After giving it a lot of thought, going back and forth on what I wanted to do, I finally decided to let my subscription lapse earlier this month. At the outset, it was one of the most exciting gaming experiences I've taken part of. FFXIV has been my only second MMO experience, FFXI being my first, and although it did not last as long as my time with XI, day for day, month for month, XIV was a lot more fun. I enjoyed how polished and accessible XIV ARR is. It felt much less of a grind compared to XI. Gone were the days of spending hours lfp for xp, hours camping NMs/HNMs, RNG of crafting, guessing what skills were best to use, and generally wondering what to do and where to go (though this problem was eventually solved with FFXIclopedia). The social aspect was also refreshing, getting to see players that I haven’t seen since XI.
I don't want to totally take a dump on XI, it had its moments and there are some good memories I've walked away with, but the game was brutally unapologetic with wasting your time. I think Ascy summed it up well here. I guess at the time of XI, I didn't care so much because I was still in school. I was old enough to legally be an adult, but void of major responsibilities, like supporting (financially) myself. Now that I'm older though, have a mortgage, fully financially independent, my free time is something I really value.
The decline of enjoyment of XIV ARR for me started when patch 2.2 was released. It gave me a glimpse of what was to come, and it scared me. This was the patch that started to cater toward the 'hardcore' crowd. As the weeks passed, and minor patches were introduced (2.25/2.8) it became more obvious that SE had no intentions of easing up on their grindy approach to content or mechanic heavy fights.
With grindy content, the game should reward you accordingly to make it feel worth it. Right now, I feel like SE has got the balance of grindy content all wrong and it doesn't feel worth it. Zodiac weapons? Sightseeing? What a joke. On paper, I liked these ideas, but in practice they are totally ridiculous in what they require, and whether the rewards are worth it is debatable. It’s a step back in the direction of XI, and not in the positive way.
I may be the minority, but I really, really, really liked Abyssea in XI. A lot of XI traditionalists will probably turn their nose up to Abyssea and claim that it was easy mode (it was), but it made the game fun. At the end of the day I just want to have fun. Personally, Abyssea saved XI and renewed interest in the game for me. Sure, it had its share of grindy content (seals/empyrean weapons), but the rewards were justified; it felt worth it to complete your emp weapon, or getting those 8 seals to complete your AF3 piece. It had large scale stuff that you could do as a full alliance or low manned stuff you could tackle with skilled enough people. XIV content is fixed at 8 man.
Then there’s the mechanics-heavy driven stuff in XIV. I’m not strongly opposed to mechanics heavy fights, as they are fun to learn and do… as long you have a group that is capable and can eventually win, consistently. The problem with this type of content is that is starts to weed out casual type players and more and more content becomes gated behind mechanics. This is unfortunate since the pool of what I consider capable players in CTR (as a linkshell) has greatly dwindled over the months. Having just 1 or 2 incompetent players greatly reduces, and can even eliminate your chances of winning. In order to progress, you’re now forced to recruit less than ideal players from within, or start looking for players outside, which are both not the ideal situation to be in.
I’ve been in pugs where I’ve one shotted Titan EX and Levi EX, which felt great, but the social aspect was missing, and some of those people were elitist snobs (party finder descriptions say a lot about a person). The thing is, those type of parties work. The fear of being kicked because of a one strike (hell, even two strikes) rule exists cut down on the number of incompetent players that even join your party. On the flipside, I don’t think I’ve ever one shotted either of those fights with CTR people, but some of those runs were still fun because I liked the people I was playing with. I guess I want my cake and eat it too; to be able to play with people I like and not struggle on fights.
Now a look at Second Coil of Bahamut. SCoB is tuned for 8 capable players and was proof that unless everyone is playing on a high level, you will not progress. And it’s really not about the mechanics being more difficult than anything in the past because mechanically I don’t think anything new is that difficult, it’s about spreading the responsibility and equalizing the stake everyone has in the success of the raid. For example, back in T2, most of the responsibility fell to the BRDs (or silencers). Everyone had their normal role to play, tanks do tanky stuff, dps kill stuff, healers heal stuff, but it was the silencers that determined whether the group won or lost. Now as we move to T6, T7, everyone bears that responsibility. A mishandled voice or shriek, and you wipe the raid. As a BRD in T2, I found the voice mechanic or bouquet to be no more difficult than watching for High Voltage and stunning. The difference is now that responsibility is spread across the whole team, so anyone not familiar with having to react while carrying out their normal job duties will be caught off guard and may struggle.
That brings me to my coil static, a combination of capable players and less than capable players. I found that a lot of people have tunnel vision, and have trouble paying attention to everything that is going on while carrying out their normal job duties. I’m sometimes guilty of this myself, I get it, it happens, but for others it happens more often than not, and that’s frustrating. We’ve been able to handle this by having people call out things over vent, but it shouldn’t be necessary. Voice chat is a crutch, and shouldn’t be needed for everything. It’s kind of sad that XIV has gotten to the point that voice communication is nearly required though. Most of the later fights require team coordination. Like in my example of EX primals, I liked playing with that group of people because I liked everyone as a person, but some were bad as players… cake and eat it too =(
And this was where the fun stopped for me. It would be easy to blame the months of head banging on Second Coil of Bahamut as the reason for me quitting XIV, but it wasn't the reason. It definitely contributed to all my frustrations with the game though. In fact, it was literally the last hope I had to cling onto. I wanted it to succeed and I wanted a reason to keep playing, but it wasn’t happening. Bottom line was I just wasn’t having fun anymore.
I enjoyed playing SCH. It's a challenging job, and by far much more fun than healing in XI. My issue with playing SCH was that by the end I was pretty much pigeon holed into playing it for everything. While I had no problem playing SCH for coil (it was my preferred job) and was the only person that didn't change jobs (that didn't have an animus) when we did our job shifting for T7-T8, I did however have a problem bringing it to whatever else we did. The reason I picked SCH, even though I still love playing BRD, was that I wanted a change. Honestly, I had the same problem pre 2.2 patch with being stuck on BRD for everything. It's fun, sure... but not after playing the one job for everything, even though I had other things leveled and geared.
It was the perfect storm of quitting but all of it can be summed up to not having fun anymore. Grindy content, smaller pool of good players, repeated coil failures, lack of job diversity in raids. All of it. Not fun.
Free weekend this week. I’ll probably give it a shot, but I’ve seen the patch notes and seen Ramuh videos. Patch 2.3 seems like business as usual.
