Are the developers of XIV out of touch?

[ShadowHunterrX]

Because 2.0 had such great depth of content that you could spend hours to do right? Man there was so much to do that you were overwhelmed wait......

I fact that was with 2.0. Everything was new and most players started with nothing. Ofcourse you have the 24/7 who wanted to be first lv50.

[Vhailor]

I fact that was with 2.0. Everything was new and most players started with nothing. Ofcourse you have the 24/7 who wanted to be first lv50.

Still, I must point out, 2.0 was pretty damned shallow. The primary issue is that the MSQ and Job Quests took you through literally everything available, with the exception of a small handful of dungeons and... well, a small handful of dungeons, only two of which were relevant after the MSQ was complete. This is the double-edged nature of using the MSQ and sidequests as the primary mechanism for leveling one's first job: it both speeds up the leveling process, and leaves the player with less to do once the leveling is done.

Case in point, I hit level 50 in ARR within about three days. I wasn't a '24/7' player, but I had significant amounts of disposable income, and I wanted to really soak in Eorzea. In so doing, I leveled quite quickly, because questing is a really rapid way to level up. So before I knew it, in the space of less than a week, the MSQ was done, my primary job was leveled, I'd conquered both the level 50 dungeons, I'd completed literally every available quest flag in the game, and I was left to... well, think about what I wanted to level next, be it DoH, DoL, or another combat job. That's a fairly startling position to be in after a scant seven or so days. It's a large part of why I quit around 2.4, and didn't return until a couple of months before Stormblood hit.

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All this to say, acting as if only the '24/7 crowd' has a problem is just wrong. Similarly, the claim that 2.0 is 'overwhelming' is ludicrous, unless someone is brand-new to gaming. Grand Theft Auto games can be overwhelming. Elder Scrolls games are overwhelming. FFXIV 2.0 was closer to the complexity of Diablo, and wasn't overwhelming in any sense of the word. Eorzea felt downright cramped within a few weeks of playing. It's one thing if only the truly hardcore players felt this way: the Twitch streamers, the students on summer vacation, the people with dozens and dozens of hours a week to devote to gaming. But this feeling impacted me, a mid-core sort of player, a single adult with 4-5 hours of free time per night and weekends to devote to the new game I'm playing. I'm not the type of player who should be able to clear literally every non-Job-specific quest icon within a week or two of ARR releasing. I shouldn't be examining other classes within two weeks of a new MMO, wondering what I'll play next because the end of the process for my primary class is nigh until the first content update lands.

SE has simply made FFXIV too convenient, the grind too minimal. I don't want a return to pre-ToAU FFXI, where leveling an average job to cap could take several months. I do, however, want an update to still feel fresh a week later, and new expansions to still feel fresh after a month. SE has yet to hit that target with XIV, and in fact hasn't even really come close. I, and others, keep clamoring for it, attempting to deliver the message in countless ways, but they're simply not listening.

They're out of touch.

Edit / Addition:

I think before the developers do anything else is first they need better hardware if this keeps going back to server issues.

I don't agree with this. I think the core issue plaguing FFXIV is shallow, overly-convenient content. That's not a hardware problem, it's an overall product development problem, starting with Yoshi-P and working its way on down through the ranks. I do think there are a ton of QoL features we're currently lacking that FFXIV would benefit from, but realistically, if I envision a world in which all of the server-related problems are fixed - housing for all, no bottlenecks because SE pulled a stupid and put a solo instance early in an expansion, a true Glamour Log, a butt slider, etc. - I still don't see a vastly improved game. I see a significantly less annoying game, but one that would still deliver updates and expansions that fail to meaningfully occupy me for more than a week or so.

SE needs to bring back more grind, horizontal itemization, and other mechanisms that slow us down. They're throwing us the tools to go 100mph through the content, and they're only capable of developing content at a speed suitable for, say, 25mph. They've got to put up road blocks and speed bumps for us so that mid-core players like myself don't blink and find ourselves at the end of an entire expansion by the time a weekend has gone by.