The game is more dead than it was pre-3.1

[hobostew]

The game has always been pretty mediocre. I think what people are seeing now is a large number of people coming out of the honeymoon phase. I guess it's a little harder to justify all the questionable decisions now that we can't fall back on the whole "The game is relaunching from total failure! Of course they're going to play it safe!"

To be clear, I'm not saying the game is bad, just that it isn't anywhere near as good as the old hype would have you believe and nowhere as good as it could potentially be.

[Ayuhra]

WoW is still there though if you want to play it on the side. I agree that ability bloat is an issue...but I'm content that they didn't completely change how the classes work with the expansion. WoW began to bore me when they gutted my favourite class and changed it every major patch/expansion to the point where what I liked originally no longer existed.

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?

I do play WoW on the side but I think folks aren't understanding what I mean. I am arguing that WoW still feels good to play as opposed to Heavensward. I need an insane number of keybinds to play this game even remotely competently and I didn't need them in WoW, even before the Culling of Abilities that came in Warlords of Draenor. I'm talking less about fun and depth than pure physical accessibility here. I have nerve damage in my hands that limits my range of motion. I could still do Mythic raiding in WoW, but in this game as of Heavensward most dps classes are more than I can comfortably handle. I know my situation is not true for everyone but everyone must feel the ability bloat somehow.

Combine the bloat with a lack of lateral progression and I think we see some of the reason for the drop off. There is a LOT to do in the game but if your main motivation is increasing your item level you are going to be grinding your face against the same couple of things each day...and your effort will have been for not much come the next patch. I also think having more mounts drop in old dungeons and encounters would be fun. I would absolutely dive into more old content to get them.

The game needs to be BIGGER, more epic-ified in general. More streamlined rotations, more complex and interesting everything else.

For the record I think the team can achieve this, I see brilliance under even the things I don't enjoy. People clearly care about the project, hopefully they can patch it up in the next expansion into something wonderful.

[Moqi]

What I gather from this thread is not the lack of content but the amount of "I can't be bothered doing that" aka lazy people.

If I can't be bothered to do stuff they need to get to work and find a way to motivate me, that's what they are paid for. If they fail to entertain me and they don't bother to change that, they are the lazy ones. I am paying for a service, now I gotta do their work as well? And for free?

Do you just finish it and move to the next one or get everything that you could possibly get from it?

I get all the fun I can possibly get from it which does not equate to all the content because some of it is going to be fun for me. I think you're mistaking a gamer with someone affected by ocd.

[Kosmos992k]

If I can't be bothered to do stuff they need to get to work and find a way to motivate me, that's what they are paid for. If they fail to entertain me and they don't bother to change that, they are the lazy ones. I am paying for a service, now I gotta do their work as well? And for free?

Quite how do developers manage to pull off the miraculous feat of un-jading a jaded player?

[Dyvid]

Quite how do developers manage to pull off the miraculous feat of un-jading a jaded player?

Same way they did in 1.0 I guess. Ask the players what they want and try to tailor to the masses needs. There will always be someone with a chip on their shoulder but most people want to play the game and enjoy it other wise they wouldn't be here talking about changes that need to be made.

[StrejdaTom]

Snip

This plus lack of replayability in the most of the content is seriously killing the game.

I think people definitely cannot use "the game has been out only for 1 year, the expansion has been out only for 3 months" etc. excuses and need to face the reality.
We need content with more replayability, gear and content that stays longer and equipment choices that aren't only about mainstat > crit > det > skillspeed (for BRD).
The question is - Is FFXIV team able to put such changes in game without getting bigger? I personally don't believe that. If I was SE, I would put one similar patch every 4 months and milk us trough cash shop more and more (well they already increased pace of that) untill the game has to be shut down. Because increasing the number of people in the team is definitely not the way they wish to go.

EDIT: The gear and content gets outdated so fast it's ridiculous. I know I know I am playing vertical progression game, white knights have been repeating that since 2013. Well, maybe it's time to change the system of progression or atleast slow it down significantly.

[Terribad]

I'd actually play this game more if they would actually let me play.

Why is everything so gated? Why can't I grind for something until my fingers bleed?

Like others have stated the reward system is awful, I have no motivation to raid any more because by time I get close to getting done, here comes more gear. Besides even if I get it, what will I do with it? There's no open world bosses to go kill that drops nice loot to sell.

Stats are boring, no customization with anything. I came back because of them stating they would add materia slots to raid/tome gear. However I didn't bank on them only adding 2 slots with no overmelds. =/

My entire FC is gone, joined another and within the last week none of them log on. One stated he's not sure why he even plays any more.

[Blood-Aki]

I'd actually play this game more if they would actually let me play.

Why is everything so gated? Why can't I grind for something until my fingers bleed?

Surely you know why, IF nothing was capped all people would do is just that, grind untill they cap, then just unsub till next patch, people already do that but it would be far worse. That is just how this game works. FFXI survived for years because getting gear in that game took ages, and LOTS of time and paitence. but when you got gear it lasted years.

[Moqi]

And yet Netxflix releases all its content at once and is doing great. That argument is trite. Lockouts was the main reason I unsubbed actually.

[Martin_Arcainess]

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.

What got me was that I couldn't use control hotbar on my PS4.