What you're doing right now, in Dawntrail's scope, before 7.1 that isn't old content?

It just dawned on me how bad it is that there's almost nothing engaging going on for Dawntrail right now other than progging High End raids. In my case, slower because I'm a PF raider, but I can't imagine having a reason to log in nowadays if I had a static and had that content sorted out faster. There's PVP, but I think just doing the same CC over and over gets old fast and the larger modes are brutally imbalanced to be enjoyable.

Everything else I can think of specifically in 7.0 sounds like a chore, like leveling other jobs or FATE farming, and I say that fully knowing that what is engaging may be different from one player to another, but even at a casual level, 7.0 is objectively barren of things.

I do say to exclude old content at the thread's title because while It's still fun to revisit things or tackle stuff you never touched, I don't think this "Oh there's a lot of stuff to do, go complete ARR relics!" should be what makes up for the lack of stuff available at an early stage of an expansion's launch. Those ideally should have a healthy amount of content on their own - going back for old stuff should be just a plus.

I do wonder if they absolutely think the formula is fine as it is? I can't be the only one thinking that early in an expansion launch is a critical moment to retain more players - and I'd figure they could introduce at least something else midway in 7.0.5, like the Field Operation or a Deep Dungeon.

TLDR: I think XIV has a problem of available engaging content at an early expansion's lifecycle.

hasn't this always been the case
I don't know what's different this time around than the last

the game has a lot to do, and if genuinely new players haven't found content that has hooked them yet to keep going back to then idk what more to say
we'll be getting a new field operation which I am personally looking forward to, as a Eureka and Bozja enjoyer

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Originally Posted by CVXIV

hasn't this always been the case
I don't know what's different this time around than the last

the game has a lot to do, and if genuinely new players haven't found content that has hooked them yet to keep going back to then idk what more to say
we'll be getting a new field operation which I am personally looking forward to, as a Eureka and Bozja enjoyer

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Well, before the wait between patches was shorter, so it wasn't as egregious as it is today.

We'll get the Field Operation, that's right, but if they follow their formula (and if that's actually in patch 7.1, because I don't remember if it really is or not), that's over another 2 months of wait because those used to be released midway at x.x.5.

Regarding the content drought: It is true, that this has always been the case. But I think it has a heavier impact this time, because a lot of players were already unsatisfied from the MSQ playthrough, and now this situation comes on top of it.

Many players also already caught up on missing content during the relative long content drought between post-EW and DT release, so they have most of the stuff done they wanted, which also adds to it.

To your question: I play since ARR and did most content along the way when it came out. For DT I already leveled up all Jobs and even did the well over 2k fates for the fatemount and the other new stuff. Besides that, I guess waiting for the next content and hoping it will be good. I'm not that much online currently because of it.

Yeah, that's why I hope they will advance the exploratory zone to 6.15 (it's usually 6.25). During EW, we at least had the ShB long running content (bozja/zadnor) that could still be somehow viable for xp, or just to complete some side objectives you had not done yet, but since there was no shelf/long-running content in EW, it's the desert right now. Not only the game had a terrible extension story wise, but as a mmorpg, it's in a terrible state right now. Honestly FFXIV barely deserve that title as it stand now.

It's probably something that the minority of players that had a huge amount of playtime could feel with every extension, but now, the average player can feel it too. Anyone with a small dozen of hour of play a week (which is average by mmo standard) that lived the end of cycle drought had the time to complete most of their backlog. And let's not talk about the ones that were already there during the covid drought. More than the story that's what I want them to fix. In the past, they find a good balance that gave you some farm to do, but making that farm the right timeframe to not become a chore. A mmo need some kind of grind/farm if new content is added once every 4th month.

I log in once a week to check the cactpot, put my slaves island mammets to work, run into my house to reset the timer, and do M4 for the weapon.

ARR, which DT has tried to market itself as equivalent to in at least the 'story beginning' sense, had much more to do leveling in the world, including side quests, class and job quests as well as an initial relic step all available from the word go.

DT has a much longer story in terms of hours of cutscenes and voice acting, but has orders fewer dungeons and trials. Guildhests existed then too, and folks actually did them cuz they rewarded good exp and weren't AS trivial. Some of the systems that existed in 1.0 were transplanted to ARR, like Leves, but ARR also introduced FATEs and Hunt Logs from the word go. Hunts as they're done now came later in ARR (2.3). It's kind of incredible we haven't really had anything new in the overworld you can just jump in to since 2014.

I think the shift in focus from completing the previous narrative act might have been more exciting if it meant they were more willing to transcend their very deliberate FFXIV expansion design document they've followed since HW, especially as we've gotten fewer and fewer dungeons among other things. The pace of adding new content was also a priority then, too, so we're taking longer to get less. I would have loved to see them just put in a bunch more random side dungeons, more reasons to be out in the field than a FATE or hunt grind, and cutting down on the EW length MSQ for an expansion that didn't need that level of time to tie up loose ends. More loose ends would have been welcome, too, we got through ARR 2.0 without even addressing the Siren that attacked us until 2.1 in a side dungeon. In DT she would have been sorted out in a cutscene. By Wuk Lamat, probably. And friendship. Because we can leave no stone unturned for the players.

I think there's something to be said if you're a player that enjoys the improved visuals or more variety in player models/gear dying etc, and while that type of content is evergreen in a sense, it's not something that occupies everyone, and even most people more than once. Most people only play one character and only have a few glams; they're not necessarily enjoying collecting the new ones because they may not have space in their inventory for such a thing, either

To answer the question, I'm just doing PvP and raid logging until my sub runs out again. Raids were fine (normal raids were actually more exciting than the savage ones this time), but the PvE jobs are mostly samey to play so I don't get the same enjoyment of repeating fights on different jobs. CC's still fun, but that's an EW thing technically, also there's no season right now

In the past the sense of wonder and excitement I gained through the MSQ made me want to be a part of the world of FF14. I didn't care too much if the new content wasn't up to snuff, because I was excited for the future. That and I had a lot of old content to catch up on.

So my enjoyment of the past + my excitement for the future obscured how underwhelming the present was.

EW patch content was pathetically weak and it finally got me to take a break from the game. It didn't help that the initially promising Void story had fallen off the cliff into the shallow pool of rehash, predictability and mediocrity. Still, with the fan fests and the community buzzing, I was looking forward to the future.

DT has killed my last hope for the future. The story was beyond bad and I'm no longer excited to be a part of this game's world. On top of that all the promised content is simply not here and what we did get is just the same old, same old.

I don't have anything fun to do in DT and after the box price and 2 month sub, I'm not paying for mediocrity any longer. If I wanted to play a game with a children's story with cardboard cutouts for characters, I'd play WoW. At least their content drops are varied, frequent and more engaging than doing the same 4 varieties of fates over and over again

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Originally Posted by Raikai

TLDR: I think XIV has a problem of available engaging content at an early expansion's lifecycle.

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we will likely get cosmic exploration in 7.15 since we got ishgard restoration in 5.1 (5.2 was bozja) and island sanctuary was 6.25.

we will be getting triad triangle or the actual area's name occult current in 7.25 so its unlikely that it cosmic exploration will be pushed back to 7.35 and following the other releases of content like it we can assume releases will just follow shadowbringers releases of ishgard restoration/bozja.

so expect cosmic exploration in december since 7.1 will most likely have a early/mid november release.

There is little to do in FFXIV for me atm

I'm currently just logging in to do dailies, and then log off to play World of Warcraft:TWW.
Having more than one MMO to play - do help with downtime :)