Surprisingly, The outdated MMO is WOW, not FFXI/XIV1.2

[Camiie]

Is that a sense of accomplishment, or a sense of relief? wondering if the 2 are getting mixed up here lol. "Yes, I finally got a party together after 3 hours to go from level 15 to level 16. yay!" yeah, not feelin it.

You have absolutely nailed it. Playing FFXI was like bashing your head against a wall, giving yourself a headache, and then being happy when your head finally stopped hurting.

[Marcellus_Cassius]

I don't think anyone wants a full on old school mmo experience. I like 14's DF and easy questing, end game could use some longer term goals though and I think thats why xi gets brought up cause those that stuck past the nuisance found a way to be content with endgame for many years. I wouldnt replace anything that we have so far.

[Shurrikhan]

Modern people asked for easy & fast contents, instant gratification, but they forgot this is a sub game,

I've yet to see a "modern" player ask for any of these things by principle (e.g. for the sake, outright, of easier or faster content). Yes, sometimes what they ask for will overlap with these things, but given that just as many complain of such kinds of play being unrewarding, perhaps it's time we stop summarizing these thoughts as if they were caricatures pointing out some fatalistic ending to the quality of gamers.

One can desire catch-up mechanics not just for instant gratification, but to allow them to play what they see as the "real" game within the game; more than desiring easier or faster content, what they most want is for there to be fewer obligatory stages that separate people solely by gear rather than by skill.

One can desire quicker content, likewise, in the sense that the total factors of difficulties in an encounter are compressed into fewer minutes of play, making the resulting fight more engaging or at least more evenly paced -- rather than being broken into mechanics that command one's attention and longer lulls that require virtually nothing unless an enrage mechanic is tightly attached to the fight.

[Emstidor]

When I was playing XIV 1.2x, I didn't have this problem, we can always form an exp/primal party in 10-20mins，
if we can't find enough people, we will disband & do other things, or you can solo the weaker mobs, just fewer exp
and I met new friends almost every time, had many memorable memories

As someone who was also playing back then, this is some pretty blatant rose-tinting.

"So after we spent time farming the prerequisite monster drops (Terrible and outdated concept, imo), sometimes the party wouldn't get off the ground due to lack of interest, so we just didn't do it. It was awesome!"

[Cakekizyy]

I would love EQ style game on PS4.

[Remedi]

As someone who was also playing back then, this is some pretty blatant rose-tinting.

"So after we spent time farming the prerequisite monster drops (Terrible and outdated concept, imo), sometimes the party wouldn't get off the ground due to lack of interest, so we just didn't do it. It was awesome!"

I have another one: 30 mins to gather 10 ppl for UBRS only to find out no1 had the key to open the door.

Not to mention that parties to get the damn thing were nonexistant on my server

[Coombah]

Modern people asked for easy & fast contents, instant gratification, but they forgot this is a sub game,
you are expected to keep playing it,so SE can keep making money from you,not play & leave.
and it requires development time to make a content，to polish a content

So thats what you get now:Play 100 easy,simple,short & fast,lower quality, same old dungeons every month, highly repetitive & boring.
instead of 50 slower & longer, but higher quality,more challenging, memorable & fun dungeons and open world contents.
And modern people refuse to wait 5-20 more minutes to form a party themself or look for a party,
so you have a DF feature, and the more horrible things: everyone is a random,impatient, unkind, rude and self-seeking stranger....

I couldn’t agree more with you, even more so now coming back to the game and trying to find a good community of people.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Also, should we talk about the grinds for relics in 2.X and 3.X ? For which you had to grind hundreds of dungeons/fates to get a weapon that wasn't even better that what you could get elsewhere more easily. At least when you grinded/camped a NM/expected a drop from somewhere in FFXI that was for something relevant, and not for a generic item upgraded 1 month later.

And yet, those grinds were doable solo, or through duty finder. I never had to wait hours to start working on them.

I don't mind grinds, those are fine.

Its when there is a grind, and then it requires hours of getting a party together, getting to the spot needed for the grind, and then falling apart. Thats the issue.

[KaldeaSahaline]

^^
This.

I, like many other people, play games for fun. I play them to relax, to escape RL.

If I have to do stuff I do not like ("work") in something I'm supposed to be having fun, then it starts becoming less of a game and more like a second job. And you know, that's what hardcore raiding is, IMO. You put in tedious hours upon hours upon hours into getting good enough to perform at maximum, grind all the best gear, get killed on a boss over and over and over and over and over again, for what? some pixels on a screen?

No thanks.

That's why we derive fun from it. Because there is a chance of failure. A risk we cannot complete it because we need to improve and that drives fun. When you reference rage your not understanding the root cause. Most of the time people only get mad when someone does something they shouldn't. They got greedy and cost everyone 10 minute of their time/energy. Someone snuck into a clear party, yet there they are watching the cutscene and wiping the party to the very first mechanic. Stuff like that is why people rage, and frankly frustration (not necessarily rage) is warranted in situations like this.

I go back to WoW every now and again. I am basically always ready to jump in the endgame as a casual. It is fun. WoW still has THE best PvP out of all MMOs. No one ever played WoW for the story. If you get a good guild, you can raid, do dungeons, grind stuff, do PvP, whatever. I enjoy playing it with some old friends every now and then. I also love how WoW is a lot faster.

I never cared much for WoW's PVP. It was ok, but I found that Blade and Soul took that category. I loved how it felt like the MMO version of a fighting game and how reading my opponent lead directly to positive results. How my mechanical acuity led to better damaging combos/tech chases, wins, etc and gear was irrelevant.

As to FF14, I just came back from a couple month break. I've always played this game casually...I just play it a lot when I do. My "hardcore" days have long since passed me by. At most I'm probably a midcore player. I just don't do Savage raids and the like, and I usually don't hit up Ex primals until the end of the expansion or the beginning of the next.

Just wanted to nitpick this. If we use the definition that casual/midcore/hardcore is a measure of skill/content played:

If you don't do EX trials or above I'd very strongly hesitate to call that midcore. That's markedly casual. Midcore typically involves EX's and very low savage. IMO of course.

Personally - I don't subscribe to the notion that "casual/midcore/hardcore" is a measure of skill, but rather that of time. I find that some of the most "casual" players actually play the game in a very hardcore fashion (i.e. 12+ hours weekly).

Delicious food, every wonderful things, require time to make & wait
Don't want to wait?then here you are：Some fast food, some genetically modified junk. this is the natural law,
oh.. what a good modern life...

I mean, I just cooked a filet mignon, and steamed some fresh vegetables in less than 15 minutes... That's shorter than 99.999765% of the DF content I do, let alone the queue time if I'm not tanking...

While I can support your statement that the community has eroded as a result of the DF, I'm not sure the alternative is actually better. I don't have the time I used too, and apparently neither do others. I can't sit around all day forming a UBRS group, then sit inside a 4 hour long dungeon. That's why gaming has evolved moved past this.

[Shihen]

^^
This.

I, like many other people, play games for fun. I play them to relax, to escape RL.

If I have to do stuff I do not like ("work") in something I'm supposed to be having fun, then it starts becoming less of a game and more like a second job. And you know, that's what hardcore raiding is, IMO. You put in tedious hours upon hours upon hours into getting good enough to perform at maximum, grind all the best gear, get killed on a boss over and over and over and over and over again, for what? some pixels on a screen?

No thanks.

I also watch videos sometimes of people screaming in rage at the game, their teammates, etc and I have to think, is that person REALLY having fun? Sure don't look like it..

An understandable view, but it comes across as a bit holier than thou if the other side of the coin isn't kept in mind. While fun is the primary motivator for a lot of people, a sense of achievement holds that spot for others. For some, the daily RL grind is the tedious part and FFXIV is where they come to get pushed. Most raid groups are just a group of friends having fun overcoming difficulty together and while the angry yelling gamer can be found in groups from time to time, he's most commonly found on his own looking for a new one.

Raiding can be a lot of things, stressful certainly among them, but just looking at the negative is only half the picture. For some it's the only time they feel like they're actually playing the game. Enjoyment takes different shapes for different people.