Unofficial Census 2016 for FFXIV

[zosia]

yes and i read it but i didn't see it saying anything about reading the total number of players subbed each month for the last 7 months just some random numbers generated by using a few filters.

lol, the numbers were not random. The source explains what each number is and how they arrived at it. It shows the number of active characters that have played month to month. This seven month notion comes from simply looking at the 1st month player activity dipped and contrasting it with the most recent month. This is not some hand wavy BS like you are trying to make it seem. You are setting up an impossible standard for proof since SE has not nor ever will release the actual number of active subs. This is the best we will ever get, and from the data we have, the game is in terrible shape.

%

Yet somehow this game is still going strong despite it, with SE clearly making enough money from the game to run a FFXIV themed cafe in Tokyo to boot! /sarcasm

I think it's pretty telling that this so-called 'census' is nothing but chocobo dung not to be taken seriously, just like this same tired Chicken-Little mentality about the game 'dying' that keeps being spouted over and over again (since long before launch actually - really this game should have died half a dozen times by now if the doomsayers are to be believed).

The game is not failing, sure it can be improved, but articulating 'room for improvement' as 'the game is dying because not everyone is logging in 24/7/doing endgame stuff!' only invalidates the whole arguement.

But I've said enough on this subject already so I'm tired of repeating myself.

Says the guy on balmung. lol. Why don't you just move to gilgamesh and tell me how this game is so well populated.

It's really not going that strong, Maybe on one of the few mega servers, but on any average server, the market boards are stagnate, towns are empty, housing wards are lifeless, and party finder is way less active than it used to be.

Then stop repeating yourself, arguing on the internet is a pointless endeavor, especially on these forums. Not to mention very few people care. I don't delude myself into thinking I am accomplishing anything here, you should embrace that. Just enjoy the schadenfreude and enjoy the dumpster fire that the active amount of subs has become.

[MilesSaintboroguh]

Yet somehow this game is still going strong despite it, with SE clearly making enough money from the game to run a FFXIV themed cafe in Tokyo to boot! /sarcasm

I think it's pretty telling that this so-called 'census' is nothing but chocobo dung not to be taken seriously, just like this same tired Chicken-Little mentality about the game 'dying' that keeps being spouted over and over again (since long before launch actually - really this game should have died half a dozen times by now if the doomsayers are to be believed).

The game is not failing, sure it can be improved, but articulating 'room for improvement' as 'the game is dying because not everyone is logging in 24/7/doing endgame stuff!' only invalidates the whole arguement.

But I've said enough on this subject already so I'm tired of repeating myself.

We should bump up that thread that recorded everything that said the game would die. Or did it get purged?

[Brian_]

snip.

Again, LIKE I ALREADY SAID, it's not about the pretty mounts / vanity items. It is about rewarding a player's time. That is not limited to gear.

You are fixated on the superficial and are missing the point.

The feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment, the fun of a shared experience, the fulfillment and entertainment in just playing the game. Those are all rewards, too.

And, they are marginalized by how this game treats its balance of accessibility vs. earned exclusivity -- the point that you missed.

One example that many talk about is Coil vs. Alexander. Alexander's normal mode was implemented as a response to negative feedback regarding the gating of content behind inaccessible raid encounters. But, as many including Level 5's CEO have pointed, doing so has cheapened the experience. He wasn't talking about the gear. He wasn't talking about the title. He was talking about our feelings as gamers. Reveals like Nael van Darnus, Louisoix, and Bahamut had more weight and impact when the fights and raid structure more aptly represented the gravitas of their reality. With Alexander, you spend maybe an hour in DF on release night with a bunch of randoms and you're done with it. It's an anticlimactic and antisocial experience. They sacrificed the benefits of exclusivity for accessibility and a lot of people will tell you that it hurt the content.

It's about inspiration. Rewards matter only so far as their value in inspiring a positive emotion. I don't think people play games to feel like complete crap. When you make content less rewarding in every sense, virtually tangible or emotional, there is less room to inspire someone and keep them hooked to the game.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

For starters, yes you were missing the point by virtue of the yokai watch example. You also further missed my point where I said no one has problems with reasonable nerfs, yet you claim my point is nerfs of any caliber result in player apathy. You are probably still missing the point. Let me be as simple for you as possible....

Big nerf bad

Many Big nerf really bad

SE, should try a different nerf style to preserve reward impact across all aspects of the game

And allow me to enlighten you. Your opinion is not fact. No amount of frequency or insistence will ever change that. All you've proven is to be wholly arrogant as the very idea someone might dare to disagree seems entirely foreign to you.

I am sorry if your life has left you thinking $65 dollars is a substantial amount of money. That is a price of a new video game after tax. You keep having to fall back to this idea of RNG, but you have yet to address other aspects where reward nerfs have hurt this game like the thavnarian set, gearing in general from a tome vendor, putting rare past event items in the cash shop like the lightning event. Your argument is a one trick pony, lol. You can only rely on how miserable it is to farm a 5% drop rate on current content. If you can't take the 5% drop rate now, why not wait until 4.0 who you could duo most of the primals that drop birds?

Your defense of the pony situation is just laughable. People would be able to get them, easily, if the drop rate had stayed around 5%. Rather than try to find a happy middle ground, you are here, defending the status quo despite the 25% sub drop over 7 months. Pathetic. This is why this game will die, people are too scared to change the status quo.

And these presumptions continue. At what point did I expression my own financial situation? I spoke in general because there are, indeed, plenty of people who play this game and couldn't afford $65 on frivolous minions. There are plenty more who simply do not see the value in tossing money at the cash shop for stuff they could have gotten in-game yet chose not to.

Laughably only because you, once again, seem incapable of perceiving arguments that are not your own. Thus, I shall reiterate, you place far too great a significant on mounts, events or other frivolous trinkets. The mere fact you even bring up the Lightning event demonstrates you don't get its purpose. This wasn't some reward, but a promotional campaign for SE to advertise another game. Nevertheless, putting leveling gear on vendors or the Lightning event on the Cash Shop isn't causing sub loss. At least not to the degree you seem to believe. loreleidiangelo's post summaries how most people feel when bored of any game or hobby. By her own admittance, mounts or events won't woo her back because the content isn't interesting.

You're wrong. Wow had a decade of great sub numbers with a system that favored long term subscribers. You are offering nothing but a slippery slope argument here. A game can both be rewarding to it's long term players and welcoming to new players. Wow did it for a decade, whats your excuse for this game?

A decade of sub numbers... that gradually declined each and every year since its release. WoW had the unique advantage of essentially revolutionizing the entire genre-- releasing at a time where it literally had no competition. Nearly fifteen years later games are still attempting to copy it. Despite all of its prior success, WoW has lost millions of players. And I have a good suspicion it didn't have to do with drop rates or exclusives but content.

Legion was not coming out 7 months ago, these sub numbers have been dropping for SEVEN MONTHS! IF you think you can pin that all on wow and legion, then I won't discuss this any further with you. The reason people are not sticking around for content like PotD is that A) it's grindy and B) the rewards suck.

And in that seven month span, what happened?

Gordias Savage
Diadem
LoV
3.1's general lack of content

It's almost like people might have quit from boredom or frustration. FFXIV attempted numerous bits of content that either completely flopped or proved far too challenging for the overwhelming majority. This, coupled with what amounted to five months of basically Thordan EX and nothing else unless you could handle Gordias meant there just wasn't much to do.

None of this couldn't have influenced the sub numbers. You know, despite people even openly acknowledging they quit because of Gordias or because they had nothing to do. No. It's the drop rates and lack of event items staying exclusive.

You are cherry picking my posts and assuming my position solely rests on the idea that everything needs to be rare. Here, I will quote myself from another thread...

I cherry picked nothing since this whole argument began initially on mounts. Some of that I could even agree with, albeit not necessarily as vehemently. But the operative word in each point you make is "you." You feeling this is an issue does not abruptly make it one. People who disagree with your opinion are not inherently wrong because every single word is purely subjective. This is the part you seem to have difficulty with.

I have plenty of issues outside of loot, mounts, and minions. This game is in trouble on multiple fronts. I do agree with you on the legion part. This game is losing more and more players to legion. Wow is doing what it does best, taking the best parts of other games and adapting them for better use.

For example, where do you think blizzard got the idea of the artifact weapon and guild halls from? It's going to take content misgivings of FFXIV and turn them into something amazing in wow. Have you even seen the artifact weapons yet? They even give me pause asking why I ever worked on a relic in this game.

Blizzard is going to keep snatching up more and more ffxiv players with legion. If the expansion is even half as good as it looks, FFXIV won't have another WoD flop to benefit from. This games days are numbered and the thought puts a grin of my face every time.

Let's hold back a little before praising WoW as the gospel, hmm? They practically tanked their own sub numbers with years of essentially no content. For all of Legion's promises; for many, this is their last attempt to "win back the crowd." Nonetheless, Artifact weapons are nothing new. These have been in plenty of games, be it MMOs or single player RPGs.

That last sentence of yours speaks more about you than FFXIV, the devs or its players. "I'm so excited FFXIV is gonna die!" Is basically what you just said. Why not go play WoW then? Oh, because you're borderline trolling at this point and just want to watch it all burn. I mean, if we're being honest.

I'll summarize this whole 'debate' as thus:

You think the game is struggling due to nerfs to drop rates, lack of exclusives and basically stuff that makes you feel special.

I think the sub decline is a result of Gordias Savage, a general lack of content; in particular a midcore and less innovative features in overall design.

Neither of us know for certain. So mayhaps you should stop pretending otherwise.

[zosia]

And allow me to enlighten you. Your opinion is not fact. No amount of frequency or insistence will ever change that. All you've proven is to be wholly arrogant as the very idea someone might dare to disagree seems entirely foreign to you.

Where once did I say my opinion was fact? Where? Quote me once. LOL, Quote me once where I stated my personal beliefs as fact. You are just being sore that I pointed out from two separate posts that you did not really know what my point was. Yet, in light of evidence provided by your very own posts, you are doubling down that somehow you understood and that I am just arrogant.

No miss, you misunderstood, plain and simple. You didn't even read my post very well. You missed the entire point where I concede that reasonable nerfs are fine. lololol you can't even admit to being wrong in that light. You can only just call me arrogant and skip past the BS that you were called out on. You are so triggered! XD

And these presumptions continue. At what point did I expression my own financial situation? I spoke in general because there are, indeed, plenty of people who play this game and couldn't afford $65 on frivolous minions. There are plenty more who simply do not see the value in tossing money at the cash shop for stuff they could have gotten in-game yet chose not to.

Yep, I assumed you thought $65 was substantial because you said $65 was a substantial price tag for the set of retired items. My bad for making an assumption. See what a normal person does when they do something wrong? Now only if you could see the irony in you making assumptions about how I felt about nerfs, lol. Pathetic.

Laughably only because you, once again, seem incapable of perceiving arguments that are not your own. Thus, I shall reiterate, you place far too great a significant on mounts, events or other frivolous trinkets. The mere fact you even bring up the Lightning event demonstrates you don't get its purpose. This wasn't some reward, but a promotional campaign for SE to advertise another game. Nevertheless, putting leveling gear on vendors or the Lightning event on the Cash Shop isn't causing sub loss. At least not to the degree you seem to believe. loreleidiangelo's post summaries how most people feel when bored of any game or hobby. By her own admittance, mounts or events won't woo her back because the content isn't interesting.

Did you not even read the long list I posted to you? Do you know why I care about loot so much? Have you even the slightest idea? Probably not. Because to you, it does not matter what kind of feedback I have to give, it does not fit your play style and therefore it deserves to be refuted and invalidated.

Interesting content is just one side of the damn coin. Don't you see that? If all content needed to be was "interesting" to be popular, the concept of rewards and carrots would not even be a topic of discussion. You refuse to see that no matter how interesting new content is, less people will grind it out if they know there will be a short cut to the rewards later. People will get a handful of clears and put the content on a shelf, until the rewards are easily obtainable.

You could have the best content in the MMO industry and if the reward system sucks, people will just wander else where given enough time. There needs to be great reasons to do repeat clears of content.

Just like my long list of dislikes insinuates, you need both compelling content and compelling rewards to keep people playing. But go ahead, that presumption glass house of yours needs a few more stones through it's walls.

Look at palace of the dead, it's by far one of the more interesting dungeons SE has added so far, yet people gave up on it pretty fast. Why? Unless you wanted a common glamour weapon or a common mount, there was very little reason to return to the content for repeat clears. Now, how many people would be doing PotD if it dropped a BiS ring from the final floor? I bet a lot more people would rather have a BiS ring for their main class than some garbage alt weapon with an obnoxious glow.

A decade of sub numbers... that gradually declined each and every year since its release. WoW had the unique advantage of essentially revolutionizing the entire genre-- releasing at a time where it literally had no competition. Nearly fifteen years later games are still attempting to copy it. Despite all of its prior success, WoW has lost millions of players. And I have a good suspicion it didn't have to do with drop rates or exclusives but content.

You are absolutely FACTUALLY wrong!!!!!!! That entire paragraph is started on a false premise. Tell her what she has won, Johnny!

~today she will be receiving a lovely graph of wow subs showing there was no real sub decline until the game was already six years old! Back to you Zosia! /announcer-voice


What a lovely prize, don't go spend that all in one place! On a serious note, we all know that wow set the bar, but we don't need to look at wow to measure FFXIV. You can look at the star wars MMO and you can see what happens when a sub game hits around 500k active subs. Let me spoil the surprise for you, it's called free 2 play and games going belly up always run to that model.

And in that seven month span, what happened?

Gordias Savage
Diadem
LoV
3.1's general lack of content

It's almost like people might have quit from boredom or frustration. FFXIV attempted numerous bits of content that either completely flopped or proved far too challenging for the overwhelming majority. This, coupled with what amounted to five months of basically Thordan EX and nothing else unless you could handle Gordias meant there just wasn't much to do.

None of this couldn't have influenced the sub numbers. You know, despite people even openly acknowledging they quit because of Gordias or because they had nothing to do. No. It's the drop rates and lack of event items staying exclusive.

I think it all affected the sub numbers, you clearly did not read my list of dislikes. At this point, it does not surprise me that you read anything on that list. LOL.

I cherry picked nothing since this whole argument began initially on mounts. Some of that I could even agree with, albeit not necessarily as vehemently. But the operative word in each point you make is "you." You feeling this is an issue does not abruptly make it one. People who disagree with your opinion are not inherently wrong because every single word is purely subjective. This is the part you seem to have difficulty with.

Where have I said any feedback of yours is wrong in this thread? I mean, you are right, I genuinely think you are being willfully ignorant to the reward side of the compelling content coin. Where do I say you are not allowed to have an opinion? The irony is killing me!! LOLOLOL You are saying that I think you are wrong because we disagree. YESSSSS I absolutely think you are wrong in many regards, but not just for having a different opinion. I Think you are wrong because you don't or are not willing to take a look at the reward side of the 'content coin'. I think you are wrong and THAT IS MY OPINION, and I am allowed to have it, lololol!!! Sorry that it rubs you the wrong way that I don't think much of your opinion. You already have shown me that this is about being right for you more than it is about finding solutions.

Let's hold back a little before praising WoW as the gospel, hmm? They practically tanked their own sub numbers with years of essentially no content. For all of Legion's promises; for many, this is their last attempt to "win back the crowd." Nonetheless, Artifact weapons are nothing new. These have been in plenty of games, be it MMOs or single player RPGs.

I did say "IF". Do I need to really point out the nuances of reading to you? By qualifying my statement with "IF" I am already admitting that there is risk of failure... /headdesk

That last sentence of yours speaks more about you than FFXIV, the devs or its players. "I'm so excited FFXIV is gonna die!" Is basically what you just said. Why not go play WoW then? Oh, because you're borderline trolling at this point and just want to watch it all burn. I mean, if we're being honest.

Yes, I am enjoying myself. Trolling? I would not go that far. I am glad to provide actual feedback, like I have in this thread. I just take none of you or anything about this game seriously. I am sorry if that offends or if you even care, which you probably don't. I get more entertainment out of these forums than I do from any of the content in the game.

I'll summarize this whole 'debate' as thus:

You think the game is struggling due to nerfs to drop rates, lack of exclusives and basically stuff that makes you feel special.

DEFINITELY DID NOT READ MAH LIST! And you call me arrogant, lol. If you read my list, then you would know I have way more issues with this game past loot and mounts.

I think the sub decline is a result of Gordias Savage, a general lack of content; in particular a midcore and less innovative features in overall design.

Neither of us know for certain. So mayhaps you should stop pretending otherwise.

And maybe you should stop talking like an NPC from the game? lol mayhaps, lolololol

Anyway, Everything you said in that little list in your last quote was stuff included on my dislikes list. So, if you pulled your head out of your tuckus and actually read half of my replies in this thread alone, you would know I agree with you on that stuff. JUST FROM THIS THREAD:

-snip-

Furthermore, content like PotD, Diadem, Aquapolis, the 24 mans, will all be different sources for your BiS set in addition to having minor upgrades along the way to help you get to your BiS. Imagine if you had to go into diadem to get the best belt in the game made from killing giant dinosaur bosses? Then, to get the best ring in the game, you have to slay a lich lord and his army of minions in palace of the dead? To round out your set of interesting BiS gear with item effect, you have to kill Thordan EX for the best helm in the game. Do you kind of see what I am saying?

Now these ideas could be worked on obviously, but if I could snap my fingers now and make a wish, that would be the changes I would make. I would also make monsters tougher, dungeons harder, and hunt monsters more like world bosses. This would actually make these gear upgrades meaningful other than just stat sticks to stand around town with.

-snip-

The irony XD it's too much. Get me the number to planet fitness, I need to work out after this desert. You literally wrote me an essay about how arrogant and presumptuous I am, yet we agree on way more stuff then you realized. You just assumed that my only issues with this game are loot and rare items. You were just too busy trying to be right, lol.

Go actually read what I have been posting for the last week instead of jumping on one of my responses in a thread 30 pages deep playing logic hero.

[Neophyte]

Again, LIKE I ALREADY SAID, it's not about the pretty mounts / vanity items. It is about rewarding a player's time. That is not limited to gear.

You are fixated on the superficial and are missing the point.

The feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment, the fun of a shared experience, the fulfillment and entertainment in just playing the game. Those are all rewards, too.

And, they are marginalized by how this game treats its balance of accessibility vs. earned exclusivity -- the point that you missed.


One example that many talk about is Coil vs. Alexander. Alexander's normal mode was implemented as a response to negative feedback regarding the gating of content behind inaccessible raid encounters. But, as many including Level 5's CEO have pointed, doing so has cheapened the experience. He wasn't talking about the gear. He wasn't talking about the title. He was talking about our feelings as gamers. Reveals like Nael van Darnus, Louisoix, and Bahamut had more weight and impact when the fights and raid structure more aptly represented the gravitas of their reality. With Alexander, you spend maybe an hour in DF on release night with a bunch of randoms and you're done with it. It's an anticlimactic and antisocial experience. They sacrificed the benefits of exclusivity for accessibility and a lot of people will tell you that it hurt the content.

It's about inspiration. Rewards matter only so far as their value in inspiring a positive emotion. I don't think people play games to feel like complete crap. When you make content less rewarding in every sense, virtually tangible or emotional, there is less room to inspire someone and keep them hooked to the game.

The easiness of Alexander Normal might has to do with it and I won't argue that stepping up the difficulty would be a good thing. To still cater to the casual crowd they could implement temporary HP/AP-boosts like the sanction spell of the GC (i.e. let them do a Task/quest of ~0,5-1h to get a 2h echo-like boost just for the current normal raid) or something like that.

But I think what most people turned of was the overall design of alexander compared with coils... I mean, even when they didn't implement normal mode, what would you think about Gordias' epicness? Well in the end, it's just robots and goblins.
Mide is no Louisoix and Twinkledinx is no Nael deus Darnus and they'll never be.

That, together with the fact, that there was an unusual long period of no new content turned people off, that's for sure. And I won't say anything against giving us 3 dungeons again.

But I don't feel the same about overall design flaws regarding gearing system or longevity of content. It's the same since 2.x, that's true there was no change.. but well that is exactly what I signed up for over a year ago. Titan Ex wasn't 'relevant' aynmore when I joined the game, it was just as relevant as Thordan is now.
E.g. Diadem failed, but not in terms of reward I think, but instead 'cause of the overall design. I.e. I just don't believe Diadem would be good if the rewards for grinding hours of dino Island were "meaningful"... it's still a boring grind and only 'cause I'm 'happy' to get my gear finally (is it really happiness or is it just relief that it's finally over?!) doesn't make the content itself better or worse.

[Duelle]

You're wrong. Wow had a decade of great sub numbers with a system that favored long term subscribers. You are offering nothing but a slippery slope argument here. A game can both be rewarding to it's long term players and welcoming to new players.

The reason it works in WoW is because they have catch ups with dungeon gear, crafted gear and Justice/Valor gear to get geared up. And it's something that is often complained about (my epics are not truly epic, lolwelfare epics, etc).

Of course, the other thing is that stuff felt like it lasted because you waited near-eternities between patches. I don't think you want to be stuck with only Alexander Midas for 8 months just so that you can claim your savage gear lasted longer. And this is something actual WoW players complain about a lot, which is why they complained about 11 months of Siege of Orgrimmar and the duldrums Warlords of Draenor saw until the pre-Legion patch.

I have plenty of issues outside of loot, mounts, and minions. This game is in trouble on multiple fronts. I do agree with you on the legion part. This game is losing more and more players to legion. Wow is doing what it does best, taking the best parts of other games and adapting them for better use.

For example, where do you think blizzard got the idea of the artifact weapon and guild halls from? It's going to take content misgivings of FFXIV and turn them into something amazing in wow. Have you even seen the artifact weapons yet? They even give me pause asking why I ever worked on a relic in this game.

Blizzard is going to keep snatching up more and more ffxiv players with legion. If the expansion is even half as good as it looks, FFXIV won't have another WoD flop to benefit from. This games days are numbered and the thought puts a grin of my face every time.

Blizzard is deciding to appeal to nostalgia, and Legion is pretty much WoD v2 with a couple of lessons learned (and really, instead of being all "omg orcs and Grom Hellscream" it's pretty much "omg demons and Illidan"). Artifacts are not something to take seriously, especially when taking into account the culture the original legendaries fostered (weapons that took an entire guild's combined efforts to get for one person) without even getting into how most of the artifacts were literally pulled out of someone's ass just to create one for every spec. And not mentioning the ire some have expressed at seeing a trillion people with Ashbringer, The Scythe of Elune and so on.

Granted, FFXIV's approach to relics is no better, but at least Excalibur, Longinus and Nothung were not prominently featured in the story content wielded by hero NPCs before they were given out like candy to all player characters.

The easiness of Alexander Normal might has to do with it and I won't argue that stepping up the difficulty would be a good thing. To still cater to the casual crowd they could implement temporary HP/AP-boosts like the sanction spell of the GC (i.e. let them do a Task/quest of ~0,5-1h to get a 2h echo-like boost just for the current normal raid) or something like that.

But I think what most people turned of was the overall design of alexander compared with coils... I mean, even when they didn't implement normal mode, what would you think about Gordias' epicness? Well in the end, it's just robots and goblins.
Mide is no Louisoix and Twinkledinx is no Nael deus Darnus and they'll never be.

This is probably a result of wanting to make raids sort of side stories of their own. This is something the devs stated as their intention during the design phase and beta. Of course, the advantage Coil had was that it was build up over the course of the MSQ in ARR as a background detail. Alexander didn't have this at all; in fact, I feel that if Mide had been someone you ran into once in a while during the MSQ and they had done something to build up Alexander, it wouldn't feel as lackluster to some.

Diadem failed, but not in terms of reward I think, but instead 'cause of the overall design. I.e. I just don't believe Diadem would be good if the rewards for grinding hours of Dino Island were "meaningful"... it's still a boring grind and only 'cause I'm 'happy' to get my gear finally (is it really happiness or is it just relief that it's finally over?!) doesn't make the content itself better or worse.

Agreed. You'd have people begrudgingly doing it for the reward, but in concept it's not really fun. I guess as an actual raid it could have worked (granted, it would need a lot of changes in design); would probably work a lot like Firelands.

[Brian_]

snip.

If I got to see the final Midas cut-scene after the victory cut-scene post A8S, would it bring Alexander up to the level of Coil? Obviously not. But, would it be infinitely better than watching it after a 10 minute DF fight? Yes.

I'd get to sit there with my static mates and share the moment. Even the dinky little victory cut-scene post A7S was a great moment to share. After weeks of wiping, frustration, and disappointment, seeing Quickthinx fly away and explode had us cheering. Moments like these create bonds between players that form the foundation of the social web of an MMO.

And again, you go back to gear. You just can't look past the superficial. Did I mention gear in this post yet? And yet everything I said was all about the rewards we receive.

Your Diadem example is just proof that you just don't understand the issue. Even though the "tangible" rewards for Diadem on my server are quite good -- the mats sell for quite a bit due to their rarity and grade V materia is always useful -- nobody does it. Why? Because while the "tangible" rewards are quite good, the content is emotional punishment. The first time I did Diadem, I went in with my static after a raid night. While it was pretty fun at first because it was fresh, after the grind set in, we were all falling asleep and couldn't wait for it to be over. The content just didn't reward us with a fun and fulfilling experience.

And, if you think the gearing system or the longevity of content hasn't changed since 2.X, you really haven't been paying much attention. Just a few of many ways it has changed -- T5 and T9 were required for raid tier progression. A4S wasn't and A8S probably won't be. EX primals had their own progression path. 3.X primals don't. In 2.X, primals were required for relic progression. In 3.X, they aren't (at least not yet and probably not ever). Raid / upgraded tomestone gear in 2.X was still valuable during the next tier of progression. Raid / upgraded tomestone gear in 3.X is completely worthless because it just gets replaced by Alex NM and crafted gear. Outside of some specific scenarios, raid / tomestone gear was always BiS until the next even patch. In 3.1, Diadem took a crap on your raid / tomestone gear.

[Blackcanary]

That's really interesting. I know why I'm hardly ever on any more waiting for the MSQ update. After that I'll be gone again since I'm slowly getting board of this game.

[Tanathya]

Yet somehow this game is still going strong despite it.

You may like the game, and it may not be dying like many people feel it is, but it's worlds away from going strong. That much is something pretty much everyone can agree on, otherwise you'd be trying to lie to yourself.