I guess it's time

[Atoli]

Jumping Puzzles can be done daily since they give a reward chest at the end.
Point of your argument?

And doing the same thing over and over again is totally not what everyone has been complaining about in this thread, riiight?

[RobbieH]

And doing the same thing over and over again is totally not what everyone has been complaining about in this thread, riiight?

People have been mostly complaining about lack of end game and poor rewards.

[WellFooled]

When has gaming become something you do for the rewards rather than the gameplay itsself?

One of the points discussed in this thread and many others is that the gameplay itself is not rewarding enough to stand on its own (No customization, formulaic dungeons and trials and raids, etc). So its not surprising that players are looking for their rewards elsewhere in the form of in-game items. Ideally though content would be rewarding for both its gameplay and the in-game items gained from it.

If you want jumping puzzles, how about you go do the sightseeing log? Actually, if you want exploration, how about the sightseeing log?!

This is off topic, but I think the sightseeing log is an interesting case study in how not to reward players with gameplay. The original ARR sightseeing log had very cool riddles on where to find each point. That makes for rewarding gameplay. If you didn't cheat, the puzzle itself was rewarding to solve on your own or with your friends, plus there are some cool platforming challenges involved in some.

But those sightseeing points also required a certain time of day and weather. So once you figured out the puzzle, once you succeeded in mastering the platforming elements...you had to wait, sometimes for hours, sometimes for days (one log I remember trying to complete would always stop having the required weather the second the required time arrived. I have still not completed that log). That isn't even gameplay. So what would have been a rewarding piece of content (even without any in-game rewards) was destroyed.

When HW sightseeing logs were added the time/weather requirements were removed, but so were the riddles and the platforming elements and the points were given visible indicators. So any sort of gameplay substance was removed from sightseeing logs. At best HW sightseeing is just busy work. Flying around and looking for glowing circles.

[Zafre]

I did LOVE 2.0, everything did seem so promising, and playing was fun!
But after 3.0 I have been keeping breaks here and there. And when I come back, I'm happily playing for first 2weeks, and then I lose interest again.
I think most of us are just missing the times when we were curious and wanted to learn more and more. And see new stuff.

I wish they add some more ways to gear up, not just the same old tomestones.. It's getting bit old >_> It's also very frustrating to log in and see all the stuff u should be capping in one week.

I would like to see the world more alive! More random gathering around the world (where u could accidentally find something rare), hidden treasure chests (without maps), world bosses, harder combat in the areas (where u would need party), more random loot on all monsters and some events (like the gold saucer one we had) that gets people moving! Too many just chilling in idyllshire.

[Vantol]

About gameplay, I'll just leave it here:

[Velhart]

You probably know as much as I do as that some of their new content, for the lack of a better word, sucks. I'm not going to fault them for trying out something new, but a lot of the faults that come from Diadem and Feast boils down to being overly ambitious with what they wanted it to be, combined with a lack of foresight and planning to make it work in the first place. Like, they made no changes to how queuing works in a party, did they genuinely believe that a ranked ladder would function without changing it (let alone solo queue matching you with new players on your team to "balance" it) Likewise with job performance (such as WM/GB giving a 20% damage boost at the cost of autos...when autos made up for roughly 17~23% of your dps in the first place). In that sense, I really feel like they're "trying" in all the wrong places and missing the major aspect of what needed to be done.

The release of the expansion felt like it failed in the proverbial planting of seeds for new content (such as the execution of crafting/gathering scrips, and FC airship and crafting), and the result is that the content, while seemingly new, falls onto the same repetition of killing mobs that have no interesting gimmicks to it (even aquapolis falls to this once you get past the rewards and RNG)

Usually because the rewards are unbalanced, not interesting, or worth nothing to take on. Understandable it is hard to balance. At the same time, you decide to dramatically change how the game works or content that comes out, people complain just as much. It is a damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario. Difference with new content is at least attempting and not simply giving in to "what works".

Hopefully SE can pin down a better balance of casual, midcore, and hardcore. I won't hold my breath though, SE seems quick to take midcore/hardcore out of the picture if it means they can get more casuals into the content. They care way more about getting higher numbers into content instead of making quality content where numbers will work themselves out.

It is pretty simple:
Casual - whatever you want
Midcore - Trials/Relic(yes make it midcore)/Raid(Final Coil difficulty)
Hardcore - Raid(2nd Coil Savage difficulty)

This alone will step it in the right direction. Unfortunately SE and many people disagree with me.

[RiceisNice]

Usually because the rewards are unbalanced, not interesting, or worth nothing to take on. Understandable it is hard to balance. At the same time, you decide to dramatically change how the game works or content that comes out, people complain just as much. It is a damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario. Difference with new content is at least attempting and not simply giving in to "what works".

For me it's less about the reward/destination, and more on the journey/gameplay. As I mentioned before, the general gameplay has not changed, regardless of what kind of content it was (or job even). This is a big reason to why Diadem flopped because it was essentially a overglorified hunt with gear drops. It's the reason why Aquapolis hasn't kept me interested for more than a week, and it's the primary reason why I have very low (if any, and this is mostly in context of glamour anyway) expectations. Honestly even with new content I feel like they're too afraid to go beyond that if they're still falling back to the same gameplay and lack the foresight to do anything beyond said gameplay.

Hopefully SE can pin down a better balance of casual, midcore, and hardcore. I won't hold my breath though, SE seems quick to take midcore/hardcore out of the picture if it means they can get more casuals into the content. They care way more about getting higher numbers into content instead of making quality content where numbers will work themselves out.

It's not just this, but the overall variety of the gameplay that each content is standing on. I wouldn't be so adverse to leveling up my other two healers if it didn't mean me going through the exact same dungeons through the same hallways and beast tribes that is either courier to X location or kill Y mobs...again it's very little variance in what the objectives require (and the novelty of say, capturing a paissa for a paissa fight is lost after the 4th repeat before it devolves to another fetch quest)

It is pretty simple:
Casual - whatever you want
Midcore - Trials/Relic(yes make it midcore)/Raid(Final Coil difficulty)
Hardcore - Raid(2nd Coil Savage difficulty)

This alone will step it in the right direction. Unfortunately SE and many people disagree with me.

Raiding is one aspect of it, but yes, being able to have a gradual curve toward difficulty (which is desperately needed imo, esp since ozma and nidhogg normal seem to be causing lost hairs for the wrong reason) and a better bridge between difficulties is needed.

[Iromi]

About gameplay, I'll just leave it here:

omg LOL I actually made that image when 2.0 launched...er, the beta..hahaha my main in 1.x was BLM and I was so disappointed when I saw what became of it, and no more elemental wheel.

[RiceisNice]

omg LOL I actually made that image when 2.0 launched...er, the beta..hahaha my main in 1.x was BLM and I was so disappointed when I saw what became of it, and no more elemental wheel.

To be fair, an elemental wheel really wouldn't work in how the game is designed now. It'd either end up as extreme button bloating with swapping of skills (which is kind of arbitrary) or imbalanced when it comes to selecting party composition. I feel the BLM we have works the way it is; for the most part the jobs are well designed save for a few exceptions, but that alone doesn't give much variety if the flow of gameplay in dungeons or non-boss fights remains largely the same.

[RLofOBFL]

People keep comparing 11 to 14 but despite what 11 may have done better, 14 has had up to triple the subscribers in far less time. So the reason they're reluctant to change anything is because it works to the casual player & gets them more money. Even now in this lull of the odd 3.0 patch it has almost double the subs 11 has ever had at one time. This is the sad truth. But some of the reason is probably bc FF has become more mainstream. I don't play mmos but I do play FF so they snagged me.