does anyone else not play xiv as much as before after dt?

I log in every day still but I wouldn't exactly consider talking with my social circles "gameplay".

I play the game less but not because of the story or anything. The story has its issues, always has had, even if today it's more dire than usual for sure. I've always been a big lore nerd otherwise and I appreciate the lore, with the world building of the game still being the last bastion remaining fully functional. No, I play the game less because the amount of content I seriously take part in has dramatically thinned since I can't be arsed with savage and raiding anymore. Their pve is bland and stale. It's also not what I signed up for when I started playing.

So I do still spend probably as much time as I used to ingame, but actually doing things...? I'm not sure. I still try out their new content when it comes out like the latest chaotic, if just to make my own opinion about it by playing it, so I can then tell what I liked and what I didn't about it. I'll do the same when the next promised content pieces come out.

I've been playing less because there's just not much I feel like doing right now. I still do a few roulettes every couple of days, but until they get around to relics or exploratory zones or something, I'm catching up on other games.

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Originally Posted by grinkdaboy

i was hyped beyond belief to play dt and by the end of it i found myself checked out due to the nonsense that went on during the latter half of the story. i used to raid, do extremes, ultimates, eureka and all of that in shb and ew and now i barely log in at all. am i alone in feeling this way?

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Can you tell us 'why' you think that is though?
(In your case it's not 'clearly' because of content. You must have a gut feeling.)
Friends who happened to leave? Why did they leave?
Burnout and the raiding content was unsustainable and without that?
Why?

I'll provide a slightly different perspective from what has been said so far.

I'm an achievement hunter.
So in those moments when people often say "there is no content" I will dig through the achievement log and still find something to do, because even if I'm currently sitting at 93% completion, there is still a lot of older content I haven't been through yet.
Before Dawntrail released, I had already planned what content to focus on this expansion: I wanted to get all the Endwalker savage and EX mounts unsync, solo Deep Dungeons (and farm Timeworn Artifacts for ShB relics at the same time, because I've spent enough time in Delubrum Reginae already), finally get the Mahjong titles, and start working on the Accursed Hoard grind.
That on top of all the new content, of course.

The reason I became an achievement hunter is not for self-gratification or for flexing titles, it's because I enjoy collecting things, customization, and, most of all, because I want these titles and rewards for my character (I got into fishing only to get the Sea Dragoon title for my DRG, I got the Saint of the Firmament title only because I thought it would make a good AST title, I got to crystal in the first season of Crystal Conflict just for the Crystal Keeper title and then never touched ranked PvP again, etc).
As long as I had my character, I could find something to do, even if people around me were complaining about the 2min meta, the difficulty of raids, the lack or the redundancy of content, etc.

Then came the graphical update, which considerably changed the appearance of the character I've been hunting achievements for.
As a result, all the plans I mentioned have come to an abrupt halt. 7.0 cutscenes were difficult to watch. I can't even take gpose screenshots anymore.
(7.1 addressed some of those issues, but the response from the dev team over the past 8 months has been so ambiguous and poor that I have no idea what to expect from 7.2 or later)

Now I do the "bare minimum" compared to how I used to play.
(it's probably still a lot compared to other people, but sunk cost fallacy got me in its clutches and I gotta spend those leves...)

Job design and job balance are constantly being reworked with each update, the story is constantly progressing with each patch, and new raid designs are released every 6 months or so, so even if I may not be satisfied with the current state they're in, I know that things can/have to/will get better in the future.
I do not share the same optimism about the graphical update, which was a one-time thing, and was countlessly touted as making the game look good enough "for the next 10 years".
(well, compared to stuff that came out this past year, I can already say I highly doubt the new graphics will last that long...)

I've already said it, but what keeps me subbed at the moment is sunk cost fallacy.
But in the current gaming landscape where more and more games want to take more and more of your time everyday with dailies, weeklies, regular updates, stamina, etc, there are only so many games one can afford to play, and FFXIV is being pushed more and more in the background, so even that may not be enough to keep me logged in in the future.

It was Endwalkers lack of content and death of OG Monk that did it for me. I'll do a few roulettes through the week and Savage reclears and be done with it.

The 4 month schedule has really killed it. Taking extra time to release less content just isn't good enough. The game will be dead soon enough if this keeps up. Even the announced content doesn't interest me. Space Island sanctuary and another 100 floor pointless content tower. Nah, I'm good.

Just release more 24 man raids and 8 man trials. Fed up with dungeons, just give me battle content that doesn't involve trash mobs.

DT really made me feel the game was not even taking me seriously as the player anymore, so from my pov it was the game that broke off a formerly strong relationship with me rather than the other way around. I am not blind to when I am being taken for granted. I gave this game my best for years, and it just couldn't be bothered to make an effort for me in return.

I play a lot more than I used to before DT. But I'll attribute that to the fact that finally, after years since I started playing, I was able to make enough time for raiding. So I found a static and started doing high end content and I'm thoroughly enjoying it.

If it wasn't for that, I'd say I'd probably login and play equally as often as I did before DT - which was pretty much also every day, but not for a significant amount of time (enough to send out retainers, do a roulette, check in on friends, then log out again).

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Originally Posted by Archeron

I won't squarely place the blame on Dawntrail for having played less. It's two reasons for me mainly.

1. Prolonged content drought

There is literally nothing to do, patches come out after 5 months, and these patches have so little content sometimes you can complete everything at a very casual pace in less than a week. (Especially in Endwalker...) Meanwhile I can boot up a free to play game, and I constantly have goals to work towards, new content coming out every month, and better value for my $15/mo if I were to spend it on them. This is a paid subscription MMORPG, one that's keeping Square Enix afloat. Neglecting it, and pushing your audience away can only end badly. There is nothing for me to do, so I play other games, and have no reason to come back to FFXIV.

2. The community leaves much to be desired

This community prides itself on being "The Best gaming community", while also displaying some of the most entitled, selfish attitudes I have ever seen. This game harbors a dark underworld of stalking, and harassment (Which even persists after changes to Blacklisting). The more normal people quit the game, the more exposed you get to the two extremes you'll see on this game. One side, will bend over backwards for sprouts, and make unreasonable demands of people to accomodate the sprout, and will go out of their way to crucify anyone who makes a percieved transgression towards a new player. Lets stop pretending duty support hasn't been in the game for years... Then you have the Hardcore raiders who are incapable of putting up with even the most trivial of setbacks, and who are incapable of teaching people strategies, and just expect people to know everything, and execute every mechanic flawlessly without failure. The extreme gatekeeping and toxicity in PF's being a prime example of the worst our community has to offer.

When my friends quit playing this game, I'll quit with them - and I probably will not return until 8.0 (Assuming major steps are taken to address current issues that have persisted for several expansions at this point.)

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i can vouch for the toxicity. I literally got doxxed just for pointing it out. And ive been harassed in the game for years by either HC raiders who think its not ok to parse low or members of a certain community who easily point the finger of "phobia" when you disagree with literally anything they say or do

I can't relate. I play it the same amount really. Probably more lately because I got done with some real life distractions.

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Originally Posted by sindriiisgaming

i can vouch for the toxicity. I literally got doxxed just for pointing it out. And ive been harassed in the game for years by either HC raiders who think its not ok to parse low or members of a certain community who easily point the finger of "phobia" when you disagree with literally anything they say or do

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That's not what happened, you got called out for using mods and also for harassing players because they had low parses and making fun of them by hunting their logs page.

Stop derailing threads.