is this game near the end of it's life?

[Faytte]

Yes. Honestly I don't understand how badly the game has gone, but it shows an inability to innovate. They (devs) are doing the same thing they have always done instead of moving the ball forward, and they are doing it in the least interesting way possible. Lets start off here with some core issues, then move to current ones.

1) Itemization is painfully boring.
Your main attributes mean more than secondaries to the point that if you can get more strength, that there is almost no circumstance in which another stat (say det or crit) would make an earlier piece of gear more or as valuable as a higher ilvl item. What this means is the only interesting decisions a player ever makes is between the same ilvl for very very VERY granular benefits. There is no real way to shape your play style around secondaries between two pieces of gear at any given tier. The gear is also incredibly boring---with a point or two of main stat being it really. There are no item sets which other games used or unique secondary effects on gear: something you saw both in FFXI and even FFXIV in 1.0, because Yoshi P believes this will cause issues where players will use older gear over newer gear--however *no* other game sees this as a problem, because that means players are now weighing options against one another. Do I want more strength and stamina or do I want -50% tp consumption on shield slam? Well this fight has a lot of stunning so maybe i'll use this shield vs that shield. Also item sets give huge rewards to players and are large carrots for them to persue. In WoW and most mmo's getting a 2/4/6 whatever piece bonus generally comes with great gameplay effects--it makes you FEEL awesome. Noting in FFXIV I'm sad to say does this any more.

2) There is no customization
Cross Class skills are a joke. Between the very small amount available and how some don't even make sense (why would a paladin want brutal swing, etc) your choices or more or less made for you. Of course every healer will get quick cast, every non paladin tank will take provoke. At this point where everyone picks the same thing, the point of this system is largely a failure. The purpose was to help non jobs but between pvp nerfs and the like this only makes any impact in the minority of gameplay (1 to 30). Cross class skills should just be removed, crucial skills for roles should appear in each class with their own flavor and a new customization system should be implemented. Also---giving us stat points for customization when they are all just thrown into main stat is another failure of understanding your own game, or the fact that every class gives up the chance to gain interesting traits for garbage like "+10 main stat" traits that could just be tied into your classes natural attribute gains.

3) There is no reason to try
Content comes out that is difficult with ilvl2** gear, but its a thin level of content (4 bosses) and you dont NEED the gear to clear that content unless the game puts in a ridiculous dps check. So you try hard and get that gear, but before any new hard core content comes out a softcore patch comes out that gives you X ways to get *THE SAME GEAR* with months of prep before the next hard core content comes out. So -why- do the hard core content aside from 'the thrill'? WoW does this very well (they do other things horribly) but they have many tiers of difficulty with many bosses per raid, and come out with raids much more rapidly. After heavensward released, WoW had patch 6.2 and released hellfire citadel, which over 10 weeks released bosses on 4 different difficulty and reward tiers out to players---for a total of 13 bosses. All these bosses are relevant---you will do LFR and normal for a while, then normal and heroic while you eventually work up to mythic. There is an actual progression where you need gear to CLIMB the ladder. The catch up mechanics in WoW dont get you to the TOP gear level, they get you high enough to begin the raid ladder and that is all!

But FFXIV cant do that---the difference between 'im ready to start raiding' and 'i cleared all content' is at this point, 10 to 15 i levels, all of which are made up in the next soft core patch.

4) Irrelevant or Bad Content

When was the last time you did bismark ex? That content was obsolete the day it came out.
How about chocobo racing? The thing you need to sit at the golden saucer to try. Go ahead, queue up; how many humans will you race against? I've raced 200+ times and never seen one.
Lords of Vermillion was a giant waste of time, and is clunky.
Diadem seems to focus on SE idea that players like hunts and want more hunt content--so they instanced hunts.

Now let me ask you, if SE had spent their time doing something productive instead of this (either by thinking through what each piece of content means against the whole better to ensure it would not be irrelevant immediately or by making 'better' content) would the game be in this state? Why did bismark have to drop a weapon that you then upgraded out of in 1 week from Ravanah? Who thought that would be a good idea?

5) The Relic Issue

When 2.0 came out, we had the relic quest more or less immediately. It was fresh and dealt with the current, relevant content.
When 3.0 came out, we were told relic needed more time. We were all hopeful it would be cool and new right?
When 3.05 came out, we were told to wait again--needed more time.
When 3.1 came out, we were told to wait again--needed more time.
And now we have 3.15 and have been given a system of atmas, dungeon grinding and the need to access the crafting system which every crafter I know now universally hates. What took *MONTHS* to complete, aside from the art assets? What were the developers doing? Where is the innovation? Why would you think forcing players to now go do content they got tired of MONTHS ago all over again (Alexander Normal) would be a good idea?

6) Raiding is dead
FFXIV Has no idea what to do with its raiding. It's either mind numbingly easy, or its AS3 level difficulty that targets the elite population. There is nothing targeting middle skill players---There is nothing *to do* if you are a pve focused player other than leveling alts, which i feel is all there has been to do for months and months now.

There are more issues obviously--I could go on, but the things I love about FFXIV (graphics, the little nuances and details) cant hide the fact that...the game isn't fun. There is nothing to do. FFXIV has I feel, lost it's own way.

I've been active since the 2.0 beta and my wife since 1.0. Today I think we will both be unsubscribing our accounts. I don't think 3.2 will bring us back--the issues here are just too rooted, too deep. Maybe when 4.0 hits we will check it out again.