What's even the point of doing savage?

[GaspardSavoureuxx]

You can have a social life while playing FFXIV too, FFXIV is very respectful of your time.
Savage really isn't that impossible to clear either even through PF in a reasonable time.
And getting reclears doesn't rly take long most of the time, I usually do it in one sitting.

I'd also like to remind you that Warhammer Online died, FFXIV has increased in players with every new expansion.
So I think FFXIV is doing something right and that there's certainly quite a lot of people who disagree with you.

Imho I actually think Glam is the most interesting reward.

FFXIV have increase player because 1/ it's a free trial for like 100hours and more and 2/ people come on expansion, farm it for 3-4 weeks, and then leave for month to wait for the next expansion. Lots of people does that.
In warhammer online, you always had something to do in endgame and you never ran out of endgame content like in here. There were countless of hours to do in endgame, without any expansion. But there were no glam, so i guess nowaday people play MMO for glam

[EgilTheStressedMage]

There were no progs left to answer.

[Striker44]

FFXIV have increase player because 1/ it's a free trial for like 100hours and more and 2/ people come on expansion, farm it for 3-4 weeks, and then leave for month to wait for the next expansion. Lots of people does that.
In warhammer online, you always had something to do in endgame and you never ran out of endgame content like in here. There were countless of hours to do in endgame, without any expansion. But there were no glam, so i guess nowaday people play MMO for glam

That's funny. I have little interest in glam, yet I have a monster list of content still to do even though I've completed the MSQ. Crafting, gathering, achievement hunting, getting the last Role quest, sightseeing log entries from ARR that I never did. There's countless hours to do HERE in endgame. Perhaps you might not be interested in it. But to act as if it doesn't exist seems very disingenuous.

[Kolsykol]

FFXIV have increase player because 1/ it's a free trial for like 100hours and more and 2/ people come on expansion, farm it for 3-4 weeks, and then leave for month to wait for the next expansion. Lots of people does that.
In warhammer online, you always had something to do in endgame and you never ran out of endgame content like in here. There were countless of hours to do in endgame, without any expansion. But there were no glam, so i guess nowaday people play MMO for glam

As I said, it has increased with every expansion even back when the trial didn't exist.
Maybe EW is the peak maybe it's not, who knows.
Regardless of that I am sure people will be crying about the game '' dying '' ESPECIALLY if they're already doing it and have been doing it with every new expansion even tho the game was growing in players.

The same can be said about WoW too tbh, infinite growth doesn't exist games are going to hit a peak and then go down.
There's other factors that makes it more significant in WoW but much the same even it's essentially a meme at this point that people have been saying the game is '' dying '' since day 1 even way back in Vanilla the narrative was the same.
In FFXIV there's also a lot of '' seasonal players '' much like in a game like Path of Exile where people come back and play the new patch for story content then stick around a bit and take a break.
Nothing wrong with that either.
But FFXIV has become more successful with each expansion thus far.

The problem is parsing are not allowed, and ultimate is useless for me because it gave you nothing except a title and a skin.

So, yeah, the glam...

Why would gear be important for you if you're not interested in doing harder content tho?
Imo gear not being as big of a deal ( but still a big deal ) is a nice thing about FFXIV, that's a matter of taste tho but I find that gear being the be all end all tends to result in a lot more toxicity and frustration.

Parsing isn't officially endorsed but people do it, there's log runs being openly advertised in PF and no action is taken against them.
The devs don't like it and don't endorse it but it's pretty clear that they accept that it exists unless you harass people with it or otherwise make a big deal out of it.

[Renathras]

I don't want to trash high-enders too much, but said high-end content in XIV ranks among the absolute easiest out of nearly any other comparable game. Even the elites of this game are rather casual, considering how the devs took to the predictable "dance"-like design of fights. ... In any difficulty. It's just a cheap dopamine injection for many who either aren't interested in other games or couldn't hack it in said other games.

I will preface this by saying I've never done Savage until this tier. But I've played this game for some years now, cleared Extremes for several expansions, cleared some Savage this tier for the first time (don't have a Static, so just did the first two and was content with that), and have raided in other MMOs besides just this one.

FFIXV's raiding is comparable to most other leading MMOs right now. It's more rigid, but also more tightly tuned because of that. That is, in WoW, you have more variable mechanics, but they tend to be less deadly. FFXIV you have to memorize and remember the order of those mechanics and execute them at a higher level.

It's different between the two, but two flavors of a similar difficulty. And considering I remember Vanilla WoW raiding, where some bosses were literal tank and spank and some class "rotations" were literally "just auto-attack" (back when bosses could only have 8 debuffs and there were no/few agro resets, so classes like Hunter couldn't throw out DoTs and couldn't use direct damage abilities, thus auto-attack), we've come a looooong way since then.

[EDIT: Hell, the term "Patchwork fight", originating as "Patchwurk", I believe, was the name of one of the big fat Undead abominations, from original Naxxaramus, I believe, which was a tank and spank fight, thus originating the term of "fight where tanks pull the boss and everyone else can stand in one place working through their target dummy static rotation because there are no/few mechanics to speak of"]

FFXIV have increase player because 1/ it's a free trial for like 100hours and more and 2/ people come on expansion, farm it for 3-4 weeks, and then leave for month to wait for the next expansion. Lots of people does that.
In warhammer online, you always had something to do in endgame and you never ran out of endgame content like in here. There were countless of hours to do in endgame, without any expansion. But there were no glam, so i guess nowaday people play MMO for glam

And yet, FFXIV has consistently higher players than Warhammer. And if they were all free trials, they'd have shut down the game for making no profit to keep the servers running.

This game isn't Warhammer - which seems to be an ulterior motive of this thread? - and that's fine. Again, not a Savage raider here, but this is MMOs in general. New content, new level caps, new gear, rinse and repeat. MMOs have followed this same basic pattern since Everquest.

And for the record: I always have something to do in FFIXV, so...

[EDIT: Don't get me wrong, Warhammer did some neat things, but it also wasn't for everyone and it ultimately failed. There's reasons for that...]

Regarding some of the OP's points, Final Fantasy XIV is designed around vertical gear progression - doing new content to get numerically better gear to do new content, ad infinitum. It sounds like the OP would prefer horizontal progression - succeeding at different tasks awards you gear that provides a unique advantage for the long term. While horizontal progression can done quite well MMORPGs, neither is objectively superior, and FFXIV simply adheres to the 'vertical' school of design.

Don't forget Eureka/Bozja.

And I don't mean the Relics. I mean the Elemental+ and Judge gear.

ALSO content that isn't for everyone, but that gear is BiS for those zones. Elemental +2 is the BiS gear for Eureka itself because of the bonuses, and people do still do that content, like Baldesion Arsenal. And I THINK some of it is (or was) BiS for some BLU builds.

...which can also be considered side/horizontal content.

But I agree there's not a lot of it. One of the things I wish FFXIV had more of would be open world type content.

[technole]

Don't forget Eureka/Bozja.

And I don't mean the Relics. I mean the Elemental+ and Judge gear.

ALSO content that isn't for everyone, but that gear is BiS for those zones. Elemental +2 is the BiS gear for Eureka itself because of the bonuses, and people do still do that content, like Baldesion Arsenal. And I THINK some of it is (or was) BiS for some BLU builds.

...which can also be considered side/horizontal content.

But I agree there's not a lot of it. One of the things I wish FFXIV had more of would be open world type content.

Yep. I like horizontal gear progression, but one per expansion is good enough. Bozja was a good one, all gear is the same except for ones with Haste bonuses and it's a pretty sizable DPS increase. Still have my DR Savage BiS and Eureka Physeos weapons +2 BiS gear in the inventory since I still go into those from time-to-time. Casuals say it's a waste of time but where else do we get gear that never 'expires' in the game? I'll wait.

If they went too wild with horizontal our inventory would be even more nuttier, so it's a two-fold issue too. Content needs to use it, but also it needs to be justified.