Do you love the MMO you live in?

When you ask someone to describe Final Fantasy 14 as an MMORPG to someone who has no frame of reference to the game, what would you say? You’re the Warrior of Light, you have the ability to change into multiple classes from the Final Fantasy RPG series and fit into various roles as a tank, healer, melee or caster. With this power you meet others who carry that same sort of power and go on to fight enemies, explore a rich story and live the life of a universe saving hero. You’d probably warn them that they have to experience up to 300 hours of story dialogue and expansions in order to “really” experience the game to the fullest but that would be a minor bump on the road to becoming a Warrior of Light. The only problem with this scenario is that as an older player and a brand new player, you two would never be able to share the same experience or troubles because of how many changes the game has as made to the benefit and detriment of player enjoyment.

If you had to ask me, as a 2.0 beta player, when was the “peak” of Final Fantasy 14 as an experience? It would have to be Shadowbringers of course. Notoriously the best story writing the game had ever seen, some of the most memorable raid encounters, and job design that still kept each of them nuanced and mechanically different that it would take both time and effort to get a much better grasp on how to master it. The expansion already has its hundreds of accolades and reviewed praises for exactly what it is. But unfortunately, with the nature of mountains, there is either a higher peak to reach or a steep fall from that point. This elaborate story is just a way that I can illustrate that many carry nostalgia of the game that was compared to the game as it is now. For many that started their journey in the following expansion, Endwalker, they would never really know the same experience or enjoyment that many older players like myself did.

But is that a good thing or a bad thing? Maybe some are completely indifferent to the experience while being in both camps? I would like to argue this point: If the story is the one constant thing between both of these camps, what are the other factors that would mold a different experience for each WoL? First and foremost its a video game, which means that this game has to carry entertainment value within its systems so that you can derive a form of enjoyment right? Game fun = Good. Now while people have varying levels of depth they enjoy a system’s mechanical backend, I believe its universally agreed that if you’re playing a class fantasy, you would want to have mechanical diversity and differing roles for these jobs to be entertaining. And then you must consider just where this mechanical diversity and roles will shine so that your choices and investment in learning payoff with fun/good experiences/personal enjoyment. Secondly, the MMO part of the RPG, the difference in social networks and experience drastically effects a person’s desire to complete various milestones and challenges set. And lastly, just what makes up the game’s meat. The hamster wheel that keeps players running, grinding and coming back to play, improve or just find comfort to relax.

Story + Classes + Content + People = ?

This formula isn’t anything new when it comes to the massive catalogue of MMOs that have gone online and offline in the past three decades. Between the climbs and declines, cost hemorrhaging, Bad PR or scandals and the massive amount of newly minted crowded funded scams. This genre is likely on its last legs with only sparce cash grabs that enter the market only to EOS within a few years. But this golden formula that companies have to solve in order to keep up like the few pillars that are left in the MMO world. So how does FFXIV stack up? The story has always been varying levels of ‘Good’ to its new low of “ugh its Dawntrail” but I would give that section a pass. As for the classes, I would have to say in its current iteration and its future projections, the classes would be one of the worst parts of the formula. The content itself has reached a formulaic consistency that essentially been played to birth, life and death and is so predictable that most people can roadmap exactly what content releases when because of how rigid its release are. As for the community, I think it speaks for itself when it comes to its responses and presence on social media. Tribalistic camps with varying levels of gatekeeping, the overly known meme of “Great Community BTW”, and the constant infighting of “hardcore vs casual” that many MMOs deal with. For the sake of my own sanity (TLDR: Endwalker pacing and execution into the worst received expansion, Dawntrail. It kind of speaks for itself.) we’ll keep away from the subjective nature liking plot points and narrative to move onto a more detailed breakdown of the two main issues which affects the last portion; Classes and Content.

Class Reductionism

If you were lucky enough to have played prior to Endwalker, you would probably already know where I’m getting at when I say that classes are the worst they’ve been. But to give a proper breakdown for people who might have never seen another MMO or played the original forms. We used to have “Class Identity” that people have been recently a buzz about but it was stripped away for years in the guise of “ease of use for the class” and “reduction of buttons needed”. Now I’m not saying every class was released in a perfect state that was an instant hit and not a completely weird mish-mash of ideas (looking at you Gun Mage.) But we existed in a time where experimentation for a class applauded for its efforts in giving a new direction. If you compared a class skill tree from World of Warcraft to FFXIV, you would be crying in the “options” that are at least afforded for you to make before you go on Icyveins and select “Top DPS spec” and copy paste. Our class dynamics have reached such a low point that we don’t even get effect changes to our skills out side of slight potency tweaks till a patch or expansion completely guts a class of a skill or mechanic that gets shoved into your passive traits. I’ll give you an example:

Machinist is a class that has had a turbulent history of ups and downs and changes. Eventually finding themselves into a universally disliked position because of how their kit has been ripped apart, changed and Frankenstein’d into its current day form:

• Machinist was once a psuedo-pet class that also had the unique mechanic of managing ammo.
• They used to have their own CD that added a vulnerability to enemies that would let you do more DPS.
• They used to have a Single Target and AoE turret depending on the situation you needed. They also provided party regens depending on the turret.
• You used to stance dance AND manage a DoT+ a damage buff so you could keep optimal damage.
• You used to manage proc based actions (Much like current dancer) that would give you variance in your gameplay.
• You used to have multiple forms of CC which all had their uses in the current content of their time.

None of the above can even be seen or referenced to the current iteration of the class which goes to show how little choice and depth is left. Is it as easy to pilot as a white mage? No. But you’d be hard pressed to tell me how a class three expansions ago looks completely alien to what we have now. And that in my opinion was a good thing. This means content carried natural variance due to the class which made almost every encounter different each pull. And this is far from the only class that has had the same treatment performed to its core identity and I could go onto every single one to do a comparison but people wouldn’t know this information unless they scour the net or have prior knowledge of the class. But for the sake of comparing, current Machinist now has:

• Only the battery gauge to manage. They build and dump meter as needed till Wildfire comes off cooldown to try and stack as much damage as possible with the buff window. (ahah 2 minute scary and bad! OOoooH)
• One form of AoE combo, while many skills have been updated to just naturally do AoE. (Not that its needed since much of the content is only ST.)
• Only party synergy in the form of Dismantle and Tactician for defensive/debilitating cooldowns.

That’s about all I can really glean in terms of the class depth even when I’m being generous with Wildfire since they BOTH had that CD since its inception. Its a crime to how consistent “change” for ease of use for a class only boiled down to many of its complexities being melted down into passives or stripped off entirely. So again, imagine these changes but for every class in the game with even more severe cases to the point where its one of the most laugh/joked about classes (Sorry Summoner). And to what end? Does simplicity to use bring you back to class satisfaction? Does a lack of variance elevate a class to unique? I think its fair to say that for the most part, Square Enix has nearly infinite choices to make on how to improve classes but I doubt they will pick one that works in favor of longevity.

Also as a little side note for the story lovers. How’s it feel to get snubbed out of unique class stories for 3 expansions in a row? I loved Shadowbringer’s role quests because it brought much needed context to the WoL’s of The First. But now? Pfft. The Endwalker story tie ups were kinda out there and Dawntrial’s role quests were just straight up goofy. We just no longer earn our class gear from our mentors but instead we walk to a vendor and pick it up. But we’re probably never going to see individual class questing because they would rather do less work with the abundance of extra time they have.

The Content Formula: Solved but Stale

Yoshi P has really found the formula that seems to satisfy just enough people to make them stick around. So what is that formula?

• Two new classes
• The Main Story
• 8 New dungeons
• 8 Raid Trials with Ex versions
• One eight man raid series with 3 separated divisions.
• One 24 man raid series with 3 separated instances.
• Two Relic series (Combat/Crafter+Gatherer)
• 1~2 Ultimate series Raid
• 1 Deep Dungeon
• Treasure map updates
• New Gimmick of the expansion. (Limited jobs, ‘New’ Midcore content, Island Sanctuary)

Admittingly this looks like a lot of content right? Now you have to imagine that list is what you’re given over a two year period. So the content should have longevity since these are the bulk of where your gameplay comes from. Well aside from three items on this list (Raid series, Ultimate Raid, Deep Dungeon) the other contents generally have a same day life expectancy to clear and that isn’t a bad thing. What is a bad thing is the value of reclearing the same content repeatedly and how stale it quickly gets. With how static and dry gearing is you only have to pay attention to clearing Savage difficulty and everything else becomes a sub-goal to whatever you want. With how little variation there is in gearing since the game’s start, I believe its reasonable to just assume that most of the entertainment is banked on difficulty and the experience it takes to get Best in Slot. But once you get that gear what else is there really to do? By design, even if you have the worst luck in the world, Square wants you raiding for 8 weeks minimum in order to get your BIS and once you’ve done, there is very little to chase at the top.

Its just strange isn’t it? 8 weeks to gear a class while also waiting 4-5 months between patches for content? Old fights? Old Farms? Reclearing the Ultimates 200 times? Going into PF and trying clear everyone else and sabotaging loot? Make an alt? Or the magical word that everyone loves; (UNSUB). The reality is, an MMO is supposed to be the adventure you make it, but if you’re only content focused then you’re going to be starved a lot faster then others. Believe it or not, I think that the infinite grind of rank #1 PVP is probably a longer grind then any of the raids. Evergreen content doesn’t really exist because of how things change constantly within FF14’s ecosystem. Job changes, system changes, nerfs, lack of reward ect, Unsyncing content. There are just so many reasons why dead content is known as it is. I’ll rant about this whole “spooky” idea that fight design and how awful its become comparatively.

So what’s the end point of this yapping?

I don’t know man. I feel like there is just a lot of people who talk so confidently about the current state of the game but have no context to what used to exist. Do players have to get dragged along with what a company wants? Do we not have an actual voice to change things? See I don’t even know because its by design. Square Enix is as transparent as tar when it comes to EVERYTHING. We will never know anything about the game or what direction its going until we get official announcements from ticketed events. Who are these players that ask for everything to get dumbed down and simplified every patch? Who are the players they allegedly talk with about the current state of the game? How do they even decided balancing from a patch to patch basis?

One thing I do know, is that I hate uneducated opinions. People who have only played one MMO, people who don’t do content, people who talk with their whole chest out but don’t actually know the difference between jobs per expansion. There are SO many loud, “bros and girliepops” who like “feeling” like the things are in a good place but not even knowing what balancing is tooled around. But these same people have like 50k+ tweets of just pure yapping without EVER touching the content in the game and somehow have more influence in the social sphere. Iunno weird energy… but if you feel offended by then you’re probably one of the bigger problems when it comes to having a cohesive understanding about why the game is in the state it is and not just vomiting the same thing people read from a tweet 2 months ago.