boring.

[Auryan]

Every time the initial patch's glow fades away this is what happens, a sudden wave of people unsubscribing. The game just doesn't have lasting power; this game presents itself to be casual haven yet they hold back the casual content (relics) back in favor of "raiding" content such as shiva unreal/the new msq trial extreme. How does that make sense?

That leaves casuals with roulette then log off. Maps I guess? hunts? (if they don't die before you get there). The game doesn't have a lot meat in it for casuals, let's be real about that.

That isn't unique to XIV though. Every MMO experiences a gradual (or sometimes sharp) decline in players after an expansion launch or major update. A lot of these players play for one or two things, get it done, unsubscribe and wait for the next update (or never come back). The drop isn't a surprise or a concern really. It's the noticeable retention loss of the base that would be a major concern. As in if every subsequent expansion or update sees less and less active, concurrent players. XIV has been consistently healthy in that department and has even grown from expansion to expansion. In the future of course things will change.

Extremes and Shiva Unreal are meant as pretty accessible content though. The latter very much so since it's essentially a tuned up original Shiva and acts as a gateway for fresh 80s to get a foothold into other endgame content. Honestly wished they added it sooner (with more exciting rewards please, talking fox-man).

The problem with relics is that they aren't content in of themselves, they're essentially grinds that require you to do old things (FATES, dungeons, trials) over and over again. The very few unique things to them are some minor trials (ARR/ShB only) with a simple story attached to them. This leads in to the current situation: you don't need the relics for those kind of grinds anymore. You have bi-color gemstones to motivate people to do FATES, Kupo treasure hunts and Wondrous Tails to get them to do old dungeons and holiday events/collaboration in between for good measure. They've lost a lot of their purpose over the expansions and the developers pretty much said as much (as in calling them process of designing relic grinds as boring for everyone involved).

Even with Eureka, the weapons were tacked on, but at least in there they had more of a purpose as pseudo progression gear for all things Eureka and not just a much more annoying tome weapon that will soon be nothing but glam. If you want to argue that the Eurekan/Bozjan content should come sooner then I'm with you, but that runs into issues for other content. /shrug