I'm a mid-core player. I choose to not play end game. (What's the incentive?)

[NefarioCall]

I should preface this topic by saying that i do very much enjoy this game. It's not exactly what i want out of an MMO, but it's the one i play, and that's ok. I always have fun with it. I'm not a hard core player. I never have been. I like to take things slow, but i play a lot.

And i was reading on here lately some discussion around how much of the player base has completed some of the end game content and how that impacts decisions around its design.

-- I still haven't beat T5 of Coil
-- I have not entered Alexander yet
-- I only just beat Ramuh extreme and Odin TODAY
-- But i have Level 60 jobs and have played this game since 1.0 launch

So... i COULD play this content much sooner than i do, but i don't...
And it has nothing to do with the difficulty of it.

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At this point i want to post edit into my OP a bit to clarify because i don't expect everyone to read every post in the topic.
First, with regards to the 'wait, how do you spend so much time in game and accomplish so little'?

From the looks of what I read, the few things I can assume is that this guy is not at i210 overall, and only has a single 230 piece. 30 mil gil saved up from 1.0. a single 60 class. 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, for a month. And that's what he has to show for it. What're you even doing here?

Well, i have every Hand / Land / War to at least Level 50, and most of those i leveled after 2.0 came out since i generally just stuck to a couple jobs in the old days. I've also maxed out all the 2.0 Beast tribes and finished all the job quests up to 50 and finished every 2.x quest except for Beast of Brewer and maybe one or two others. I've unlocked and played every 2.x content except for 2nd and 3rd Coil. I'm presently working through the 3.x content. I also bum around a lot in housing because i do enjoy that. The gil is all 2.x onward savings because i spent everything i had from 1.x buying my Free Company the first Mid Size house on server. The one by the water (Lavender plot 11 on instance #1). I'll get to Alexander probably in the next couple weeks, especially with the iLvL going up as it does. The 2nd part of it is iLvL200 right? So especially with Weapons being a bit tougher to upgrade, i dunno ... maybe i'm a bit technically late on the first part, but even the 2nd would just be entering my field of view.

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Motivation is a personal thing, there is nothing the developer team can make to make you feel motivated to play this when you already go away for months and you have been playing since 1.0, and even if it was, it would only make the big design issue going with game even deeper, the cattering to returning/unactive players and its ridiculous "no one left behind" policy that only wastes resources and development time. If you have been here since 1.0, that is 2010, and you still haven't found a motivation, tbh, you are better off for your own good, and ours, the last thing we need is the dev team wasting more time and resources into players like yourself.

No matter the MMO, or the design, i've always been a binge player. Not especially different than the others who come and go at each patch cycle. Given my play-style though, my play cycles don't tend to match the patch cycle. ... (Expansion aside)

I always love tracking the player levels after a cap increase, and seeing that small number of players who inexplicably make it to cap in a couple days. I'm fairly certain that most of the player base does not do that. If i was a one job player, focusing solely on battle contents, then i'm sure i would have had no trouble getting 50-60 in the first week (which i did with my first job), and then keeping up with the cycles. It's the Armory system, and its ability for me to level and build every possible profession on one single character that sets this MMO ahead in my interest to any game that limits you to just one. It takes a lot of time and effort to get everything to 50 unless you're one of those fraction of the percent of speedy grinders. Even then it should take a while.... and then taking multiple jobs to 60 and gearing them up effectively. It's not 10's of hours... it's 1000's, which is well beyond what any normal person would spend on any normal game. ...

Then, as other posters have mentioned, time spent on other areas of the game such as housing or gold saucer or frankly.. just good 'ol socialising eats up hours that are not directly accounted for in terms of getting a level up. I'm extremely excited about any new type of content that expands on the variety of play styles available. If i end up liking deep dungeon i could disappear into that for weeks and not get a single level up from regular battle content.

Flatly, the OP seems like a player who enjoys the game, yes, but will only make the effort for gear incentives once they are at their easiest to get, using that as justification to not task themselves with content when it's both relevant and challenging. Knowing that all things become easier over time due to nerfs, Echo buffs and overleveling/outgearing, it's effectively gaming the system. And that's fine, but I would say it's hardly something to boast about.

Hmm, i guess i didn't really expand on it in the original post, but i used to pull 10+ hour boss fights in FFXI. Bring it on. I love that kind of stuff.

I just don't feel it's worth it for my own personal play experience in this game. Were the game built differently, i would absolutely take on more challenging content. But the work i put into gearing up for the fight will be obsolete in weeks or months.. and perhaps more importantly, the fights themselves are a shadow of what they could be with elemental strengths/weaknesses/skillchains etc etc. This is not FFXI, nor will it ever be. I accept that and enjoy the things i like about this game, many of which are superior to FFXI. This game is more action and mechanic based. That's fine. It is what it is. It's just not as exciting to me on the end game as other games.

I'd like to grind for 100 hours to get a piece of armor that i can grind another 100 hours cramming it with fire resist materia to the maximum forbidden level and take that into an epic 10 hour fight with a fire based monster and know that the fight and my gear will be at or at least nearly as good a year from now. If nearly, i want to be able to upgrade my existing gear, rather than start over.
(True story, i've got hundreds of elemental resist IV materia stashed away and i've yet to find a reason to really use them, but i reaaaalllly want to xD)

This game doesn't have that. But i love other things about it, and i play those things.

FFXIV will never be hard core enough for me to take that part of the game seriously, but it wasn't ever built with that in mind. I'm always a bit disappointed by that on some level, but at the same time, if a modern hard core MMO were my make or breaking factor in what game to play, i'd go play EVE. ... or SOMETHING... but if this game had that kind of end game, i would play it. I don't because it's not here to play. It never will be.

Now this is more like it. As opposed to the "I'm mid-core, I choose not to play end game, lol to those of you who do, what's even the point of it?" feel of your original post, what you're really saying is you play the game to only a certain extent as it doesn't have certain features or systems you would prefer more than what's currently in place. However you do still love the game. That's entirely different from your original statement and far more valid. Pseudo-pride in effectively doing less or spending less time to accomplish what others have, again, is hardly a boasting point. Maybe you didn't mean it as such, but that's quite how it came across.

This is technically my first MMO and I'm quite satisfied with it. Prior to this, I came from an old console RPG I played online with friends that had MMO elements to it, and was quite grindy. Despite that, it was a lot of fun (White Knight Chronicles for anyone curious). Some of those friends really grew to enjoy this game, and others were almost immediately disillusioned. What I told them was that this game is NOT WKC and never will be. So long as they play this looking for that experience, they will continue to be disappointed. I've since branched into other MMOs and I enjoy those too, as they are, and not based on what I like from XIV. I'm not saying people aren't entitled to preference, but fact is playing Game A expecting what Game B offers will generally never be satisfying, even if you enjoy both games.

^^Very astute point.

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(There was another bit of OP further, but for some reason it got clipped and lost while i was editing this. The above content better illustrates my thoughts anyway, and the discussion below, relevant beyond OP content)

[Nav_Fae]

I'm a mid-core player. That's what i am. I come and i go from the game. When i do play it, i focus on things that will still be valuable after i disappear for a couple months.

Maybe it's just me but... in my opinion, this makes you a casual, not a mid-core player.

[NefarioCall]

Maybe it's just me but... in my opinion, this makes you a casual, not a mid-core player.

I could edit my post to say casual, but when i play, i play 16 hours a day, 7 days a week for a month. xD

[Aronys]

Um... good for you? I guess? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Lisotte]

I could edit my post to say casual, but when i play, i play 16 hours a day, 7 days a week for a month. xD

Uh... so a casual who has some unhealthy sounding binge sessions?

I definitely agree with you, there needs to be incentive. Myself, I do try to do all the content because of first, the completionist in me, second the feeling that I want to challenge myself and improve as a player, and third, that feeling of "well what the heck do I use all this higher gear for if not to try content that requires it?"

[Sandpark]

I'd say do relics, palace of the dead, hunts, gold saucer and crafting. If you are looking for a massive time investment. The rest of the game is designed to be played in short sessions.

[Chiramu]

Maybe it's just me but... in my opinion, this makes you a casual, not a mid-core player.

The term "casual" indicates the player does not have a lot of time. There are many players who have LOTS of time to devote to the game, that is not very "casual". There is no casual content in FFXIV if you want to gear your character up either, if you have no time to grind dungeons then you are not gearing up or you are getting one piece a month.

[NefarioCall]

Um... good for you? I guess? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I think this sums up my feelings pretty bang on.

Uh... so a casual who has some unhealthy sounding binge sessions?

I definitely agree with you, there needs to be incentive. Myself, I do try to do all the content because of first, the completionist in me, second the feeling that I want to challenge myself and improve as a player, and third, that feeling of "well what the heck do I use all this higher gear for if not to try content that requires it?"

Yeah, with 4.0 coming relatively soon, i may just try to keep my focus on the completion of 'content' rather than getting sidetracked too much into levelling extra jobs. Good idea

I'd say do relics, palace of the dead, hunts, gold saucer and crafting. If you are looking for a massive time investment. The rest of the game is designed to be played in short sessions.

Relics! Yes, i just need to choose a job.... but yes. Very good point. Also very interested in palace of the dead. I used to craft a lot, which is why i have all my crafts at 50, but then just stopped there... Dunno if i'll find the time or not.

[Terrini]

I completely get you NefarioCall - but I don't really stop playing, but more I focus on different - social - aspects of the game more than content on occasion.

And I avoid end-game because every time I enter it, the atmosphere is poisonous and it is NOT fun to play with poisonous people that will just say "watch the video" and expect that to make people experts at mechanics. I'm sorry, I can know the mechanics, but I won't be able to do anything about them if the party disbands as I'm trying to learn my timing to anticipate them and what I need to watch out for and how I should position myself and move. Some people may be able to figure that out easy, but I'm just not one of them. I think it's fun, but only if you actually have a supportive group, so good luck! It's not happening... and now I'm holding off on the new story content because I HAVEN'T done coil and I want to see the content as someone that has completed coil since you can ONLY get that content while playing through for the first time.

[Rita1989]

I've always been confused by this design choice by the devs. They want to make this game accessible to the mid-cores, and yet... the vertical cap itself is anti-mid core player. It's a pro-hard core system, because the only players who can ever be able to play the end game will be those who never stop playing... The rest of us, who do come and go, will always come back to see what little best gear we could work for, become 5 cents on the dollar. So why work for it at all?
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The gear system is designed in a way that its actually quite friendly to players that take breaks from the game I had recently went back to to an alt I had at i170 gear I hadn't touch since HW came out and was able to get it to i235 in a couple of weeks,

Honestly if you dont have any desire to challenge yourself on relevant content then gear is meaningless regardless of the system they have in place,

Anyways a horizontal progression system favors hardcore players much more and leaves more casual players in the dust.