Originally Posted by
Elphy
Draylo just cant help but slam xiv every chance he gets lol
To quote a famous bard "The lady doth protest too much, methinks"
But I digress.
18-man content in this game is going away faster and faster and xi is basically being rendered the first solo mmo. But with numbers fluctuating and more often than not dwindling its no surprise they are making low man content a priority. The story is fantastic and some of the old endgame content was some of the best in the mmo-sphere (dynamis, salvage, einherjar, even nyzul was a hoot and so was mmm if you gave it a chance) but they have been broken down and/or reworked in such a way that its just not appealing anymore. Couple that with the poor ui, thousands of menus, silly lock out timers, etc and its not really a wonder that only the dedicated are sticking around and even they are starting to slip away. Plus who really wants to start building a weapon that's going to take months to well over a year sometime when you can just get a quick drop and move on, usually to a new game.
So the answer to why they did it is to just simply make it more accessible. It will be solo/trust friendly soon enough and then you wont even need 6 anymore. And like it or not xiv is the new money maker for se, not xi. So pleasing the few remaining by making accessible low-man content really is not a bad business plan. Just gotta roll with the punches if you have the insufferable urge to hold on.