I edited my post.
It was meant in general - both sides are as bad as they come with bashing.
I get the general concern regarding rewards and their frequent replacements, heavily due to how stats work in this ridiculously vertical/linear progression game. It's like leveling up, in that there's no reason to be playing at level 59, when you could be playing at 60 (you'd never care to look back). This feeling has been known about to happen since ARR launched. I think that initially, the devs didn't want to introduce a gear system that essentially forced players to have to go back to old content to get gear they'd need for current content, similar to how certain "hated" games like XI conducted itself...
Ironically, they obviously went that route to entice/compel people to routinely do old content anyway, be it any reason deemed necessary (e.g. filler activity, help new players, etc). The treadmill suffers because of that. Just like most content they newly introduce, their reward system since the beginning has been half of what it should have been (except half being one possible route, the other being half of a different one). It's like they chose to go vertical progression under the mindset of not forcing players to do old content too much for gear, only to keep that vertical progression and use horizontal progression methods that don't work for vertical (doing old content).
I appreciate what they seem to intend to do with this game, but there's a lot of half assed execution going on. The devs/Yoshi-P tend to have great vision and excellent ideas. The problem is, as I've said many times in the past regarding this sort of topic, that their execution is pathetic. Either problems arise that should have been prevented based on prior content (e.g. stance on win-trading, bots/hacks, hated perspective on methods to acquire stuff - e.g. FATE integration) or they come from content that is new but isn't fully executed properly, adding to the filler and dull limitations that they are often criticized for. I mean, we still apparently have that housing issue of furniture limitations... 200 for an L is kind of sad. Basically, you're playing a sub MMORPG that is being developed with the same execution standards you would expect of an F2P or mobile game. The biggest difference as far as money goes being the polish to what is half-assed executed (e.g. graphics, balance, story, etc).
People need to stop saying that their relic has been invalidated. Your weapon didn't stop glowing and become incapable of killing things.
Why did you bother with the anima weapon in the first place? Did you do it because you enjoyed the quest? Because you really liked the look of the weapon? Or did you really put in 2 years of, "work" so your weapon could be BiS for a whopping 2 or 3 months at the end of the expansion when it's just overkill and Stormblood will make your weapons obsolete in short order anyway?
If you're going to take your ball and go home at the mere thought of someone getting a luckier roll than you, then you just need to stay away from RPGs in general.
You're speaking to an audience of players that are shocked at the idea that expansions mean their current gear becomes obsolete. That's an even more depressing state of ignorance to be in than someone that plays this game and is shocked at gear becoming obsolete with a new raid tier.
What is ignorant is that you think people don't accept that their gear will be obsolete in Stormblood. Everyone knows and expects that i275 will be levelling gear when stormblood releases. However that isn't for 3 months (which in this game is a long time due to how quickly patches come out). People are less concerned about the fact that gear becomes outdated and more that the devs are reckless about invalidating content. There is a HUGE difference between a gear cycle coming to an end and the devs randomly dishing out BiS rewards just because they don't have faith in content.
What if in 3.1 they put a weapon better than Omega1 in palace of the dead, is that acceptable now? I bet there are a lot of people are now subconciously afraid of that, and that distrust could affect the 4.0 raid scene.
As noted multiple times prior, I did indeed put all the effort into my anima so I would have a BiS weapon from completion to expansion. And I'm not the only one. You need to realize and accept that different people had different motivations for completing their anima and respect that, even if theirs differed from yours.
You may not think that, but it doesn't change the fact that people in the topic are of that level of ignorance just to prove a separate point.
And so on. I also took note of the problem you're trying to express in an above reply, but did so without needing to be appalled at the idea of gear becoming obsolete (especially in the face of an expansion or any final content patch). People taking the expansions situation as a means of proving a point are of a level of ignorance that I intend to ridicule. They hurt the core argument far more than they help it.
I think having at least two games to jump between is always a good idea. I'm playing WoW right now and I'm having a great time. I hope Strormblood will give me that as well since I'm only gonna pay one subscription based game at a time, but a lot of the latest decisions that where made for FFXIV leave me a bit wary.
I say I'm only going to pay one at a time but I actually thought about getting two this month, because I thought maybe Diadem would be more that I'd expected. I'm glad I didn't buy a second one.
None of the MMOs I've played up untill now where completely perfect, how could they be with everyone having different opinions on the definition of perfect (the best of FFXIV, WoW and GW2 combined), so I've made the decision that I'll just play the one that has the least negatives at the time and the most fun potential. Or is bringing out a new expansion.
But I actually miss looking my character(s). So I know I have that to look forward to at least.