The game is more dead than it was pre-3.1

[Hardware_Hank]

2.1 wasnt really much better, yeah it added extreme primals (or was that 2.2 I dont remember) but in terms of anything new it didnt do much.

just wait until 3.2, I think they'll have much more in store for us which will include a continuation of raid content

[Mature]

snip

That's what I enjoy , the fact I HAVE to gather as much as I can for dailies like red scrips mats and gathering red scrips. That's what keeps me busy. The only thing I'm still 50/50 is the fact I cannot craft more than red scrip items like body/legs/hands etc etc etc they take too many red scrip mats to make. Apart from that I'm pretty happy with everything else. I got lots to do.

And regards of clearing savage.... If you don't get a static or people to practice how do you expect to clear it? Practice makes better. This deluded kids need to stop the "I'm better than you or I've done more than you cause I clear savage" so please come down from cloud nine. It doesn't make you better in the slightest.

[Cheraa]

I wonder sometimes if people (like myself) would dig into Heavensward more if it were more fun to play at the most basic, physical level. I love the expansion. I love the music, scenery, story, dungeons are more interesting, quests are more interesting, but the ability bloat and drastic changes in how some classes operate (hiya, Bards) is a bit of a turn off. WoW might be a disaster content-wise these days but if there is one thing it's always gotten right it's that it's always felt good to play.

Maybe you want to have a talk with the Arms Warrior Community of WoW and how Blizzard made this Specc from super fun to the most freaking boring Specc in this world?

-------------------------------------------------

We had a really big content hole during the first 5 month of this expansion, nothing that you have ever seen in World of Warcraft. BUT you always had there 11-14 month without any new content before the new expansion went Live. SE did a great job with delivery constant Updates during 2.x until 3.0 but instead of the ~12 month without new content in every WoW expansion we had now 5 month with to less content after an Expansion release.

Anyone can consider for himself what content hole he likes more.

[Yukiko]

The core mechanics of the game need to be reworked if we want to see some changes. (..)

Since 1.x ALPHA we try to convince them to add element wheel... they continue to refuse!

What FFXIV is doing wrong: It does not feel like an adventure! Point.

The UI is way too slow with double checking "yes" and "no" confirmations and its way to hard to form groups (you can not just pass by and help strangers who have the same interest because you are forced into fixed 4, 8 or 24 man groups! Even FATES only support the normal 8 man grouping system...). Better we do not talk about Loot, with all that HQ items (mostly as requirement) they blown up the players inventory but the worst is that you have of apsolutely NO use for outdated gear but at same time the game is throwing a lot outdated gear at you (not to mention all those currencies we have)

[Gardes]

post about variable difficulty selection and scaled reward

Rather than perpetuating massive ilvl increases, I would like to see them actually be scaled back to ilvl increase per level cap raise. Instead of 210 > 240 > 270 for alex1>2>3 (if it goes that far), I want to see 210 gear with stat mods (crit+) > 210 gear with skill mods (cure+2) > 210 with set bonuses (alex2 pants+ alex3 feet = jump+1). Lockout removals stay as is (alex 2 released with weekly lockout, alex 1 weekly lockout removed) but the fights are untouched or maybe 10% echo max. Tomestone gear stays at 200/200/200 throughout but also provides similar stat/skill/set bonuses but with less variety and are mixed around.

This way every player is on the same level within 1 or 2 patches when it comes to sheer raw stats but non raiders can be enticed to either tackle raids at its prime or after it gets its weekly lockout removed to collect unique mods on raid gear and have it be relevant for a few more patches. Raiders can still tune their character gear for their bis needs (even more so, I'd wager). Glamour focused players wouldn't be affected because it'll essentially be the same routine, except the gear they got from farming yesterday's raid is still as viable as today's raid gear. Players that play multiple jobs can also gear up those multiple jobs through out the hw expansion/lvl 60 cap and have them be at near full strength without ever feeling like they're constantly a few steps behind and chasing after 6 month ilvl increases.

Note: I don't see this style of gearing and content structure being implemented and I won't try fight you for it so don't bother arguing with me how the current one note way is better for everyone. You win.

[SenorMartinez]

Gather red script crafting mats while gathering red script nodes...about 3 hours counting legendary nodes.

Do expert a few times. 6 hours a week for the static...done. Level all classes to 60? I rather not, crafters/gather's to 60 are super easy with leve quests. DOW/M... rather not, might end up killing myself. I know what most are talking about. But it's not the games fault, go play other shit. Playing starcraft 2 now..qued up.

[BreathlessTao]

I gotta say, as sad as it is, I agree with OP. I've seen friends leaving the game (quit or just "taking a break" is irrelevant in this case) - or having left, thinking they'd be back for 3.1, and they never came back. I've had people saying during the HW-drought "wait for 3.1, everyone will be back and things will be super busy again", only to see...nothing changing with 3.1.

LoV, as was predicted, ended up being pretty much DoA (from what I can tell anyway, in the "area" I know about), which is doubly unfortunate considering the amount of time and energy put into its development that could've been used for other things. Void Ark is ... idek, I'm completely neutral about it, run it once for the Farthing and if I get another piece of loot I need/want, it's good, if not - no headaches; the quests/story for it however I did find kinda lacking and short tbh, which I'm sure doesn't contribute to anything positive. The Diadem ... er, well, besides apparently having turned out to be a fustercluck from what could be seen in the forums, personally I still haven't even set foot there at all and it doesn't even feel like I'm missing anything. And somewhere between these two, the additional issue of the broken Duty Finder (I won't be convinced that these had nothing to do with it, both are instanced content and more often than not I only see "reserving instance" when queueing for a duty, instead of the roles filling up) really ruined the atmosphere even more.

The Arboretum is nice, Pharos is...well frankly I've been bored of goblins since Brayflox HM and bored of aether crystals since the original Pharos, so that's just meh. Both in those as well as in VA though, I do have an issue with so many enemies being not much more than incredibly overdone HP-sponges, it's mind-numbing that we (whether it's 4 of us or 24, although the latter is more frustrating I guess) keep hitting them for so long and it barely amounts to anything at all when it comes to actually beating them.
The Vanu Vanu ... well let's face it, even that ended up being bugged, and let's not even talk about how confusing the progression on that became. (Currently I'm at 1700/1730, which is on a sidenote another "screw this" type of artificially prolonging content, because, 30 points, really, gimme a break - especially when lots of others have already completed rank 8, people who didn't fall victim to the bugs of it.)
Tomestone upgrade in hunts once more ... sure we can do "private" dailies, which yield 870 seals per week - too bad we need 6×500=3000 to upgrade just one piece of armor (and 2000 for one accessory). A form of content, I guess, but a drought is not made any more bearable with menial, tedious, repetitive tasks. (And of course there's still no upgrading the weapon this way, either.)
Honestly, the part I liked (and perhaps looked forward to) the most was the continuation of the story - at least that part did deliver, in my eyes anyway, but then again I am biased when it comes to Alphinaud. /shrug
edit: I'm reminded that there's also Thordan Ex. Welp. The fact that I need to be reminded of that speaks for how relevant/significant it is as far as I'm concerned. I haven't even picked up the quest at all, and honestly with how the PF was filled with "know the fight" ads once again (on friggin' day 1, I might add), I don't even feel like I want to touch it any time soon either. /shrug

So all in all, my personal experience is: here I am in 3.1, figuratively staring at the desiccated, decaying corpses of friends who've left so long ago and never felt like returning; and the thing I spend the most time doing is leveling up my other battle classes. Which is I think the farthest away from having anything to do with any new content. And more often than not I notice I'm simply - fatigued. Exhausted. It irritates me, it frustrates me, it makes me angry, to the point where I just quit at points where I used to be going on, pushing on, working on those things, because I had the time and the opportunity and felt like I could do it. It's quite simply sad.
The game on a whole might be thriving; the situation might be completely different in Japan (lets face it, that's what really matters); and obviously, this is just one side of the coin... but I have a feeling about as many of us are seeing this side as the other, brighter one.

[Chiramu]

Verminion simply wasn't a home run piece of content popularity-wise. It's a pretty large chunk of development resources wasted in that regard.

I tried to do Verminion matches but if there is no one playing you can only do the Challenges >.>. There needs to be a better match-making feature for Verminion.

Patch is out tomorrow, hopefully the game will feel better after that .

[Mwynn]

Gather red script crafting mats while gathering red script nodes...about 3 hours counting legendary nodes.

Do expert a few times. 6 hours a week for the static...done. Level all classes to 60? I rather not, crafters/gather's to 60 are super easy with leve quests. DOW/M... rather not, might end up killing myself. I know what most are talking about. But it's not the games fault, go play other shit. Playing starcraft 2 now..qued up.

Even then, the Feature called "Limited Inventory/Armoury Space" comes then if you level up everything to 60.

The Game limits the whole Community on every Feature, want to get a Item? Fine, do this and then this, oh wait, you also have to do this! and don't forget you have to do it the other Week while you have to wait still 3 more Days ...

[Laerune]

I have to agree with OP aswell, I cant blame players leaving this game. I used to play alot, but right now I am bored after a hour or two.

- Queue is bugged (something must be wrong), I play all 3 roles and when both tank and healer get 40+ min queue, something is wrong.

- Everything is tied to the Duty Finder. Want to queue for a dungeon and kill some mobs with your chocobo? Good luck! Everthing is tied to the DF and worst part is, you can not queue for more then one type of content.

- PvP queue is very random and often takes way too long. We know this, the developers know this, yet for the past two years there has not been any changes to the queue system for PvP. Alot of my friends want to try to do some PvP, but the queue can take up to 2 hours. Two hours queue means you can only do open-world stuff for 2 hours (no chocobo or able to join a party).

There is something very wrong with the system of this game, older online games let you queue for different type of content at once, they let you group up and summon a battle pet when using their version of the duty finder. SE has many times said that their staff is to small, but you see alot of news where SE made alot of money, because of FFXIV. So my question is, why wont they hire a more developers?

FFXIV has future where it can be a amazing mmorpg, but little staff, bad system and server memory BS is holding this game back. Unless they fix these issues, FFXIV 4.0/5.0/6.0 will be the same stuff that we are having right now and in 4 years we will be complaining about the same stuff. As always Yoshi-P will answer with: Staff to small, Server memory blablabla and please look forward to it.