The game is more dead than it was pre-3.1

[Terribad]

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.

But everything doesn't have to be so gated. Majority of people aren't going to grind and then unsub because majority of people don't have time for that. Hence all the complaints about not having enough time.

[Mwynn]

But everything doesn't have to be so gated. Majority of people aren't going to grind and then unsub because majority of people don't have time for that. Hence all the complaints about not having enough time.

^ This. I rather Unsub because when my Esotoric Tomestones have been capped I have to wait.
If this wouldn't been the case, I rather spend more time on other Jobs to gear them, thus not needing to unsub or log off for some Days...

Other Content is gated pretty much ...

[Blood-Aki]

But everything doesn't have to be so gated. Majority of people aren't going to grind and then unsub because majority of people don't have time for that. Hence all the complaints about not having enough time.

Then this indeed would turn into a real casual game, it would have died off already if everything was uncapped from the start, there would be no raid scenes because all the raiders would have capped in the 1st 2 weeks they could beat the content, then have no incentive to do it anymore.

Even 24 man raids like void ark, would be even harder to que for in about a month because everyone would just spam it till they got their gear sets. and it would turn into CT/WOD in a short time. You can't do that with diadem due to the sheer randomness of the 210s that can drop and have better stats then the gated 210 and you actually winning the lot.

You and a few others may not unsub but a large population of this game would have dropped off fast. and there wouldn't be much point playing this when you don't have many people around you. This is how they keep you subbed.

[Terribad]

Snip

RNG, RNG is basically the gate that gives you the illusion of doing something. Everything doesn't have to be RNG and RNG doesn't have to be for every patch.

Plenty of mmorpgs have RNG not everyone grinds everything out in one week and then leave or else no MMO would use it. Heck even the forums are gated ._.

[MilesSaintboroguh]

Heck even the forums are gated ._.

Blame the trolls, spammers, and flame war instigators that caused chaos on the forums during beta (or even before that)

[BreathlessTao]

Blame the trolls, spammers, and flame war instigators that caused chaos on the forums during beta (or even before that)

Point in fact. So damn long ago it's not even relevant anymore; I'm willing to bet most of those people are not even around anymore. Yet we are still being punished for it, and the facts that a) Yoshi&co themselves are making posts worth a short novel sometimes because b) it can be done even by us because the whole restriction is bypassed without any difficulty - they make the whole thing even more enraging. Even more pointless and obsolete and arbitrary.

And the worst thing is that this represents quite a lot of issues the game has all too well. Just last night I saw that thread asking for resetting skills on wipe in raids. An issue that is as old as the game itself, completely trivial, yet still not addressed at all as far as I know (as in, not even acknowledged or commented on in any way). The lockouts and the way they're applied; the way that actually effectively being able to use any job is so arbitrarily gated (yes you can be anything but good luck gearing everything up for that endgame content); and let's not even talk about the DF's shortcomings and the limits of our companion - especially don't even mention these two together.......... the list goes on.

So many old issues I'm pretty sure don't help the image of the game, especially for veterans, that aren't being taken care of because there's always "something more important" that the "small dev team" has to work on and churn out. And so many times that "more important" thing ends up being....well, not new at all, not satisfying at all, not interesting at all - cue so many people in this thread posting all the examples.....

[Blood-Aki]

RNG, RNG is basically the gate that gives you the illusion of doing something. Everything doesn't have to be RNG and RNG doesn't have to be for every patch.

Plenty of mmorpgs have RNG not everyone grinds everything out in one week and then leave or else no MMO would use it. Heck even the forums are gated ._.

Because their are plenty of succesful paid mmos, right? also, what does RNG have to do with the topic of why things are gated?

[Terribad]

Snip

Depends on your definition of successful, if you're talking about with an high active population, then yes there is. FFXIV doesn't have MILLIONS of players like SE wants you to believe. SE only states "accounts" made and never "active subscribers". There's way more p2p, b2p, and f2p mmos out there with an higher active playerbase than here.

RNG is the solution to this false worry of people grinding things out and then leaving.

Blame the trolls, spammers, and flame war instigators that caused chaos on the forums during beta (or even before that)

That was long ago and we still shouldn't be punished for that. Ban the trolls/spammers that's what mods are for right?

[Yukiko]

(..) RNG is the solution to this false worry of people grinding things out and then leaving. (..)

Never ever was or is RNG the solution, it ALWAYS is a part of the problem!
If you like to add more RNG to FFXIV then you are in the wrong forum - sorry but true!

RNG is supposed to help making something unpredictable but not in making content grind artificial longer!

[Terribad]

but not in making content grind artificial longer!

Who said anything about making something longer? She said people would grind everything as fast as possible and then leave. RNG is a way to prevent that. Even though I personally don't think anyone would grind anything out in a few days and then leave. Look at people complaining about the new relic grind.