The amount of dead content in the game is alarming

This has always been a problem with FFXIV, but with every new expansion it gets worse. As per title, the amount of dead content is alarming, there are lots of activities that are impossibile to tackle for the average player (meaning anyone who doesn't have friends/a FC/is in a Discord channel). Variant and Criterion Dungeons, Eureka, Bozja, Castrum Lacus Litore, Delubrum Reginae, The Baldesion Arsenal, and of course older raid tiers and especially Savage.

Personally I don't have a solution, but a thing that I think everyone noticed is that every activity that grants a lot of EXP, no matter how long, bad or tedious it is, always manages to attract people. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think that the playerbase prefer grinding Bozja Southern Front FATEs than tackling on Variant Dungeons, it's just a matter of how efficient it is to level up alt Jobs.

What do you think? I discussed this with some friends and they say that these activities help keeping the social apparatus of the game alive. While I understand their reasoning I feel like sooner or later it's important to solve that problem.

I think players that don't regularly do any of the content you mention might just be intimidated and haven't really tried it out. You don't need a dedicated pre-formed social group to do most of those (though it helps)

Bozja and Eureka always have people around, and it's just a matter of shouting "lfg" to find a group. Extreme, Savage, Criterion, even some Ultimates can easily be progged through Party Finder.

Baldesion Arsenal and Delubrum Savage usually need more organization and yeah, those will require you to find a solid group probably through Discord.

Those rides had their time, there are new rides now. It's the reality of a themepark MMO. Old things get left behind eventually (usually after their expansion).

But people are still doing Bozja. There are still people doing Eureka. You can put together groups to do whatever. The solution to the 'problem' you've found is make friends and play the video game with them.

Rival Wings is the best PVP content this game has to offer and only gets play during Mogtome events and discord-organized nights.

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Originally Posted by CapricaLangley

This has always been a problem with FFXIV, but with every new expansion it gets worse. As per title, the amount of dead content is alarming, there are lots of activities that are impossibile to tackle for the average player (meaning anyone who doesn't have friends/a FC/is in a Discord channel). Variant and Criterion Dungeons, Eureka, Bozja, Castrum Lacus Litore, Delubrum Reginae, The Baldesion Arsenal, and of course older raid tiers and especially Savage.

Personally I don't have a solution, but a thing that I think everyone noticed is that every activity that grants a lot of EXP, no matter how long, bad or tedious it is, always manages to attract people. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think that the playerbase prefer grinding Bozja Southern Front FATEs than tackling on Variant Dungeons, it's just a matter of how efficient it is to level up alt Jobs.

What do you think? I discussed this with some friends and they say that these activities help keeping the social apparatus of the game alive. While I understand their reasoning I feel like sooner or later it's important to solve that problem.

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The solution is to make the content long-standing, and not just something that is isolated to that singular expansion.

Add regular updates to content, even if it is just additional loot, lore entries, achievements, EXP, or gear.

Oh, I never thought I'd see this. Yeah I've thought this forever.
Cutting to the chase, it's unsustainable for an mmo. They never reach something's potential before they leave it in the dust to push out the next gimmick.

Old content being ignored disenchants new players too. It's the biggest reason new players dont want to join too, because they dont get to do anything worthwhile until the current expansion.

I think FFXIV could be doomed in 5 years, for this and many other reasons, and being square's flagship, it could actually downgrade square enix to the small indie developer everyone jokes they develop like.

Square needs to wake up.

Eureka, BA, DRS, and Bozja are all things people still do. Bozja was extremely crowded when DT first launched because it was the best way to get to level 90 on the new jobs. And I want to point out that BA and DRS have always needed joining a Discord to complete, this doesn't make them dead content. I should know, I got my Ozma mount the week BA dropped, and everyone used a Discord back then for it. (that Discord is still running BA weekly to this day if you still want to get Ozma!) Me and a bunch of friends also got our DRS dogs shortly before DT dropped. I don't think you can have large scale difficult content and not expect people to want to use a pre-made group with voice chat for it. And I mean, I'm pretty sure like, 99% of MMO players are going to have Discord on their PCs, phones, or consoles so it doesn't make the content inaccessible to anyone. You don't even have to speak a word to anyone if you're shy or have anxiety over being in a voice chat with 40+ strangers, everyone mutes except people doing the call outs.

I've thought for a while this game needs rewards that aren't glam, housing items, mounts, minions, or currency

Something like giving out more personal boost items like the ones you can get from squadrons (exp buffs so that you do the activity to get the exp buff and then go use the exp buff in another activity, create rewards that make you do more stuff)

And stuff like consumable items that make you move faster in town

Things that don't feel necessary to get but feel nice to get and help you when doing other activities

It be nice if they at least patched old content to not be as much of a pain in the ass anymore.

the mandatory 10m wait on queueing into Delubrum Reginae really should be axed.

Eureka and Bozja are not dead. You can zone in to any map and find other people doing the FATEs. You can /shout "let's group up!" and form a group to do together if you want. Castrum and Dalriada can be completed by the people in the zone, discord not required. Discord runs were useful at launch when everyone was undergeared and didn't know the boss patterns, now it's been years since launch and you will have more than enough veterans who will carry the group. Baldesion's Arsenal is the borderline edge case where it CAN be completed by people in the zone without discord, but due to the amount of people required you will probably want to be in a discord run to fill up.

Delibrum Reginae I agree, mainly because it's instanced so there is no chance of seeing it pop in a zone and other people showing up like with the other three field operation raids.

SE should just up the old max levelish content, so Bozja and Eureka turns into lvl100 content, including the rewards, you will of course get your current progress reset every new expansion, but it would give content to do and also keep some of those serious no lifer achievements alive as well.

The end of Eureka should be rebalanced, and maybe others. But you can hang out in Eureka pug the zone talk with randos and have a decent time no judgment. You can not finish Eureka the same way. The 24 randos in the zone can't just plop into the last area and finish.


Treasure maps are another. If they would just remove the level sync they could be random soloed. Or just make them all 100 and give 100 rewards.

They already have systems in place to keep some content alive.
The main one being roulettes.
You also have the challenge log.
Then there is wondrous trail.
They add rewards regularly to bicolor gemstones to incentivize FATEs.
Also the moogle event, especially with their new structure where they made all sort of things possibly reward tomes.
Seeing so many people waiting for the fishing boat was great when that event started after6.55.
The issue is that rewards are basically either poetics or old. They would need to add more worthy generic rewards, similar to the moogle events.
Another possible fix is also to add an actual transmog system. That would probably incrntivize people to try to get the loot to fill their transmog log.
Oh and they also need to make the achievement system better which they said they might be looking into.

Pretty much every MMO has this issue where previous expansions content becomes old and people prefer doing the new shiny stuff. FF11 and various other mmo games have had this issue of older zones and endgame hubs being almost devoid of players and everyone hangs out in the new zones/endgame hubs. Although ff11 did do a better job at making older content last a lot longer compared to modern mmo's.

I feel like FFXIV has the least amount of old dead content, most of its content is evergreen and has at least SOME people interested in doing it.

Compare that to World of Warcraft where entire expansions are skipped over and forgotten for new players, and you are forced into the new expansion once you reach a certain level.

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Originally Posted by CapricaLangley

Eureka, Bozja, Castrum Lacus Litore , Delubrum Reginae,

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How to say you never set foot on eureka / bozja without saying you never set foot on eureka bozja. Sure if you try now, while everyone is on the new extension, it's gonna be dead, but neither of those are dead content. I mean, I did 10 eureka relics, and 10/10/10 with medals in bozja/zadnor and half of a eureka relic was with people I knew. DR is often done in PF, you can do it with 8 men, it last half an hour average. The only thing they will ask you is to use essences, and if you don't know what to use, ask during the 10 min wait, they will always explain it to you.

For variant and criterion, you're kinda right. For BA and Savage, that's high difficulty content, of course you'll need discord/a premade. Thoses things need communication, but they're not dead. for normal older tier raids, it's fairly easy to have a team due to roulettes, for high difficulty tier, I have no idea, but you might be on something.

Most of those are very well alive, they just don't fit the way you want to play the game

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Originally Posted by Maxilor

I feel like FFXIV has the least amount of old dead content, most of its content is evergreen and has at least SOME people interested in doing it.

Compare that to World of Warcraft where entire expansions are skipped over and forgotten for new players, and you are forced into the new expansion once you reach a certain level.

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Outside of the new MoP remix event, classic, and limited timewalking events, you don't even get to do the old raids unless you want to just walk up and 1 shot a boss, because syncing isn't a thing for them. At least new players can go back and sync old EX trials and savage raids in FF14.

None of that content is dead, BA is run multiple times a day, and DRS is run several times a week. There are discords dedicated to running this content and it is all regularly run.

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Originally Posted by Ratikal

Rival Wings is the best PVP content this game has to offer and only gets play during Mogtome events and discord-organized nights.

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Sadly even with mogtomes I was still seeing 30+ minute queues most of the time.

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Originally Posted by Urielparadox

None of that content is dead, BA is run multiple times a day, and DRS is run several times a week. There are discords dedicated to running this content and it is all regularly run.

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This is just my view. But any content that needs discord organization outside of the game to get it done should be consider questionable. It really isn't within the design of the game. Now you might say what about crazy endgame stuff, completion rates are not good and it is more a showcase then part of the game. Like ooh look at this amazing feature, but you will never use it. With that said depending on real life you should be able to complete almost anything if you have the skill to do it. Except Rival wing achievement, I don't like your chances.

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Originally Posted by Kaurhz

The solution is to make the content long-standing, and not just something that is isolated to that singular expansion.

Add regular updates to content, even if it is just additional loot, lore entries, achievements, EXP, or gear.

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There is truth to what you're saying, but it's only half of the problem.
Some of the mentioned content isn't at cap, and, which each expansion, playing old content feels progressively worse. I ran a lot of Delubrum Reginae Savage in EW, and the latest BLM changes made what I used to play (Lost Flare Star Black Mage) horrible. Come 8.0, it wouldn't surprise me if, continuing current trends, Cirterion feels as awful as doing UCoB feels these days.
Until this game stops both disregarding low level gameplay, and accidentally gutting it with its ill-thought "reworks", a lot of this content will never see life even if they build on it beyond a small burst of activity as people trudge their way towards endgame content.

It doesn't help that moogle tomestone events actively discourage people from engaging with said content by providing easier access to their respective rewards.

I feel like The Baldesion Arsenal should now be taken out of the 2 fate system and put in like Delubrum Reginae savage, there's no need to go in and do the portal thing nowadays, especially when you hae FC's that want to participate but don't want to join large scale discords, just for a chance at a spot of getting in.