I wake up and click on FFXIV logo...

And realise I have nothing to do until next week.

Everything is so gated that I'm actually playing it based on the date and day...

I'm not sure I'm liking where all these gates are coming from, Eso, Crafting, Alexander, Void Ark, Beast Tribes...

Not sure I can be bothered with it anymore.

£9 a month for a day of playing... Daylight robbery.

Really struggling to find anything fun in this anymore.

Maybe you should wake up and go out and do something.

Yeah I would, but various bone diseases make this hard.

I have plenty of stuff to do, but unlike the masses, I didn't rush through the game at break-neck speeds and paced myself while still doing stuff IRL (such as hanging out with friends, spending time with my girl friend, working, etc.)

FFXIV is not a game designed to be no-lifed. It's designed for the casual playerbase, which means things aren't necessarily hard nor time-consuming, but just short enough to allow them to be completed before the next patch for 99% of all players. No-lifers are going to continue to be sorely disappointed around every turn.

Well I've not exactly rushed through the game. But after what I've seen of Heavensward already, It's nothiing but a gate fest. I really don't wanna play a game because I feel obliged to because a timer is running out and I have to do it. Why can't we have something, one thing we can do thats not gated and also useful. EG crafting (Red Script Gate). I know they need to make the game longer and stuff, but for gods sake, don't you think it's getting a little bit boring, every single thing they release is gated...

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Originally Posted by LongsunZhao

Yeah I would, but various bone diseases make this hard.

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Hard but not impossible.

Well I don't wanna go on about myself. But I cannot walk.

Doesn't mean I'm gonna sit here paying for this game, while it's nothing short of boring.

Why does everyone say that? Rushed through the game? I mean. Wasn't Heavensward released 5 months ago? Not 5 days ago? Stupid thing to say, people are not rushing the game, people are bored to death. GATE GATE GATE! All they know!!

So this makes..the tenth time you're planning on quitting?

I never mentioned quitting. So don't know what your saying that for. Also. I'm focusing on a real aspect? Does everything they do for the game need to be gated. But the truth is, it is really boring. No content and when there is there gated to death.

Can't we just have one thing that we can do all the time, no gates nothing? I mean... I'm playing this game for one day a week. It's absolutely boring

Nobody has actually answered the question, and while I feel like I have things I can still do (raiding sometimes, levelling other jobs, and sometimes even attempting to actually get my nexus), the game has become quite stale in my eyes, this thread has just become a personal attack on the OP who has the right to express a concern over the content that he is subscribed to.

My answer is that I am personally really looking forward to the floating island and lord of verminion content, which are not behind gates and I hope that these pieces of content see longevity and will actually last more than a few patches unlike the hunt (which could have, but SE decided not to, in fact they decided to make HW hunts irrelevant less than 4 weeks after release, gj guys :D)

I'm not afraid to stick up for myself and say whatever I feel I'm experiencing. At the minute. It's just making sure its getting subs by fear of missing anything rather then it being so overwhelmingly fun it's preventing sleep...

But even some of the things like the Floating Island. It sounds amazing, but how useful will it be? Are the enemies gonna drop Red Script Mats? I doubt it. It'll just be vanity again. And as for the minion thing... It's gonna be an unlimited farm for MGP. When was something last released for the Gold Saucer... (Apart from the gold saucer)

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Originally Posted by LongsunZhao

But even some of the things like the Floating Island. It sounds amazing, but how useful will it be? Are the enemies gonna drop Red Script Mats? I doubt it. It'll just be vanity again. And as for the minion thing... It's gonna be an unlimited farm for MGP. When was something last released for the Gold Saucer... (Apart from the gold saucer)

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I do agree with you on the minion game, and I feel like the GC should have a bit more structure as an additional endgame (other than ridiculously unobtainable items), but regardless, I'll still be enjoying it and it will add extra things to do.

As for the floating island content, we don't know enough about it really to tell, but I think it will be dropping weapons which could potentially be BiS, which makes it relevant, along with other rare items, as well as I believe rare gathering nodes, which will presumably be relevant.

I also forgot another piece of content, that we should have already been given (around 3.05 or 3.07 would have been perfect), which is the relic quest, which would have given players a lot to do to pass the time.

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Originally Posted by Lambdafish

Nobody has actually answered the question, and while I feel like I have things I can still do (raiding sometimes, levelling other jobs, and sometimes even attempting to actually get my nexus), the game has become quite stale in my eyes, this thread has just become a personal attack on the OP who has the right to express a concern over the content that he is subscribed to.

My answer is that I am personally really looking forward to the floating island and lord of verminion content, which are not behind gates and I hope that these pieces of content see longevity and will actually last more than a few patches unlike the hunt (which could have, but SE decided not to, in fact they decided to make HW hunts irrelevant less than 4 weeks after release, gj guys :D)

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New contents like LoV are always welcomed, but they really need to fix the CORE problems. Otherwise, the game gets stale again within 2 weeks of new content release.

Not to mention, every new mini game will have bugs, problems, exploits, issues that worth ranting about. Introducing new content is more like a "diversion" that takes players' attention away from the real issues, rather than facing the real problems themselves. But this diversion in the end, just creates even more problems, and thus even more things for the developers to resolve. Look at Triple Triad! People are still ranting about the drop rate of rare cards being too low! The RNG just sucks there... people can win over an NPC like 80 times, and still not getting the drop they want.

People are not subscribing for the mini games like Triple Triad or LoV. The dev needs to focus more on making the primary contents more interesting (like raids... people are really bored with Alex & Alex S), fixing the balance, improving the stale economy, release the gates for 2 star crafting, bring in new recipes, make specialization more useful, etc.

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Originally Posted by Caimie_Tsukino

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I actually completely agree with you, I was just throwing LoV out there as something that we are getting that we can look forward to. In my eyes the game completely lacks Midcore content, which is a shame because it used to be quite good at it, during 2.0 the midcore content was finish your zenith and beat the HM primals, which was great preparation for coil, and was enough (for 3 months) for the masses to do as "difficult" (titan) content. My main issue is that bismark and ravana didn't last 4 weeks, let alone 5 months, had they been viable content for the duration of the patch, things would have been fine.

A suggestion I have is to dramatically increase the amount of valued "non gear upgrade" rewards to keep content relevant. add minions, mounts, titles, or idk, something crazy like housing items to the primals, to coil, to CT, anything that adds longevity to these pieces of content and makes more relevant content without making more content. Kirin was great because it made all ex primals from 2.1-2.4 relevant content again, and players actively participated in this old content and made 2.5's 5 month patch cycle a lot easier for me, its even gotten to the point where people might be running 2.x Ex primals more than HW Ex primals, which is a hilarious, and rather sad thought

The core problem is the business model; As in it's entirely intentional.

In content-driven games, content takes longer to develop than it takes to get consumed. It takes a grand total of around 65 hours to completely consume Heavensward (Not counting wipe times. Could take you forever then :p)

All games get boring after a while, but you stave it off with sand-boxy content and/or activities. The mini-games are an example, but the ones we got so far aren't really engaging mini-games. Hell, Chocobo Racing is a stat-game and an exercise in pressing the W key in most cases.

All I know is, is that I'm currently capped on all my weekly "gates," but I can still log on and find something fun to do.

That's the difference between looking at it as a gated game, and looking it at it as an MMORPG. Hell, last Tuesday I didn't get shit done even though things reset. I spent 99% of my night goofing off with friends. I found something fun to do that wasn't at all related to reaching gated milestones. I wasn't even mad when I didn't cap all my stuff last week because I was having too much fun and forgot to.

For you, the only recommendation I can make is to expand your horizons beyond the limitations of the game.

Spend time with friends.
Throw a giant Halloween party for the whole server.
Organize a scavenger hunt.
Attempt to beat a dungeon/fight naked.
Mentor some newbies who never played an MMO before.
Organize an S-rank summoning expedition.
Etc.

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Originally Posted by Velox

For you, the only recommendation I can make is to expand your horizons beyond the limitations of the game.

Spend time with friends.
Throw a giant Halloween party for the whole server.
Organize a scavenger hunt.
Attempt to beat a dungeon/fight naked.
Mentor some newbies who never played an MMO before.
Organize an S-rank summoning expedition.
Etc.

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The problem with this is that apart from the last one (which SE doesn't want you to do because there is 0 incentive). These are you making your own fun and really has nothing to do with the game itself. Just because you can goof off, doesn't mean the game is giving you anything to do, its just you interacting with other people, which certainly softens the wounds, but doesn't really help. I'm glad you are having fun, but it doesn't fix the core issues.

Incentive and reward are the key to keeping people engaged, not content (look at any clicker style game, which is grind in its purest and simplest form), and recently I have felt like the game hasn't been balanced to meet the demand.

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Originally Posted by Lambdafish

Incentive and reward are the key to keeping people engaged.

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Actually that's how you train dogs. People are different in that they are able to learn something regardless of whether or not there's a tangible treat at the end of it. People also have the amazing ability to create their own incentive and create their own rewards.

And everything I said IS part of the game. That's the essence of an MMORPG. The game IS family and friends. The game IS finding fun in even the most mundane circumstances. If you think otherwise, you are sorely mistaken, and are setting yourself up for incredible disappointment down the road. I'm not saying it's not without its problems, but ignoring everything I said is ignoring what it means to play a social game.

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Originally Posted by Velox

Actually that's how you train dogs. People are different in that they are able to learn something regardless of whether or not there's a tangible treat at the end of it. People also have the amazing ability to create their own incentive and create their own rewards.

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I recommend you look up player psychology and conditioning sometime, its a fascinating subject. You are right that dogs are easier to condition than people, but people still respond to it much the same. Look at the amount of Bismark farm parties you see compared to pony farm parties, people don't run content without a reason, and for the masses, it takes a bit of carrot on a stick to engage a player in said content.

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Originally Posted by Velox

And everything I said IS part of the game. That's the essence of an MMORPG. The game IS family and friends. The game IS finding fun in even the most mundane circumstances. If you think otherwise, you are sorely mistaken, and are setting yourself up for incredible disappointment down the road. I'm not saying it's not without its problems, but ignoring everything I said is ignoring what it means to play a social game.

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Actually the essence of an MMORPG is the way its designed, your perception of an MMORPG is a place to play with family and friends. In my opinion, XIV give lackluster control over this, and the controls that FC are given to organise events like you suggested. People play for different reasons because people are different, which makes it hard for SE to cater to everyone, which makes developing content expensive, and hence here we are complaining. What isn't hard is making the game that we already have rewarding to play, and to slow down how quickly content becomes irrelevant, SE know this because its the entire point of the relic quest, however there are unrelated problems there to do with reward balance.

Again, this isn't a bash at you for the way you play the game, you are a certain categorisation of player (look up the Bartle test), and you enjoy the game your way.

Im sorry about your illness, but there is plenty of things to do!

Level a new class. (Thats what I mostly do while waiting)

Play Triple Triad! (or Pet Battle next patch. I can't wait!)

Or even....I know this might sound bad but...Start a new Character of a different race!
(Ive been mulling it myself, might make either a Lala or Roeg.)

Roll an alt. Heck, roll a few.

It's the corner they are painting them selves in to. If everyone rolled 8 characters and completed gated content on all 8 they would never run out of end game and throttling us would be moot.

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Originally Posted by Ksenia

Roll an alt. Heck, roll a few.

It's the corner they are painting them selves in to. If everyone rolled 8 characters and completed gated content on all 8 they would never run out of end game and throttling us would be moot.

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Hmmm good idea. Just need to level 4 class to 60. 1 Dow/Dom, 1 Doh and 2 Dol.

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Originally Posted by Tapasan

Hmmm good idea. Just need to level 4 class to 60. 1 Dow/Dom, 1 Doh and 2 Dol.

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Only to 58! As soon as your battle class reaches Idlyshire your good to go. Heck u could even ditch the DOL class since most people cant be bothered to do 1 characters worth of weekly favors. Red Crafting Scrips are the real gate. You can have all the money in the world but ur still gated at 9 Crafting tokens per week (unless your buying them from other players). 1 Crafter at 60 (ALC best option) and 1 Gatherer (Miner) and 1 DOW to 58 is all you need.

Be warned however, going this route essentially makes you a slave to the game (3 Gather/Craft Red Scrip ready alts). Some people have a hard time capping weekly's on 1 character. Multiply that by 1,2,3 and you'll soon realise this isn't something for the faint of heart. Hardcore Omnicrafters will go this route to give SE the middle finger because lets face it, U CANT GATE US! Nice try tho! But asside from that small minority of players, most people wouldnt even consider this.

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Originally Posted by PROBOUND

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Yeah feels like a slave already T_T leveling my alt. Capping red script so far im okay since i pre-harvest most the materials, e.g. You can do two thing in one run such favor in sea of cloud while collecting birch log, ooid and aurum sand etc. tbh im pretty much bored and worn out with these planning and pre-harvest everytime log in. subs end in 2 week, i guess a break from playing is good too.

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Originally Posted by LongsunZhao

Why does everyone say that? Rushed through the game? I mean. Wasn't Heavensward released 5 months ago? Not 5 days ago? Stupid thing to say, people are not rushing the game, people are bored to death. GATE GATE GATE! All they know!!

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Yeah, I love how people are all U RUSH UR OWN FAULT DKFSADFJKS when in fact if we don't "RUSH" we end up doing content with gimps who can't play and expect carries and can't clear AND it gets nerfed...SO WE HAVE NO CHOICE you either do it when it comes out along with everyone else or you get stuck with the bads. PLEASE STOP SAYING TO STOP RUSHING its contradicting to what SE does with the nerfing!

Sorry about your situation there. All I can say is that the game is balanced around the idea that most people can't play quite that often and they've designed gates as a means of keeping the majority of the player base together, rather than a small portion rocketing far ahead of everyone else.

Personally I've kept up on capping red gathering scrips lately and that's it. Still haven't managed to dedicate time to leveling any crafting class to 60, only a single combat class, usually wind up with 200-350 eso tomes at the end of the week (240 this week I think), and haven't had time for a single Alexander run in 2 weeks. Hell, I even have several maps waiting to be run that i just don't seem to be getting to.

The game always has loads for me to do and I hate that I can never seem to catch up. I guess what I'm saying is 'the grass is always greener.'

I put all my DoH and DoL to 60 and I just... Don't know what to do other than red scrip. I don't like making gear for 51-59 since those material is really annoying to get.

I really hope this new patch gives adjustment for red scrip (or maybe no more limit) so I could trade for AF2 gear.

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Originally Posted by Velox

Actually that's how you train dogs. People are different in that they are able to learn something regardless of whether or not there's a tangible treat at the end of it. People also have the amazing ability to create their own incentive and create their own rewards.

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The ugly truth is that the human reward signaling pathway is pretty darn similar to other mammals. We, however, differ ourselves in other things like self-consciousness, high lvls of cognition and mental time-travel etc, including "the abilities to generate fun on our own" as you proposed.

I agree with you that we have "the abilities to generate fun on our own", and there is so much joy in enjoying the game with friends, family, FC members. Not many of us can deny that our wonderful FC provided us much incentive to log on each day. But these should not be the "only few reasons" for us to log on. Hell, many games out there can provide these anyway. Why this game then? This is DoH section of the forum here. If you are reading and even posting here, you must love crafting in this game. That is MAIN reason that's keeping most of us here - we love crafting!

And because we love crafting, we do our best to remain positive concerning existing problems in the crafting world. But we all have different limits of toleration (and for many of us, this limit is 3.1). It is UNDENIABLE that something is very wrong with the crafting world at the moment. All we can do is hope and believe in SE to resolve them all in 3.1.

Whether you are doing naked runs like you mentioned, playing Triple Triad like Maxilor, or whether you are leveling DoW/DoM like me & Maxilor, it's all the same... We are just buying time for SE to fix the mess. Like the OP and Iromi said earlier, no one is really rushing here now. It's been 5 months, and i have been casually doing some favors and massively buying favor mats, yet i am not even close to gearing up 1/4 of my DoH. Face the iron fact, the current 2 star crafting is too gated. Stop denying it!

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Originally Posted by Lambdafish

Incentive and reward are the key to keeping people engaged, not content

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The idea here is true. Content is something great that can keep people engaged. But like you said, content gets rolled over in days, while it takes months for the dev to create new content.

I assume the "incentive and reward" you meant refers to certain "goals" or "aims" like acquisition of a BiS mainhand tool like Supra or Lucis. But in my opinion, even that is not necessary. For instance, in Patch 2.4, many of us reach BiS and obtained Master Recipe II very early (Ok, I rushed back then). So you would think we'd be bored to death after that. But we ENJOYED REPETITIVELY crafting those 4 star items (and 3 star too, in earlier patches!). This repetition didn't give us any further "progress" or reaching any "goals". But we, crafters, enjoyed the crafting! The items were pretty, they were useful, and they sold well. Now, how many God damn favors do you need to do before you can do 1 or 2 items? Having a carrot (reward/goal) in the front is a good incentive to keep people going, but it's not the only thing that keeps crafters crafting! Currently, what's preventing us from enjoying crafting are the GATES! And of course, there is also the Core Problem that there are currently TOO FEW DoL i170 gear to sell, and all those i180 DoW/DoL gear are pretty useless to raiders.

The OP's ranting has been going on for quite awhile... and they are getting a bit overwhelming. But hey! It's what the forums are for, right? XD

I do think we've got too many weekly gates now, generally, and the game could stand to lose one or two of them. Problematically, however, the only really "new" gates are the crafting/gathering ones, and sadly, I don't think they're going to back down from the new Scrip system.

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Originally Posted by LongsunZhao

Why does everyone say that? Rushed through the game? I mean. Wasn't Heavensward released 5 months ago? Not 5 days ago? Stupid thing to say, people are not rushing the game, people are bored to death. GATE GATE GATE! All they know!!

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well, you don't have to keep playing. Maybe go find something else to play or do. Many of us are still enjoying the content.

its pretty boring and mundane capping scrips. i do it basically to get it over with, so no, i agree it's not much fun. i like crafting however, so even still there are those times when i am enjoying it, i get the feeling its more like a chore and not as fun as it used to be.

I haven't gotten up to Red Scrip Crafting yet, but even if you're capped and gated behind waiting a few more weeks until you can do some special crafts, can't you just do normal crafting to sell and what not? If you have nothing to do, can't you craft some HQ 50+ recipes or something?

Something I've been doing lately is going through my recipes and crafting items that I've never made before and putting them on the MB. Many of these items are also gear I could use myself now or in the future, or I can use them on a retainer, or I can just SB them. The main purpose for me though is twofold: work towards an achievement, and generate some gil thru MB.

Try PVP, that's the only ungated thing I can think of. You can do hundreds of matches per day if you want and reap rewards from each and every single one...

...Of course, if the insanity doesn't get to you first. *Shrug*

Seriously though, try out PVP. It's pretty fun if you can find the flow of the duty-finder and get back-to-back matches.

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Originally Posted by Lemuel81

well, you don't have to keep playing. Maybe go find something else to play or do. Many of us are still enjoying the content.

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Oh for goodness sakes, please can people stop using this argument instead of addressing the concerns raised? It doesn't make you intelligent, or witty, it just makes you come across as someone who doesn't have a cohesive response.

Let's get the obvious out of the way first. This game has flaws. This should be a no-brainer for everyone, because there's no such thing as flawless, ever. A lot of people hate the scrip system, myself included. I feel it's an unwarranted obstacle. The rewards offered are too low, and the cap is too low. The ingredients used to make some of the higher end recipes even REQUIRE the use of scrips to make, so you get even less of a return on them.

If you've carefully constructed a masterpiece, only to miss the deadline hand-in by a few minutes, there's no telling when the next hand-in will be for that item. I had an Opal Ring in my inventory for 5 more weeks before I was able to trade it in! It's not as if you can devalue it to a HQ item, even if the quality bar was maxed, and NQ items are next to worthless.

Can we also talk about why level 140+ items are still converting into tier 3 materia? If I can convert a level 55 chestpiece into a T4 materia, shouldn't the higher level stuff be way out of the Tier 3 park by now? We should be looking at a chance to get T5 materia through conversion with the really high level stuff, but I'm pretty sure it's only available through Mutamix currently.

Anyway, enough of my ranting. The point is, the OP has a really good argument. What do you do when you hit all your caps for the week? You can't progress your crafts any further, you can't get better gear for your White Mage or your Paladin, and you basically just log off until the following week. For myself, this is why I play it in shorter bursts. I'll log in, do some crafts, do my dailies, and then log off. I do this once every day so I can reach my caps. This might mean playing for an hour or two each day, tops.

Crafting is a bit of casual fun for me, but the scrips turned it into a relentless grind (so did the earlier 3-star grind, as it required insane levels of expensive materia melding to qualify, but this is much worse) and it's taken some of the fun out of it. I'm on record as saying I was actually looking forward to the system as, on paper at least, it sounded like a great way to get high end gear without too much hassle.

I think I gave them too much credit.

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Originally Posted by kuma_aus

If you have nothing to do, can't you craft some HQ 50+ recipes or something?

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Well, sure you could. But there's a few issues. Firstly, the MSQ and sidequests give away most of the crafted gear between levels 51-59 like they were Halloween candy. And they're all HQ, so we don't even have that as an advantage. This significantly devalues them, and basically means the only ones who care to buy are themselves crafters looking to hand-in for levequests. At level 60, you do NOT have any level 60 crafts by default. They're all gated behind the scrip system, and you will need a fair number of hand-ins to get your recipe books.

Incidentally, all of the level 60 quests also require recipes hidden within these recipe books.

So, while you can HQ some recipes there's nothing truly valuable which isn't either a pain in the butt to obtain the materials for, or is otherwise gated in the first place.

Anyone ever heard of Skinners box. Thats what some of this "we need Incentive and rewards" reminds me of.

If you are playing for the gear only, this is bound to happen. I couldn't stick around if it was only for the gear.