What does Heavensward actually bring to the table as an expansion?

[Kosmos992k]

It's impossible getting a good statistic or sample because there's no control of how much people leaves or stays, what I do know however is that people quits without voicing that they do, because for a lot of them, they forget about the game and never touch it again or remember it, but the people I knew and had the chance to ask why they retire, are pretty much the same issues I currently have, I probably wouldn't have bothered to just not post here and just forget about it.

As Vickii points out, you have effectively finished the game, until the next patch, you have beaten the game. When that happens some people go play another game until there is more to do, some return, some don't. However for players who do explore the whole game, there is no beating the game because it is open ended.

however I want the game to improve in the future, and the game doesn't improve unless people starts voicing, this is actually from what I remember the same stance people adopted in 1.0 when someone pointed out 1.0 flaws issues with it, and you had an army of people defending it, saying that it's fine, they are having fun with it and see no problems

That's not the same situation. The majority of issues with FFXIV 1.0 were not related to the story, were they? The things that 'killed' the game were the ridiculous platform requirements and performance. I'm not aware of what complaints there were about content or battle system - or whatever else - because a) I never played v1.x and b) they were not the primary reasons for the problems that FFXIV 1.0 faced.

SE has forgotten that there's a middle between hardcore and softcore, and they are just doing the extreme opposite of both, really hard content or super easy content, and neither party is interested in the opposite as there's no middle ground.

I don't agree with this at all. If you are running Alex Savage, then even just looking at the recent census statistics, you're part of a pretty small minority of players who have step foot in Alex Savage. Judging by the ilvl 200/210 pieces of gear you possess I presume you are in fact raiding Alex Savage. In which case, whether you like it or not, you are in fact part of that hardcore group.

I think your perspective is not at all that of a "mid-core" player, you are in fact a very capable raider which to be honest places you within that hardcore group. But, yes, from that point of view, FFXIV doesn't really cater much to you.

There's nothing 'mandatory' in the game. Everything is optional, but when those options are better than your current gear people will want them and it's silly to assume otherwise.**snip**And so we hit this endless cycle of having them release gear, only to overshadow it in 2 updates with a brand new set of level X gear which remains functionally identical to every other item in the entire damned game! **snip** People can argue their ridiculous case that BiS means choosing one benefit and sticking with it, but I've seen too many examples where that simply was never the case to believe a word of it.

If we boil the game down to it's essentials, armor protects, weapons do damage (or heal) and nothing else matters. weapons are little more than sticks that accomplish their function. In other words one set or armor is functionally identical to another, it can't be otherwise. The same is true for weapons, they fulfill the same function, so by definition they are functionally identical.

The problem is that everyone is afraid that if side-grades or horizontal progression became a thing, it would cause balance problems and break content. Honestly, I don't see how that could be any worse than the degree to which over gearing breaks content already.