The game is more dead than it was pre-3.1

[KeluBehemoth]

I'm guessing that it would have had a higher adoption rate than LoV did.

What players said: "We want pet battles like World of Warcraft has"
What SE heard: "Players want pet battles to work like Warcraft"

Lol spot on

[Alahra]

If Diadem were more engaging and better designed, things would probably be in a better state content-wise. Personally I still think they need to move back to EX Trials dropping max-item level loot, as well--2.1 was probably the golden age of content for the game the older, more rewarding EXes (and the weekly quest to go along with them) were a big part of that, in my opinion.

And they should really add a way for future 24-man gear to be upgradable to i210 as well (make it require drops from the 8-man raids or something). They've gotten into a sort of rut where anyone that keeps up with their gear and Esoterics has no need for gear that isn't maximum item level on their main jobs, and the largest portion of the playerbase doesn't spend a lot of time gearing alt jobs so far as I can tell. That greatly shrinks the amount of content regular players consider worthwhile, I think.

My server at least, though, is a bit busier now than it was before. Unfortunately, the high difficulty of Savage lead to a lot of transfers to "better" raiding servers, though (primarily Gilgamesh), which is definitely contributing to server population troubles.

[Colorful]

Including the hunting portion. Done similarly to gathering in FFXIV where we get our own nodes because otherwise it'll get salty.

Not sure I'd want it similar to FFXIV crafting as that's boring as boring can be, but rather just critters you find similar to WoW. Unless you mean only you can see the mob, or rather everyone has their own critter on their screen, in which case that would be nice.

[RiceisNice]

The expansion effectively removed more content than it added. 3.1 was late and very small compared to other major patches. This community and many like it told people that were unhappy they should "take a break and go play other games." Well, maybe that wasn't the hottest advice. Often times when people go play other games, some of them never come back.

We've seen the full moon... now welcome to the "waning period" of this MMO. Most MMOs have such a period. I'm sure server merges are something that will have to be talked about in the coming months. Population will eventually stabilize (at a lower level than we have now).

The waning period usually happens when an expansion is near end of the cycle though, not closer to the beginning. That difference is what makes an effective, good expansion.

In regards to LoV, I feel it's too innovative for it's own good, and it's definitely not what the game needs when it's already at an all-time low from an extended 3.0 period (which was already weak on it's own in same areas). It's too much time commitment to get a hold of, the queuing of it is a mess. I much would have rather had something that's easy to pick up, fast paced, but has the capability to have strategy and thought. Like...pokemon or WoW's pet battles. TT did it nicely (aside from other issues like collecting cards and ranekd games), it's fast to pick up but the time commitment is there if you want to master it.

Not sure I'd want it similar to FFXIV crafting as that's boring as boring can be, but rather just critters you find similar to WoW. Unless you mean only you can see the mob, or rather everyone has their own critter on their screen, in which case that would be nice.

I liked crafting in this game, up until it became a chore to even craft because of the favors (esp when it was an hour of gathering minimum to make a piece of material, and you needed 3-5 for one craft). By the time I could even get to the crafting steps, I felt so exhausted and burned out that I just didn't want to do it a second time. As well as the lack of provisions (until 3.1 for the glamour aspect) toward combat and gathering classes at level 60.

[Teryaani]

They've gotten into a sort of rut where anyone that keeps up with their gear and Esoterics has no need for gear that isn't maximum item level on their main jobs, and the largest portion of the playerbase doesn't spend a lot of time gearing alt jobs so far as I can tell. That greatly shrinks the amount of content regular players consider worthwhile, I think.

Yeah, I've gotten to the point where I think I'll be skipping gearing in the "one class only" update patches because I really don't want to do the treadmill that much.

[Voltyblast]

Yeah I agree with OP and unfortunately, as a house owner, I'm also "threatened" to not leave the game, or else I'd lose my hard-earned house, in a server where housing is already hard to find, if not impossible.

And suffice to say, if I lost my house I'd definitely lose all the little reason I have to keep on playing.

[Teryaani]

Not sure I'd want it similar to FFXIV crafting as that's boring as boring can be, but rather just critters you find similar to WoW. Unless you mean only you can see the mob, or rather everyone has their own critter on their screen, in which case that would be nice.

The latter. Where we each have our own pool of critters to try and capture. I know why WoW did what it did - their game's core mechanic is players competing with players for resources, but it looks like we're in agreement that that would be less fun for a lot of us.

[RiceisNice]

The latter. Where we each have our own pool of critters to try and capture. I know why WoW did what it did - their game's core mechanic is players competing with players for resources, but it looks like we're in agreement that that would be less fun for a lot of us.

I haven't been savvy with WoW's changes to pet battle, but IIRc, there's an immesurable amount of critters out in the open world for you to challenge (or straight up right click and kill, or heroic leap), you can't possibly run out of them even if someone was going on a critter killing spree for shiggles

[Teryaani]

I haven't been savvy with WoW's changes to pet battle, but IIRc, there's an immesurable amount of critters out in the open world for you to challenge, you can't possibly run out of them even if someone was going on a critter killing spree for shiggles

Last time I was on (Timeless Isle) it was reasonably dense with critters and the respawn rate was pretty good. Grief happened, but it wasn't the norm - unlike their gathering where it was the norm. I have a natural desire to reduce the potential for players to wreck someone else's day though.

Given the load that tracking individual ones may cause, SE couldn't make it that dense, but certainly 4-5 on the mini map at a time doesn't sound implausible. Have a skill akin to triangulate that makes them show up.

[Ladon]

The broken foundation of the game is really starting to catch up to them.

This entire process of releasing content then releasing content with better rewards for "catch-up" purposes is the core of the problem. Stat progression is so linear and so simplistic that they simply design half the content out of existence with new patches which is just ridiculous. Not only that but they spend so much time and effort on designing redundant "alternate" progression that basically isn't used by a chunk of the population one way or the other. Then on top of this Yoshida is starting to complain that his team doesn't have enough resources. I mean, no sh*t? You push everyone to a tiny bit of new content every few months. Then to make content relevant they have to pull terrible design decisions like putting the best gear in Diadem to actually draw people to the content. Again this core of this issue is the terrible progression plaguing the game.

The other side of things is their homogenized game design means they are pretty much out of new mechanics options. The fights are just getting to be downright boring because they all have to be designed with a 2 tank, 2 healer, 4 DPS composition in mind. And beyond the mechanics are all dead simple and similar simply because they refuse to give jobs defining abilities that could be designed around because of this silly fear that you might have to bring a BLM to one encounter and a SMN to another. Oh but they designed out that whole possible aspect of what could make this work as well. The biggest defining feature of FF14, the Armoury System, is completely pointless because of the silly lockouts and limitations of consuming most of the game content on a single job. No repeatable quests to help other jobs level up, stupid alternative path gear that is always weaker than the best stuff making it difficult to raid with secondary jobs until the restrictions are lifted and making all of that pointless again because a new set of better, locked content is available.

I honestly don't think there is much they can do for the game than look at the foundation of the game itself and I doubt that is going to ever happen.