Quote Originally Posted by Kosmos992k View Post
I think your criticisms are off base and parrot things you've read on this forum or reddit.

At the end of the day, in my opinion, the biggest problem that this game suffers from is player behavior. I'm not talking about trolling or abusing others, I'm talking about the content locust mentality that has people playing 8 hour shifts and ticking things of their to do list as they go. Farm this, cap that, etc.

When the expansion came out these were the people capping their characters at 60 within days and complaining about a lack of content at 60 thereafter. If players focus solely on completing things as quickly as possible and avoiding anything that slows them down, then of course the game is boring. My god, if they were to go for a 1200 mile road trip, players with that mentality would hit the interstate and drive in shifts to their destination getting there in 18 hours flat. About halfway there, they'd complain about the boring drive, and by the time they get to the destination, they'd be tired, burned out and cranky. Sound familiar?

Many others would take the same road trip in multiple legs with an overnight stop with each leg of the journey, they might plan on visiting places of interest on the way, and even get side tracked and visit other places they didn't originally plan on. By the time they get to the destination, a week might have passed, but they are fresh, happy and not bored because they saw the sights, stayed in different places, ate different things and experienced the journey. They have things to talk about and stories to tell, and probably a couple hundred pictures to share.

Imagine those two groups starting off at the same time and meeting up after their journey. The ones who drove straight through on the interstate would probably be pissed off with the others for making them wait for so long, and be itching to get home (again by the fastest route possible). The other group would have their stories to tell and pictures to share, but a very unreceptive audience.

I feel like we are at that point with FFXIV. There is a relatively large group of players who play the game in such a focused manner that they complete the content much faster than intended, and get bored and annoyed, or disillusioned. They complain about the game, about having nothing to do, or about everything being the same, cookie cutter content, or copied from WoW.

Since I'm still mid way on the journey and enjoying the ride, I really can't say I understand or agree with the criticisms being leveled at the game or SE. There is so much to do I can't do it all, and I've been playing since ARR Beta phase 3.

You mentioned hard mode dungeons as recycled, I don't think that's really fair. If they were simply recycled it would be the same dungeon with boosted versions of he same trash and Bosses in the same map, but the hard mode dungeons are not that at all, so I find your criticism completely off base. You call the relic quests an abomination, but why? That is what the community asked for. An alternate way to obtain a high ilvl weapon that is upgradeable and can be earned through long term play rather than clearing turns in the Coil so that players who lack the skill or time availability to complete coil, had an upgrade path for their weapon. If that isn't a grindy way of obtaining something, I don't know what is, and that is what people asked for.

In the end, the problem you are talking about, OP, is self inflicted.

What I can't quite get my head around is that people approach the game like it's supposed to provide them with completely new content every time they log in, but don't want to do anything for it. It's an MMORPG, some of the novelty in content is playing with others and reacting to how they handle things. There is no way that the developers can keep up with player appetite for content, nor their ability to consume it. But, if people login to cap tomes and do their dailies, and that's all, they have no room for complaint. You're not making use of the framework that is in place, nor are you making use of all the rides in the theme park. Instead you're using a very restricted subset of the theme park, and complaining that more isn't done for you.



How is it a huge mistake? This was something that was asked for by the majority of the community with many raiders saying that they were OK with a story mode version as long as the harder version had unique drops . The problem with having only the super hard version of things is that it disenfranchises many players - as Coil *did*. I lost count of how many threads asked for or demanded a normal mode version of coil, and in the end people settled for asking for the future raids to have a story mode version for non-raiders to complete.

How is Alexander Normal a huge mistake when it is precisely what was requested by the community?

Perhaps you're just pissed off because you feel that you *have* to farm the snot out of it for gear that you can use to take on Savage mode, only to find that savage mode is (as expected) the same content with a harder level of difficulty and better drops. You honestly expected it would be otherwise?
Wonderful post. Useless to add that I agree with everything you said.