Originally Posted by
Dazusu
The inflow of new players to this game must be zero to 2 per week. SE shouldn't be concerned with trying to guide in new players or expending valuable resources on making the early game more welcoming. SE should be concerned about retention and attracting back players of the past who are already seasoned in FFXI and its archaic systems (and perhaps once enjoyed them).
I've just stopped playing mid-way through creating a Mythic (30K/30K Alex complete, to give you an idea of the progress). My main reason for stopping play? The lack of a challenge in content - and the slow delivery of new content to keep up with my rate of progression. Now please understand before you get your panties in a twist and start spewing out emotion at me in a reply -- I'm not one of those players that say "give me HNMs, make it harder, where's the challenge" etc etc - What I am saying is - everyone plays differently and everyone enjoys different things.
I realise I am fortunate enough to have kept a Linkshell that wasn't overrun with drama or unpleasant people, and I also realise not everyone has been lucky in finding a Linkshell where they fit in and can get stuff done.
A lot of Linkshells fell apart after Abyssea, I managed to keep the majority of mine together and kept a steady number of members, around 16-20. We were always end-game players (camped HNM successfully for many years) and enjoyed participation in tough events that caused repeat wipes and development of new strategies.
The latest Challenge (in my opinion) to be added was Delve and for a period of time, farming Tojil, the Shark and the Bee was actually fun -- working out the tricks and finding out the best job setup; but that content quickly got to the point of repeat farming and thus... monotony.
A lot of players enjoy the low man (or casual-esque) challenges like Skirmish, Salvage, WildKeepers etc, there were a lot of people who enjoyed the tougher content. These people have not really been catered for, for a long time. If they have, its been in short bursts and never continued (like the non-existent Legion expansion... but I have to say, Legion was crap and largely unfun, so that's OK in my book!);
The more recent example is the continuous addition of filler content/low man content and the non-existent expansion of Delve (to this point).
So back to my original point, me and the majority of my Linkshell have quit the game because we realised that up to now - the only fun thing to do is stand in town and enjoy the game music. I personally didn't want to complete a Yagrush to.... farm more Tojils. It's not fun, it's stale - and content is not delivered quick enough that satisfies all types of gamer. Its safe to say looking at the rate of FFXI posts on popular endgame forums like BlueGartr, a lot end-game players are bored of waiting for content that never comes, and have moved onto FFXIV.
Meanwhile people on this forum continue to complain and ask for trivial changes to the game to satisfy their own desires/methods of play. Everyone seems to want to change the game so it caters to their availability/schedule. Rather than create engaging content for both light players and heavy players - we're suggesting Arise recast timer changes, Soul Voice being extended to get off a song rotation (what, you need more than 60 seconds to cast songs on a party?)... ok I stopped reading that post when I got to "Chainspell Stun generates too much hate"
Please continue to enjoy the game that the vocal minority of you have cried into the ground.
Back to FFXIV for me... Madness.