Patch 7.3: The Promise of Tomorrow (August 5th, 2025)

[arus2001]

Sounding like SE sent lawyers after Mare, too. Wouldn't be shocked if the game suddenly sees a significant sub lapse because they took away one of the few toys RPers had.

[Ragns]

Sounding like SE sent lawyers after Mare, too. Wouldn't be shocked if the game suddenly sees a significant sub lapse because they took away one of the few toys RPers had.

Weird that SE goes after modders now, considering mods have been here since 1.0. I guess their lawyers didn't like the screenshots of these horny Costa del Sol ERPers going around lately.

[arus2001]

On the one hand, they probably don't like their servers get clogged with player-staged events. However, this is still possible without mods.

On the other, mods allow you to use their cash shop glams without actually buying them, so they probably see it as lost revenue. Moreover, you have the absolutely braindead modders that sell mods, oftentimes ripping assets from other games, and thinking it's cool to make money off SE's IP.

So, while Glamourer technically exists for now, whether or not they go after that and/or Dalamud remains to be seen. I guess I can't rule out some kind of UK censorship bullshit being a factor, too.

[Ragns]

Also, on a maybe unrelated topic, Yoshi-P discusses porting FFXIV to the Switch 2: https://www.videogameschronicle.com/...ntasy-14-port/

[Gokulo]

Weird that SE goes after modders now, considering mods have been here since 1.0. I guess their lawyers didn't like the screenshots of these horny Costa del Sol ERPers going around lately.

I haven't been following the drama too much, yesterday was actually the first time I heard about mare, but are we sure it's SE? I have seen theories it's actually related to the new UK laws.

But also saw the dude himself basically leaked his private info on GitHub, making himself an easy target to shut down

[Ragns]

I haven't been following the drama too much, yesterday was actually the first time I heard about mare, but are we sure it's SE? I have seen theories it's actually related to the new UK laws.

But also saw the dude himself basically leaked his private info on GitHub, making himself an easy target to shut down

For now there's no proof of anything, and it's entirely speculative based on what the Mare dev said.

It could be SE, it could be the UK laws, it could be Mastercard, since he made money for it from his Patreon, and it could also be a made-up excuse because the guy was tired of maintaining it.

[Gokulo]

Got it. Yet people are already review bombing the game because of it, lol. You gotta wonder if they even liked playing it at this point, maybe quitting because of this will actually be good for them

[Lucavi]

Could be anything from cash shop sales tanking (with investors thinking that no one's buying if they can just datswap since the code's in-game) to Switch prep to UK law jitters or anything inbetween. All I know is that its not good to cull a portion of your player-base and revenue when you're already bleeding subs in a down Xpac. SE sails on its MMO revenue, and this'll be another slice into that leg.

If only all the moral purists screeching about a "victory over the degenerates" could understand that, but never let a moment pass where a human loses the forest for the trees.

[arus2001]

Got it. Yet people are already review bombing the game because of it, lol. You gotta wonder if they even liked playing it at this point, maybe quitting because of this will actually be good for them

I know a lot of people are using it as an excuse to have a laugh at the expense of ERPers, but the reality is RPers have never really had an MMO "for them" and XIV has ultimately been more about making due with what little scraps have been given with mods picking up the slack where SE refuses to. So, whether it's SE becoming more strict about their ToS, UK BS, first rule of fight club, or whatever, it doesn't matter because the overall landscape for creative writers who want graphical representation and the ability to create user-generated content like a glorified DM is virtually non-existent. Any community that exists has always been in stubborn defiance as the numbers chasing relative to "roll-play" has always gotten priority over the creative nuance of "role-play" in these titles.

Skirting along social media, youtube vids, and so on related to this has more or less reminded me there are some people out there who legitimately don't deserve video games as entertainment. It's right up there with why I refuse to touch Souls games or the "likes" because I have zero interest in advocating for or supporting the sort of gatekeeping that goes on in those communities. To me, telling a good collaborative story is way more difficult than spamming a rotation for 10-15m and hoping everyone else isn't an idiot over the course of a few hours. But at the same time, the people who have never really committed to good RP and cultivated the linguistic skills to do such aren't going to get that and XIV's MSQ fellating us as god-slayers does no favors in terms of keeping egos in check and we frankly saw that manifest through DT discourse in general. Sharing an awesome story with others is also something you can't Jeuno-pose over, which naturally earns the disfavor of those sorts of gamers. That's something that actually COULD be addressed, but it would require SE to basically hire multiple RP GMs per server to both facilitate and reward play alongside expanding open world lore. Yeah, effort, I know.

This isn't going to be the end of XIV in the end, but it's still not doing it any favors. Doesn't really help WoW is now copying some stuff XIV has done, but with improvements. Of course, it's still WoW, so it's gonna be an ugly ass game that deters some RPers by default. Pretty much anything and everything SE sees within the mod community should be a hint on what players want and to act on it if reasonable. But here we are, years, if not a decade later, with spaghetti code often the excuse not to. It's just a dumb ball to fumble.

[Lucavi]

Humanity is nothing but gatekeeping. Old money hates new money. The noble class hated the wealthy merchant class. The marines hate the army. No True Scotsman fallacies. None of this is a surprise, and humans have always been about getting their jollies from the misfortune of someone else.

None of that helps SE's financials, and unlike WoW, SE doesn't have other massive games to fall back on for profits when their big MMO slips and falls on its ass. No King money from Candy Crush and suburban moms. No CoDs endlessly churning out proifits each year. XIV propped up the company, much like XI did before it. This is going to sting for them. To many people, XIV was Second Life but with a functioning plot and good-ish character models. A game you could ERP in, then actually go and do something else when the clubs weren't hopping, and while I can certainly see SE's side regarding not wanting their game to be represented by slutmogs and screenshots of fat-asses and giant tiddies, they need every sub they can get, until they get their shit together and rediscover what fans who left actually want.

The game survived without a massive ERP scene, so its not like this shit is mandatory for their success. MARE didn't even exist during the Shadowbringer years (though of course ERP as a concept did), so this isn't some deathknell, obviously, but they better fucking crush 7.0. That's all I'll say, haha.

[Lokus]

Supposedly, this particular plugin used the same AccountID thing to share information with other players which is what the stalker plugin people were worried about recently uses. Considering SE is trying to make their blacklist stronger and AccountID more secure, Mare probably got caught in the crossfire, assuming it was actually SE that sent the legal notice which no one ones but the dev. It also doesn't help that while SE's stance has always been, "Don't use 3rd party tools while playing our game. But we're not gonna be invasive and search your computer for these things," people are absolutely idiots who constantly keep flying close to the sun and get shocked pikachu face when the sun is hot. If players quit over this, it's whatever. They clearly don't actually like what FFXIV offers. Second Life is what they actually want to play.

[Lucavi]

Second life doesn't look as good, or have a functioning story and gameplay around it. Not all ERPers only chill in limsa and nightclubs.

[arus2001]

Pretty much been saying for a long time now that MMOs killed MU*s (text-based games for those that don't know, more or less) because the graphical elements allowed the lazy RPers to not have to spend so much time on details. Chasing the prettier game has basically been baked into the DNA of the RP casual since EQ and XIV just happens to be the most visually appealing for the majority that are into it at the moment. WoW may have had its time a la Goldshire memes and such being the more popular game over XI back then, but it's both pretty dated and understandably too cartoony/stylized. I tend to look at people just wanting to banish RPers to SL or whatever as a slur at this point and just a perpetuation of that roll-play vs. role-play problem that's always existed through lack of support. It's fine if RP isn't your thing, but as long as devs keep treating it as a third-class activity, it's basically a self-fulfilling prophecy or scorn and dismissal.

Now, braindead as SE's move may be here, player reaction has kinda been tempting me to just cut ties with XIV and drop it all together. I've always known a lot of MMOers are assholes and it's mostly been contained to the casual vs. hardcore side of things, but this has dragged out ToS absolutists that think these things are at all legally binding (in the scary "Let's let corporations control what's on our PCs!" kinda way...), grasping at straws of some JP law that was hardly written to prevent Shinji from playing a big titty catgirl when it's more about hacking/disrupting service/cheating/etc., and the general acceptance of the decay of gaming that comes from defending the prominence of the cash shop (and the flawed logic that a used mod is a lost sale) alongside they decay of content delivery/quality from a multi-billion dollar company. The people who're raid-logging aren't what makes a server look lively, but golly gee we're supposed to believe what they say matters most all around.

[Shenrien]

Supposedly, this particular plugin used the same AccountID thing to share information with other players which is what the stalker plugin people were worried about recently uses. Considering SE is trying to make their blacklist stronger and AccountID more secure, Mare probably got caught in the crossfire, assuming it was actually SE that sent the legal notice which no one ones but the dev. It also doesn't help that while SE's stance has always been, "Don't use 3rd party tools while playing our game. But we're not gonna be invasive and search your computer for these things," people are absolutely idiots who constantly keep flying close to the sun and get shocked pikachu face when the sun is hot. If players quit over this, it's whatever. They clearly don't actually like what FFXIV offers. Second Life is what they actually want to play.

Don't know how it would, you paired your character and world to a key and the key is what was used to be seen when shared from person to person. Nothing should have been touching the AccountID as there was no way for mare to make a connection if you did not have a character paired. Example: I had my Midgardsormr character paired but if I logged into any of my alts on Midgardsormor or any other server that are not paired to that key then there is no visibility if I'm online or not and no sync performed.

[Lokus]

The Second Life jab was specifically for those quitting over this cause, like I said, they don't care about gameplay, current content, or story enough to keep playing regularly. They want a specific brand of game that FFXIV doesn't offer. And funny enough, there are a large amount of popular clothing, sculpt, and hair mods that originate from SL or take inspiration from SL, so clearly, there's a good chunk that enjoys that style.

On another note, over the weekend, there was a big RP event that was pirate themed, that gathered a decent amount of people, all with no mare. While mare could have enchanced that event, it was def not a deal breaker. I have gone to many venues while bored to people watch with friends or solo and joined the venue syncshells and 90% of the time, people's characters did not fit the XIV asthethic. Characters full of black out tattoos, size HH tits and ass, dicks and cooter hanging out, neon glowing hair and scales and the same fucked up doll face sculpt. A common complaint from old ffxiv rpers is that the rise of venues, greatly facilitated by mare, has diminished actual rp in favor of people just wanting to show off their new mods. Some people are addicted enough they are going with the mare alternative started by the pedos that were banned from mare, and stupidly, they are advertising that shit ingame.

As a final not, aside from devs providing more emotes and dances, housing, and clothing options, what do you really want devs to do with regards to RP? They have their plate full making their game with their vision. XIV devs can't even manage that sometimes with content delays or underwhelming content releases.

[Anoat]

Me, a console only player all this time: y’all are weird af

[Lokus]

Don't know how it would, you paired your character and world to a key and the key is what was used to be seen when shared from person to person. Nothing should have been touching the AccountID as there was no way for mare to make a connection if you did not have a character paired. Example: I had my Midgardsormr character paired but if I logged into any of my alts on Midgardsormor or any other server that are not paired to that key then there is no visibility if I'm online or not and no sync performed.

Thats how I understand it worked initially but the mare dev moved to accountid later on then backtracked after 7.3. This was something mentioned by the penumbra dev so I assume it's correct. Whether it's part of the reason mare went down, we won't know for sure though. Someone also mentioned that the way mare was working was actually giving SEs servers some weird errors which def puts a target on it.

[arus2001]

The answer to what SE can do is not one that can be answered in a simple paragraph or two. At the barest of fucking minimums, they've had feedback from players about what they'd like to see relative to character creation, the glamour system, and dyes. That's just scratching the surface on establishing your own personal identity, really. And while it's certainly fair to not want to see dicks flopping around, the reality of the current engine's restrictions is that myriad body types are not supported with racial restrictions further limiting that. Want to be a tall female au ra that isn't built like a twig? No. Fuck you. You can try to argue that someone with H-cups doesn't fit the aesthetic, but not only do those exist in reality, people who aren't just gooners do associate their identity to them and aren't just automatically surgically altered sex workers, either. Given all the credit card and UK shit going on right, taking the conservative puritan side of creative oppression probably isn't the best look. Is this to say all mods are good or "fit" within the world? No. Frankly, the same could be said of Solution 9 and related "futuristic" clothing, but it's still there all the same. I'd even insist ripping assets from other games is poor taste and the having the audacity to charge is heinously stupid. I can't control what other people do just as SE can't.

Putting that aside, approaching RP from the concept of User Generated Content is where things get more demanding, but that also doesn't mean we just throw our shoulders back with a shrug because poor little SE might have to invest a bit more in the game than they have to make up for a decade+ of lacking attention. With what exists now, housing is obviously flawed on various levels with the concept of the lot system, not being instanced, and forcing people to maintain a sub. Additional quibbles could be levied on placement restrictions (and needing to bug or 3P tool) alongside making houses more meaningful in general. Instancing would likely be the first required step and Island Sanctuary has roughly proven they can give people their own individual little slice of a server, but going the extra mile on housing would mean allowing people to construct neighborhoods with friends while having additional control over the nearby environment. This also includes the construction of secondary buildings like bakeries, smithies, clothing stores, or whatever. In effect, you need to view these small towns as a potential stage for people to congregate in a way the open world hubs really don't allow.

Keeping things within the players' hands in terms of additional UGC, let's take the idea of instanced housing and adapt it for the creation of quest lines and custom dungeons/encounters. While none of these would technically be canon, and of course subject to to reasonable ToS limitations (can't recreate GoT, script orgies, or whatever), it still gives the creatives something to make and others to experience, especially in longer content lulls. I'm not talking exploitable bullshit like having level 1 mobs drop i750 gear, either. You'd be there more for the story and a bit of challenge. I'm going way back in time and thinking Starcraft custom map makers here, but if it'd be easier to think of it more as FFXIV Minecraft, then whatever works. Of course, while this works as a sort of fire and forget service, you may have some players who would actively create content on the fly a la a D&D campaign. If one is wanting to be lore faithful, SE will also have to put more information out there about zones, NPCs, and so on. I'd even assert a monsterless open world mode should be a thing so people can just casually walk around.

Reflecting my own GM MU* experience and what I talked about a couple posts back is for SE to also have their own official RP event organizers. It doesn't have to be an every day kind of affair, but it can still function as an option to encourage players into activities that aren't solely combat-related or mindless craft grinds like Ishgard/CE. What happens here is definitely more open-ended and I wouldn't even be against putting exclusive rewards within. Stuff like the holiday events are what I'd consider a baby step toward this end, but these are also commonly stocked with useless filler that people just skip CS to get the mount/minimum/glams ASAP. There's a whole world of potential lore out there that can be expanded upon and gradually build upon itself. However, there's still the MSQ divinity brainwashing problem where some people will have to get over their eighth grader syndrome to understand that RP isn't a wrecking ball you throw at a problem. Not doing this from ARR up is collectively why it'd be way harder to do now, too. And it's not a "this isn't the game for that!" kind of thing. It's a fear of shaking up the MMO status quo and potentially realizing that maybe raiding is stale and ultimately insatiable. If this means SE doesn't make another shitty gacha that gets shut down in six months to make it happen, so be it. XIV money should go to XIV first. It should be a standard practice the moment any company decides to make a live service game. And yet XIV players have gradually accepting less and less.

[Lokus]

I had a much longer reply but even though you got ahead of the argument at the end, you are still asking for an entirely different game. A game that SE has never shown an inkling of making. As far as character customization, as much as I would like to have infinite options, SE is in charge of the rules and lore of the races in-game. And those rules are obviously decided on a gameplay level as well since the greater amount of customization, the more data is being transferred and at a certain point, gameplay takes a hit. Mare proved this very succinctly as it wasn't a rare occurrence for people's PCs to lag like crazy or blow up whenever they entered a venue and loaded 10+ people's customized characters, often times the fault of one person that decided their personal identity was a 7 ft female au ra with neon scales, a sharingan, full body tattoo, fiery hair that covered their back, and a 4k eyepatch.

[Anoat]

Someone on one of the shitpost XIV Reddit threads said now we are getting the full Emet-Selch experience by having to see all our friends as mere shells of their former glory lmao