FFXIV is reliable and consistent

[Bourne_Endeavor]

If someone has the time and energy to play, they should be able to play without being gated at 450 tomes/week, or 1 item per week in raids, weekly crafting turn in caps, etc.
They shouldnt be restricted because someone ELSE doesnt necessarily have a similar amount of time to play.

They do this out of necessity. Remove these restrictions and players will have full i390 within a week. Some will have i400. At which point, what purpose does normal mode, crafted, Primals and the 24 serve? All that gear is rendered 100% DoA since you can simply spam dungeons or Eureka and buy better gear.

As for the topic in question. I feel FFXIV has already stagnated to an extent. While I can appreciate some predictability, I shouldn't be able to predict an entire expansion's worth of content with 90% reliability. Stormblood is literally Heavensward with a red coat of paint. If Shadowbringers simply dips its brush into the purple can, it'll have an uphill battle keeping me engaged. Granted, I wouldn't mind the repetition so much if I had stuff to do. In many ways, Stormblood has boiled down to either raid, do Eureka or play a different game after a month or so. At least this is a common criticism I see—one I cannot fault people for. It didn't help content was spread out far too thin. Look at 4.3. There was nothing to do outside Namazu, Tsukiyomi and Ridorona once you finished the story... for six weeks. Unless, of course, you jumped into Ultimate.

[Vespar]

They do this out of necessity. Remove these restrictions and players will have full i390 within a week. Some will have i400. At which point, what purpose does normal mode, crafted, Primals and the 24 serve? All that gear is rendered 100% DoA since you can simply spam dungeons or Eureka and buy better gear.

It's not a necessity though... It is only this way because they MADE it that way. Removing restrictions sees people ACTUALLY PLAYING the game...look at Eureka, the instance is pretty much full every time I go in there and folks keep coming back for more to gear out multiple jobs and not just 1 or 2. This doesn't sound like a bad thing to me.
If they removed restrictions on everything, they can still keep crafting relevant by making it so that gear is on par with raided gear or you need items from the raid content (or other types of content) to make said gear. There are myriad ways around this issue... Crafting doesnt have to suffer just because there arent locks on content. The new Farming thing in 5.X for DOL/DOH could easily be a method for getting high end materials that produce materials for gear on par with raid gear...

[Bourne_Endeavor]

It's not a necessity though... It is only this way because they MADE it that way. Removing restrictions sees people ACTUALLY PLAYING the game...look at Eureka, the instance is pretty much full every time I go in there and folks keep coming back for more to gear out multiple jobs and not just 1 or 2. This doesn't sound like a bad thing to me.
If they removed restrictions on everything, they can still keep crafting relevant by making it so that gear is on par with raided gear or you need items from the raid content (or other types of content) to make said gear. There are myriad ways around this issue... Crafting doesnt have to suffer just because there arent locks on content. The new Farming thing in 5.X for DOL/DOH could easily be a method for getting high end materials that produce materials for gear on par with raid gear...

What's the point of i400 crafted gear if I need to raid to obtain materials to make it yet the raids themselves also drop i400 gear? How about normal mode, EX Primals or 24 mans? Are they all going to drop i400 gear too? Congratulations. Now raid gear as a whole is meaningless since everything drops the same ilvl. You have made it so I have less reason to keep playing. After all, why bother running half the content when I'll have full BiS in less than a month? Come January, I would have precisely zero reason to even log in. All my jobs will have been fully geared from farming Savage months ago. The whole purpose behind restrictions to assure people won't get everything quickly, thus they have to maintain a monthly sub.

People are playing Eureka because gear is made irrelevant and RNG forces them to continuously grind. Take out the RNG aspects and people would have bailed on Eureka ages ago since there wouldn't be a reason to farm.

[Vespar]

RNG is only on the weapon, not the armor. Heck I'd play Eureka more if I could RNG my stats on the gear too! That would keep me playing!
That right there could be a way to keep things fresh while not maintaining a gate.
I'd say more but my 9mo old is having a fit so it will have to wait.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

RNG is only on the weapon, not the armor. Heck I'd play Eureka more if I could RNG my stats on the gear too! That would keep me playing!
That right there could be a way to keep things fresh while not maintaining a gate.
I'd say more but my 9mo old is having a fit so it will have to wait.

So your solution is to remove all restrictions and replace them with pure RNG? They tried this already with Diadem; Coil raids also didn't give weekly pages, therefore you had to farm and pray. Both systems were universally despised. WoW relies on RNG and it's routinely cited as one of the most hated features about the game.

Nothing about this is fresh. It's simply doing what we already do except your entire progression is based on sheer dumb luck. It also still renders most content obsolete since there isn't a reason to do say... normal mode when you can get better gear simply farming tomes. Unless tome drops are RNG too, prices are absurdly high or tomes no longer exist and it's pure RNG with easier content having weaker gear but higher drop rates. None of these ideas sounds fun, engaging or in anyway something I ever want to partake in.

[Vespar]

So your solution is to remove all restrictions and replace them with pure RNG? They tried this already with Diadem; Coil raids also didn't give weekly pages, therefore you had to farm and pray. Both systems were universally despised. WoW relies on RNG and it's routinely cited as one of the most hated features about the game.

Nothing about this is fresh. It's simply doing what we already do except your entire progression is based on sheer dumb luck. It also still renders most content obsolete since there isn't a reason to do say... normal mode when you can get better gear simply farming tomes. Unless tome drops are RNG too, prices are absurdly high or tomes no longer exist and it's pure RNG with easier content having weaker gear but higher drop rates. None of these ideas sounds fun, engaging or in anyway something I ever want to partake in.

If only we had the echo so we could understand one another better. Im not saying that EVERYTHING has to be RNG-related. I personally would accept it though, because as an old skool XI player, finally getting that piece I was after was a HUGE accomplishment and back then you felt like you earned it and it was euphoric! (I dont feel that in XIV)
But... What Im actually asking for here is LESS GATED content and MORE FREE TO ACCESS CONTENT like Eureka so Im not waiting around bored for the next reset.

They dont need to make EVERY reward from every type content be the same ilvl or type of gear or whatever. Nor does it all need to be RNG-related. I'm only asking SE to give players additional content that can remain relevant for a patch cycle that is Freely accessible. Such as Eureka... So that we can gear up additional jobs and not be limited to wasting all our money on crafted junk.
This is why I disliked Pagos. Anemos had armor sets, as did Pyros, but Pagos had only the weapon and I couldnt keep up my jobs to a decent ilvl like I wanted to (until Pyros) because Pagos armor was not present so I was back to being gated... Pyros is great. Im asking for more of that! I dont care if its not BiS. I dont care that I have to RNG my weapons stats... That gives me something to do (FINALLY) and I enjoy it, but when 5.X hits will there be content like that from the start? Equipment sets available from this kind of content just need to be relevant and give enough ilvl to allow entry into the other contents. Free to access content like Eureka should always be in EVERY patch cycle so players have a means of gearing up alternate jobs besides their main job without being STUCK every week waiting for SOMETHING to do!

Sorry if this is a hard read, my 9 mo old is screamin' in my ear right now...

[Hamada]

So your solution is to remove all restrictions and replace them with pure RNG? They tried this already with Diadem; Coil raids also didn't give weekly pages, therefore you had to farm and pray. Both systems were universally despised. WoW relies on RNG and it's routinely cited as one of the most hated features about the game.

Nothing about this is fresh. It's simply doing what we already do except your entire progression is based on sheer dumb luck. It also still renders most content obsolete since there isn't a reason to do say... normal mode when you can get better gear simply farming tomes. Unless tome drops are RNG too, prices are absurdly high or tomes no longer exist and it's pure RNG with easier content having weaker gear but higher drop rates. None of these ideas sounds fun, engaging or in anyway something I ever want to partake in.

This reply is more for the conversation you are having with Vespar and not you directly but ya, kinda replying to you both.

The gating is more like a necessary evil, damned if you do, damned if you don't. However I do agree with Vespar's point, I do not think the artificial gating should be there. You are basically favoring the gating because the game has no content, so you are artificially extending it. I do not think that is a good model.

I do not like the predictability to the extent FFXIV does. This gives you a lot of insight of what and when it is worth even playing, what and when you need to prepare for and so on. So you end up not playing for huge gaps of time because you know when something will be drastically outdated. This thread is weird to me, praising the biggest flaw in this game.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

This reply is more for the conversation you are having with Vespar and not you directly but ya, kinda replying to you both.

The gating is more like a necessary evil, damned if you do, damned if you don't. However I do agree with Vespar's point, I do not think the artificial gating should be there. You are basically favoring the gating because the game has no content, so you are artificially extending it. I do not think that is a good model.

I do not like the predictability to the extent FFXIV does. This gives you a lot of insight of what and when it is worth even playing, what and when you need to prepare for and so on. So you end up not playing for huge gaps of time because you know when something will be drastically outdated. This thread is weird to me, praising the biggest flaw in this game.

You said it yourself. Content gating is a necessary evil for gaming as a whole, not simply FFXIV. No development team can sate how quickly their playerbase consumes content. While yes, FFXIV has been undeniably lackluster in some areas, saying they should remove gates and just make more content to compensate isn't realistic. Look at the raid tiers. This is content they spend months creating and the normal modes don't last more than two hours. Savage has greater longevity but groups above a casual level are usually done within two months. The 24 mans take 40-60 minutes yet likely take weeks, if not months to develop. Yoshida outright admitted Heaven on High took triple the resources and time of a dungeon despite it taking 8-10 hours to do a full 21-100 run.

Gates exist purely because it's impossible to develop enough content. No amount of money or new developers are going to change that.

[Izanagi_Fiaresu]

They do this out of necessity. Remove these restrictions and players will have full i390 within a week. Some will have i400. At which point, what purpose does normal mode, crafted, Primals and the 24 serve? All that gear is rendered 100% DoA since you can simply spam dungeons or Eureka and buy better gear.

As for the topic in question. I feel FFXIV has already stagnated to an extent. While I can appreciate some predictability, I shouldn't be able to predict an entire expansion's worth of content with 90% reliability. Stormblood is literally Heavensward with a red coat of paint. If Shadowbringers simply dips its brush into the purple can, it'll have an uphill battle keeping me engaged. Granted, I wouldn't mind the repetition so much if I had stuff to do. In many ways, Stormblood has boiled down to either raid, do Eureka or play a different game after a month or so. At least this is a common criticism I see—one I cannot fault people for. It didn't help content was spread out far too thin. Look at 4.3. There was nothing to do outside Namazu, Tsukiyomi and Ridorona once you finished the story... for six weeks. Unless, of course, you jumped into Ultimate.

Have you leveled all the jobs? Done all of Hildebrand? Done your hunts. Raised your chocobos? FFXIV has a lot of content, in fact it can be too over whelming with content. It might not be content you wanna do, but its there.

[Ilan]

Have you leveled all the jobs? Done all of Hildebrand? Done your hunts. Raised your chocobos? FFXIV has a lot of content, in fact it can be too over whelming with content. It might not be content you wanna do, but its there.

You forget one thing: Not everyone is interested in all of this.