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

[Alistaire]

Wall of Text hits you for 9999 damage.

[Hiruke]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Hiruke]

Wall of Text hits you for 9999 damage.

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

[XLauncher]

Wall of Text hits you for 9999 damage.

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

[Dark-Saviour]

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

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

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

[Eissels]

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

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

[Odd]

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

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

[Ryel]

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Elven]

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

[Genz]

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

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