What happened to fun for fun's sake?

[NocturniaUzuki]

Does everything need a material reward now? Do we all only care about how fast we clear battles so we can move on to the next battle faster?

Every time I go around advertising for eccentric activities in FFXIV, such as 4-player Royal Menagerie, I get bombarded with the same responses, and it blows my mind. Here are some examples:

"Why 4-man it?"
"You can't undersize current content."

What blows my mind is that people somehow don't seem to comprehend the fact that they, and all of us, are playing FFXIV for fun. It's not our job. We don't just do this for money (not that everyone hates their job, of course). All of us are playing for fun. So why 4-man? Why not ask "Why 8-man it?" It's the same response: because that is what the player feels like doing, and it's fun for them.

It also blows my mind (though somewhat less so, seeing as people so rarely actually do anything outside of the norm) that people don't even know how to undersize current content. I've actually had people continue to deny that it's possible even after I give them the very logical explanation of how to do it (which is launching with 8 players, four of whom drop out immediately).

The same problem applies not just to doing odd party compositions, but also to any content that doesn't have a reward. A vast amount of the playerbase seems to consider anything that doesn't have a material reward as being completely pointless. All old content is done unsynced because it's faster. And faster is always better, right? Because the only thing that matters is getting those WT rewards faster so we can go get that gear faster so we can go get those materia faster so we can go get those mounts faster.

So what do you do when you've already finished WT and already have the gear and already have the materia and already have the mounts? Judging by how people get bored after they 'finish' a new expansion, and how the game population declines over time, the way it was before Stormblood released, I'd say they quit. So then, we're all speed-grinding the game to max everything ASAP... so we can quit. Does this make anyone else's head spin? I mean, if your end goal is quitting, then why play the god ____ game in the first place?

/rant end