Concern on the current state of FFXIV, and future content

[Hezkezl]

I've noticed a pretty severe lack of depth when it comes to this game. Everything seems to revolve around grinding various things to try to get the best ilvl stuff that you can. There's very little depth to add character to the world. Like... to take several examples from WoW, which I'm sure people will love.

There's no Archaeology. Bits and pieces of stuff you can dig up from around the various zones for the different cultures, which have some mild Lore/RP tied to the history of the items you assemble with the fragments. There's no achievements for completing sets of gear (besides three of them from 2.0, that concept seems to have been abandoned since) which removes incentive for people to run old content outside of the chance you'd get put into it through a daily roulette. WoW has achievements tied to completing item sets from the various raid tiers out there. The vast majority of the zones seem to just feel dead. There are no players around, except for the random person leveling. The biggest group of people that appear are those doing Hunt mobs, and they're only around in a specific area for less than 5 minutes before disappearing again. Nobody is out there doing World Quests for a slow grind to improve their character's power. Suramar was the backdrop of this new race of Elves that showed up, and they're going to be a new playable race in the next expansion. There was more depth and personality in that entire zone than almost the entirety of Heavensward, plus the completion of all the quests in that zone lead to the ability to play as that new race (if you've pre-ordered the expansion), so that's another incentive for people to do the content.

If you fly around 3.0 or 4.0 zones, there's a few scattering of mobs here or there with the occasional settlement. Maybe a tree or two around, but for the most part it's all just rocks and dirt (or water, in the case of the Ruby Sea, or air for The Sea of Clouds)... in WoW, even flying around a zone like Val'sharah, you'll find little things all over the place. Mobs everywhere, treasure chests hidden around that give you artifact power, rare mobs to kill to try to get them to drop their gear (in WoD and Cata, there were toys that they'd drop.. which is another thing that XIV is extremely lacking on, except for Fireworks. There are no toys anywhere that do silly things. Fireworks and maybe a glow stick or two.. that's it.) But for 95% of where you can go, they're completely and utterly dead. Devoid of life or flavor, not interesting at all.

This game has become monotonously predictable. We know exactly how many bosses are going to be coming out in the raids, we know how many bosses there will be in the dungeons, we know how many dungeons there will be, we know that we'll be doing expert roulettes through them to grind out tomestones to get gear for the raids, the exact same thing we've been doing since 2.0. We know that Merchant X in Rhalgr's Reach will sell us those tomestone items and what they'll cost and the currency they use. It's all pretty much the same crap from day 1 that we're still doing now. There's little to no variety.

It's a good thing this game prides itself on its story, because that's all it's got going for it. Mechanics, depth, creativity of activities, hell even stuff that they could've stolen from other games and repurposed to fit into the XIV world are all completely missing. The only thing people have to look forward to, is the next chapter in the Main Scenario quest. Once you do that, there's little point in doing other stuff because it'll all be outdated and nerfed to be super easy to get later on, while other games are more fun to play due to the variety of things you can do in them.

Maybe I'm overly critical of it because I've dedicated so much time putting info up on a certain fansite, and the small amount of time that I'm able to actually log onto the game and play due to being burned out makes me see how dusty and gray and unappealing everything is, but I've seen other people making similar comments so I can't be the only one thinking this stuff... XIV is far too focused on shoveling out new content in the exact same ways that we've been getting content since 2.0, and there are very little meaningful side activities that are actually rewarding to do. The Postmoogle quests were fun to do while they were around, but they were just more quests... there were no new mechanics unlocked as part of that (such as you getting a daily quest to deliver mail to some dangerous area that some adventurer has gone and gotten themselves stuck in, so you wind up rescuing them as well as delivering their mail to them.)

POTD is the closest thing we got to something in-depth and lore related, due to several dead NPCs RARELY appearing in there (but no explanation as to who they are, just a vague hint based off of their dialogue...) But that's gotten boring now, and we're STILL waiting for news of its cousin, POTD 2.0 for Stormblood, which I'm sure will be more of the same (randomized dungeon using certain Pomanders that will start off at floors 1-50, then 51-100, and 100+).

It's best summed up in one word: "Blah."

[Cidel]

Thank you for making this thread and bringing more attention to and causing more players to be vocal about how tired we are of the stale, reused "safe" model they seem to be unwilling to stray from. Since like 2015 people have been starting to see the writing on the wall about their content model and seemingly low-effort and hardly thought-out attempts "outside of the box" with Diadem(s) and Eureka. The goalpost can only be moved so many times.

feels like they keep on catering to "new players" or creating content that "anyone can do"

Man, I can't tell you how hard I roll my eyes every time someone here, or over on reddit or some other forum is new and is like "there's so much to do! Where do I start!?" It only seems overwhelming to new players because they've gone through so much throw-away content and invalidated/neglected to keep older content relevant beyond a handful of months. If they show Eureka as much "love" that they showed Diadem(s), you better work on your relic/dyeable AF now before its a ghost town by May/June/next content patch.

[Tridus]

Yeah, Eureka is where I've become concerned. The slower pace of SB was one thing, but that slower pace resulted in... this? Okay, that's bad. Eureka is super slimplistic. Minimal story. No real depth. Just mindlessly kill stuff to make the NM appear to kill that, and hope the server doesn't buckle under the load and cause it to vanish halfway through while you're fighting it, potentially getting you killed. Not to mention how often during those big NM fights half my party vanishes from line of sight and becomes untargetable, which is kind of a problem as a healer.

If they both can't fix the server limits and also can't design the content to work around them, where are we? Nowhere good. I expect I'll be playing something else pretty soon because it's hard to stay interested for another two months of this followed by another three months of basically the same thing except with a new 24 man (although those are fun).

I don't know what the direction is, but red flags should be going off right now. This is a fail on a lot of levels and there's really nothing coming down the pipeline to engage people let down by it.

[Unaki]

I'm really surprised its taken people this long to start worrying about the state of the game. How did the repetitive, ultra predictable 2 dungeon - 1 raid tier/24man pattern not alert you after 4 years? What about the very clear lack of original content in Stormblood or the absolutely boring and insanely easy primals that have been a thing since after Thordan? Or the constant neglect of the housing system and a failure to actually apply a fix that isn't "Throw more wards at it"?

[Miss_Jane]

I'm really surprised its taken people this long to start worrying about the state of the game. How did the repetitive, ultra predictable 2 dungeon - 1 raid tier/24man pattern not alert you after 4 years? What about the very clear lack of original content in Stormblood or the absolutely boring and insanely easy primals that have been a thing since after Thordan? Or the constant neglect of the housing system and a failure to actually apply a fix that isn't "Throw more wards at it"?

A lot of us were worried in Heavensward too.

[Unaki]

A lot of us were worried in Heavensward too.

I feel like many of this game's relevant content (Dungeon, raid, etc.) could be better if SE had a test realm. Nothing crazy like allowing the general public but its easy to tell the dev team doesn't actually have a deep understanding of the game from a player perspective. If they had a test realm and invited the top raid groups in the world, the players most likely to break the content and find issues, a lot of the problems with cheese strats and tuning could be easily fixed and make for a more fun experience for everyone.

[Kaonis]

I don't know what the direction is, but red flags should be going off right now. This is a fail on a lot of levels and there's really nothing coming down the pipeline to engage people let down by it.

The worst part of this is, this is now the 3rd time we've been sold something as "new" and given the excuse that it was what justified fewer dungeons. I don't know if the devs are incapable of implementing something truly new due to incompetence or not having the manpower, or if they are just creatively that out of ideas, but something has to change. Eureka really is the most unacceptable thing I've seen a game do in a long time.

[MsKirsten]

MY THEORY:

Eureka is a great location for BLUEMAGE to learn skills should SE decides to introduce this job.

Sharlayan might be our next EXPANSION destination from the storyline.

More new gameplay or new job variations will be extremely crucial for next expansion as the patterns are getting mundane (beast tribes, 24man raids, Savage etc). Think of Besieged in FF11 and how those beasts attacks the Aht Urgan capital.

[NovaLevossida]

I'm really surprised its taken people this long to start worrying about the state of the game. How did the repetitive, ultra predictable 2 dungeon - 1 raid tier/24man pattern not alert you after 4 years? What about the very clear lack of original content in Stormblood or the absolutely boring and insanely easy primals that have been a thing since after Thordan? Or the constant neglect of the housing system and a failure to actually apply a fix that isn't "Throw more wards at it"?

This isn't the first time people have complained about this (and were downvoted on Reddit because of it), but this time is different in that a lot of people were looking at Eureka as this dev team's last chance to implement some interesting and new content. They got nowhere close with Eureka, and it being a chimera comprised of Diadem 1.0, FATEs, and hunts isn't interesting. And it's especially disappointing (after 1.5 years of development and delays) if you had any hope at all for this breathing fresh life into the stagnant development cycle. That's why Eureka flopping is eliciting more of a reaction than other content.

[Rofel]

MY THEORY:

Eureka is a great location for BLUEMAGE to learn skills should SE decides to introduce this job.

Sharlayan might be our next EXPANSION destination from the storyline.

More new gameplay or new job variations will be extremely crucial for next expansion as the patterns are getting mundane (beast tribes, 24man raids, Savage etc). Think of Besieged in FF11 and how those beasts attacks the Aht Urgan capital.

B-but I want it to be good BEFORE 5.0! D: