at least.

[@untemperance]

But 1.0 Limsa wasn't segmented into two areas. You could actually use the staircases. Wasn't much use, since they were an invisible loading screen, and it's not like you could jump from upper decks to lower decks, since you, well, couldn't jump.

[@topjos12]

For the past year I've been having less motivation to play FFXIV despite being really hooked since 2017 and I've been struggling to find out why until I've watched your video. I will cherish the memories I've made in this game but I don't think I'll come back to it, at least not any time soon.

[@QuarrelOfTheCave]

Excellent video. You put into words what I've been feeling about FF14 for a while. My perspective is that 80% of the blame falls on CS3/CBU3/Yoshi-P. Then 20% of it falls on the players who cannot complete the most basic of challenges. Any time a quest requires the average player to rub two braincells together they scream and cry and it gets nerfed. The same thing applies to normal content. Like Yoshi-P states, I am falling asleep in Expert dungeons and normal raids as a healer. I find myself wanting people to get hit or die so I can actually press more than one button. Thankfully, someone usually delivers. They die-their-way-through the fight and then win the roll on the 1% drop minion. :)

[@melaniehoyle5483]

I completely resonate with you on all of your points about FFXIV. I've felt exasperated for over a year over the lack luster of the game. Nothing appeals to me anymore. Endwalker's storyline wasn't too bad, but Dawntrailer was definitely the killer for me. I got so frustrated by the lack of stimulating gameplay and the overwhelming amount of cutscenes that I had no interest in watching anymore....except for the one with G'raha Tia on the gondola - but everything else was excessive. Wuk Lamat's constant stealing the spotlight was also super annoying to me. Like put a freaking muzzle on her for crying out loud! She was always there constantly taking over that it was irritating and exhausting. And every holiday event the past few years has been turned into a low effort get a cutscene from NPC A, NPC B, NPC C, return to NPC A and get your reward all within the safety of the same city. Every new patch has been less than a day's worth of cutscenes and limited amounts of mediocre fighting just for another fugly costume with an extra 5 item levels. Dawntrailer really pulled the wool off my eyes and made me realise just how awful the game has really been. The only true reason I stayed playing so long was for the story, the friends, and fear of losing my hard-earned house, but now many of my friends are gone and the story is dreadful and I no longer care if I have a house anymore.

[@bunnysue6660]

"I don't like the new final fantasy game." Ten years later, "Final Fantasy (insert number here) was a masterpiece."

[@TheAnimatedGamer]

Lets not use sales figures to add to the issues of 16. 7 Rebirth sold around the same as well and wasn't to expectations

[@odindarkll3706]

Nah. FFVll Rebirth flopped in Japan and rightfully so. SE didn't learn from the first "remade" entry and thought they could bait people by calling a *sequel* a remake. Not to mention how the story is blander than OG FFVll by a long shot.

[@TheAnimatedGamer]

​@odindarkll3706 and that's valid. I'm just of the stance that 7R can suffer from similar issues like 16 due to the company that makes then but people treat 7R like there were no missteps with those games

[@dangerousshoes]

It's probably also due to the fact that both of these games were ONLY on one platform. So it's very obvious that it was never going to sell well.

[@zeroskaterz92]

@@odindarkll3706 You clearly don't know wtf you're talking about and quite obviously didn't even play the game to think the title was to bait people when they deliberately open about it since the beginning. lmao

[@odindarkll3706]

@@zeroskaterz92 uh oh, here comes an FFVll fanboy!

[@JacketCK]

FFXIV started falling off when it started shifting away from it's older brother FFXI, the more and more they trivialized everything, the more it lost it's identity as a Final Fantasy MMO, where is the difficulty? where is the challenge? where is the dangerous open world? the open dungeons? the complex fighting mechanics, skillchains, magic bursts? when I remember FFXIV, I remember the Story, not to say that it's bad that I do, but when I remember FFXI, I remember the time I got a Valkurm emperor pull from a Japanese player, or when I save my party from wiping in a BCNM by pulling aggro, using gravity on the mob and spinning the arena till they got mana, or when I first got to 75, and all the parties I've done to make that happen, I remember running away from a goblin that hit a little too hard. ON TOP OF THAT FFXI story is still one of the greatest narratives the FF franchise has to offer

[@chrislee5268]

For as much as XIV players love to shit on WoW, they might discover that it lacks a lot of the problems with agency that XIV has had for years. Cutscenes are sparse, and dialogue between characters often doesn't take control away from you. You can stand around and listen, or you can walk away and go to the next objective -- talking to characters for bonus dialogue is strictly optional.

[@Necrofitz]

The problem with WoW for a lot of XIV players is basically that. I'm pretty sure a lot of people want a game firmly sandwiched between the varied build focus of WoW (even if meta builds will always emerge as dominant) and XIV with its story so front and center nothing is visible past it. It's just hard to find a game like that already, much less one you also can enjoy enough to sink hundreds if not thousands of hours into over a long period of time

[@ScribbleNuts]

WoW is short and sweet with it's story telling. XIV is like a monotone storyteller that goes on and on with overly descriptive word salad thinking it makes you sound more smart.

[@raziel6304]

"Cutscenes are sparse, and dialogue between characters often doesn't take control away from you. You can stand around and listen, or you can walk away and go to the next objective." Because the story pretends like you aren't even there, which wouldn't be an issue if Legion hadn't established us as the leaders of our own faction class and had our player characters be considered on the same level as racial or faction leaders such as Velen, Medivh and Illidan, we were considered one of the strongest characters on Azeroth, only for the next expansions to gradually remove us from the story entirely until we are nothing but a nobody standing in the back while the characters talk to each other. FFXIV is on a terrible state, but WoW is not any better in this regard.

[@Silversky1113]

Pretty valid points. I think my main issue as you've mentioned, is the illusion of choice. What once excited me about FFXIV has now become a disappointment and that is the job system. Jobs have become so linear and barebones, that it feels like you're not really playing a "class." Instead it feels more along the lines of a "character select," where, regardless of who plays that "hero," they will always have the same abilities, same skills, and same progression. Every red mage plays like every other red mage, every black mage plays the same, every samurai or bard, they all have the exact same skills as every other player. If you are not following the optimal rotation, you are not playing the job to its fullest, but overall, there are no real ways to really customize your gameplay other than having a different opener to your rotation or something like that. FFXIV has become very shallow. I started playing back in Stormblood so I don't know if it has always been like that. The gear system boils down to just having bigger numbers and that is so disheartening. The glamour system in XIV has some potential, but overall it is plagued with issues that they either cannot fix or refuse to, and honestly, I'm kind of tired of waiting. My favorite types of rpgs and class systems are the ones that let you mix and match abilities and skills, and maybe even use progression from one class within another. I feel like XIV had a bit of that at first, but now most jobs within their same class feel the same. Probably my favorite final fantasy game is Tactics. Apart from the great narrative, its job system allows for so many different combinations and it really gives you the freedom to make whatever you want. You wanna make an archer who also uses swords? Done. A white mage who also uses martial arts? Go for it. A dual-wielding dragoon? yes. It's so much fun. One of the reasons XVI immediately stuck out to me as something I didn't want to buy was that I got the same feeling of shallowness from it. Yeah, it looks pretty and the cutscenes look great, but gameplay-wise, it looks dreadful and repetitive. Now years after its release, I am saddened that my impressions of it were true.

[@MagashiSaizen]

I think MMO's as a genre need a renaissance, the genre feels repetitive and stale.

[@Kamarlex]

I really hope for Final Fantasy 17 they go back to roots of the franchise and return to turn based combat. Octopath Traveler and Dragon Quest 11 were extremely well received proving that turned based combat is in fact not dated. Turning Final Fantasy into Devil May Cry was probably not the best decision. I played 16 but didnt get very far. However, I really enjoyed FF7 Rebirth, even though that was real time it still felt like a final fantasy game because you could swap between characters mid combat, instead of only playing as cloud.

[@embersarcade]

I’m currently playing through Remake after receiving Rebirth as a Christmas gift-if Final Fantasy’s combat needs to be modernized, then FFVII’s system should be the standard. I can’t wait to play Rebirth.

[@SunderMun]

@@embersarcade I agree, but we all know it doesn't need to be modernised - devs such as Atlus and Larian prove this endlessly. But the square execs are out of touch with what their audience likes anymore sadly.

[@Armoterra]

@@embersarcadeI disagree. Remake’s battle system is also a button masher. Sure, it’s tougher with bosses, but the majority of the monsters, you’re just mashing the button. The HUD looks like FF, but it just LOOKS like it. Play Fantasian-that’s the new Final Fantasy. The battle system in that game was peak turn-based. I still would have preferred ATB, but it was otherwise fantastic. Every battle was engaging, and the complete opposite of an “illusion of choice.”

[@Armoterra]

Don’t forget Fantasian. The battle system in that game was peak turn-based. I still would have preferred ATB, but it was otherwise fantastic. Every battle was engaging, and the complete opposite of an “illusion of choice.”

[@Dharengo]

​@@embersarcadeMan I really really cannot agree to this. FF7R's very existence just annoys me to no end. I don't want to see game design like this ever again. Nomura just needs to stop.

[@Ruzgfpegk]

The strength of Yoshida is that he's a great planner. The weakness of Yoshida is also that he's a great planner. FFXIV is planned so much in advance that there's not much room left for surprises or improvements upon feedback. When something is badly received in the game, then the response will either be "okay, we'll do better next time" or "okay, maybe we'll fix it in 5 years", outside of exceptions like the Diadem that got fixed very fast. And sometimes the response leads to a worse situation than the initial issue. Some people didn't like Bozja in Shadowbringers? Fine, we got Island Sanctuary instead and the easiest relic weapons ever, which meant that players weren't invested to farm a zone as groups, and many felt bored in the Endwalker lifecycle as a result. I don't know what happened behind the scenes with Dawntrail as, if I remember correctly from the interviews, Yoshida didn't think it would be well-received: did SE ask him to let the new writers do as they wish and not intervene? Don't forget that he played MMOs since he was young, so he knows what works or not and he probably saw that coming, and if my theory is correct I hope that he's using our feedbacks to prove to his boss that he was right and should take back full control. During the media tour and FanFests, outside of the technical side where he was really proud of his team backporting some effects and shaders from XVI into XIV (they're the same engine at their core) like the grass shader, I felt like he was prouder of what has been done until now than of what was about to come, but maybe that's just me. Story-wise, I knew it would be rather dull compared to the two previous expansions, but by being a mentoring third wheel to a failure of a heir the sentiment of adventure has been greatly reduced. The overall Dawntrail theme seemed to be the passing of the torch to new generations: in the storyline (going from an adventurer to a mentor), in the music (if you look at the OST, Soken left a lot of tracks to other musicians), in the scenario (Ishikawa is probably working on FFXVII right now), in the approach (when it looks like hard themes are about to get talked about, the story skips to something else as if sensitivity readers censored every zone and asked to double down on Wuk Lamat instead), and maybe with players too with Xbox (so, mostly Americans who the Japanese know to be sensitive) and soon mobile gamers joining? I'm waiting on the Eureka/Bozja-like group content that's supposed to arrive in the next patches, and I feel like it's gonna be a decisive moment for many players. It's still an incredible game deserving to be played for hundreds of hours, especially for new players, but those who are at endgame right now have been bored for way too long, and most Xbox players who joined my FC have since left to enjoy what their Game Pass offers instead. During the Endwalker lifecycle I could forgive them the lack of content, because they were working on "the next new cycle". And then the next new cycle arrived and it got worse. Sure, I'll wait/pay a few more months, doing older side-content because there's almost no end to it. But many players feel like their money has been used to pay for SE's failures like Forspoken instead of improving the game, and it cannot continue like this.

[@FredericckPesetas]

Attencion! This guy ember's arcade is a complete phobic. He has been harassing the voice actor of wuk lamat and any who show any comment of posivity towards the game. Look for his social media. He agreeded with toxic comments who wish the va dead and fired. Arcade confirmed to be an anti t catolic

[@dandykuma]

It’s important to have discussions like this. I don’t agree with all of the points you made but I do believe your bias to how you feel about difficulty in video games may colour your perspective. Not everyone wants a challenge, some people just want escapism. That being said I didn’t like dawntrail! I enjoyed the heck out of the monotonous side quests that most people avoid because they give me a feel for the land. I have friends that do high end content so I hope for you and them it does get better. I would also enjoy more risky gameplay beats like end walker. I finished FFXI but it was a one and done for me. Story was pretty good and the primal fights were very fun but as you said the gameplay was mostly boring. This video was great! It got me to think about things from a view completely opposite to my own. Thanks for making it

[@thecthuloser876]

While I can agree with some of this critiques... I can't help but wonder if you're not very familiar with the Final Fantasy (or even Square Exis) as a whole. Since almost everything you mentioned has existed in their games since like... 1991. The lack of real difficulty that could be a possibly gate to the narrative, the stories having little interactivity, gear just being numerical increases. It's something that's a franchise-wide "problem" and has been so for like over 30 years.

[@threestars2164]

The entire ff community could be said to be "unfamiliar" with the history of final fantasy since all of those complaints are thrown at every ff game they don't like. Only the "og 151" pokemon fans are as obnoxious.

[@Silverias]

It's really seemed strange. There was a clear, tangible change in 14 once Endwalker development wrapped. EW post, Dawntrail, and now DT post have all been shaky, and in some very obvious, almost amateurish ways. Simple, glaring problems like the state of alliance raid balance, or half of the final battle of EW getting _skipped_ because they didn't put a sync on it, went unaddressed for weeks...or just permanently. It really feels to me like when EW shipped, the game got handed off to the B team, and they have not been up to the task.

[@SenpaiXcore]

As commentet above: I read that most of their senior devs went from 16 to 17 and other projects while junior devs are handling 14 as of now. Ishikawa who did Shadowbringer did not return to the team of FF14 if the comment was correct.

[@CrimsonFIame]

I've been feeling this way since Endwalker and then FF16 came out 😬. Yoshi P is talented but he's absolutely overhyped and for awhile there if you dared criticized him the dk suckers would come out to suck more dk blocking out any useful criticism. I guess Dawntrail finally snapped some people out of it but too little to late imo because I have this feeling it isn't going to change for the better. In any case please just keep this man tied to FF14 no more side projects for the love of god

[@moowilliams731]

the lack of content and how simple a lot of the jobs/classes it feels weird to play at times

[@blake112x]

The conclusion(s) in video are valid, but all the reasoning is conjecture. Example: the noclip section, you randomly pluck this idea out of a 2 hour documentary and made up a whole scenario of how strict Yoshi-P has been running this team for years (with ZERO proof). There are a lot of examples with these kind of made up scenarios throughout the video. FF14 is formulaic by designee now, they are going to give you a consistent experience moving forward. They want FF14 to be a theme-park MMO - where you leave and comeback, because they know MMOs cannot provide you consent content. And FF16 was designed to be "safe," because the FF main series has not been popular in years. They have never really recovered snice they made FF13 back 2009 (sales wise). It's really not any deeper than that.

[@CineGoodog]

We got the first "toxic positive" fan here

[@fredy2041]

@@CineGoodog We got the million anti social weirdo here

[@MahakalaMatrix]

​@@CineGoodog Notice how there literally wasn't any toxic positivity in their post? Funny how the ones who bitch about toxic positivity seem to have the exact same childish mindset as the people they're bitching about. 😂

[@Teuwufel]

@@CineGoodog But it's you who is bitching here, dude didn't say anything toxic.

[@elaine_of_shalott6587]

15:24 what happened is the player base screamed bloody murder about how much they hated those quests.

[@neh1234]

FF XIV only became the game it is today because devs at the time were able to understand that something wasn't working and they fixed it. I do hope they can do that again. But Yoshida has clearly been blinded by years of mindless worshipping. Ultimately it's Japan the one that has the final say here. The Japanese are more receptive to dull gameplay, and for better or for worse, their reception matters more than ours. Nothing will change unless they start rejecting the product. Then again, considering all the mess with Wuk Lamat, I am no longer sure the customerbase is a part of the equation nowadays.

[@wiseguy240Winston]

What could've made 16 better was pretty simple but they wanted everything to be so easy and accessible to all players and to attract new ones like they did with FF15 1. The weapon crafting system should've been like FF13. Basically you find around 5-8 new weapons in the game but each weapon has unique abilities in combat on command and or passive unique to themselves. And instead of crafting to create new weapons u use monster materials and other materials to upgrade those weapons till they evolve and change with upgraded abilities and appearance. This would've especially worked considering the game is made by the combat director of DMC, which has a generally similar weapon upgrade system to this. 2. The gsme should have had large open zones like FF12. Felt like a good chunk of the maps were too small but its better than FF15's large empty open world. It needed large zones full of enemies and hidden dungeons 3. Better and more meaningful sidequest w better rewards and less repetitive objectives. Even adding minigames like a card game, chocobo tresure hunting and fishing like in previous entries would've helped 4. Higher difficulties w increased enemy agression, altered attack patterns and new abilities. Game devs need to understand simply increasing enemy stats on higher difficulty makes the game more boring at times and makes everyone a damage sponge. Outside that I'll list a couple other flaws: 1. Lack of magic to use in combat 2. No final dungeon 3. No real party system 4. No summons in regular combat 5. Kinda mid ost

[@XrayDVD]

The ost is def not mid.

[@Senyuno]

I always call my passive relationship with FFXIV "watching my stories", after my grandma who would mindlessly watch a soap opera every day at the same time with her inoffensive lunch; until passing out for a nap.

[@Sheepdog_Alpha]

I quit after I finished DT... The new story beat left me completely deflated and uninterested. Maybe I will hop back on when the new field operation comes along.

[@acev3521]

Didn’t even finish DT quit at the pot city thing. Game is just not what it used to be.

[@superhello443]

I quit XIV after 10 years because they're playing the slow game and I'll never get what I want: Something truly new. Not a new boss with a new OST and different visuals. Something new. Like, Eureka-new. Something big, that I know they won't have time to do because of their content schedule which they refuse to break.

[@BigFatOfFate]

I'm in the exact same position. Game feels really meh and needs some new thing to shake up the formula.

[@Martensonatypewriter]

Timely accessories is a really bad faith argument. Accessibility features aren't indicative of bad priorities in game design. Final Fantasy Mode being locked behind story completion definitely seems unnecessary, but it makes it difficult for me to believe the rest of your arguments are in good faith when you're willing to make one that openly bad. You make some good points later in a the video but it was a tough call deciding whether to even watch that long after that first bit.

[@embersarcade]

You can’t just hear an argument that you dislike and call it “bad faith”-that is an accusation of dishonesty. It is _demonstrably true_ that XVI only allows players to _reduce difficulty,_ restricting the ability to _raise difficulty_ until after the game has been completed. Listen to that sentence again, if you need to. “Bad faith argument”? Please, use your own words, rather than borrowing whatever you’ve read on Twitter.

[@Martensonatypewriter]

@@embersarcade I absolutely can say that it's a bad faith argument. Timely accessories were included as an accessibility feature. No-one is forced to use them, you set your own challenge, it is not indicative of a shift toward story over gameplay it, is indicative of a shift toward allowing more people to experience a game. Again, it is a bad faith argument, and I shouldn't have had to explain why.

[@lofipiggy7718]

honestly so many people watching this because so many people feeling the same. I am going to share the video as well

[@Caladir]

Only thing we can do as people who dislike current direction. Devs need to hear us, or we will leave simply. I don't want to leave, but will do if there won't be any changes.

[@Skyverb]

I fell out of love in Endwalker. Still play, but not nearly as hardcore as before. For me it was the story first- was disappointed in how the MSQ ended on E.W release; too safe and they took back the impact of what the cast was doing. Then it wasn't really winning me over with changes to things(mainly lack-there-of) / how we can grind for things. My team and I cleared Savage, but afterwards I kinda wanted other things to grind that wasn't raids that just feel like dances at this point. And once ur used to Savage (and Ultimate) raids the rest of the game feels 'meh' for difficulty. Ended up having fun in the deep dungeons trying to get the solo achievement in game for that, but then there are only two, lol. Would love for this game to be my home game again someday; but everytime I go back it feels like I'm chasing what I used to feel have instead of creating new memories. Hard to describe passed that. On the bright side, setting the game down let me cross off so many games from my backlog.

[@ClouderSavage]

Im surprised at the amount of people that watched this video are just NOW opening their eyes to these issues. I cant begin to count how many videos Ive seen that go over these same problems.

[@radaro.9682]

Your example of a "good" mmo is WoW? The king of uninteresting systems and bad writing? Otherwise a well done vid. I often have a problem with lack of interest while playing and absolutely would love some kind of failure chance.

[@ohcharlie428]

Thanks for saying this

[@ganonman8]

This succinctly describes a feeling that I've had for a while but refused to acknowledge. I began playing FFXIV because a few friends of mine wanted a healer in savage raids, and I didn't mind helping out. The plot (minus ARR) was good but I felt bored and didn't understand why the game was so intent on making traversal as slow and tedious as possible unless I bothered to waste time scouring empty parts of the maps to let my mounts get a speed increase through flight. Once I beat Stormblood however, a friend of mine told me to watch the Shadowbringers trailer before I continued the MSQ and...I was COMPLETELY hooked. It felt like all of the negative feelings that were building toward the game washed away as I was entranced by the (subjectively) best content the game had to offer, and by the time I got to Endwalker and started raiding, I was satisfied. I had a falling out with my raid group however, and told my friends that I would cancel my sub and hop back on once Dawntrail came out, but I found myself surprisingly not caring once the expansion ACTUALLY released. I wanted to resub out of obligation, but I guess on some level I felt that aside from raiding and minor diversions, I was going to be bored again until I got to postgame content where the (subjectively) difficult and fun content remained, since Endwalker felt like two steps back from the narrative grip that Shadowbringers had on me. Seems I was correct. Thank you very much for making me confront the fact that I put aside my grievances with the game just for the sake of engaging in content with friends that frustrated me to no end. I'd say that overall I enjoyed my experiences with the game, but now I'm able to move past that and play things that genuinely make me happy.

[@arsarma1808]

Holy shit this was my experience as well. I joined up because some friends needed a healer and I had some experience from raiding in wow back in WotLK/Cata, so I helped out. I was super into ShB but EW was such a huge disappointment and I got fed up with my kinda rude and frankly, low tier raiding team so I left. The game was often boring. Raiding was kind of alright, but became repetitive because teammates would make the same mistakes in what was a pretty simple experience.

[@ganonman8]

@@arsarma1808 Yessss exactly. I understand that everyone coordinating is supposed to be a part of the raiding experience, but it's so frustrating when you have to waste hours redoing the same mechanics because someone continues making the same mistakes. After a while, it just got tedious repeating information in hopes of reaching the fun parts of the fight, let alone to roll your loot.

[@jamesdiato]

Youre absolutely correct. It took a lot out of me to actually complete shadowbringers years ago cause questing and open world gameplay is insanely BLAND, no danger in combat whatsoever. Found myself falling asleep. In FF16 i dont know what to call them, the cutscenes in the game like when you get quests. Anything that isnt MAIN STORY i had zero interest in because i started to see the formula. Very similar to FF14 cutscenes.

[@caliburny]

comparing 16 to 14 is pretty important to not just focus on flaws inherent to the MMO genre like many criticisms of 14 do, but focus on flaws inherent to the work of CBU3, which is the bigger issue.

[@SenpaiXcore]

FF16 nearly has the same narrative as 14 if you exclude character names, zones and factions. On one hand political enemies who try to overthrow the established system (Garlemald in 14) and a sudden mythical enemy who is tied to the protagonist as the chosen one (Warrior of Light in 14). I dont want to get too deep into the comparison but I've been playing both games at the same time and I just couldn't fathom the idea that Yoshi P took almost the same context for both games with a different coat.

[@shadowthehedgehog181]

@@SenpaiXcore That's EVERY final fantasy, not just 14 and 16

[@SenpaiXcore]

@@shadowthehedgehog181 Not really. I mean kinda but in 14 and 16 you can really feel that both games were made by Yoshi P and his team.

[@shadowthehedgehog181]

@@SenpaiXcore That's only because you have the knowledge that Yoshi-P is involved. It's a confirmation bias. These tropes also exist FFV, FFXII, FFXV, and the others

[@SenpaiXcore]

@@shadowthehedgehog181 No not really but going into detail where these two especially align would stretch the comment too much.

[@TehListeningPost]

Hi Ember. New sub. I was so impressed with your appearance on the Summon Sign podcast. Wishing you a fruitful career in this realm.

[@tessa8484]

tldw: It's not hardcore and sweaty enough for me.

[@shanesheridan4798]

Yea I mean... A lot of the people who complain religiously about this game kinda forget that its a JRPG first and MMORPG second. The story takes its time, and it meanders, and that is intentional. I get that people want their really hardcore gameplay based MMORPG, and even I find myself disappointed at the continued 'dumbing down' of job class mechanics, but that is because of flavor/lore reasons more than it is about balancing hardcore content. I kept finding myself thinking that yanno...maybe this creator and the people who unequivocally agree with the statements in this vid just aren't really getting that American MMO players are not in fact the demographic meant to enjoy FFXIV specifically. The bulk of XIV is in its worldbuilding and storycrafting but a enjoys challenging you now and then. If you don't like reading, then go back to a game that doesn't require you to care about the people in the world you're playing hero in. But even that aside, it's just also a lot of armchair crit about game design from a person who (presumably) does not work in game design, and also doesn't actually seem informed about how corporations generally function with project management and the budgeting/costs surrounding that (and yes, it is regrettable that something has to be a product before a work of art, but this is nothing new and it's very strange that this is a hill anyone dies on while being so brazenly ignorant). C'est la vie lol

[@stanktatiousd7732]

This is gonna be a rant but I’m just gonna tell you now that this is just a legitimately poor take. I see where you are coming from but the best way that I can describe it is “You bought a Mario game, and are pissed there isn’t any pokemon in it even though it’s Nintendo”. I agree with story mode content being a cakewalk, way too easy. I agree that quests, main and side, can be hella tedious. As of now, that’s about it. This IS a story heavy game that has, and will always be, primarily focused on the story. That is what Final Fantasy has always been. Now I agree entirely that they could make the story more interactive so no arguments there; I would add that I’m pretty sure that’s something they want to do but that takes time and sadly people don’t have the patience they claim to have (I.e everyone nagging them to hurry up with DT). Complaining about a story heavy game being cutscene centered over other aspects is no different than hating Mario Kart because there is too much driving. Now, Dawntrail was honestly not great in that aspect but apparently they were expecting backlash (not to the caliber they received) and was going to go from there based on feedback. Other than that, they hit their marks (expect Zenos, the rivalry between him and the WoL actually pissed me off how absolutely fucking horrible that rivalry was done, BIG L, but that’s a whole rant in itself). Yea you are a god slaying descendent (I think) of an Ascian (literal gods) but you are not the only character in that story so yea you are gonna be sidelined sometimes, unless you’re Wok Lamat; zero idea why they thought she needed to be MC’d that hard but I think they heard everyone’s opinion on that. Which brings me to my next talking point: difficulty. Final Fantasy has mid to low level difficulty and has always been that way. I beat those games when I was

[@NaturalEntertainer85]

Haha beautiful comment, I said some similar things in mine; essentially he seems to like Dark Souls style games where standard monsters might destroy you and thinks FF should be more like that, can't blame him FromSoft are awesome but as you said, it's just a different type of game

[@CCKaraoke]

My biggest issue with FFXIV is the combat design in general. Rage timers are awful game design and I'll never support it. Simply being 'good' because you can dodge blobs on the ground and mash your button rotation with maximum quickness is the worst imaginable design. FFXI may have had its flaws, but it rewarded actual strategy. You won a fight by working together as a team more often than simply by putting out the most damage. If your damage was low, you could still win with good communication and teamwork. I got my Kirin's Osode as the end of a multi hour long wreck of a fight against Kirin, where we all lost 10's of thousands of exp, but we held together, chipping away little by little until we won. FFXIV never gave me that feeling.

[@Hambs23]

Myeah, as much as I have a kick out of the Raids and Trials in XIV due to their phenomenal presentation, the second to second gameplay is very static.

[@steel5897]

Street Fighter 6 has deeper RPG systems than Final Fantasy XVI. This is not a joke, this is not hyperbole, this is quantifiable truth. I love to point that out.

[@cosmosofinfinity]

So does Stranger of Paradise, which was billed as an action spinoff. And uh... better action too lol. AND a game you can spend a lot more time in, time that is spent actually playing a video game and having a blast

[@threestars2164]

What are you even talking about?? Have you ever played an rpg or what? I would compare it with Daggerfall or similar.

[@cablefeed3738]

6:40 they're not making final fantasy mobile. Someone is giving them money to make final fantasy fourteen mobile