Yoshi P, is this what you wanted? (Terra Branford Blues)

[Welsper59]

Well, if you'd like me to be specific, I'd be more than happy to. The MMO I've had the most fun with was one called Dungeon Fighter Online. They still had RNG attached to the best drops, but there was a system in place to ensure that you could continue progressing even if you didn't have that RNG-based gear. Not to mention, the gameplay was fun and I enjoyed the instances/dungeons without being forced to run them for RNG-based loot; it was entirely optional to the experience if you chose to do that. Not to mention, the gear was actually able to be sold on their market board before it was bound to your character, so even if RNG was denying you the drop, you could still save up and buy the loot from another player. There was still an alternative to RNG that FFXIV doesn't have for most dungeon drops out of fear of supporting RMT (which doesn't seem to be impacting their presence in the game in any way, but that's neither here nor there).

Now, you could say that the cards are optional as well, but even then, the difference is that it was fun to play DFO even when you were grinding RNG-based drops. It isn't fun to run Thornmarch HM for a week straight on XIV; heck, it was barely even fun for the first day. You can only dance alongside the moogles so often before you start hating the animation for dragging out an instance you've already run 10 times that day, and the day before, and the day before that. I get enjoyment from collecting the cards, not from running the primal instances ad nauseum on the hope that RNG finally deigns to save me from my repetitious hell or waiting for 2+ hours for a EX farm party to fill up and disintegrate if it doesn't have good players in it or key members (tank, healer) get their drops and just quit.

As for your constant assertion that "This is how you maintain subscriptions/active playing," that might be true to an extent, but when you start to suffer total burnout because RNG refuses to give up sadism as a lifestyle choice? Not so much anymore. As a few people have pointed out in this thread, the sheer amount of grinding this minigame requires has actually made them second guess staying subscribed. And, to point out again, I was already interested and wanting to enjoy Triple Triad before they revealed/it became apparent how much of a grind it would be to collect the all the non-tournament cards. But now, instead of actually enjoying Triple Triad, here we are, grinding Thornmarch for the eighth day, and seeing the same results as the first seven.

That's all right of a suggestion, but that doesn't answer the question lol. You're indicating methods to obtain goods, which has nothing to do with how you have fun once you acquire everything. My question was exactly that, what keeps you after. Why are people constantly ignoring the question and point at hand? I can't even recall a single person offering a reply/retort to any question I ask without being vague or offering a generic response pertaining to subjective criticisms "bad", "lazy", or "fun"... I'm assuming because they just can't answer it, which is rather bad and shows a lack of insight of what they're stating (meaning its likely not something credible).

For example, I'll try to go step by step about what is happening here. The person I replied to had mentioned F2P games and how you can pay for things to get them right away. How people enjoy getting things. So, my reply was that, it's true that people enjoy getting things. But what's going to keep them around for a long time once they do this? That was my question about that format. What's going to keep people interested, if there's no goal left to achieve when you get what you want. Then you replied about hoping the devs would rely on "fun" to keep people around. You see how generic of a response that is? How little it adds, not to mention how much it degrades your own perspective on things?

If your reply that I'm quoting now is of relevance to that, then we're going all over the place here and you're completely off base. If you'd like a reply regarding the off-subject things you said, then that's fine. Summed up, burn out is preferred evil between boredom and overdoing things. The burn out is definitely real. I've experienced it many times and is largely why I don't even do raids much at all (I've not touched a single EX primal besides Garuda, and that was only like last month). Speaking from a business stance however, which do you think makes them more money? Someone enjoying the game but quits in a few months because they feel accomplished to the extent that they've done everything they want... or someone that eventually burns out after a year or two of playing the game? Keep in mind however, that burnout (or interest in general) can happen regardless of how much/little you play. That's just how whimsical we can be about the things we do as human beings.

On a side note, just for the sake of interest, why aren't you playing DFO anymore?

Edit: I just looked it up. Servers shut down, so that might be it. One thing though... action RPG. You can't really compare the two when it comes to fun lol. Action games are the equivalent of hack and slash or beat-em-up games in most cases. I was expecting an MMORPG similar to FFXIV, WoW, etc as far as an example would be concerned. I mean, that'd be almost like me comparing Dragon's Crown to this game.