A friendly warning to SE: Do NOT turn FFXIV into an Asia Grinder!

I would caution keeping this game just like every other westernized mmo that has failed as well.

Where you beat a whole patches/expansions content in a month then you have to unsub for 2 months to wait for the devs to add more content which will take a week to beat. That is a good way to get people to jump ship off your mmo for greener pastures.

The grind is a required element of MMOs. It is something the west has failed to learn and why almost every mmo made in the west outside WoW has failed hardcore within 2-3yrs.

Game needs both. You cannot be handed everything on a silver platter. And Difficult content is not the answer, ask the people beating turn 9 if it is still hard or taking weeks to beat a 2nd time... bet they say no. You cannot have long lived content without some form of grind (Work) involved.

This game is currently made up 100% of throw away content... it is just bad mmo design in general.

Well if they are gonna do the same thing as 1.0 but in a different way they aren't helping themselves.

Just wish Square-Enix would stop restricting their players and themselves with the way the approach handling content.

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Originally Posted by stupiddog

When I started to play ARR (as my first MMORPG) in February, I was completely blown away by the beauty and the main storyline. When patch 2.2 came out, I was very pleasently surprised about the content that comes after the main quest (esp. Hildibrand). However, after that, the production values seriously went downhill. Playing the same dungeons again and again and again, repeating the tasks the wild tribes give you again and again and again, the Atma crap (finished it, but definitely will never do that again), and now the Novus impertinence.

SE, when finishing a grindfest like Atma, at least give the player a pretty and long cutscene! I am starting to remember that for the price of 3-4 months subscription of FF14, what I got by paying ~40€ for FF13.3 was: A great storyline, about the same amount of FMV than the whole FF14 content released so far, and complete (!) voice acting in even the most trivial encounter. Your very own company shows that, in terms of production values, you CAN do better if you want (need?) to.

In case you think "oh well, one player yells, just ignore him", here is my prophecy about what will happen in the upcoming months if you proceed this way:

- More and more players will realize that only the names and Levels of their weapons and bosses change. Chasing numbers is not a long-term motivation.
- When the previous grind content is nerfed two months later (like you do now with the Myths of the current dungeons in relation to the cost of Animus maps), the following will happen:
- a) Wait for a patch, then subscribe for a month
- b) Grind new content
- c) Unsub
- d) Wait two months until next patch
- e) Go to step a).

Of course, you could introduce a penalty for returning players (like a reactivation fee or something like that). But that would surely backfire in that players will not return at all.

So, SE, hear my plea:
- Release MEANINGFUL and non-cheap content for the players to play between the big content releases
- Make the release cycles shorter. I would like two medium-size releases every 45 days much better than one big release every three months.
- Do proper voice acting, at least in all the cutscenes. Everything else looks rather cheap these days.

EDIT: Just to clarify: I do NOT have a problem with grinding per se. But I do have a problem if it is used as a cheap excuse for missing content, or for content with very poor production values.

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The grind is good. Its fun. Its an RPG.

Whats not so good is the reward for the grind.

Gear becomes obsolete a maximum of 3 months after acquisition, (thats if you obtain the best gear possible on day one of content release) plus there is no wonderful cutscene after obtaining an Atma/Animus/Novus etc. Its "here you go have fun."

It would be very very nice to get a small story/cutscene, and then have the item last longer than 2-3 months. Animus isnt even as good High allagan nor Novus but it takes 5 times the time. Lets face it nothing in this game is hard, its all just time. If you spent the time you spent farming Novus, in coil, you'd have turn 9 cleared. those people who think coil is actually hard are very silly.


Edit:
One way to solve this?

Give us something to do for the gear we obtain. Between patches include a piece of content that takes that "hard earned gear" and put it towards a guildhest (or some other content such as skirmish or something..) that grants 20k gil per player (full party of 8.) that has item level sync to the highest level gear for that patch. (So you cant simply out gear it and clear it easier come the next patch.) Or grants 500 myth and 100 soli. Or some other similar reward. (Cracked Materia, gil, tomes, seals, something thats worth it and puts the gear to good use.)

Hell they could probably even be lazy and make it an exact copy of the hardest fight of the current patch (turn 5 before 2.2, turn 9 of 2.2 etc.) with the boss having more hp and deal more damage in relation to being capped on gear.

I.E. Something RMT's cant do that rewards players for spending time capping gear each patch that isnt "throw away" such as things we need regularly to keep playing (gil, food, materia etc etc.)

Can even make the 'content' a leve so its not "spamable."

How bad is the grind in 2.28 really?

Just doing once per day rewards content you can get the following:

Duty Roulette (Expert): 80 Soldiery, 50 Mythology, and a Mysterious Map
Duty Roulette (High Level): 20 Soldiery, 100 Mythology (30/120 if you don't get AK or WP)
Duty Roulette (Low Level): 5 Soldiery, 100 Mythology
Duty Roulette (Main Scenario): 100 Mythology
Duty Roulette (Trials): 10 Soldiery, 70 Mythology (14/80 if you get ARR:Hydra/ARR:Chimera/BotBB and 16+/85 if you get a HM Primal/Thornemarch)
Beast Tribe Dailies: 42 Mythology (6 tier 2 quests)

These guarantee that you can get between 462 Mythology and 515 Mythology per day, 115 to 131 Soldiery and 1 Mysterious Map.

Just doing these and successfully opening every chest you should get all the Alexandrite you need for a Novus weapon in 48 days.

Considering that it is only day 3 of the patch, people seem incredibly impatient.

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Originally Posted by Ultimatecalibur

people seem incredibly impatient.

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Those 48 days aren't guaranteed since infusing has a chance to to fail because infusing isn't 100% all throughout all the infusion process. Keep in mind that's 48 days of constantly grinding.

Sure you can make it less days by farming through FATEs but the overall experience is unpleasant.

I was initially planning on doing a minimum of 3 Alexandrites a day.

Yet at this point I'll probably stick to the dailies unless I get a farm party instead of wasting my time through the unpleasant farming process and enjoy my time doing something else.

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Originally Posted by Gormogon

Those 48 days aren't guaranteed since infusing has a chance to to fail because infusing isn't 100% all throughout all the infusion process. Keep in mind that's 48 days of constantly grinding.

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Failed infusions don't eat Alexandrite, just the Materia.

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Originally Posted by Ultimatecalibur

Failed infusions don't eat Alexandrite, just the Materia.

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If this is true I can let out a sigh of relief. There's a near-endless supply of materia. Not so much Alexandrites.

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Originally Posted by yahhzoo

Grinding in a MMO. No way. What a surprise.

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Whenever I see this I die inside a little. Genres evolve over time, why should the MMO stick to the traditions of grindy content when other genres look to improve?

MMOs in the day were grindy, that doesn't mean they should be now.

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Originally Posted by Ultimatecalibur

Failed infusions don't eat Alexandrite, just the Materia.

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Yeah and materia isn't cheap for me. I don't do spirit bonding and I ain't spending that kind of gil on materia. So that fail process is gonna affect my overall chances on Novus.

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Originally Posted by Gormogon

-snip-

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I don't know the economies of any other servers but my own, but even with the optional (though the fastest) way to get materia, gil is really easy to get and/or replace. Between retainer ventures, daily roulette queues, challenge log completions and treasure maps, I've been able to make a substantial amount of gil in the past few months regularly. I don't craft and only gather for treasure maps. The price of the grade 4 materias are somewhat outrageous but I don't see them staying that way forever, and the lower grades are fairly cheap. All of this said I know everyone is different and have varying styles of play. In the meantime I'll continue to gather Alexandrite and purchase/infuse the lower grades and work my way up. The only thing limiting your chances is yourself in a sense. Also, no system is perfect and like other things it can definitely be improved.

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Originally Posted by zulu_kulu

i feel SE need to take their own advice on these long ass grinds


particularly the 2 point
http://www.siliconera.com/wordpress/...oto6_thumb.jpg

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Hey, an awesome thread we have here, ironic too, should I add! lol!
When they said , "Keep it fun" and "Never forget the fans", does that mean grinding isn't fun and fans don't have fun grinding to make the game meaningful? I always felt playing with the community of FF fans was fun in itself, guess I was wrong. (I guess we're forgetting our roots)

:rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by Lynneth

There was an MMO that had amazing production values called Star Wars: The Old Republic. Everything was voice acted and it was the most expensive game ever made.

It flopped. Hard. I'd rather SE put their resources towards making the game long lasting than making the non important quests voice acted.

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The reason SWTOR flopped came from the fact that the game was incomplete at launch and had next to no endgame content (eternity vault was bugged and Illum had to be taken offline because it kept crashing servers). You had a faction of discontents that were basically the guys that had nowhere to go when Star Wars Galaxies shut down, the PvP guys pissed off at the devs not doing much about assassins and shadows (knowing the guys that did nothing during the bright wizard fiasco were also on the SWTOR team didn't help).

You're right that SWTOR had high production values, but also made some VERY stupid mistakes prior to and on its launch.

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Originally Posted by Sparky

They added ATMA so that it would encourage people to run fates in numbers that would be beneficial to people trying to level up alt classes, and even to help newcomers out. I'd rather the grind if it means that the low level content is not significantly dumbed down.

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Atma is a poor mechanism for pacing. They could have come up with another reason to grind FATEs, though FATE grinding has burned out some individuals and as such I wouldn't have banked on FATE grinding at any point. People didn't take it well when it was part of the beastman quests. People didn't take it well when it was made part of unlocking Crystal Tower. Third time was not going to be the charm in this case.

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They are not adding these things because they want to be evil to players etc.

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No, instead they want to drag out playtime by applying RNG that is usually reserved for the "hardcore". It'd be one thing if the bosses in coil2 had a 5% chance of dropping an Atma for something the hardcores would have to rely on RNG to obtain; it'd give them a reason to run coil besides allagan gear.

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

The only thing limiting your chances is yourself in a sense. Also, no system is perfect and like other things it can definitely be improved.

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Yeah I do limit myself. I don't play the market board game. I didn't mind farming for atma, since it was 12 pieces, but something like infusing that has a chance to fail is something that affects me the most since I ain't blessed by RNGesus. Every MMO I've played isn't kind I have to do that extra grind to get "lucky".

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Originally Posted by Gormogon

Yeah I do limit myself. I don't play the market board game. I didn't mind farming for atma, since it was 12 pieces, but something like infusing that has a chance to fail is something that affects me the most since I ain't blessed by RNGesus. Every MMO I've played isn't kind I have to do that extra grind to get "lucky".

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I don't consider myself blessed either, nor do I play the MB but there are some who watch it a good bit of the day doing so. If I get something I sell it, end of story, then I continue about my business. Beyond that...well, I won't repeat what I said in my post with my other options. I'm not saying the whole materia infusion process is perfect but it IS feasible for those willing to put forth the time and effort...and/or gil to some degree.

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Originally Posted by Ultimatecalibur

How bad is the grind in 2.28 really?

Just doing once per day rewards content you can get the following:

Duty Roulette (Expert): 80 Soldiery, 50 Mythology, and a Mysterious Map
Duty Roulette (High Level): 20 Soldiery, 100 Mythology (30/120 if you don't get AK or WP)
Duty Roulette (Low Level): 5 Soldiery, 100 Mythology
Duty Roulette (Main Scenario): 100 Mythology
Duty Roulette (Trials): 10 Soldiery, 70 Mythology (14/80 if you get ARR:Hydra/ARR:Chimera/BotBB and 16+/85 if you get a HM Primal/Thornemarch)
Beast Tribe Dailies: 42 Mythology (6 tier 2 quests)

These guarantee that you can get between 462 Mythology and 515 Mythology per day, 115 to 131 Soldiery and 1 Mysterious Map.

Just doing these and successfully opening every chest you should get all the Alexandrite you need for a Novus weapon in 48 days.

Considering that it is only day 3 of the patch, people seem incredibly impatient.

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I'm reducing the grind even more than that: 1 Expert Roulette per day which = Novus in 71 days. I may also Fate grind while I wait for PvP queues or PF groups. By the way, I don't care that Novus isn't going to be the absolute best weapon, it's still going to be a competitive choice for all content and it looks cool. Sure, it's hard to get for alts but I think that's ok. I plan on just using T5 or Leviathan weapons for alts for now.

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Originally Posted by Gormogon

Yeah I do limit myself. I don't play the market board game. I didn't mind farming for atma, since it was 12 pieces, but something like infusing that has a chance to fail is something that affects me the most since I ain't blessed by RNGesus. Every MMO I've played isn't kind I have to do that extra grind to get "lucky".

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My partner has made over 5m gil just buying mats from vendors and selling them in stacks for just a little bit more. I make 300-500k per day crafting (takes about 2 hours). Spiritbonding is probably an even more lucrative method right now. However, the materia melds aren't even that expensive until you get to Tier 4s and you can easily make thousands of gil a day just doing roulette and working on your Challenge Log in preparation for the end melds. Yeah it requires effort because SE wants players to actually play. Sorry :(

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Originally Posted by zulu_kulu

i feel SE need to take their own advice on these long ass grinds


particularly the 2 point
http://www.siliconera.com/wordpress/...oto6_thumb.jpg

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Most people say FATE grinding is not fun, so what does SE do... ah yes make people grind fates for their relic... lol

But SE do never back down ;P

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Originally Posted by Purrfectstorm

Yeah it requires effort because SE wants players to actually play. Sorry :(

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I am playing but I'm playing to have fun not to force myself into having an unpleasant experience.

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Originally Posted by scarebearz

Most people say FATE grinding is not fun, so what does SE do... ah yes make people grind fates for their relic... lol

But SE do never back down ;P

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That's the SE we know and "love".

We get denied FFVII HD and Final Fantasy Type-0 being localized.
Yet they are happy to announce that FFXIII HD collection.

http://i.imgur.com/IMOLj6Q.jpg

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Originally Posted by Gormogon

I am playing but I'm playing to have fun not to force myself into having an unpleasant experience.

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MMOs are fun for many, but for some it might not be their cup of tea, and this is sort of the impression I'm getting about you. Playing for fun is a good thing and it's why most people play the game, myself being one of them. But it's an MMO...investing your time and a little effort toward some things are nothing short of a requirement. In-game currencies and a various grinds are all hallmarks of the genre, if you limit yourself by not getting what you need to progress...well, I have no sympathy. I find having to do all those things a lot of fun, as do a fair amount of people playing the game. You seem to be the type that doesn't.

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

well, I have no sympathy.

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I ain't asking for it.

Just saying compared to Atma and Animus, that was already borderline pushing it, Novus passed that line and left it in the dust with they way they approached it.

That's what you should consider more because the next upgrade to the relic weapon might end up far worse if this approach continues.

Next relic.
Farm First Coil, Turn 3 for a magic item. 0.1% drop rate on trash, must be rolled on.
Then farm T9 for your HA weapon, to bond to the relic with the "magic item" - 20% success rate, lose HA weapon if it fails.

Retarded Grind + Skill + RNG = Fun For All!

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Originally Posted by Kenji1134

Next relic.
Farm First Coil, Turn 3 for a magic item. 0.1% drop rate on trash, must be rolled on.
Then farm T9 for your HA weapon, to bond to the relic with the "magic item" - 20% success rate, lose HA weapon if it fails.

Retarded Grind + Skill + RNG = Fun For All!

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That's one way to look at it.

Though I'm seeing it more around the lines of.

Primary item = Go to Golden Saucer. 1 attempt to win the item a day. 1 loot and 1 week lock out. Takes 12 months minimum to complete. Please look forward to it.

All I'm seeing though is retarded arguments like "It's pointless", "Takes too long", or "I don't like grinding".

These are not facts, these are opinions based on personal preference. The only fact here is that Yoshi P intends the game to be like this hence why he explicitly stated that the Relic Quest etc are optional things that take a lot of time, and he does not expect most people to continue them long term.

Put simply if you don't like it then it's not for you. Quit moaning and stop doing what you think is pointless, it's Not. For. You. If you consider the game to be too grindy, then there are dozens of games out there that are less so. This game is not for you. Period.

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Originally Posted by Purrfectstorm

My partner has made over 5m gil just buying mats from vendors and selling them in stacks for just a little bit more. I make 300-500k per day crafting (takes about 2 hours). Spiritbonding is probably an even more lucrative method right now. However, the materia melds aren't even that expensive until you get to Tier 4s and you can easily make thousands of gil a day just doing roulette and working on your Challenge Log in preparation for the end melds. Yeah it requires effort because SE wants players to actually play. Sorry :(

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I love how naive players are on new servers... please come to a legacy server and try that :)

Maybe if the grind was fun people wouldn't have major issues with it regardless of who the intended part of playerbase is, the main issue is FATEs still have way too low percentage droprates and they're still zergrushes because you know, casual content and all those excuses, and they still don't give much aside from seals and pocket change although seals are somewhat useful now so there's that I guess, and yeah there are alternatives in a daily quest and 800 myth you can get from daily roulette and/or doing the same most efficient dungeon over and over until you get even more bored, and of course you know, beating Coil and all that too. Then there's the materia luck grind which is all too familiar to 1.0 players but hey at least you don't lose the catalyst or the scroll. Too bad they left the seemingly fun part of the quest which is Daily Hunts out until 2.3, although they could screw that up too but they do seem like a more interesting way to obtain Alexandrites at least, with that not coming out until late July, early July if you're really optimistic, looks like most people in this thread are indeed justified in their complaints regardless of the many apologies this content's design might get.

I just realized that wall of text was only 3 sentences. Reading that was a grind in itself. It was fun.

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Originally Posted by Ravno

snip

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SE killed that possibility the day they chose not to allow us selling gear. You can have tons of alts, and can gear them super fast (provided good luck) in dungeons and raid. Those who don't raid can grind, and that's fine for a main class.

Yet, after that, alts have... nothing left. If you did the grind, it's probably because you couldn't achieve the raid stuff, so you won't magically rampage through it and get stuff for alts. Other games have solid crafting or possibility to sell loot stuff in order to provide ways to gear. FFxiv has none. By choice, because they wanted to reward raiders rather than making us pick one or two side classes (read here, craft and harvest) in order to gear.

If you want to gear alts (thus using the alt system to its fullest), you have to either raid (5% of the playerbase can do it in SCoB) or grind more, which is... non reasonable considering how this grind is personal. You can't do like in older MMOs, say, loot something you didn't need by lack of luck but be able to exchange it somehow with someone who would have your piece of gear but wanting the one you looted.

I rather SE put more effort in content we're meant to replay than a one-time content like a cutscene...

I bet most people just watch it once and then done with it. At least that's what I do.

I did hate the Atma farming, but the books and scrolls are completly fine. Finally a really long-term goal where we progress little by little everyday.

I liked the first relic quest the most but i wouldn't call it long term goal since it took like 1 day to complete...
For top notch one-time cutscenes and content there are enough single player games you can play.

Took me about a week to realize FF14arr was a paint by the numbers, shift into maximum overgrind, MMO. Not really sure what people are afraid it will turn into to be honest.
Practically all sub MMO's rely on absurd grind/time gates to keep you playing.

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Originally Posted by JatohCynn

Took me about a week to realize FF14arr was a paint by the numbers, shift into maximum overgrind, MMO. Not really sure what people are afraid it will turn into to be honest.
Practically all sub MMO's rely on absurd grind/time gates to keep you playing.

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The same can be said for F2P games, it's grindy so people buy potions to speed things up/have more luck on RNG.

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Originally Posted by Yukiko

I love how naive players are on new servers... please come to a legacy server and try that :)

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On Ragnarok, I buy beastmen dyes for around 350 gil and sell them for 1000 gil.

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Originally Posted by JatohCynn

Took me about a week to realize FF14arr was a paint by the numbers, shift into maximum overgrind, MMO. Not really sure what people are afraid it will turn into to be honest.
Practically all sub MMO's rely on absurd grind/time gates to keep you playing.

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Thing is that it's tolerable as long as the grind is fun and not locked behind various ways to screw you over.

Sure MMO's rely on grinding and time gates yet it's a gamble that only few do right and don't meddle with their formula. You can see people playing games like Farmville and Minecraft and see that despite being a massive grindfest and I'm guessing it has its own ridiculous time gates but people enjoy it because it's overall fun for them to do. If those 2 games per se approached that grinding and time gates with ridiculous punishments and RNGs they wouldn't have ended as successful as they did with the community they have.

Relic weapon and Zenith started off good. Yet for some reason people complained that everyone has them and Yoshida agreed to that statement. Next thing you know we ended up with unpleasant change in direction with Atma and now Novus. Animus however ended as an acceptable compromise that's basically borderline crossing into unpleasant simply because it was more tolerable than the Atma grind. Without Atma I don't know what kind of reception it would've gotten because the topic of Animus consists on not enjoying the brayflox myth farms.

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Originally Posted by Felis

On Ragnarok, I buy beastmen dyes for around 350 gil and sell them for 1000 gil.

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Great, now you can forget it, because everyone is doing it... *sigh*
Have to look for other things to sell now...
Please dont tell secrets :)

PS: You can trade in myth items to sell for gil with nice prices too!

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Originally Posted by Elazu

Oh right, that makes turning the game into an utter grindfest okay.

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WoW was (and still is) grindy and I'm pretty sure Blizzard isn't Asian. There's no such thing as "Asian grinder", there's grinding and no grind - there just seem to be bitter feeling from ARR going from handing out everything to one putting in an iota work.

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Originally Posted by Gormogon

We get denied FFVII HD and Final Fantasy Type-0 being localized.
Yet they are happy to announce that FFXIII HD collection.

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Funnily enough, XIII sold very, very well, not the same as VII but to the point it does make sense that they'd do an HD collection (like every other company is doing.) They already said remaking VII won't happen until another FF surpasses it and we know how much people love to say FFXI is "horrible and no one liked it" even though it already surpassed VII many years ago.

Been playing since ver.1. Got PLD animus and blah blah.. but i woke up one morning asking myself.. why am i really playing this game.. It was fun, but now all the fun is gone. Time to unsub, and play my backlog. I'm done...

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Originally Posted by Tupsi

Funnily enough, XIII sold very, very well, not the same as VII but to the point it does make sense that they'd do an HD collection (like every other company is doing.)

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Yet XIII-2 and LR did not and the overall reception for XIII wasn't that good. Yet if their expectations do revolve around that info then I guess it will be a success if not Square-Enix will be in for a surprise.

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Originally Posted by Gormogon

We get denied FFVII HD and Final Fantasy Type-0 being localized.
Yet they are happy to announce that FFXIII HD collection.

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Link?
Isn't FF XIII not already in HD (1080p) on PS3?
The next HD remake I know is Final fantasy XII, because Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD sold good.

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Originally Posted by Gormogon

Yet XIII-2 and LR did not and the overall reception for XIII wasn't that good. Yet if their expectations do revolve around that info then I guess it will be a success if not Square-Enix will be in for a surprise.

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As hard as it was for myself to believe, XIII did well enough to warrant a sequel. The sequel did well enough for them to produce another installment as well. I'm not really a XIII fan by any means, but if they can make money by milking it for all it's worth then they will. FF VII was a huge hit and sparked a few spinoffs and appearances in other games, which were actually pretty decent: Dirge of Cerberus, Crisis Core, Advent Children, Kingdom Hearts, Dissidia, etc. Dissidia is a FF game entirely but still, characters from VII made an appearance there. My point is that SE is a business, if they can make money off of something then they will do whatever they can do keep doing so.

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Originally Posted by Felis

link?

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It's all part of the E3 rumors going around so don't take them to personal and get hyped. Above all I'm simply saying that my point of view they would hesitate to do it and if they did I wouldn't be surprised.

http://i.imgur.com/iChx3ZR.jpg

Also now that I found the image it's not FFXIII collection but The Lightning Collection which makes more sense.

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

snip

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I don't care that it warrants a sequel or not. Yet all that focus on FFXIII and being denied Type-0's localization and other Final Fantasy installments for more Lightning does in fact rub me the wrong way.

We've seen Lightning mainly in everything last gen and she even made an appearance in other titles such as Dissidia and FFXIV as well as the rumor that she may also partake in Playstation Allstars round 2.

I completely agree with the OP's sentiments. Although, I think that using the word "Asia" in the title connotes vaguely racist undertones (as has been already said, Western MMO's also have grindfests) and was unnecessary to make the point.

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Originally Posted by Pibz

So.. you beat all the raids and dungeons within a month?No? Oh..

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Except for new top-tier raids that require a static, it is absolutely possible to beat all other new mid/low-tier content (dungeons, trials, CT, etc) within a month. I say this as a 10-12 hrs/week player. But because my playtime is irregular I can't commit to a regularly scheduled static, so top-tier content will forever be out of my reach. I didn't down T5 until a month after 2.2 hit, in a PF party, after Coil 1 had been nerfed from being top-tier to mid-tier.

So I've come to realize that I'm okay with just playing around and having fun with mid/low-tier content, because SE now has a proven track record that eventually...everything becomes mid/low-tier content and gear. Which is actually really great because it means that I can sub for only 1 month out of 3, and spend the other 2 months playing other great games rather than grinding away in FFXIV waiting for the next big thing.

Ridiculous RNG-based grinds like the Atma>Novus quests just aren't fun enough to keep me subbed for the other 2 months. Merely capping tomes each week grinding the same content over and over for gear that I know will be made much easier to get in the next patch isn't compelling enough either. So I, for one, am going to do exactly what the OP stated: let my current 6 month sub run out next week > resub when 2.3 drops > play new mid/low-tier content for a month > unsub for 2 months > come back for 2.4 when 2.3's top-tier content becomes the new mid-tier > rinse, repeat

SE only facilitates such consumer behavior by 1) the monthly "all you can eat" subscription model, 2) their game design philosophy of "planned obsolescence," and 3) by tuning the ilevel requirements for mid/low-tier content so low. The latest HM dungeons only require i55, Levi EX i80, and T5 i82. Which tells me that the i90+ gear I have now for my PLD, WHM, and BRD (covering all three roles) will be enough for any new mid/low-tier content in 2.3.

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Originally Posted by Pibz

Also, you expect them to be able to, in 3 months, make enough non-repeatable/non-hard content that will last you anymore than a month to go through for the first time? You have very very VERY unreasonable expectations.

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That may be, but that doesn't mean I have to keep sending SE money after I'm done with the actual 1 month of new, non top-tier content that's included in each patch. I am a FF fanboy, but not that much of a fanboy >.>; The money and time I save by not subbing for 2 months, I can put towards the many other great games out there.

TL;DR - I enjoy playing FFXIV, but I agree that there's not enough new, non-grindfest content in each patch (that doesn't require a static) to justify subbing for more than 1 month between patches. Especially when we all now know that SE intends all gear to become obsolete and all content to be nerfed over time.

Made a similar thread proposing changes they could make to ease the grind, make the game far more enjoyable again:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...res-are-Absurd