My friend the "content locust" :(

[Haruka-Akemi]

Well as i said the game is boring but we need to find stuff that makes the game less boring
I do titan with random people or level an alt character
Or simply go to the poor mans version of jeuno (mor dhona) and read the shouts
some of them are really fun.
We need to find other stuff besides rushing the new content and deaining its resources
Because lets be honest
The developers will not deliver content as fast as we want

[zdub303]

Well as i said the game is boring but we need to find stuff that makes the game less boring

This is the fundamental problem with the 'WoW' model of these games. If the player base has to try to find stuff to make the game less boring, then imo the game has failed at its core. People considering the game boring vs entertaining is one thing, that is all about personal taste, but when players have to log in and try to find something to do because they are locked out of any sort of meaningful content that is either due to a lack of content or a mismanagement of existing assets. I personally believe its the latter when it comes to FFXIV.

The developers will not deliver content as fast as we want

Like I was saying in the first quote, look back at the early days of EQ1. People had to grind hard for up to a year to reach max level, while this is a gross exaggeration of content delivery and it wouldn't fly in todays world of ADHD gamers they still managed their existing content in a way that it remained relevant for an extended period of time. The fundamental problem with FFXIV is that they have casualized all of their content to the point that many people don't bother to try/do it more than maybe once.

An example of this would be the King Mog encounter. I did that fight exactly once to finish the story content, and the fundamental design of the game gives me zero incentive to go back and replay that encounter. I have to 'try' to find my own meaning in replaying that encounter, instead of the devs balancing their content and how meaningful it is in light of the current endgame. Examples of this occur everywhere, and the worst issues is that 90% of the game (levelling your first class to 50 and spending time in the open world) is meant to be completed in several days for more active players to up to maybe 3-4 weeks for the more casual players.

Then this endgame focused MMO delivers a straight vertical progression (which is rather easy) right up to Binding Coil.. a dungeon completed relatively quickly, pugged often by a lot of the server right up until the only challenging fight in the game - Twintania.

This is why people say the game has no content. Because by its own nature it invalidates almost all of it, and its why people are calling for more horizontal progression.

I don't see the pace of development for this game changing any time soon, especially with the release of details on 2.2, invalidating all of the content in 2.0 and 2.1 and introducing a new tier of minimal content to replace the old one. Nothing changes, it just looks different and the stats have a few more numbers.

[Doo]

Yeah content that becomes obsolete quick is a huge issue in current mmos. That's why players will never be satisfied with the amount of content because you get them done in a week and it takes them 3 months to release so you end up having to "make your own fun" for a couple of months. Older mmos have rare items that you could possible farm for and different ways to progress your character to keep players entertained.

[Gamemako]

Older mmos have rare items that you could possible farm for and different ways to progress your character to keep players entertained.

That is to say, they had more grind. You'd gut the same monster 500000 times to get the 0.0002% drop out of it. You'd wait for the boss spawn (do nothing), kill it for the 500th time, and still get nothing again. FFXIV could do the same thing, but people already complain about running CT 20 times now when they'd do far more repetitive things in the past.

It's hard to make an MMO these days.

[Imapooonu]

Please allow me make this clear one more time. This is NOT a discussion about what is considered content and what is not. This is NOT a discussion in regards to game developer mistakes. This is NOT a discussion about whether or not someone is literally correct in their statements.

This IS a discussion about why a friend of mine who seemed to care less about gear progression and more about community suddenly changed perspective.

For those of you who refuse to read the entirety of a thread before posting, allow me to recap:

To top it off, my friend was always group oriented or “hive minded”. Sure he would say “sorry I’m busy” at times, but for the most part he was the rare gamer we can all appreciate who sacrifices his personal gain for the benefit of others.

Let me give you an example of some things he would say:

“I am not interested in a linkshell coil. It is something that should be done within an FC to promote relevance to said FC.”

“We need to start putting our personal FF goals aside in order to help FC members actualize theirs goals in game. If they progress, the FC progresses.”

“stuff like that”

After reading this, please refer to the original discussion I had with said friend in the original post.

I would advise the most recent participants in this thread to start getting back on topic. There are plenty of threads available to discuss the subject matter currently being injected into this thread. Use those.

Further off topic discussion will be flagged as such. Several comments a have already been removed in lieu of this consideration, yours will be next.

Thank you for understanding, poo

PS-Injecting personal opinions with the intent of validating a perspective is not considered off topic. Continuing a conversation in it’s entirety with no relevance to the subject matter is.

Thanks again.

[Imapooonu]

I also edited the original post to reflect this sentiment and request.

Thank you in advance, poo

[Susanoh]

The friend in this post is perfectly entitled to that opinion. Most of the activities suggested have no relevance to the world itself. They'd be fine as a self created goal for completionists who want to grind out everything just for the sake of doing everything, but when the meat of the game involves almost exclusively self created goals it makes for a game that's not entirely interesting as a whole. I personally love when there's extra things to try outside of what the main part of the game offers but not as a substitute for having a strong base of a game to begin with. If you immediately have to jump to advocating menial tasks like "capping 50k seals" when someone mentions a lack of content, it only reinforces what they were originally getting at.

[Clavaat]

-snip-

A consideration for you:

Let's take a moment and look at the situation from the producer's perspective. You are given a project that has failed. Your company is going bankrupt, and the idea is for you to not only fix a failed project with a reputation, but to have it produce a profit. The safest route would be to cater to as many people as possible.

The game is rated T. Players could be as young as 12-18. They all have school, so they cannot play too late, or too early. College players 18-22 have a more varied schedule, but in general do not have a lot of time. Typical working hours for any person beyond that is limited to about 5 hours a day, give or take a few. If you think about it, the average player does not have as much time to devote to MMO's. The producers needed to turn a profit, which they did, and they catered to the average player. I don't think it is an "ADHD gamer" thing so much as it truly is most people are completely unable to devote that much time on average.

My recommendation, if you truly feel like there isn't enough for you to do, is to take a break and come back in a year or two. This pace sets the bar similarly to FFXI, where content came out fairly regularly, but if you had started playing when it came out, you may run out of things to do on a day-to-day basis. Please don't read any of this post as being facetious, I just think it makes more sense in the grand scheme of things really

[Edellis]

This is the fundamental problem with the 'WoW' model of these games. If the player base has to try to find stuff to make the game less boring, then imo the game has failed at its core.

This is the problem with MMO gamers, who believe that an MMO is some ~*~magical activity~*~ where you do the same thing every day, every month, continuously, for thousands of hours on end, yet is supposed to stay interesting and never get dull, or else it's "bad game design". The game has plenty of content. It has plenty of endgame content too. You've just gotten bored with it. Cancel your subscription and wait for them to add more.


/thread. This isn't a "CURRENT ISSUE IN MMOS", it's literally common sense that development teams aren't global mind readers, and a game's capacity to hold your attention isn't infinite. And the WoW model is probably the furthest thing from a "fundemental problem" any sane person or critic can think of. The fact that many of you have multiple lv50 classes and have been playing since 1.0 are proof that the game is addictive and is succeeding quite spectacularly at its goal.


People complain about how Casual gamers ruin gaming, but i'd venture to say the equally terrible end of that argument is the unrealistically entitled Hardcore gamer who believes everything should take 20 years to accomplish with fun you have to dig for by design. You'd think years of terrible Korean MMOs would have broken us out of that idea, but instead it just seems to create a cancerous niche that just wont go away...


FFXIV ARR is indeed a roller coaster --> you pay for fun, and you get fun, until it isn't fun anymore. The endgame content in this game is not easy, it just isn't impossible. Your sharply honed standards for what is considered "Hard" or "Fun" for an MMO have been conditioned so hard that you can only enjoy a certain type of it.

So you need to understand, that you're the minority. That's why this game is so successful.

[chococo]

/thread. This isn't a "CURRENT ISSUE IN MMOS", it's literally common sense that development teams aren't global mind readers, and a game's capacity to hold your attention isn't infinite. And the WoW model is probably the furthest thing from a "fundemental problem" any sane person or critic can think of. The fact that many of you have multiple lv50 classes and have been playing since 1.0 are proof that the game is addictive and is succeeding quite spectacularly at its goal.

This isn't quite the case I'm afraid. People that did carry on playing in 1.0 are probably those that look to the future of FFXIV, hoping that one day it becomes a much better game than at release. Kinda like what OP said, people did stuff to prepare themselves for when FFXIV becomes a better game; leveling up classes, gather more gil, stock up on materials prior to 2.0. I had a discussion with a friend during 1.0 why we moved on to XIV rather than staying in XI. It was because XIV had potential compared to a 11 year old game that will have to be phased out eventually.

The game had gotten much better by the end of 1.23, and 2.0 was supposed to be an extension and improvement of what we already had in 1.23. People had their hopes up high. But then bam!, we get a simplified FPS wrapped in MMO skin. Totally different nature. People aren't gonna "prep" themselves again for a second time and "hope" that the game becomes better. Simply put, they lost their hope.

I would retract that statement my friend and I agreed on in 1.0.