Thank you for the free weekend. It reminded me why I quit playing.

I want to start this off by saying that this game does a lot of things right. I enjoy a lot of things about the game, unfortunately it's a lot of smaller things is to why I find more frustration in the game than I do enjoyment. And as someone who has been contemplating reactivating ever since 2.2 and especially after 2.3, the free weekend was the best thing that could have happened for me because it reminded me how often I'm frustrated when playing. A lot of people may believe some of the things as nitpicking, and some of it may be, but I think companies forget how about QoL changes are. How much they make an impact on some people's enjoyment.

A list of things that I have a hard time grasping, or things I can't stand to deal with, in no particular order:

1. Leveling alts is incredibly boring after you've exhausted your main story quests and side quests. The game world is so fantastic. I love it, its beautiful and I'd love to spend more time in it. Unfortunately, it bothers me that you can't do each side quest for each class once, similar to guildhests. I really enjoy picking up quests in each area of the world, completing them, and moving on to another. What I don't consider a good alternative are Leves*(get to that in another point). Leveling another class just feels like an annoying grind where I'm repeating the same thing over and over and over and over and over. Now, to further expand on this, I'll move onto to some of my next subpoints.

A. Leves - These are such a good idea, but horribly executed in terms of Battlecraft leves. Why is there an allowance on BattleLeves? Does their need to be? Absolutely not. Why are there so few leves? Why are they all the same thing? No matter what quest you go to and no matter how many you do, it'll always be the same 5-7 leves or a variation of. It's awful. It's so mind numbingly boring. Not to mention its terribly ridiculous that I can't use my companion*(another point later) while completing leves while being queued for what I DO enjoy doing, Dungeons. The leves are horribly designed. /Beckon, /Poke, Use item to break apart the illusion. These are not fun, nor dynamic. The leves I found myself enjoying the most were the ones that simply said "Kill 4 enemies". Thank you, because there's not a terrible/non-innovative gimmick behind it. Not to mention if I grind out leves I am so sick and tired of hearing that music on repeat. Just let me listen to the ambience or battle music itself, but that Leve music on constant repeat is terrible.

B. Hunting Log - Another fantastic idea. I love nearly everything about the hunting log, except its just a tad too small. I think 20 per 10 levels would serve better than 10. As post level 30, the hunting log reward is so minuscule, that its just something you forget about. I think an expansion on the hunting log would be a fantastic idea. As it stands now, it just feels half-way done.

C. Dungeons - Much improved experience. The experience is better, but the rewards* are awful.

D. FATEs - Something else which isn't a bad idea, its just not a fun alternative to leveling through Main story quests or Side quests. They seem to pop more frequently and that's good, but they usually are so mindless and dull that its just "Spam my rotation 50 times until the big bad monster is dead". I enjoyed FATEs when I would run into them while questing, I don't enjoy them while I'm doing my annoying leve grind, or spending the 15 minutes it takes to complete an entire Difficulty Rank of a hunting log. Maybe smaller FATEs would be more fun and interesting?

2. Companions - I love the idea of the companion. It's awesome. Glad they want to allow respecs, it's about time. But my goodness, I don't feel like I can ever use my companion because of the stupid party restriction not allowing me to have them summoned while I am queued for a dungeon. I know they want to work on this, but their excuse that it'll take development time away from new content is a tired one and laughable at best. It's a major oversight that probably never should have been incorporated into 2.0. Let me use my Companion while I am queued up. Let me use him during GC Leves. Let me use him while I am doing other things out in the wild that already bore me to tears because I don't have any main quests or side quests to do anymore.

3. Dungeons/Rewards - There is a major issue with your dungeon/loot system if people purposely AVOID your treasure coffers. News flash: It's terrible. The loot is AWFUL. I'm getting the same things in chests at level 15 as I am at level 30. I don't want potions. I don't want ethers. I want LOOT. I want stuff I can actually find a use for. As I haven't played any of the new 2.3 content, I can't speak for what people are claiming to be a major problem even at later levels, but if its true, what is the matter? Why is it so hard to include FUN loot in dungeons rather than Filtered Water or Animal Fat? Who wrote that off and thought it was a great idea? He should be tied up and tickled(Because its a game, why commit violence over it?). Hell, back in 2.0 when I played, it was a major issue back THEN when people were complaining that AK and WP were dropping terrible loot way too common. I was TOTALLY BUMMED to see it is STILL an issue. Something I was hoping they had addressed. Instead, they keep making the same silly mistake for such a SIMPLE fix. This is so disheartening to find out almost a year later some of the most annoying problems with this game are STILL existent. Also, why in the hell can I still not talk to people on my friends list or whisper people while I'm in a dungeon? Why do I need this kind of hand holding? Just let me enable the option to receive tells inside a dungeon, this is ridiculous and I feel like you're babying the players.

4. Endgame - So the endgame was pretty terrible in 2.0. I'm glad to see it has more options now and that it is more improved. I am totally bummed to see(which I already stated in a previous point) that loot is awful in endgame 4 man dungeons. Not sure why this is the case, but moving on. I remember in 2.0 when people complained about the Darklight grind. Doing the math to determine how long it would take to get full Darklight just for ONE class. Well I was ecstatic to see that they made it easier and improved upon it. But they took away the grind in that aspect and moved it to something else. The relic weapon upgrades. The Atma/Animus/Novus/Zodiac whatever they want to call it these days. Does anyone actually want to grind FATEs at level 50 for items? FATEs are nice to grind(but boring) because the experience reward is decent. Doing it at 50 is like a kick in the crotch. You get seals, but seals aren't hard to get and have never actually been hard to get. Why put a horrible RNG grind behind FATEs? Why not something a bit more fun/interesting? I won't speak more on this as it's not something ingame that I am going to even try pursuing on my main. I have decided to skip it entirely as I'm not that much of a masochist.

5. Little odds and ends -

A. Class quests from 10-30 are awful, need to desperately be changed and I'm bummed to see there haven't been any significant changes to them. They are all the same. Be horded by a bunch of mobs, hope that the friendly NPCs don't die, do their job by agroing the right mob, or healing when needed, and hope that you can see in the future and know which mob you need to kill first(as the game doesn't always clearly tell you). I remember in the level 20 ACN quest, the NPC tells you to attack the Thaumaturge. Well, there isn't one NAMED THaumaturge, so you have to find the one with the staff, easier said than done in a hodgepodge of particles exploding, 10 enemies bunched together, and just too many damn effects going on. You get blasted once and go "Oh thats the enemy, well damn that enemy took half my life, hope i can kill him before he does that again." There's just too many awful random variables that happen with these quests. They are all the same, they aren't fun, they are not exciting.

B. Needless complexity to be confused with Depth: Dyeing AF armor is...well, needless to say, absolutely ludicrous. I don't even have to go into it, everyone knows why its ludicrous. I just want to dye my AF armor, I'm not UPGRADING it. For real? I have to do all of this? Not to mention that having to use prisms to use the wardrobe function is dumb in itself, but I guess that's what they intended to help give crafters more use.

C. Quest Gating - I log in for the first time in a long time, and I find out there's a lot of new features. Only to be able to use any of them, they are ALL gated. I have to unlock each and every one. Really? Can't I skip all of that? I understand the problem for new players, but for someone who is not new to MMORPGs and just wants to take advantage of the new features, why do you have to gate EVERYTHING behind a menial task? Yes, this is nitpicking, I know. But again it feels insulting to the player to have their hand held this much.

6. The future and beyond: While this can change in the future, the idea that you need to have a FC house to garden or raise a chocobo is...again, why? Why? There's no other way to go about it? You give us gardening and chocobo raising but we have to use a FC house to do it? I know this may change with personal housing, but we will have to see what the prices will end up being and if its something people want to invest their time into. It seems like with every good idea or with every good change there's a gimmick, or a CATCH to it. Just add a new feature that we want, make us happy, and be done. Don't gate it behind something stupid or grindy. Don't offer some kind of catch to the system. This feels like FF11 when they would make good changes then said "BUT, here's a kick to the nuts just because." Like when they introduced the Fellow NPCs that could join you temporarily, BUT, with a 24 hour cooldown, BUT he disappears if you try to zone, BUT he stays for 20 minutes at a time. I mean, just add a new feature in and be done with it. Stop with all the gimmicks, please. We don't want handholding, we want fun new features that will keep us subbed.


Conclusion: While this game is in a better place now than it was at release, it's just still not enough. I don't care how much new content you add. I don't care if you add all the major Primals, or more fan service from other FFs. I just don't care, not until you show me that you can take care of all the little things that cause major frustration. Fat Chocobos are awesome, and I love more fanservice like that, but not at the expense of QoL. I don't care that 2.4 is adding in the Ninja, I feel it was a bad idea to add in ANOTHER dps class when they are the most played, but hey that's just me. Ninja will probably be awesome and fun. But it won't make me play the game until you show me that you can address some of the things I mentioned above. No expansion, no amount of new content will make me resub until I see that you can stop making the same mistakes as you were making in 2.0, just with a different flavor.

Please note: I DO enjoy a lot of things about the game, the game does a lot of things right. But because of the things I mentioned above(as a whole, not seperately, don't just pick one and say "lol you don't play because of the hunting log? U dumb!".) I have no desire to play, no matter what content they add. Even if they add THF, DRK and RDM tomorrow. I wouldn't play. I hope this game continues to be a success, because I do enjoy a lot of things about it. It's a damn shame how much I enjoy the things they did RIGHT, but that its not enough to make me want to play. Game is almost a year old, I've paid for 2 months(in addition to the free month) since it came out. If most the things above were addressed, I'd like to think I would've never stopped subbing. Cheers, Square and forums. I hope things continue going well for you.

Bye

/10char

Just for the record, they have been doing QoL changes in most middle patches ( 2.15, 2.25, 2.28 etc). They have been working on those "little things. Content makes games, if all they focus on was QoL changes, this game would never get ahead. those QoL changes will come as the game progresses.

The game may not be the game for you now ( because of the little things @.@). In the future, maybe after the expansion pack, when they do big changes ( assuming, that where all big changes happen is within expansions), maybe that will draw you back.

Don't forget to watch tomorrows live letter, it may give you info of what you are hoping for ( Future of FFXIV).

Quest Gating issues is very small, you can just skip all the Dialog and be done with it in like 3 mins. It's not a big deal personally.

It's a theme park MMO, what did you expect, there is no depth. Frontline is fun though, did you bother to try that? Or wait maybe PVP isn't your thing, in that case well bye.

Lol Tl;dr
/10char

Thank you for the well-constructed post, OP. It's not every day when someone posts a quitting thread and gives not only examples of what drives them away but proposed solutions to what bothers them as well. I wonder about a lot of the same things you mentioned as well, although they aren't driving me to quit. Awaiting details on personal housing with bated breath because that is likely going to be the make or break for me.

Edit: Quite a few responses in this thread make me sad. Without feedback like the OP has given we wouldn't have A Realm Reborn. Without unhappy players voicing their distaste and leaving you wouldn't have this game that you pay money every month to enjoy with your friends/family/whatever. No game is all things to all people, but the amount of "kbye" and "so don't play" type of responses is, I hope, not indicative of a wider trend and is simply the vapid expressions of a few particularly loud individuals. Constructive criticism is a rare thing, and shunning and discouraging it is bad for all involved.

I agree with some, but not all of that. I don't mind having a few things to unlock, as it gives it a bit more purpose and the unlocks themselves can actually be enjoyable. I do like that there are quests with no tangible rewards, but which are there for the fun of it. Hildibrand is one of my my favourite characters, and his comedic exploits are hilariously good fun to watch. I almost wet myself with the last (current) quest.

That said, there's far too much grind being introduced. And not the good kind either, but grind for the sake of grinding. There are enjoyable ways to make players stick around for longer, and then there's the Atma/Animus/Novus rubbish. It's not fun, it's not smart. It's just designed to take ages, not to be an enjoyable ride. Same goes for the abysmal crafting quests for the level 70 tools which involves the endless acquisition of rare items and non-stop HQ crafting.

That being said, there's still enough aspects that I enjoy to keep me playing for now. I'm hoping that SE moves away from the grind a little bit with future updates. They're teetering on the edge of a very slippery slope, and it'll be all downhill if they get the balance wrong.

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Originally Posted by Litre

It's a theme park MMO, what did you expect, there is no depth. Frontline is fun though, did you bother to try that? Or wait maybe PVP isn't your thing, in that case well bye.

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You know, Frontlines could've actually been something spectacular rather than another zergfest. Anyone who's played Guild Wars 2's WvW knows how fun it can be when you introduce new mechanics into an otherwise normal fight.

Storming camps with siege weaponry, amassing armies to take control of forts or castles. THAT is how Frontlines should have been made, but with a nice FF twist. Instead it's basically a bigger arena battle with a few random camp spots. Yay? Oh, and every once in a while you get a few NPC objects to smash. Fun times.

I am too lazy to read all this, but it's nice that you take the time to write up your opinion in such a manner, SE might appreciate the feedback.

TLDR:

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Originally Posted by Dorfentyme

I don't like anything in this game even tho i state otherwise in the beginning of my post.

Oh and Fat Chocobos are awesome.

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/10char.

Congrats for crafting your post based on weekend playthrough. You must be feel burned.

Wall of Text hits you for 9999 damage.

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Originally Posted by Riepah

I am too lazy to read all this, but it's nice that you take the time to write up your opinion in such a manner, SE might appreciate the feedback.

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I doubt it. I don't think anything could convince the dev team that FATEs and Guildleves aren't very good, even though they're not. In the quest to create "content for everyone" they've created "content for no one". Folks who actually seem to enjoy stuff like FATEs and LQs are in an extreme minority.

Similarly, I don't think you could ever convince the dev team that it might be a GOOD thing to be able to send tells in dungeons. They only see negatives, and think everyone needs to be coddled to prevent people from arguing with each other. Well, guess what... People fight with each other constantly, all the time. Disabling core functionality and creating boring content to "ease" people through it isn't good.

Ironically, dev team likes to introduce content that actively DOES incite conflict between players. For example, the spiritbonding system. Because materia is so annoying to get, and worth so much at high tiers, folks like to spiritbond tons of their trash gear in dungeons/Crystal Tower etc. This seems to irritate other players, and start fights. What I think is even funnier about this is if there were dps meters in the game (which they will not add because I guess it will incite conflicts), you could actually see how much of a dps loss it was to spiritbond however much gear they were spiritbonding. Maybe if you got a good player with spiritbond gear who was wildly outdpsing a bad player in "good" gear, they'd leave that poor spiritbonder alone.

Or, dev team could revamp FATEs, revamp LQs, get rid of spiritbonding, and work more on actual fun, engaging content instead of the mindless grind festival this game is quickly becoming.

I'm not holding out a lot of hope, though, so hopefully what little is fun will be fun enough until something better comes along (at which point I expect a mass exodus from this game - currently SE is lucky that most all MMOs are somehow even worse than this one).

It's kind of disappointing because this game DOES have a LOT of potential... The dev team seems unwilling or unable to capitalize on this, however. I really wish they would, though. I want to love this game.

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Originally Posted by Alistaire

Wall of Text hits you for 9999 damage.

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I don't think you know what a wall of text is.

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Originally Posted by Alistaire

Wall of Text hits you for 9999 damage.

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When did "wall of text" have its meaning expanded from unreadable messes of unpunctuated words with no indents to any collection of sentences that look like they took more than three minutes to put together?

Fair points all around, but... 5b and 6...
So much agreement there.

I'm honestly tired of the whole idea of trying to herd players into doing X or Y in general, but the restriction of stuff to FCs until 'sometime down the line' has been one of the most obnoxious things that keeps coming up.
Housing, chocobo-raising, gardening would all fit the type of content I would likely enjoy the most, but they end up stuck behind the FC-gate as it stands. :-/

And the universal grind all-around is starting to wear on me. I can bear grinding sometimes (Hell, I had intended to collect all of the Luminary tools), but when there are so many things that are all so time-consuming, I honestly don't have enough time to do them all, which really sucks since you know the next patch is just going to add to the pile. :-\

A lot of people are giving him shit, but he raises a lot of very good points. It's the small, QoL subtleties that make the difference between a good MMO and a bad one, because at their core, they're all the same.

I just got back from a (seven?) month break, and it's been three weeks, and I'm already thinking about quitting again for a lot of the reasons the OP mentioned in his post. Leveling alts is boring, dungeons are uninspiring, and every good feature comes with a really arbitrarily complex or grueling mechanic to go with it, like glamour, or dye-able AF sets.

One weekend or not, the OP thought about it, and clearly explained his thoughts to us. I found this very well written, and insightful to the mind of another player.

Not to mention he made some very good points. In fact, I agree with all of his points (except leveling alts, I love running dungeons). The difference though is I continue to play, while he doesn't. It's the people that keep me here, I've made some very good friends.

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Originally Posted by Odd

One weekend or not, the OP thought about it, and clearly explained his thoughts to us. I found this very well written, and insightful to the mind of another player.

Not to mention he made some very good points. In fact, I agree with all of his points. The difference though is I continue to play, while he doesn't. It's the people that keep me here, I've made some very good friends.

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Pretty much this, while i still actively play and enjoy certain aspects of the game it amazes me how many people on the forums continue to try and act blind to the large number of players who have left or are leaving the game.

The OP raises points that many others have brought up in the past and continue to bring up now and there are plenty of legitimate issues still being posted around with little to no answers.

With the exception of the release of ESO and Wildstar, FFXIV has been lucky when it comes to competition on the MMO market at the moment. However they can only ride that for so long, especially with the expansion most likely a year+ away (unless Yoshida announces otherwise)

Threads like these need less "Bye lolololol" replies and more attention to the things that are driving players away and preventing them from coming back, considering that's what these "Welcome Back" Campaigns are aiming to do.

So if you don't enjoy playing don't play simple as that and as for some of your other points the game was meant to be enjoyed playing all parts not just leves or fates but the loot in dungeons does suck and the whole idea of grinding is enough to turn anyone off. They do want to herd you into one main class with supporting cross classes so people learn their chosen job. As for running out of quest big deal start a new char with a different set supporting cross classes it's the reason why they give you more than one char on the same account.

Thanks for the free week-end ; it's just enough to do what really matters.
- Main quest 2.2 + 2.3 (still crap)
- Hildibrand 2.2 + 2.3
- Tam-Tara hard
- The Greatest Story Never Told

I'll try to do the Syrcus tower too, and aside from 2-3 other little things, I'm essentially done for months. The only thing that keep players busy between updates is the grind.

Those are great content pieces but frontlines requires you to have completed the entirety of the grand company quests right? Which means completing the hunting log, and aurum vale.

I understand the concern about quest gating. A lot of new content + super grindy quest gating means unless you play for 72 hours continuously you don't get to try most of the new stuff.

a lot of things are needlessly complex or gated for no apparent reason. And most of it doesn't have an in-game guide on how to unlock it. Perhaps a large popup of things you unlock and a checklist might help new players. People shouldn't need a google companion to learn how to play the game.

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Originally Posted by Ryel

Threads like these need less "Bye lolololol" replies and more attention to the things that are driving players away and preventing them from coming back, considering that's what these "Welcome Back" Campaigns are aiming to do.

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Totally agree. OP brings up some good points & I agree the game is getting boring for me too. I find myself logging in less, & the community REALLY doesn't help either.

I have a great FC of friends. But when I do things like ST & my husband gets locked out of the final boss on our first run through cause an antsy tank couldn't wait 2 seconds, kinda kills it for me and I go "Oh yea, people are jerks on here -_-". And being like "LOL bye! *insert gif here*" doesn't help improve our already crappy community imo.

I miss how helpful ppl use to be in MMOs :(

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Originally Posted by Ruenis

Congrats for crafting your post based on weekend playthrough. You must be feel burned.

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It was an amazing post - Also, if even one player's interest isn't held by letting them play your game for free after they quit to see all that's changed, it means it's not the perfect MMO some make it out to be if you read these forums a lot lol.

Complains that they aren't doing enough QoL patches, in the game with the most QoL patches I have ever seen.......

After reading OP, I found the mentioned game was a lot interesting than the one I was playing...^^;

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Originally Posted by Litre

It's a theme park MMO, what did you expect, there is no depth. Frontline is fun though, did you bother to try that? Or wait maybe PVP isn't your thing, in that case well bye.

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While FL can be fun, I'm honestly it's little disappointing how small the actual map is....It's REALLY small.
From I think market/manor to the left right side, you can literally see Maelstroms base, in TA's. I was kinda hoping
FL would be like Fantasy Earth Zero. Another SE made MMO that's siege base. I enjoyed it at first, but now it's boring lol.
I would kill if someone please give FeZ back to NA. Best PvP game I ever played, and I'm not a PvP fan myself. Fun times.

He actually has some good points and feedback. Pretty rude some of you guys are going lol tl;dr.
Would you rather him completely bash the game and complain with no details about it?
This game is far from perfect. I always stand by the fact
it'll grow in due time, just like any other MMO. It's also IS a theme park game, so you're expected to join the rides
x amount of times, and leave to come back later for new things to try because it'll eventually get stale. Same deal with me because I got bored
of this game 2-3 times already and only came back because of 2.3...and I'll be done soon since updates come every 3-4 months.
And I'll be back in 2.4. My major gripe right now is that the fluff content is a stupid round about and they purposely make
the fun things so hard to deal with. Also, when the HELL is Personal Housing coming...

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Originally Posted by Defmetal

Those are great content pieces but frontlines requires you to have completed the entirety of the grand company quests right? Which means completing the hunting log, and aurum vale.

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The hunting log for the GC? No, I grabbed the quest and that's all I had to do.
I never finished GC log.

I can honestly say, nothing you complained about has ever made me frustrated or upset.


You're crying about leveling 2nd classes, and the loot in 4-man dungeon. You're missing the point of the game lol.

Boo hooo hooo, you aren't even paying a subscription so why do you even care?

I stopped reading after free weekend and scrolled through your post tiny bit.

If I got another free weekend for FFXI, I ain't gonna whine about anything I am gonna enjoy the weekend playing and that's it, no Emo post about things I didn't like and why I quit.

I find it funny that you say :

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Originally Posted by Dorfentyme

this is ridiculous and I feel like you're babying the players.

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When i read this couple paragraphs bellow:

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Originally Posted by Dorfentyme

hope that you can see in the future and know which mob you need to kill first(as the game doesn't always clearly tell you). I remember in the level 20 ACN quest, the NPC tells you to attack the Thaumaturge. Well, there isn't one NAMED THaumaturge, so you have to find the one with the staff, easier said than done in a hodgepodge of particles exploding, 10 enemies bunched together, and just too many damn effects going on. You get blasted once and go "Oh thats the enemy, well damn that enemy took half my life, hope i can kill him before he does that again." There's just too many awful random variables that happen with these quests.

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You're complaining that the game tries to baby you and yet complain again shortly after because it didn't...
Also one thing that seem to be one of your major issues with this game, is to not have everything handed to you and actually have to put efforts into it.

Call it boring grind or whatever, when it comes to MMOs everything should take a fairly amount of time and effort or else there would be nothing to do after a week. You want X gear, or reach level cap with another job? Work for it.


With that said i have to admit the RNG factor involved in both steps of the Novus upgrade is utterly stupid and artificially extend the time required to complete it though, but thats another story.

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Originally Posted by Tupsi

It was an amazing post - Also, if even one player's interest isn't held by letting them play your game for free after they quit to see all that's changed, it means it's not the perfect MMO some make it out to be if you read these forums a lot lol.

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No single MMO is perfect, but you can find an MMO that's perfect 'for you'.

Just the same though, you can find many MMO's that are completely not what you're looking for. Sounds like such a case with the OP.

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Originally Posted by Nicobo

After reading OP, I found the mentioned game was a lot interesting than the one I was playing...^^;

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And I agree completely :)

I can never understand why people are complaining about the grind when you are playing a *gasp* MMO *gasp*

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Originally Posted by Miltani

I can never understand why people are complaining about the grind when you are playing a *gasp* MMO *gasp*

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Have you already begun the recycling torture?