Engaging Content is at an All-Time Low

I say this after seeing the failure of Cosmic Exploration, Occult Crescent, and how much we're being drip-fed. We experienced it in Endwalker with how ridiculously easy dungeons and raids were to an extent outside Savage and Ultimate, and now we're back on the cycle yet again.

Let's be honest here: We're going to be waiting until 8.0 to even get fixes, and even then it's not going to change much aside from new bells and whistles, maybe a tiny carrot on a long stick that they're going to beat us with until we get our drop like the Yan in Treasure Maps.

Looking at the content of Dawntrail, I'm pretty sure others have said it plenty of times: The magic is gone after the first few runs of a dungeon. Dungeon content persists for new players, sure, but when it's constantly being re-run after re-run people just accept the grind it is. At the very least, they attempted to fix the problem that they created in Endwalker with dungeons being trivial on arrival and have at least had some success in it(The Strayborough Deadwalk is still one of the best dungeons to date in terms of "Expert" difficulty due to the first boss).

Other than that, it's been a mixed bag from beginning to end. We've yet to see 7.5 sure, but all in all I haven't really seen anything to be surprised about when it comes to encounters except few occasions.

Regardless, outside of that you've got your Trials and Raids. These are more or less what the meat and potatoes are, since you're literally thrown into the fire to do them on Normal - but am I wrong when I say that Extreme and Savage and Ultimate are the only engaging battle content to date if we're not including Exploration Forays?

Because it really feels like it's the only thing that gets people to think about what they're doing half the time and not just pressing one button(not Healers) to do things. That aside, our current Exploration Foray has failed to meet the mark that Bozja left - all because of a failed gameplay loop and horrid systems involved.

Forked Tower was supposed to be engaging content(and it still is, to an extent) for everyone to jump into similar to CLL and Dalriada, or even BA in this regard with the entry system, but it flopped hard before they fixed the problem with pre-mades. There's also the matter that people are heavily discouraged from entering Forked Tower because of its difficulty, even put on a scaler if we also consider how Chaotic went the first few weeks it was out.

The gameplay loop was too repetitive, and didn't give people time to breathe in-between outside of Forked Tower. This is what really made Eureka unique - NMs weren't popping constantly. People had to wait on timers, so they did other things and talked with people while they were waiting. When it comes to Occult Crescent, it's the complete opposite: FATEs spawned constantly, forcing a treadmill you're forced to keep up with even as a player just entering the content, and then missing it either because you lack the Riding Map or because FATE scaling is destroyed by people with Job Mastery nowadays. Relentless Grinds are certainly something for people with a hard grindset, but I don't think that's the case with a majority of XIV players.

This is why Occult Crescent is slowly being abandoned by people because not only are the loot tables a joke when it comes to chests, it rewards you with a majority of junk for your time unless you're doing Forked Tower. They'll grab the one thing they want and then leave - that's it and normally has been the case for a lot of things in XIV.

Now, while Battle Content isn't everything(it really is mostly everything in hindsight), you've got Crafting Content with Cosmic Exploration - where we revisit the Loporrits exploring stars. RABBITS - IN SPAAAAAAACE. It's not a foreign concept given Endwalker, but initially when we first got Cosmic Exploration it was actually kinda cool - though, again after the first few weeks people petered out because not only were your Gatherers starving for GP, Crafters had some recipes that were nigh insurmountable even with BiS, Food, and Pots in the form of EX+. That's still the case today when looking at it through a lens and taking a deeper dive all the way to Oizys.

Phaenna in particular fixed a couple things for Gatherers so they aren't always GP Starved, but it didn't innovate - it just continued with what was building on foreign planets. The only thing that we did unlock was just more colorful scenery, but that's it. That's the reward. Everything else was just the same slop from the Moon with different rewards involved.

Oizys is a continuation of this downtrend, as when we initially started people were excited about the artifact digging since we already knew it was going to be the same old same old. The artifact digging I was hoping to at least have something tangible to hold onto and read, if not for the heck of it or even just a reward tied behind it - instead, it's our favorite trend that they've repackaged from Occult Crescent, it's not spinning the Wheel, it's Lootboxes.

Like seriously? How many times do we have to keep telling you this lesson? LOOTBOXES. ARE. BAD. Especially when you just stuff them with useless stuff that we're just going to sell for paltry gil because we have BETTER THINGS that are being sold in the Credits Store! It's just a slap in the face.

While the Crafting Relic is a grind in itself, my biggest problem is again, systems. Others have said it before, and it's that XIV cannot survive unless they shake this up. Engagement is at an all-time low in content because their systems keep failing to reward the player properly. Their long-form content is failing because of this. If you don't reward the player for their time, they're going to move onto something else and by the time they've exhausted the content(even battle content) they're going to stop playing and probably not come back.

Hell, I'll just come out and say it: The only content keeping XIV alive right now is Player-driven Content. Your RPers, your social events, your clubs? All of those things are driving engagement. It's the ONLY thing driving engagement with others in an MMO that has been disincentivizing actually making connections for content outside of raiding ever since they implemented Duty Support and making it a Single Player Game nearly.

We need the development team to actually give a damn about the content they're putting out because we can't just copy pasta the same systems over and over. That's how you grind out your player base and not make them want to do the new content - because the expectation is it's going to be some form of an old system that was good in the past, but doesn't work today.

Innovate. Break out of the formula and try something new. That's really all I can say as feedback to the dev team from this post outside of highlighting the failures from content and lack of engagement. You can say the same of Healer Engagement too, if you want to go that far and understand why there's a lack of Healers still.

Other than that, Please look forward to 8.0 as Yoshida would say.

From my perspective...

Occult is boring because, as you say FATEs are always spawning, but there is only 1 that spawns at any given time, and then they only last 30 seconds at best.. Then you have CEs where only 1 spawns at any given time... They've stripped away near enough all forms of player agency with this... Can't decide which zone to farm, because it's so on-the-rails.

Cosmic is uhhh, it is glorified levequests, and because of this reason, it feels like the actual collaborative effort has been a lot lower with this versus with Ishgard... EX+ recipes are dull because the underlying ability suite is dull... I know people routinely (and rightly) complain about combat job simplification, but the amount crafters were hit with this is absurd, there used to be a lot of agency to combat RNG... With Cosmic it feels like they wanted to add an exploratory element to it... But it's just utterly redundant because you just find yourself using the glorified hoverboard to travel everywhere.

It just feels like they are trying to streamline the system as much as humanly possible to ensure that in any given activity, no player can miss out on anything, and with this they've lost a massive amount of engagement factor.

I know people say that relics should be most efficient inside of Occult, and frankly on surface level I would agree... But when you realize how much of Occult is just on-the-rails... It makes it incredibly boring... I went in there, did 1 CE for 5 Paste and gave up, because it just borderlines on Netflix activity, you could multiply the yield by 5 or 6 and I still would not touch it (and this is hilarious seeing as I farmed levelling roulettes).

They need to spend more time putting their foot down, and not being afraid to make certain content for specific audiences, rather than trying to funnel the complete player-base into a specific piece of content.

Personally, I'm finding Savage engaging, and the deep dungeon was extremely good and felt like how normal dungeons should be.

They have been saying the variant/criterion dungeons will be good so we'll have to see, because they intentionally have been trying to make a middleground difficulty for it.

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Originally Posted by HyperiusUltima

LOOTBOXES. ARE. BAD. Especially when you just stuff them with useless stuff that we're just going to sell for paltry gil because we have BETTER THINGS that are being sold in the Credits Store!

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Lootboxes are bad when:

• Exchanged for real life money (these are not).
• When the RNG chance is low enough that you could take an extremely long time - potentially years - to get it (this is the case sometimes, but usually you'll have it after a year).
• When you cannot obtain the rewards through a more consistent method, such as buying it off the market board, or with a currency somewhere (normally, you can, in this game).

So the lootboxes are not really anywhere near as bad as in other games.

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While the Crafting Relic is a grind in itself, my biggest problem is again, systems. Others have said it before, and it's that XIV cannot survive unless they shake this up. Engagement is at an all-time low in content

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I agree that the systems are designed to be extremely shallow, and not engaging. The main reason is they don't have variability. Variability is generally achieved in an MMORPG by allowing other players to be involved in how the content goes. SE has removed other players from the equation in most cases, to protect casual players, making the game a lot more boring than it could be.

For example, in a raid, doing callouts or being a dorito makes it fun. But you don't have to do callouts in FFXIV because raids are scripted in such a way that they don't need anyone to coordinate things as the battle unfolds. They are much too streamlined for that. A raid leader isn't needed.

Making players have to ASK another person to craft something instead of buying it would be fun. Making crafters have to go and gather materials to craft said thing by slaying dangerous enemies would make it fun. But it's casualized to a point where you just buy it all on the market board for a few gil, if not from an NPC. Subsequently, most items have no significant gil value.

The concept of one player relying on another player to change how the content plays out is really how to make content work long-term. PvP is the easiest example of this that no MMO really gets wrong. No battle is the same because players make it different.

Oh, let's give an example of something they finally did right. Pilgrim's Traverse. In the higher floors, it's particularly common for 1-3 of your party members to wipe. Then YOU stand between succeess and failure. The stakes get high. You have to lock in. And of course the content isn't 100% the same every time due to RNG so you don't even know how the last floors will go at all, or what actions you'll have to handle it. There is little other content in the game with actual stakes and variability like this.

Anyway, I don't believe engagement is at an all-time low. Rather, as low as it has been since forever.

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because their systems keep failing to reward the player properly.

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They do and the people interested in those rewards chase them. Mounts, minions, etc. Completionists. Achievements. BiS. The people not interested in those rewards are the ones who don't engage... but just because you are not amongst those motivated by the rewards does not mean there are none.

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Their long-form content is failing because of this. If you don't reward the player for their time, they're going to move onto something else and by the time they've exhausted the content(even battle content) they're going to stop playing and probably not come back.

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I think the problem you're having here is that the rewards are one-and-done. It's not that there are no rewards, but that once you have the rewards, that's it, no reason to do it anymore. That's how themepark games work though and to an extent, it does feel good to reach a point where you can move on to the next piece of content because there is 13 years worth of content to get through, so I can't entirely fault this concept.

However, making it rewarding long-term in a more shallow way makes sense, such as getting something for helping a sprout clear, etc. Tomestones don't really feel enough anymore. Nevertheless, often said sprouts can find others that still need the content, so it works out.

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The only content keeping XIV alive right now is Player-driven Content. Your RPers, your social events, your clubs? All of those things are driving engagement.

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That's what I was getting at above. Player-driven content makes content engaging. RP is an example of something that happens in many MMOs in spite of a lack of support for it in many cases. At least they have done a bit to support it in terms of emotes, mounts, house decorations, glamours, bard music. But there are definitely other things they could do to support RP.

Idk about everyone else but dawntrail is the best the game's ever been imo. Cosmic Exploration is the best gathering/crafting content they've ever put out, it's fun and i feel like i have a lot of choice in how i spend my time, and the various reward structures are gamefied in fun ways that make it not feel like a monotonous grind. The Gold streak system on Oizys is pretty fun, lets you grind for certain resources really fast, but the A rank missions arent always gonna be the best source of specific data so I actually get a choice in which resources i wanna farm for between going for gold A ranks or going for the best sources of Data.

South Horn isn't as fun as Bozja but in a lot of individual ways it's just as good if not better, mainly in getting around the map and adding more stuff to do around the area like scouting for coffers or doing sightseeing.

The Relic is easily the best ever. The raids are fantastic, Pilgrim's Traverse is probably my favorite Deep Dungeon, Story's been great, the environments, especially in Cosmic, have been the most gorgeous the team's ever put out.

Idk about everyone else, but this is the most fun the game's ever been for me.

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Originally Posted by torpy

Idk about everyone else but dawntrail is the best the game's ever been imo. Cosmic Exploration is the best gathering/crafting content they've ever put out, it's fun and i feel like i have a lot of choice in how i spend my time, and the various reward structures are gamefied in fun ways that make it not feel like a monotonous grind. The Gold streak system on Oizys is pretty fun, lets you grind for certain resources really fast, but the A rank missions arent always gonna be the best source of specific data so I actually get a choice in which resources i wanna farm for between going for gold A ranks or going for the best sources of Data.

South Horn isn't as fun as Bozja but in a lot of individual ways it's just as good if not better, mainly in getting around the map and adding more stuff to do around the area like scouting for coffers or doing sightseeing.

The Relic is easily the best ever. The raids are fantastic, Pilgrim's Traverse is probably my favorite Deep Dungeon, Story's been great, the environments, especially in Cosmic, have been the most gorgeous the team's ever put out.

Idk about everyone else, but this is the most fun the game's ever been for me.

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I'm also really happy with a lot in dawntrail. Im more upset about long standing issues like machinist aoe kit being ignored for 3 expansions.

I loved Pilgrim's Traverse -- the DDOS attacks soured me on going back in for a bit but I heard they gave some more leeway to that if you get disconnected. Things like that make the process a whole lot more palatable.

Cosmic does have beautiful environments but, and I say this for all of Dawntrail as a whole... there's just no reason to care anymore. Like the planet exploration could've been really something, with great lore, unique items, more involvement (think Diadem! People STILL do that and that was two expansions ago!) and you could actually sell most of the stuff you got on there, so you could make some gil with it too.

Your mistake is thinking that the current design isn't completely intended. Look how quickly they respond to feedback like "add better events". They are listening. They're just not listening to you. If anything has gone unfixed at this point after years of feedback it's because they have zero intention of ever changing it. They are not interested in retaining gamers. They just want XIV to be a sterile safe adult daycare center where nothing interesting can ever happen.

Personally, the game is pretty lackluster to me. I know some here are saying DT is the best ever but I honestly truly have to disagree. There's nothing...exciting. Not story wise, not reward wise. Crafting content aesthetically isn't pleasing to me at all. Fantasy seems just...ripped away. I dunno. Maybe the game just isn't for me anymore, but I enjoyed playing through HW, Stormblood had some fun parts. ShB was great on the story end of things, and EW was alright, I myself enjoyed it. I joined the game in Shadowbringers and really, really was engaged.

Not entirely sure what happened. But the excitement is just...gone. I'm not really wanting to move on yet (it takes a long while for me to just decide to leave and I have some hopefully not false hope it will get better), but with no sign of anything getting interesting and all of this drip feeding/no response to feedback at all, it's tiresome. It just makes me wonder if they even care, honestly.

I've been running out of things to stay engaged and I haven't even reached Dawntrail yet, and by all accounts, it doesn't seem like I'm missing out.

I'm just kind of stagnating after finishing Shadowbringers (which its self was ridiculously over-hyped) because apparently Endwalker was also "the worst expansion ever" until Dawntrail came along apparently.

I had a ton of fun with Pilgrim's Traverse for a while farming all the initial....whatever we were farming for the first step.

I just wish the gimmick was more fun than the phantom classes. A lot of them don't really make the zone more exciting. I found the special buffs/skills way more fun in Eureka and Bozja.

Aside from oracle - as a healer I love the thrill of reducing my HP by a ton but then being able to heal myself right away.

I'm not super motivated to level up all the different phantom jobs (especially the ones that seem extra boring) so it ran its course for me a lot faster than the earlier relic zones.

I feel like cosmic isn’t a flaw of content, it’s a flaw of the fact that there is only so much you can do with crafting

When you take a step back and look at cosmic, what it does and what it doesn’t do, what Phaenna fixed, little things that aussies changed it’s obvious they are taking feedback seriously and implementing it, the problem is simply there is only so much you can do with the games crafting system especially with Raphael.

Conversations I’ve had with people who already liked crafters before this basically all agree, cosmic is fantastic, it’s just crafter mains or people who really like second screening macros like they are playing RuneScape just aren’t a very large portion of the playerbase and with the absolutely catastrophic failure of OC people feel pushed into cosmic when it just isnt broad content

Square isn’t helping this by making it so cosmic gets updated every patch while OC rots and pilgrims; while good; is never getting updated again

Cosmic’s only real “failure” is too much time being dedicated to too few people

I don't get why they planned 4 full blown maps for cosmic. Because the story asked for a progression? We've been doing the same exact thing every time. There is nothing new (beyond dronebits lol). Nothing specific to each map to make them more unique and bring them onto themselves. Even the phase progressions are all the same and build the exact same modules over and over and over (cosmoliner, hydro and energy stations, mech hangars, etc).

If that was the extent of what was planned in terms of gameplay content, two maps at best would have sufficed. Ardorum would have just been a small map instance serving as base camp we could have probably set up in one or two phase progs or just a solo instance like the train station before Doomtrain. Phaenna could have been scrapped, Oizys would have been where we would actually have started following the story, stumbled on alien artifacts. And then the second map would have been the 4th one that has yet to come for a good finale.

But they needed more steps for their doh/dol relics, yet didn't want to assume responsibility for what it actually demanded in terms of investment.

I dont think Cosmic is a fail. However Cosmic and Occult just show that when two large scale open areas are created, both suffer from design perspectives. Occult is a bad version of Bozja and Cosmic while it is mostly fine is just a copy of Ishgard restoration but without the promise of new housing at the end.

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Originally Posted by Derio

I dont think Cosmic is a fail. However Cosmic and Occult just show that when two large scale open areas are created, both suffer from design perspectives. Occult is a bad version of Bozja and Cosmic while it is mostly fine is just a copy of Ishgard restoration but without the promise of new housing at the end.

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It was still worth having both Cosmic and Occult because Endwalker felt like it had too much solo content. At least I feel like I'm playing an MMORPG again in Dawntrail, doing these large-scale events (Red Alerts, Mech Ops, Progression FATEs, CEs) regularly with hundreds of players there. It feels "massively multiplayer".

Both would of course benefit from more mechanical creativity. But do remember that they only discovered their internal problems around the time of Occult and Cosmic release, and said it would take around 8 months before we start to see their new design philosophy due to how the development cycle works. We should see if North Horn is just another copy and paste mechanically, or not.

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Originally Posted by Kaurhz

Cosmic is uhhh, it is glorified levequests, and because of this reason, it feels like the actual collaborative effort has been a lot lower with this versus with Ishgard... EX+ recipes are dull because the underlying ability suite is dull... I know people routinely (and rightly) complain about combat job simplification, but the amount crafters were hit with this is absurd, there used to be a lot of agency to combat RNG... With Cosmic it feels like they wanted to add an exploratory element to it... But it's just utterly redundant because you just find yourself using the glorified hoverboard to travel everywhere.

It just feels like they are trying to streamline the system as much as humanly possible to ensure that in any given activity, no player can miss out on anything, and with this they've lost a massive amount of engagement factor.

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Pretty much. I agree that the biggest issue in CE is that there is no similar location like Diadem where one could gather resources, so there are no incentives for people to be there other than to level their crafters or try to do EXs for either score or farming mounts. In the case of Ishgard Restoration, it could be considered evergreen content because resources would have to be gathered, which allows a market to revolve around buying and selling those resources. To this day, you can still find people doing it for that particular reason.

Once everyone finishes their relic tools and their mounts in Cosmic Exploration, there simply would not be any additional incentive for people to return to that content.

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Originally Posted by DarkOmegaGod

Your mistake is thinking that the current design isn't completely intended. Look how quickly they respond to feedback like "add better events". They are listening. They're just not listening to you. If anything has gone unfixed at this point after years of feedback it's because they have zero intention of ever changing it. They are not interested in retaining gamers. They just want XIV to be a sterile safe adult daycare center where nothing interesting can ever happen.

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The "intended experience" for Cosmic at the moment is really just it - Space. The biggest problem we have been running into since they constantly made large maps and is beginning to become a problem is that they are empty after a while. Remember what I said about how people are when they consume the content that's in front of them? That includes art and the world. While we do have the FATE system, it's not actually standing up on its own after 12 years - it's stagnating even with the Shared FATE system added since Shadowbringers, along with an incentive to keep farming Bicolors.

It needs something new - and in regards to Cosmic that something new really needs to be something that we're actively doing. Think about it! What if people could, I don't know, choose what project they want to do first? The Loporrits have been deciding all this for us, and while it's nice for some base things, it'd actually be more engaging if we as a community worked on said projects instead of "filling the bar" just to move to the next phase that they've preordained in their game design. Not to mention, having a choice also can provide impact on what can happen first. Build a Mech Hangar first for more mechs, or build more energy efficiency? It adds an extra layer - but it's not really expected at all out of this dev team to go the extra mile in Dawntrail unless we push them to do so, which really shouldn't be the case but is.

While all they can do is react to what feedback is saying, they're too busy already planning 8.0 in the background while current state of the game is unhealthy. However, I also think that the idea that they should retain their design philosophy for an expansion in terms of content is more ridiculous than it sounds. If anything, it mostly tells the player base "we're going to keep doing the same thing until we get to the next expansion where we can actually change things later instead of now, so please look forward to it".

My biggest gripe with Cosmic Exploration is the lack of actual exploration. I honestly enjoy it for the most part, even if it is essentially the same gameplay loop in each zone. I just wish there was more interaction with each planet. I thought the artifacts would give us that, and it just being a reskin of Accursed Hoard for crafters and gatherers was such an utter disappointment. I figured we'd at least get a lore book of sorts like the field ops do. There just needs to be more to tie players to those planets and make them feel like there's a reason why they're there and not somewhere else doing the same content.

I do wonder if doing OC + CE at the same time was a bit more than they could chew, so both are suffering for it ultimately. I do feel like maybe we should have gotten three zones for each instead of 4 for CE and 2 for OC and had them staggered.

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Originally Posted by HyperiusUltima

Hell, I'll just come out and say it: The only content keeping XIV alive right now is Player-driven Content. Your RPers, your social events, your clubs? All of those things are driving engagement.

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I fully agree with this, and I just want to mention the extreme... irony of the whole situation - casual socialization is in fact the primary "driving force" for huge amount of players to keep logging into the game long after they ran out of "artificial tasks to complete" (or were not interested in such content in first place). Yet SE has always done everything possible to push even such people out of the game and into other games/virtual worlds, by refusing to introduce in-game social tools like a properly implemented, fully featured proximity voice chat (with appropriate controls to selectively mute individual players/mute everyone) or even very basic things like an "event board" specifically for people to advertise their "social venues/events" separately from Party Finder.

I'm going to disagree and say there's far more to do in Dawntrail patches then Endwalker had. During Endwalker patches I frequently found myself wondering why I logged in and some weeks I didn't even bother to do weeklies.

That being said I really am disappointed at how OC turned out.

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Originally Posted by thrntnja

My biggest gripe with Cosmic Exploration is the lack of actual exploration. I honestly enjoy it for the most part, even if it is essentially the same gameplay loop in each zone. I just wish there was more interaction with each planet. I thought the artifacts would give us that, and it just being a reskin of Accursed Hoard for crafters and gatherers was such an utter disappointment. I figured we'd at least get a lore book of sorts like the field ops do. There just needs to be more to tie players to those planets and make them feel like there's a reason why they're there and not somewhere else doing the same content.

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That's pretty much also my impression. As Supersnow said, cosmic is great if you just want to turn your brain off and macro craft while you do something else on your 2nd monitor, but that means all the work they put into the environment goes completely to waste.
They create these big, arguably nice looking, zones and then...you spend 20 hours sitting in the hub.

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Originally Posted by Infindox

I'm going to disagree and say there's far more to do in Dawntrail patches then Endwalker had. During Endwalker patches I frequently found myself wondering why I logged in and some weeks I didn't even bother to do weeklies.

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There is definitely "more to do" in Dawntrail, it's not even a debate. A lot of it is just doing the same thing we've been doing for 10+ years. It's fates, it's levequests, it's aoeing trash.
Pilgrim's Traverse brought some new things to the deep dungeon formula, I'll give them that (significantly better than Eureka Orthos). It just suffers from matchmaking issues now that the content is "old".

Well, good Job design (doesnt matter if Combat or Crafter) would make every content automatically more engaging.

Unfortunately Square seems to die on the hill of simplification. This only makes the problems that have plagued the content since Heavensward even more apparent.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

I'm just kind of stagnating after finishing Shadowbringers (which its self was ridiculously over-hyped) because apparently Endwalker was also "the worst expansion ever" until Dawntrail came along apparently.

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I know this is somewhat strange to say, but they are honestly the worst expansions for different reasons...

Endwalker just outright gave very little content, on any measurable scale.

Dawntrail has given a decent volume of content, but to varying degrees, there's not much in the way of substance that we haven't already seen, and there's very little reason to actually care about the content in any meaningful capacity unless you aim to raid... Like OC is irrelevant to me, for the simple fact that as soon as I've completed the base content it offers nothing to me.. Courtesy of the fact that all of the relic steps are just one-time-steps before being tomestones.
So yeah, I personally think they are both the worst expansion, but for different, key reasons...

As someone who is a super casual player, I actually liked OC's release because it had decent rewards and I collected all the PJ stones along with leveling a few to max level despite knowing how I'd never do FT1 because of lack of my personal skill for high-end content. Then I liked the novel exp of wandering around the locations and teleport spots and finding random personal chests was fun for a few hours even if most rewards had been recycled from other Field ops too. The new map itself was colorful and diverse mobs were entertaining more than Eureka and Bozja too, even if it's p boring after a few days but I was an tank so nothing could kill me out of the blue too during CE was useful.

Also, the next part I first tried the Cosmo Exploration despite not really into crafting in-game at the 3rd new planet so I did as many gold missions as possible, joined the Red Alerts, Mech ops, and even made it on time during an upgrade mission for the base by chance and helped. It was not that compelling exp for me so I gave up grinding the Cosmo tokens since I was p bored and you needed so many of them for the shop glams that I bought them the mp along with any affordable tradable items. I mean, I accept it's not for me, but it was a creative and interesting experiment for everyone and I found it worthwhile to unlock it and farm tokens for the 3x exclusive frames.

There're all kinds of new content that I'm not really interested in, like the CC/PVP, IS, fate farming, and high-end content, so I'm more open to lifestyle content which I find is much more accessible to casual players like I am too.

Finally, I'm slowly grinding for pastes by doing 2x EXDR and 1x Capped rous instead of going mad and doing like 10 Leveling rous daily because honestly the latter is super miserable and not worth the suffering if I didn't also need the exp for alt jobs.

I would say try savage but healers are at an all time low, I've been in PF for the last 5 hours only finished M9S and M10S, with a total of 3 parties because it takes an hour for a single healer to join.

Can’t imagine why the role that plays like cookie clicker when things go well and gets yelled at when the DPS presses feint 1 time in 14 minutes is unpopular

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

It was still worth having both Cosmic and Occult because Endwalker felt like it had too much solo content. At least I feel like I'm playing an MMORPG again in Dawntrail, doing these large-scale events (Red Alerts, Mech Ops, Progression FATEs, CEs) regularly with hundreds of players there. It feels "massively multiplayer".

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I don't know, I'm not interacting with those hundreds of players. They're just background noise unfortunately.

i think the content in DT is leagues above the snoozefest endwalker was, OC is still abit eh but i hope they fix it with north horn but overall fun whise DT is pretty awesome, when it comes to narrative, the slog that was ARR and HW burned me out so much i ended up skipping through the entire story so i can play with my friends so no comment there

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Originally Posted by Kaurhz

I know this is somewhat strange to say, but they are honestly the worst expansions for different reasons...

Endwalker just outright gave very little content, on any measurable scale.

Dawntrail has given a decent volume of content, but to varying degrees, there's not much in the way of substance that we haven't already seen, and there's very little reason to actually care about the content in any meaningful capacity unless you aim to raid... Like OC is irrelevant to me, for the simple fact that as soon as I've completed the base content it offers nothing to me.. Courtesy of the fact that all of the relic steps are just one-time-steps before being tomestones.
So yeah, I personally think they are both the worst expansion, but for different, key reasons...

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I do sometimes feel like I joined FF14 "too late" because apparently mid/late-Endwalker was the worst possible time to start playing and its been downhill since then according to most. Everything was bad because its too easy, now everything's bad because its too hard, and everybody seems to hate everybody else based on their personal skill level.

But at the same time, I hear about all of these supposedly "great" things from the ARR through Shadowbringers era and I can't really say I would have enjoyed them (TP alone would have made me quit early), culminating in how Shadowbringers, the supposed peak of the game's lifetime was actually... kinda mid compared to ARR/HW/STB. Gameplay and even storywise, it was just a generally deflating experience not just in my confidence as a player when I'm getting constantly murked in normal content (even solo duties), but I felt like the most useless character even from a narrative point (which started in Stormblood actually, but Shadowbringers REALLY wanted to rub it in that I had no business being the protagonist anymore).

I'm already not renewed for March, and this also marks the first time I've unsubbed while NOT having houses to deal with so I don't have to show back up every 45 days anymore. So much of my time has been hearing about a great game and community and then struggling for years to actually find it, where even moving data centers didn't help and I feel so worn down.

Quite frankly, Dawntrail marks the first time in over 10 years that I have unsubscribed from the game. The raids this game has to offer have changed into something I dislike playing years ago by this point (the way the fights are designed is boring to me.). Occult Crescent, which I was really looking forward to, since Bozja managed to capture me for a long, long time, turned out to be a bust, as we all know. Expert Dungeons got reduced from 3 every patch to 1 over the years, the new Deep Dungeon failed to keep me engaged, and I can't even bring myself to enjoy PVP any longer because the netcode makes a lot of it more frustrating than it needs to be. Most of the people on my friend list have quit by now, too. The world feels empty, and unless you enjoy the Shadowbringers Raid design paradigm, there is little to no meaningful endgame content for you.

I'm most likely still going to check up on the devs announcements for 8.0 during the fan fests, see if there is something there that catches me again.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

I do sometimes feel like I joined FF14 "too late" because apparently mid/late-Endwalker was the worst possible time to start playing and its been downhill since then according to most. Everything was bad because its too easy, now everything's bad because its too hard, and everybody seems to hate everybody else based on their personal skill level.

But at the same time, I hear about all of these supposedly "great" things from the ARR through Shadowbringers era and I can't really say I would have enjoyed them (TP alone would have made me quit early), culminating in how Shadowbringers, the supposed peak of the game's lifetime was actually... kinda mid compared to ARR/HW/STB. Gameplay and even storywise, it was just a generally deflating experience not just in my confidence as a player when I'm getting constantly murked in normal content (even solo duties), but I felt like the most useless character even from a narrative point (which started in Stormblood actually, but Shadowbringers REALLY wanted to rub it in that I had no business being the protagonist anymore).

I'm already not renewed for March, and this also marks the first time I've unsubbed while NOT having houses to deal with so I don't have to show back up every 45 days anymore. So much of my time has been hearing about a great game and community and then struggling for years to actually find it, where even moving data centers didn't help and I feel so worn down.

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I would say this very much depends on what kind of player you are, really, and how you struggle with the content... Like, mechanically for me these latter expansions (Endwalker/Dawntrail) are much easier... But I tend to find them a little more tedious just for the simple fact of visual bloat more than anything.... If I joined after Shadowbringers I probably would be a worse player than I am now, just because ARR/HW gave me an appreciation for smaller things (Which the game doesn't do enough of)

You are probably way too harsh on yourself to be honest.. A lot of players struggle, and to be honest if you aren't passionate about the combat side of things then you won't get as good as what you can be.. That's just natural.. Wouldn't really let it get to you, when there's a lot this game does wrong, e.g., accessibility (actual accessibility and not ease of access)

Many people will tell you the community used to be worse, but IMO the experience was quite contrary... People used to be very inclusive, and honestly even though the game was smaller then than it is now (probably), it feels much smaller now because everyone is so insular and don't really go beyond their immediate clique... I met tonnes of friends doing the OG Diadem (supposedly worst content in the game btw).. Many of them I am still close friends with to this day (But most have quit).... It's difficult to say it has such a great community now, just for the simple fact that the community is so insular.

Edit: The above is why the content feels so flat.. For the most part you aren't really doing anything with anyone... You're just in the same space. So it feels very hollow. You may see hundreds of players, but like Valence said it's just background noise these days.... Maybe it's the natural progression of things.. But a lot of design decisions have pushed people away from the game, and into external spaces like Discord.