askchapo

Really telling that one of the things they’ve worked super hard to add recently is bots to almost all the main dungeons and trials so you don’t have to engage with the player base that will scream the instant you suggest they learn basic mechanics.

Don't worry the 1 button combos and perpetual job identity/playstyle simplification will solve everything Sorry to anyone who liked Viper on release, or 5.0 Astrologian, or pre-7.0 BLM.

I've never been a 2-minute meta lover; I have always thought it hampers class design/playability. But the fact that the team seemed to say "we need to move away from the 2 minute meta, we can do this by making every job have a 1 button combo and getting rid of any unique-to-a-class playstyle" has frustrated me since they started implementing them. PVP has a 1 button combo? Fine; it's pvp and a large chunk of the playerbase cheats in matches anyways so it doesn't matter beyond doing your dailies and maybe the season rewards for CC if you care about them. Regular content/trials are given very telegraphed AoEs and no longer have penalties for fucking up? Fine - that's been FFXIV's bag since basically Shadowbringers because so many players revile content like Mhach and Orbonne.

But when the last 3 expansions have basically gutted every 'complex' job because the majority of the playerbase can't read skill tooltips & just ignore the job quests that teach you how to use specific skills/play the job in general? Enough. It's crazy to me that like, BLU is a way more rewarding job to play than PLD or AST, if only because BLU requires you to seek out content to learn spells and you can fill your hotbar with a bunch of unique skills that have their own drawbacks/benefits (even if once you unlock Moon Flute/Tingle/JKick you'll probably just use those for most things). And you can't even use BLU in regular content so it's a moot point besides having fun.

Could really use a Limsa Volcel Vanguard or something.

What's crazy is I've always been stationed in Gridania (even if they are the racist elves) specifically because I hate Limsa's idle population, and I still constantly got people running up to me while I was doing GC turn-ins asking me to join their strip club or come erp with them. I don't even hate them though. The "you need to download Mare so my character appears as a big breasted bunny-girl that has an excessive amount of cosmetic surgery on your screen too!!!" gooners were actually my most hated. There was one in my FC for like 3 months, who I finally was like "either he gets kicked or I leave" to the leader after he put a picture of 8 of us, who were doing one of the newest extremes at the time & just hanging out, naked in the discord. He had one of the Dalamud/Mare mods that would just make everyone nude. It was so egregious to me because 3/8 of the people in the party were lalafells and he was always up our asses (metaphorically) even though none of us really were buddies with him & when he posted that image I was like "oh my god he's been fucking gooning to us the entire time because we look like naked children". FC Leader did not understand it at first and I raised so much hell about it that they did finally boot him but that caused him to start stalking us, which is very funny to do in a MMO but made me realize "a lot of FFXIV players are just unhinged/gross and the game itself kinda encourages it with 'fashion' being the end-game and their lax stance on mods/plugins"

I'll be back for Evercold ofc but it's just one of those things that makes me cringe whenever I'm playing for awhile and long-time players who do participate in the general ERP scene (although all of them are fairly normal when it comes to that stuff and don't prey on lalafells) in my FC/Linkshells are like "where have you been!?!" because at the end of the day, I'm playing FFXIV because I like the final fantasy setting - I'm not playing FFXIV because I think the Miqo'te or Roegadyn are hot.

Makes me miss FFXI because it was never really like that, although I was way younger during its heyday when I played & might have just overlooked that side of the playerbase in favor of wasting my life on Kirin and Tiamat fights.