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I quit FFXIV to play FFXI again. Traded in brainrot for pain and torture.

Ive got over 900 days of playtime in 14, and I've also fallen out of love with it. I feel like you've put a good argument for why that is. To me, its just lost its spark.

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 <10 years old; again, combat<story in final fantasy. They didn’t make millions because it plays like Elden Ring. Not their forte. No excuse for poor combat but their combat is mid but not as bad as ESO when I played it 10+ years ago; it’s interactive enough to keep most including myself. If you want challenging combat then do not consider final fantasy. The most challenging thing in that game is finding 7 other players competent enough to do harder content with. That is the true ULT content that I’ve got a massive rant about. By far my biggest criticism but moving on. As for overworld challenges, that is not where their main content is. It’s a literal chapter in the story and you move on. I would agree that they could make some maps bigger and add more to them but they see them more so like I described earlier and move on; doubt they will add anything else to them. You are also a god slaying, descendent of a god so if you struggle with a big bird then what the hell power scaling is that. It makes no sense. They are mostly there to add some substance and some of the mobs drop items essential to crafting. Overworld challenges have never been a challenge in most FF games. You are asking for a different game at that point. As for customization, I haven’t met anything that competes. I’ve got glams that I have never seen another player have, that is unheard of in most games. Usually there is no diversity of design. As for armor and noticing a real difference in performance, I’d argue that’s for balancing reasons. They know their player base and if there was a clearly superior class then everyone would play that and they would have wasted their time with other classes and there would just be a plethora of issues that could legitimately crash their business if they didn’t balance like they did. So due to balancing, it’s almost impossible to notice the scaling when it all essentially performs the same. That is something you will find in older FF games though. I probably missed something but these were the main parts. To summarize this rant, You essentially expected it to be/turn into an entirely different game. Tear it down, strip the foundations of what started the business, and make something ENTIRELY new but with familiar things. Plain and simple. “I bought Super Mario and I’ve been playing for years now and still haven’t caught a single Pokémon. Do better Nintendo”. I respect your opinion but mine is this was just a bad take with a clickbait title.

0:36 Funny, considering the working title of XVI

2:07 - "EVERY MODERN GAME MADE"....

I played FF16 for 3 hours. The majority of it was Cut Scenes. It’s a beautiful game it has gorgeous graphics. But the linearity of the same and the amount of cutscenes in the first few hours of the game has killed it for me. I’m gunna finish it but man the combat is lacking. FF15 was better imo by a loooong shot.

woke = broke

Oh my god, finally someone who shares my experience, I was a huge fan of FF14 for 10 years, it was my favorite FF game from both combat and narrative perspectives. And after playing 16 it somehow soured my experience with 14, like I have tried to play 14 even before Dawntrail released I simply couldn't play the game, everytime a character spoke or a speach bubble apeared it reminded of the boring way 16 characters talked, every time I try to finish a quest whether main or otherwise I remember the meandering sludge that was 16's quests design. I just can't play 14 the gameplay is boring, the way the characters talk annoys the hell out of me, and the way you progress the story how you need to talk to this npc then talk to that other one and everytime it's a wall of text that says nothing and sometimes the npc is not near an Aetheryte so you have to walk. All this stuff didn't bother me much upto the End of Endwalker but ever since I played 16 and I just can't deal with all that stuff at all. I'm grateful that I got to experience the 10+ years of story and finished Endwalker before playing 16. Endwalker is the end of my journey with FF14 and I'm satisfied with that. Also I'm not touching anything made by Yoshi P or CB3 ever again. Like I can't believe how my opinion of Yoshi P and CB3 changed dramatically after 16. Although I have to say that atleast 14 has 1 redeeming aspect over 16 which is imo the biggest flop of 16, the story and world, 14's world and story is extremely interesting and good, the world is magical and filled with wonder that it makes you want to explore and engage with it, 16 is the complete opposite of that the world is dead and dreary there's no "magic" in it there's no fantasy it's extremely small and by the end you just remove magic from the world , and also the fact that you literally fight the creator God by the end just makes this whole world so small, like I know it's a JRPG trope that you always end up killing god by the end but that's a joke, because it's always someone who wants to become a god or some eldritch space god or "a" god not "The" God, the actual creator of humans to have him so cartoonishly evil and flat his whole purpose was escaping some blight, and he's so clumsy that he created humans and completely forgot about them and went to sleep in hopes of maybe someday one with power of mythos will be born. He's such a bad antagonist and the story and events and narrative just all suck the politics end up in nothing, characters bearly have any personality or story or motives, the only interesting character dies early on and the actually good villain Annabelle turns out just crazy instead of smart or scheming. Over all bad story, which is the biggest crime of 16 imo.

Ive been disliking the game since EW, and with DT I just gave up completely, so I agree 200% with this video... but please tell me that the free copy of a good mmo isnt wow lol

well... Stranger in Paradise was really chalenging but didnt sold well.

I haven’t played 7.0 but I totally agree with xvi which unfortunately contributed me to unsub in post EW. I was always active in raiding but also enjoyed the msq, but it started to feel really dreadful towards the end of post EW. Xvi was like a condensed version of the issue of xiv where you clearly feel story cutting up gameplay, long overly visually but lack of substance fights, and actually not that engaging story 😂. For the longest time I felt that I was alone for thinking this way, and I ended up just stopped subbing for 7.0, then I started to see more and more people talking about it that makes me feel like I’m not insane.

Thank you, for the candidness of this critique. Often I feel ff14 exists in a space where the players are scared to say voice negative opinions about the game. Whether it be the fear of biting the hand that feeds them or of the toxic positivity of the community. You nailed every instance that I now realized I was overlooking for when I did really like the narrative.

The gear in 14 is so you can do the ultimate and do more damage in savage, which I enjoy. If you are a more casual player though then yeah the gear has little value. They need to do an endgame overhaul to change anything gear related at this point.

The problem with Yoshi P is he has his hands tied to a gatcha machine of a company. The day Hironobu Sakaguchi returns to be CEO of that company is the day Final Fantasy returns from the dead. It's been dead for 20 years as a a brand.

I also think its a problem with Current day gaming culture on a large scale MANY people give up at the slightest point of conflict. This is a massive issue with AAA devs you see all over. 10 years ago you could make hard and interesting games. Now to make profit you have to make easy games that allow the almost frustratingly "causal" gamers to be able to complete without them giving up and refunding/Review bombing the titles. Even games like Elden ring is MUCH easier (minus 1-2 encounters in a post game dlc) then its DarkSouls counterparts. I agree with you points and would LOVE to see more risk taken from Yoshi-p and his teams. But I also understand at the end of the day his job is to make a game/story that will sell well to AS MANY people as possible and make Papa SE the most money.

3:50 I think the only reason shadowlands set a sales record is that everyone was stuck at home during covid and wanted something to do. We've seen a huge bubble in tech/tech adjacent industries that has begun to correct itself because the demand from covid lockdowns was high for every digital service/product.

make a game to please everyone and you will please noone. ppl called me crazy when i said this game has 0 innovation since stormblood.

FF16 made me completely lose respect for Yoshida as a game developer, and it allowed me to shatter the rose tinted glasses I looked at FF14 with and realize how shit of a game it is. I don't think Yoshida is as good as people think he is. What he has is an extremely talented team that just needed proper management and a direction, which he provided. But outside of that? I don't think Yoshida has anything else to offer. He's as shallow as his vanity for wine glasses and large rings, as shallow as every fucking game system he allowed to be put on 16 and 14. They need a new director.

You should add that nobody wants to fanta to a female Hrothgar because it resembles Wuk Lamat. The story ruined the model.

Yoshi could learn a thing or three from Monolith Soft in open world design.

About time. I’m amazed how some people love 16. I thought it was absolutely terrible. It didn’t even feel like a final fantasy game. Here’s to hoping XVII is better

As a long time world of warcraft player i dont think i can ever go back to game, the pure toxicity of the game has forever dulled it for me, ive come back 4 times to the game, and i play since wrath of the lich king. From toxic guilds, getting kicked out cause i had slightly lower damage, and straight up death threats or people exploiting a good nature it sucks. The game is boring, the story, dull and hidden and uninteractive, it only begins after you reach max level, and can actually do something that affects the world. ...BUT that doesnt mean final fantasy ARR didnt face the latter issue as well, i play since stormblood release, and i can tell you the questlines before rework made me wish for a game that respects my time, but past that my experience with ff has been stellar, even if it has been easier than wow, mostly cause i can have a blast with a huge amount of people and feel i play an mmorpg rather than a solo grindfest min maxing gear to be kicked cause my feral druid is bad and i should switch to rogue if i want to be playing the game, or people joining to farm mounts and then scamming you and running away with them after you help them.

When games focused too much on graphics, and forgot to make them actually immersive, intriguing and engaging for players. It's more like tech demos over and over again.

The whole expansion was the B squad of characters. Wuk Lamat? Trash. Krile? Trash. Erenville? Trash. Graha Tia? Trash. WTF happened to fighting demons and acians with Thancred, Yshtola, Estinien, and Thancred??? WHAT HAPPENED Gun to my head, if you told me to watch any of the cutsenes for Dawntrail, I'd tell you to pull the trigger.

I am all for constructive criticism and I myself have a lot of that about FF14 including Yoshi-P, but I am sorry, this video just had SO many biased and one-sided and frankly just made-up(???) takes: * You just state that you are convinced that the team is still working under the same tight time restrictions as in ARR - a claim to which you present no proof or even evidence at all(???) * You SOLELY describe the perspective of the game from the view of somebody who wants to do harder content, who wants a challenge. However, the playerbase in FF is extremely diverse and also seeking different endgame goals. Some go hardcore raiding. Some fall down the pit of immersive RP. Some go do housing and then open a club or cafe. Some just socialize and hang out in Limsa. Some do posing and modding and screenshots for a living (there, I said it. Mods and Mare and Posing have become a big part of the community.). Some treat the game as a singleplayer and go deep dungeon solos which is one of the hardest content in the game. Others grind for ranks in CC (may your preferred deity guide their soul). * I do think most of the playerbase appreciates the world NOT being dangerous and that they can go out, discover new places and just enjoy a sunset or nightsky somewhere without having to fight deadly monsters every hot minute. It's part of the game concept since ARR and it's one of the things where you either like it or you don't but if you don't, you are playing the wrong game. * You complain about the very storydriven approach of the game. This has been one of the main selling points since release. This hasn't changed much. This is the selling point and why a majority of people love the game and got drawn into in the first place. I think the only way you could really improve that without losing immediately 75% of your players is if you make a "challenge" mode, that just lets you raid the current bosses. But it's really extremely hard to just redo the entire concept of an MMO. * I am sad for you that you felt nothing completing the savages but the achievement itself is what drives most people, not the gear I think this video has some points as well: * The gear system is stupid. But it's also in WoW and other MMOs. In WoW it's just more complicated but what specs you need you used to sim out anyway all the time. Unless that changed. But yeah, FFs stats system is so dumbed down it does not serve any value whatsoever - maybe the skillspeed to make your rotation smoother, but that's about it. Everything is else is also "what The Balance discord says". The only thing the gear system of savage sets you up for is Ultimates. * I do think that DT was a bad expansion storywise but also in the way the story was told. I very badly remember the statues you HAD to click through and read and in a certain order at that. I am sorry, but if I want to study again, I go back to uni. It wasn't a quiz, it wasn't fun, it was "here is our loredump, we couldn't figure out how to feed you all of that LOL". The pacing at the start was very slow, the middle to I would say 2/3rd part was actually decent and the story had some interesting points, the end ruined it completely again. Will we have a charcoal map as one of the main expansion maps forever now btw or are they doing something about it? * I agree that the worlds feel extremely void and empty and I also felt like that this was very artificial, especially the ridiculous amount of zone changes. But also the cities... Go to any major city of any of the recent expansions and it's a dead wasteland. Walk around in Solution Nine and tell me it doesn't feel dead as fuck. Or Eulmore. Why aren't does cities BUSTLING with NPCs and funny dialogues? * I agree that the game has not much to explore - some things are hidden behind sidequests, but just mapwise... there is very little. And the little things they are they HAVE to guide you there via the sights system... So you don't have a spot you found yourself, you can enjoy yourself and not have somebody coming every 5 minutes to perform /lookout and then mount their whale again. Some other points I think would make more sense to critique: * Yoshi-P ignores a lot of player feedback and seems pretty tone-deaf in general with his replies. See e.g. his response to the PlayerScope plugin issue. Or the issue with playerlist unfriending being just onesided. * The UI in FF14 is HORRIBLE. Every part of it. Also the bag system. And that you are not allowed to use plugins or simply can't due to being on console makes it a lot worse * Every expansion follows a RIDICULOUSLY similar scheme. Every expansion must have 6 new maps, one new major city, one new minor city, 3 trials, a story dungeon at lvl X1, X3, X5, X7, X9 and then one at max level followed by exactly two expert dungeons. And the rest of the patches follows the exact same pattern, including releases of alliances, raids/savages, new story dungeons and new story trials/extremes. Every savage tier has exactly 4 bosses, there are exactly 3 tiers. Imagine they changed that up. Imagine they would suddenly make something different there. Wouldn't that be cool for once? On a positive note: I like the criterion content EW brought. It was fun with friends and you find 3 others pretty easily. Not a fan of Chaotic but I appreciate that they tried. * The game tries to strongarm you into staying subscribed by literally destroying your house after 45 days. If I don't visit my house irl in 45 destroys, will it get destroyed too? I don't think so. The official statement has always been that they don't want wards to feel empty, but wards already DO feel empty and they can just add however many new ones. So no. They just want to keep players subscribed.

It's ok to not like things.

W summon sign guest

I'm sorry, I have to disagree with FFXIV's power of friendship story blowing games on the level of last of us and such out of the water, and I could go in on how having stiff robotic animations takes away hugely from emotional and important elements of visual storytelling alone, and that would just be the tip of the iceberg with telling a story in a game or any similar media for that matter

For me Endwalker patches and XVI were the end of my love with the game. It was almost as if I went through a breakup in a way, one initiated by me. And tbh I still hold my memories fondly. But damn, are the CBU3 afraid. Afraid of experimentation, afraid of innovation, afraid of the possibility that they might fail leading to them actually failing by sheer, uninspired boredom.

TRUE. FF16 is a joke, it so on rails it feels like like a COD campaign with long cutscenes even the eikon fights are like that - interactive cutscenes and why even put party members when they do absolutely NOTHING.

Is this a anti ffxiv video to get you to join another mmo community? Looks like it

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

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.

Damn this hurts and hits hard. As someone who has been a subscriber since 1.0, I finally unsubscribed about a month ago. The fun just isn't there.

You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain. I personally don't think yoshi p needs to retire or turn over the reins to new management. The issue with dawntrail is that he took a step back and let the team follow their own direction. He does hold the blame though because in the end he has the final say.

I'm glad gamers are waking up to the fact that most AAA game studios are just cinematics studios who are more concerned with the marketability of a product than the quality of it.

Thank God I stopped playing before this release 😆😆😆 Endwalker for me was exactly that: The End. For me FF14 story is complete and done.

Yeah I got so bored of the post story patches in shadowbringers I unsubbed and never went back. FF16 was also a slog. I put it to as easy as possible around 30 hours in just to get through it as quickly as possible.

FFXIV is essentially a stripped down version of modern WOW with more focus on Story. But modern WOW itself is streamlined and stripped down that most of the RPG mechanics are superficial and just boils down to "big number gets bigger" while the context of what you're actually doing as a character and your engagement of the world is more or less an absolute after thought. Gameplay is king, but last I checked walking through a long checklist of storybeats isn't gameplay, its a visual novel. Good music and visuals also doesn't change the fact what few gameplay encounters that does exists are more or less dodging circles on the ground

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.

Came here after listening to Summon Sign. Excellent video.

I think the most egregious issue of 14's last two expansions were that they didnt sit in the cooking pot for long enough. That certainly translates into narration - from the incredibly obvious deus ex machina tools in EW, the rather anticlimactic final days, to absolutely not a single moment where characters stop and reflect on the travels,journeys, or events they have done in Dawntrail. The narrative focus clearly took a back seat, and, while i personally think fight design has been good - the sterilization that happened during Endwalker killed any interesting or unique things about jobs, so you're just stuck between "meh" plot and "meh" combat, which, i think, sums 16 up perfectly as well.

I don't understand why Square Enix is doing everything except taking accountability for messing up Dawntrail. It’s really not a good look when they keep pushing collaborations with other companies while the game remains stagnant. It sends the wrong message-that they don’t care and have other priorities. "Hey Yoshi-P, can you fix Dawntrail?" "Yes! Here’s a collaboration with Schwarzkopf, tents, and now clothing! Dawntrail is saved! See you next time!" The ridiculous notion that Yoshi-P can do no wrong needs to stop. A friendly reminder to casual players: while you may feel entitled, you're also the ones who kept this game alive. But don’t forget-FFXIV exists because of FFXI and the original 1.0 players, back when no one cared about it. Speculation and streamer theories are fine, but we need to stop daydreaming.

Ever since everyone decided that Soul’s like games were the best thing ever, there’s been such an influx of pissing and whining about every single game that isn’t one. If you want a Soul’s like game, just go play Elden Ring, damn😂

2:12 A good mmo by your standards is World of Warcraft?

As someone who LOVED FFXVI I really enjoyed hearing the other side of the pond. 4:23 was VERY pertinent. I have said multiple times that I wish FFXVI had other mediums to consume it: a book series, movie, animation etc. because I wish more people could experience the STORY, without needing to play a video game. Alas, here we are. I enjoyed it and I enjoyed this video! Thank you for your perspective! 🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️ also I’ll claim my free ticket to a good MMO when one comes out agagagagga (JK 😁)

Yoshi p commented that they had a 10 yr schedule for ffxiv from endwalker onwards. Im assuming its running the game into the ground and getting as much money as they can until then lol