SB is great, but are there any plans to shake up the endgame formula?

[HFTB]

Fair criticism of my reply.

Yet I have to ask; what game has an endgame that is not just grinding for more gear/token/currency? Or; what type of endgame would that be? Player created content a'la Neverwinter (even though you are still just grinding for gear and currency)? Individual storylines for you characters like in WoW Legion (even though this, too, is just more grinding to reach certain milestones that allow you to continue)?

I cant think of a single MMO whose endgame is not "grindy" or that people do not cap their weekly resources to slowly push themselves along outside of new content progression.

[Eclipsed]

At least other games make some sort of effort to mask it, make it fun, provide alternate avenues to do it. Here it's just do x effort for y reward, rinse repeat. As well as other games rarely cap you beyond restricting rewards from raids. Even in WoW you can make groups and run mythics all you want if you want to put in more effort and get more reward which gives more to do even if it is a grind. SE is like Nope! This is all the candy you get this week!

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Will they shake up the formula. Probably not.

You even acknowledge it's likely the majority of people prefer it. So what incentive do the devs have to "change things up" when the average playerbase hasn't demanded said change? FFXIV caters to a casual audience who may not be able to invest much time into it, thus content that may feel stale or lacking in longevity for us wouldn't for them. To get the most out of FFXIV, you have to put time into other aspects of the game; leveling all your jobs, crafting, gathering, raiding, more casual content like PotD and etc. If you only care about say, raiding. The game will often leave you wanting a bit more. When Yoshida talks about wanting to cultivate a game where you can take breaks, this is what he means. Simply put, the amount of players will to invest all their time into a single game and do multiple things is few and far in between. For me, FFXIV has plenty. I craft, gather, raid, roleplay and run casual stuff like dungeons and whatnot. A friend of mine decided to make a personal goal of making every single Anima relic.

Now that doesn't mean they couldn't do a few things different. Yoshida has mentioned some supposedly brand new content coming in 4.2. Just don't expect any major shake ups. At least not until the average playerbase wants it.

[Xuri]

Biggest problem so far is that every piece of content in the game that has had some sort of a grind associated with it is something that people can complete in 1-3 days.

[Tsukino]

Fair criticism of my reply.

Yet I have to ask; what game has an endgame that is not just grinding for more gear/token/currency? Or; what type of endgame would that be? Player created content a'la Neverwinter (even though you are still just grinding for gear and currency)? Individual storylines for you characters like in WoW Legion (even though this, too, is just more grinding to reach certain milestones that allow you to continue)?

I cant think of a single MMO whose endgame is not "grindy" or that people do not cap their weekly resources to slowly push themselves along outside of new content progression.

From about halfway from its first expansion to its second, until many years later, Final Fantasy XI worked this way. It was able to because the level cap remained the same throughout, and all endgame content was "horizontal" progression for those players. A lot of people have discussed this here at length, but to simplify it a bit - you might have a set of gear that had better stats for restoring MP, and another for casting spells, and another for doing auto attacks, etc. instead of just getting new equipment with better stats all around.

What this resulted in was every single piece of content got added into the available list of things to do in the game - a single player might do A, B, C, and D every week, while another might do B, C, and E. Furthermore, because no one ever saw a replacement of everything coming (it was in this state for several years), many of them did not feel the pressure to keep on the treadmill. Once someone finished getting an item from somewhere they were set, so they could do it as often as the game would allow or go at a different pace and eventually collect it. This is in stark contrast to a game like XIV, where people either don't see the point in keeping up with the progression at all and don't play, or are always ready and doing the next thing and being bored in between.

Now, I'm not saying XIV should do what XI did. They have something that seems to be working for them, and changing to this other example would require a complete replacement - they can't coexist. I'm just responding to this particular question of whether it has been done before.

[Nixxe]

Fair criticism of my reply.

Yet I have to ask; what game has an endgame that is not just grinding for more gear/token/currency? Or; what type of endgame would that be? Player created content a'la Neverwinter (even though you are still just grinding for gear and currency)? Individual storylines for you characters like in WoW Legion (even though this, too, is just more grinding to reach certain milestones that allow you to continue)?

I cant think of a single MMO whose endgame is not "grindy" or that people do not cap their weekly resources to slowly push themselves along outside of new content progression.

I don't think the problem is grindiness, but awareness. Players don't necessarily mind grinding, even cyclical grinding (like most MMO endgames). They just don't want to be acutely aware of it as they're doing it, generally speaking. The loot treadmill needs to be disguised well enough that they feel like they're accomplishing more than just chasing a carrot of game completion on a stick, which they'll of course never catch. To some extent, I think having a strictly formulaic endgame and content release schedule probably makes them more, rather than less, aware of that treadmill aspect.

[KDSilver]

They don't need to skahe up the formula totally.

I'd just like to have some surprising things sometimes, that I wasn't expecting based on this formula.
That's all.

[Fortune_Cookie]

I also get this overwhelming feeling when I play this game that SE has its thumb on top of my characters progression all the time due to the gates. "For this patch, you can reach this ilvl. Then we'll very quickly move the gate back a bit and let you get to this level. Then we'll very quickly move the gate back a bit and let you get to this level... (and so on). Progression feels very stifled to me. No meaningful gear drops in this game (outside prime ex weapons). You do a calculated amount runs of this or that, then turn in you badges for the time spent. It almost feels like clocking in. I understand that this is probably the preference of a large chunk of the player-base, but I'm finding it more stale this time around than ever.

Different strokes for different folks. FFXIV's predictable and rigorously throttled progression is precisely why I moved over from WoW. I like that the time investment needed to keep your progression relevant is relatively limited. I realise there are plenty of people who want to play 20/30h+ per week and be rewarded with progression for that investment, but you can never please everybody. There are plenty of meaningful side activities and casual players would never get to enjoy them if they had to spend every minute to keep their characters vaguely up-to-date with current content.

[Sandpark]

So far:

1. Raids
2. Dungeons
3. Aquapolis
4. Palace Of The Dead
5. Hunts
6. Fates
7. Trials
8. Exploratory Missions
9. Relics
10. Craft Scripts
11. Could even include Gold Saucer(for some people)

Eureka is coming something like XI HNM, and new relic armor similar to weapons. Though I don't know how an open world NM system is going to go down when you see the Ixion thing going on right now.


I'm confused, I don't see a lack of content. Maybe I am misunderstanding something?

Do you mean like the actual content or the means of acquiring drops?

[Avatre]

I'm also curious about the lack of content mentioning...does it mean you have finished ALL class leveling(every one of them, crafter and gatherer included, to 70), and therefore have none of that stuff to do? Did you get all the ARR relics, all the HW relics, all minions/mounts/achievements? To me, there is always content because I don't have all that stuff, and always have something to work towards. Which might just be the completionist in me talking.