At the start of this month FFXIV released its fifth expansion Dawntrail. The expansion comes with all the usual trimmings in same old FFXIV fashion: new classes, race adjustments or additions, new continents, +10 level cap, more dungeons and raids and of course the continuation of the famed storyline. Down the line, there will be lots and lots of tomes and tokens to grind in exchange for gear and more gear – a system that literally hasn’t changed in ten years and remains the repetetive endgame at the core of Eorzea.
Meanwhile SE have continuously increased the optional content (bloat) around it to a point where I have long lost sight of all the extra features and “games within the game” that make FFXIV rather overwhelming at times. Wanna dive into the various solo and deep dungeons of the game and relive some of that 8bit era nostalgia? Race chocobos and become lord of the Gold Saucer? Win every Triple Triad card game? Return to the old FFXI experience and grind your way through Eureka? Obtain a guild house and build a submarine? Level blue mage? Gain access to Diadem and become a master gatherer and crafter? Build up your personal island sanctuary? Obtain the different relic weapons? Pwn at PVP? The list goes on, completionists talk to your therapist first!
Why I’m not playing right now
To say that I’m not feeling the game right now would be an understatement. I haven’t bought the expansion as I’ve yet to finish the MSQ for Endwalker and I’m likely going to wait for a sale. Reading through the official expansion featurettte nothing strikes my fancy, it’s just a lot more of the same in abundance. Maybe my enthusiasm really ended with beating FFXIV’s unofficial endboss: the housing lottery.
For a moment I thought that leveling one of the new classes might bring me back; ranged magical DPS are usually my thing and the Pictomancer sounded fun in theory. But of course it isn’t – like everything in FFXIV nowadays, from three-page raid boss strategies to 100+ steps relic weapon guides, the newer the class the more nauseating the class mechanics and rotations. A quick look at a guide for dummies just told me two things: I don’t think I want to play a class with animations straight from Kingdom Hearts and I really cba to read 28-lines worth of infotext for a single spell. Much less do I care to commit all of it to memory. I am old – are you crazy?!
I really miss the days when MMOs were simpler. Maybe way down the line I can somehow rekindle my adventurer’s spirit and at least enjoy the new story quests and zone exploration in Dawntrail. Maybe the soundtrack is also worth listening to, that could be good.
We’re both getting old together!
But seriously, I will always see you and Shintar and Syp and Vidyala and all the rest as “young pups” because you’re all younger than myself or Wilhelm or Bhagpuss.
In one respect, I think that the longer an MMO is around, it creates bloat in rotations and in systems because a decently sized (and often vocal) subset of the player base wants new and more involved mechanics. They’ve already mastered the “old stuff”, so they want more complex stuff to challenge them. The problem is whether the developers should be catering to this portion of the player base or not; sure, they’re loyal and they’re committed and engaged, but are their demands also walling off your game from a general audience? In other words, are they unconsciously self-limiting the game so they can have their own private club?
When I hear people who play Retail WoW and speak about systems, they sound like they’re speaking a foreign language. And that’s despite me actively playing WoW Classic, so you’d think that the very basics between the games are similar. And while the “read quest, do quest, turn in” is the same, a lot of the mechanics and design philosophy have diverged to the point where I don’t recognize the modern game much. That doesn’t make the game objectively better or worse, just different. It also makes it plain that the game wasn’t made for me –or people like me– either.
I’m sorry that you’re feeling that same disconnect with FFXIV now, given all of the fun times you’ve had in the game, but I’d not give up on FFXIV quite yet. Yoshi P and his team have already proven that they can reinvent FFXIV before, so maybe they will again.
Haha thanks Red – I am glad there’s those blogger friends who consider me a young pup! 😀
There is definitely that conundrum of MMOs growing with the audience and that audience getting ever faster, better and also somewhat over-indulged. In FFXIV’s case many of the additions feel completely out of context at times and they’re poorly implemented with the rest of the world and story. It’s like a very chaotic quilt that generations of different people keep adding patches to.
I believe another aspect especially with these older MMOs has been a gradual shift between their main feature being “omg I am playing together with other people!” and just generic beating ‘content’ and accumulating stuff. A big part of that old wonder was just playing together on the internet. None of this matters anymore to the current audiences.
You’re right though, Yoshi-P has been a source of innovation in the past. We’ll see where it all goes as I battle my personal MMO blues. I’ve not written the game off entirely just yet.