Quote Originally Posted by Skivvy View Post
XI had a ton of varied end-game content to spread things around. In the days of level 75 cap, you had your assaults, Limbus, Einherjar, Abyssea items, Sky, Sea, Dynamis, ENMs, WotG events (I didn't do this much, so can't recall what they were called), Salvage, Nyzul, etc for your gearing needs. All of that was available within 5 years, which is now how old XIV ARR will be in August.


In XIV, you have Tomes, 1 set of dungeon gear, crafting (which was also an option in XI), and the latest 8/24 raid. That is it.

XIV is more about your instant gratification, which is fine if that's your thing. But it doesn't suddenly change the fact that the game is shallow due to its lack of substance and variety.
The problem, though, was the simple fact that a lot of these systems were so similar in design, and they were still punishing and unrewarding, where you ran it week after week after week and got nothing 99.9% of the time.

And crafting was never an option in FFXI except for a very few select pieces, until the Su pieces and even then, most of those were inferior to gear you could get through other means, until Su3 came out just this past year and even then it was expensive as hell, and was STILL inferior, it's just that most people couldn't get into the endgame that dropped comparable stuff.

And again, if you didn't have an Endgame Linkshell, the game had absolutely nothing for you to do at max level because everything required a Linkshell. No Linkshell = No Need To Apply. You weren't getting anything done whatsoever.

At least in XIV you can still do Sigmascape, get into PF 24mans, etc. Better than absolutely nothing.