To Square Enix, these are the reasons why I am currently unsubbed from the FF14.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Like any other game phases / patches are meant to implement changes based on feed back. What your suggesting is for people to give it 100% percent, burn out with great ideas from the start, and then stress out start, implement them so that most can finish within a few days, and then complain that enough content is being released so they go somewhere else and they scrap the game faster.

... what?

This statement makes little, if any, sense. How is giving 100% going to result in burn out? You are arguing in extremes. Most people aren't expecting perfection, but Eureka lacked even standard features any PTR would have highlighted. You can see this throughout much of their design. Even something simple like say, The Glamour Dresser. How they didn't anticipate the sheer number of complaints about destroying items baffles me. Likewise, how is it other games have implemented far superior glamour systems with more dated equipment than XIV? You keep insisting things take time yet SE has had plenty of time. They simply aren't implementing things, especially those which deviate too drastically from their very rigid formula.

Stormblood is essentially a red-coated Heavensward, which itself didn't differ much from A Realm Reborn. While it was understandable previously due to it being their first expansion since the relaunch, we're now approaching year five and what has changed? I certainly cannot fault people for getting a little tired of the same thing hence the OP's complaints.

[BluexBird]

How is giving 100% going to result in burn out?

I mean... if I'm being honest with you, if there were no such thing as 2 chests a week, 450 tome restriction, I would probably log in every day and spend most of my weekend doing raids until I'm ilvl 370 with all 3 of my characters. It might take a bit over a month. After that, I don't think I'd know what to do in the game. But that's exactly what the problem is for me. They time-gate the game to give the impression that there are many things to do, when there actually isn't...

So instead of most of my playtime being concentrated over a very fun month or so, I'm forced to delay that throughout a period of 6 months, by logging in every Tuesday morning...

People are getting tired of that.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I mean... if I'm being honest with you, if there were no such thing as 2 chests a week, 450 tome restriction, I would probably log in every day and spend most of my weekend doing raids until I'm ilvl 370 with all 3 of my characters. It might take a bit over a month. After that, I don't think I'd know what to do in the game. But that's exactly what the problem is for me. They time-gate the game to give the impression that there are many things to do, when there actually isn't...

So instead of most of my playtime being concentrated over a very fun month or so, I'm forced to delay that throughout a period of 6 months, by logging in every Tuesday morning...

People are getting tired of that.

It's ironically how many raiders use a certain website as self-competition just to stretch out the content, isn't it?

Mulling over ideas just now, I wonder if something similar to Legion could be adopted over here. Replace tomestones with a persistent upgrade system spanning the entire expansion. Every piece of content you do offers some degree of progression, though capped to an extent to discourage spamming easy stuff endlessly. Obviously not a perfect idea, but I can't help wonder if something akin to that would be better than simply capping and replacing our gear every six months.

And what I wouldn't give for gear with more thought behind it than "does this have Crit?"

[Neophyte]

Thing is, depending on amount of new players/quitting players, there is almost no point in asking people why they left, if you don't ask the staying and newly subbing people why they do so, too.

I mean, if someone says "Gearing is too quick and gear gets replaced too fast" and someone says "The endgame is too easy/too hard" and another one says "Because I think this game moves in direction of p2w." and another one says "EUREKA!!!!!"...
...that doesn't mean in any way that those are things they should look into or even change.

They also have to make sure, that those are not things making other ppl sub in the first place....
Where is the point when you make endgame harder because 3.000 ppl quitting told you so, but after that change there are 3.000 other quitters because now it's too hard.

That's why they propably don't even ask... they won't change core-systems or game mechanics because of quitters anyway, unless a real huge bunch quits... and then they will just ask us how the next reboot should look like. x)


Edit: Imho it's way better to have Surveys now and then asking every player (and those subbed in the last 3 months or so), what they like and what they dislike.
Only asking quitting players won't tell you which changes are best for the whole community.

[Neophyte]

After that, I don't think I'd know what to do in the game. But that's exactly what the problem is for me. They time-gate the game to give the impression that there are many things to do, when there actually isn't...

No, they say they timegate, so people don't burn out on content, leaving them with nothing to do for the rest of the patch. They're pretty honest about that.
And ofc, they aim for a specific playtime-per-dollar.
If there is no lockout people with a lot of time on their hands would be able to experience the x hours of content of a patch for 13$ (within a month), while others would have to pay more depending on how rare they play.
I think it also influences the stability of server populations, average people playing, etc... which is pretty important for an MMORPG.

If there were no timegates/lockouts they'd prop release a patch as a dlc for 40 bucks or something like this and scrap the sub system or lowering the sub to just an "online fee" of 2-3$, while you pay seperatly for the real content.

Imho ppl just need to ask themselves if they have fun for enough hours a month to justify 13$.