Why do long time players play the game so differently?

18 years of MMOs and 36 years of gaming in multiple genres here. Many things in MMOs gets old. Being in work life. Doing more gets increasingly challenging. I'll still pull big numbers even with my age.

Because nothing matters.

Outside of the actions you put value and being a decent human nothing else matters.

I went try hard through Stormblood and Shadowbringers.
Capped tomes on reset, pentamelded gear, studied outside raid time cleared TEA before 5.2 dropped by doing 5 days a week 5 hours a day I was 7 other dudes spouse, father, mother, and family for about 3 months and my reward?
1 ultimate and my efforts in vain with no new content left to do for almost a year.

I made tons of unforgettable memories both good and bad and it has definitely done something to my mentality.
I've moved data centers, lost friends, gained brothers, lost free companies, gained free companies in my pursuit of simply moving forward and at the end what I learned is that there is no end, so why rush?
The only thing you're going to find is stress and disappointment.

I went through 7 statics just to get past LC for TEA and it took my 8th to finally get a clear.
It got to a point where if someone messaged me on discord I would check it a day later because it was probably someone telling me they were leaving the group.
Even with the 8th group it was a wonderful hell, when we finished we didn't talk to each other for 2 weeks.
I would have to calm my nerves every day 15 minutes before raid time.

I personally don't know if I would do it again if I knew what I know now but what I do know is I'm never doing it again.
Endwalkers comes around I didn't pentameld anything, I stopped capping my tomes 2 weeks in despite needing them for BiS, got BiS yesterday after barely playing the game outside reclears.

It really doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is if you're having fun and your group is having fun.

And that's just from the raiding perspective.

I don't play the marketboard because I simply don't understand how. I don't see any patterns or trends to it no matter how long I look.

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Originally Posted by SeiyaSoiya

ignoring all the other troll replies and replying to the only legitimate post, I must ask:
The main reason stated for parsers and ACT being a legitimate tool is that it helps people improve their skill, which is a net positive for the community as it makes duty roulettes more enjoyable.
How could something that is only ever used for self-improvement cause so much burnout that veteran players no longer have any interest in it? A lot of people I know use ACT in normal duties and alliance duties, so they don't necessarily use it for "hardcore raiding"
Of course, they do love posting their high numbers in normal duties for some reason.

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ah, I get it, this is a troll post meant to praise the glory of parsers and ACT in order to belittle others

now the odd generalizations make sense.

the only thing missing was "weebs" and "filthy casuals"

and 2016? new? you have achievements back to 2014... so you are DEFINITELY not "new". Which WoW "death craze" was there in 2014? I must have missed that one

I just do what I want.
I suggest you just focus on yourself and do what you want too.

"1. They don't seem to care about actively improving their gameplay"
When it comes to improving gameplay via ACT, I simply do not care. I am on PS4, but nothing would change if I had access anyway. This does not mean that I do not care about my gameplay and improving it, and to think that is the case with myself and other like-minded players would be objectively false. Optimizing rotations, your UI, learning the mechanics of a fight, finding ideal positioning for your current job in that particular fight, recovering from mishaps; how well you do all of that can be confirmed via ACT, sure. At the same time though, if you are doing all those things well in any given fight, you don't even need to. There are more tools to improve other than ACT, and ultimately what I care about are clears. I couldn't care less if they come a little slower.

"2. They don't seem to want to play the marketboard"
The market board is not for everyone. You can spend all your time logged in managing your wares, and the moment you decide to do a roulette or craft some more stuff, the 1-gil undercutter makes the sale *whomp whomp*. This complaint is odd, as there are no shortages of MB sharks, and the 'lil guppies they consume by the mouthful. Some even consider the market board the game's true PvP.

"3. They are more interested in doing outdated content than current seasonal content"
You basically described me with the outdated content, but this is how I would describe anyone who does activities outside of raiding. If you're not raiding, then you're not doing current content. For me, I am always looking for the next grind, and I go into whatever content is required to accomplish that.

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Originally Posted by SeiyaSoiya

I started playing this game recently, and I noticed that there is a massive difference in the way people who, like me, started playing after the wow death craze, and the people who have been playing since Heavensward, ARR or even have legacy accounts.

1. They don't seem to care about actively improving their gameplay: A few veteran players I know have been parsing and using ACT since 2015 (when it was first released for FFXIV), and they don't seem to have the same drive I and others like me have to continuously improve my rotation and gameplay and to become more skilled. Their job's kit changed drastically since the days they first raided, but they don't make an effort to learn the kit to its fullest, and sure as hell don't care about their parse. Some of them are parsing green and blue and they only do the savage tier to get BiS and be done with it, even though checking their old logs they had high purples and many of them oranges.

2. They don't seem to want to play the marketboard: many of them refuse to engage in marketboard selling and buying, which is undisputably the most efficient way to make money, and prefer to earn money using passive methods like levequests, FC submarines and doing their weekly challenge log/doman enclave donation/retainer 18h ventures. Some of them often times complain about lack of money as much as newer players like me do, but they don't seem to want to put in the effort to earn it.

3. They are more interested in doing outdated content than current seasonal content: they do their savage raids, but they spend a lot more time doing older savage and extremes unsynched, the deep dungeons, side content like ocean fishing and diadem gathering, mount collecting, minion collecting and other things that don't increase their ilevel or their parse number.

I don't get it, does something fundamentally change about your gameplay once you spend a long time playing this game? These veteran players don't seem to be obsessed with the same things I and other newer players are obsessed with.

Is it really worth it for me to spend so much time improving my gameplay and skill and rotations and my parse number, if once I've played this game for 5 or more years, I will no longer care to do so anymore?

The community seems to put a lot of emphasis on being good at the job, but what it looks to me is that I will burn myself out optimizing and improving for one savage tier, maybe two, maybe for a whole expansion, but then never do it again.

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1)I've been playing for such a long time that I usually put YT/Netflix on my second monitor while having the game fully muted and still I'm able to do all the current content even more than the average player.
2)MB sucks, the whole system looks like something from 2007.
3)I don't thing so, I avoid everything pre level 60, if I get CT raids on Roulette I prefer to quit.

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Originally Posted by Kes13a

and 2016? new? you have achievements back to 2014... so you are DEFINITELY not "new". Which WoW "death craze" was there in 2014? I must have missed that one

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There have been quiet a few, unironically.

There was the 2012 to 2014 era for Mists of Pandaria which, between pandas as a playable race and the long content drought at the end of the last patch which lasted 14 months, created a slow loss of players but we are talking going from like 8 million to 6.4 million players.

Then there was the 2014 to 2016 era one known was Warlords of Draenor, which the only things you could really praise was the dungeons and raiding experience, everything else was barebones. The playerbase briefly shot up from 6.4 million to 10 million players and then the following month lost about as many players, then kept sinking down till it went below 5 million in which Blizzard stopped posting the sub count. Take with a grain of salt from mmo-population, but it dipped well below 1 million. So fastforward for WoW, with Shadowlands, a similar trend happened based on its peaks and valleys and ravines for player count, but it also featured a long content drought from its 9.0 to its 9.1 patch.

*reads post*
yeah, so?

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

This half-sounds like one of those typical bait topics from a certain somebody....

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Only half?