I sure hope HW is not going to be more armor grind treadmill!

[Instrumentality]

OH NO!
OBJECTIVE OPINIONS! RUN! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!

They were not good games. Sorry this is a struggle for you to accept.

[Devils_Lawyer]

Problem is that everyone likes different things, some like story, some like gear, minigames, crafting/gathering etc.

And when you try to constantly add content to all different parts you end up adding a little bit to each one instead of a massive content boost for one and leave everything else on a hold.

So for people whose only purpose or enjoyment is to get the next level of gear then yes they will get bored rather quickly and most likely unsub until the stuff they enjoy gets more content.

[LunaHoshino]

Having said that people should not be quitting left and right every 1~3 months. Something is wrong with the game if that happens.

Or maybe FFXIV simply isn't the game for them. Most of my FC has been subbed for a year or more and we still log in every night if only just to have fun together, even if we're not doing much of anything in the game beyond rearranging all of the furniture in the house and seeing how long it takes our FC leader to notice. Last night a bunch of us decided to join in on a 21 DRG WoD run for laughs.

There are tons of things to do in the game. If people aren't interested in doing those things, that's on them. It's not a problem with the game itself.

[Asmodaeus]

Everquest and FFXI where ALL about the gear. Everquest was all about getting better and better gear to allow you to raid to also get better gear. So was FFXI, only difference is you got numerous sets for gear swaps to optimize, until an expansion or new content dropped then you would start anew. Both of those are vertical. SWG and DaoC where totally different as the main end game of those 2 was PVP. Not PVE. So the ability to get players to the same level of gear was a main focus so PVP wasn't inaccessible for a protracted period of time.

I never said it wasnt. The huge difference here is you had to rely on people to get that gear and they had to rely on you. You met people, formed friendships and so on. There wasnt a new patch where you could obtain the good stuff with just spamming random dungeon finders and behave like little brats without fearing any consequences. Funny enough, a few days after I finished my level 50 Cleric in Daoc I already had best in slot gear (best stuff was crafted). I still played around 2 years and only switched my Guild 2 times. And no, it wasnt only about PvP. Imagine: Doing raid bosses just for the challenge. Not for the gear or achievments. Staying in the game for months without getting better gear, just being part of the world and the community. That is what MMORPG´s are about (for me).

While some people say those old games were bad, mechanicly, especially PvE stuff was very rough. FFXIV on the other hand has really smooth gameplay (movement and class design) and I like how it feels. Still, for me its nothing more then a solo RPG with added co-op. While the way from 1 - 50 was a nice journey, endgame is nothing more then a 3D Diablo. Like I said before, its okay, I can accept it. But it also brings so much problems with it, like loosing lots of people because there is nothing else to do (beside another grind in crafting or spamming low level fates for "epic" relic weapons).

[kyuven]

Imagine: Doing raid bosses just for the challenge. Not for the gear or achievments. Staying in the game for months without getting better gear, just being part of the world and the community.

Possible back when the number of decent MMOs could be counted on a single hand.
Impossible now that there are better options that DO reward you for doing content.

[Dijana]

Community is what you make of it and its got nothing to do with the gear grind. If this was a different type of game, you'd have entirely different people playing it. The ones that stick it out to 50 and finish all the current content do so because they want to, they just apparently don't want to do anything else afterwards.

My 'guild' (I consider the LS as the guild rather than the FC, we were two groups that wanted our own houses so had our own FCs but use the LS to chat and organise events, and its grown from there) consistently has 40-50 active, talkative people on, and we have a high turnover rate too. We're constantly at capacity and end up having to remove people who have been inactive for 30+ days because there's that many people wanting to join and bring friends in. The reason we're so popular is because the people in it get involved with each other. I finished all the content I was motivated to finish long ago, and so have many others, but we still have fun and enjoy the game by playing with other people, helping newer players get their clears, even just hanging out in the goblet and chatting.

Just recently I've been tanking dungeons for 3 members leveling new jobs. My tank was 50 and I got nothing out of it doing brayflox over and over, but I did it just because I enjoy playing the game with friends and it's more than just an 'armor grind treadmill' to me.

[T2teddy]

The thing I hated most about the treadmill was how expert roulette was handled. Doing the same 3 dungeons for the entire patch period get old real quickly and was the reason for my most recent break. It really needs to be handled better from here on out.

Yeah all the hard mode dungeons should have been on the expert roulette list imho. The most frustrating thing for me and my 3 friends is that 8 out of 10 tries AK hard is the one we get. That is not random. Its ridiculous! We got Lake once and WP once in the last 10 days. We even get AK if we leave and try again in 30 minutes.

[Asmodaeus]

Possible back when the number of decent MMOs could be counted on a single hand.
Impossible now that there are better options that DO reward you for doing content.

We have very different views about what is "rewarding". My reward was spending a good time with people I knew for months who like me, loved a challenge (bring down a 24 man boss with only a group of 8). We didnt need an achievement to pop up on our list so everyone can see it, it was enough to know the 8 of us did it.

There more I think about it, the memory, even 14 years later is also a reward. More then any piece of gear, stupid achievement or another class at 50 can ever be.

[Callinon]

Possible back when the number of decent MMOs could be counted on a single hand.
Impossible now that there are better options that DO reward you for doing content.

Additionally: that's what Savage 2nd Coil is.

Notice that almost nobody does it.

I like killing difficult bosses too. I did cutting edge raiding for a long time. Killing the hardest content in the game and getting nothing for it? That just sounds like a waste of time to me.

[Asmodaeus]

Community is what you make of it and its got nothing to do with the gear grind. If this was a different type of game, you'd have entirely different people playing it. The ones that stick it out to 50 and finish all the current content do so because they want to, they just apparently don't want to do anything else afterwards.

My 'guild' (I consider the LS as the guild rather than the FC, we were two groups that wanted our own houses so had our own FCs but use the LS to chat and organise events, and its grown from there) consistently has 40-50 active, talkative people on, and we have a high turnover rate too. We're constantly at capacity and end up having to remove people who have been inactive for 30+ days because there's that many people wanting to join and bring friends in. The reason we're so popular is because the people in it get involved with each other. I finished all the content I was motivated to finish long ago, and so have many others, but we still have fun and enjoy the game by playing with other people, helping newer players get their clears, even just hanging out in the goblet and chatting.

Just recently I've been tanking dungeons for 3 members leveling new jobs. My tank was 50 and I got nothing out of it doing brayflox over and over, but I did it just because I enjoy playing the game with friends and it's more than just an 'armor grind treadmill' to me.

Not the gear grind, but the anonymity the game allows you to keep. I don´t want to say you can´t form a nice Guild with friendly people, I just say its much harder here because you can do almost anything on your own (just getting together to finish a dungeon has nothing to do with community or socialising) and that is one of the biggest reasons why people choose to not talk in groups, behave like the biggest muppets and vanish from one day to the other (and might start on another server).