I feel like 7.0 will be quite the milestone

[MoofiaBossVal]

The MMO needs actual content retain my interest. As it stands now you just go through the boring 30 hour long visual novel that is the expansion MSQ (occasionally punctuated by snoozefest combat), reach level cap, do a few short level cap questlines, and then there is nothing to do but grind up other jobs by running through the same corridor dungeons over and over again. Or play the boring clicker that is the private island. Stardew Valley and Runefactory provide more engaging farming sim gameplay anyway so you mind as well play that. For some bizzare reason, there is no endgame combat zone like Eureka or Bozja this expansion. This expansion is pretty desolate. If 7.0 is more of the same then I'll unsub.

[Jybril]

That's fine with me. I know what to expect and what I'm getting for my money and I know that I'll enjoy it then.

I actually laughed at this comment for like 5 minutes straight.
Yeah, have fun with the game turning into a trash heap because the quality is shooting the sheet these days.
Might get a dungeon that you literally enter and win. All Jobs with 1 buttons in your horizon!
Wait, Jobs? Don't need them. New jobs now are all grey suits and stand there!
But you expect it, and enjoy it so more power to ya! Can't wait to see you be the only one standing with
600000000 bots by your side because people are sick of this crap and left. XDDDDDDDDDDDDd
Good one, mate!

Edit: Also why isn't POTD back in? This was one of the best things they added into this game
that people actually stuck through and played instead the failed attempts of Eureka.
Diadem is saved thanks to Ishgard but come on dudes. You're doing less and it is pathetic.

[CStrife912]

The MMO needs actual content retain my interest. As it stands now you just go through the boring 30 hour long visual novel that is the expansion MSQ (occasionally punctuated by snoozefest combat), reach level cap, do a few short level cap questlines, and then there is nothing to do but grind up other jobs by running through the same corridor dungeons over and over again. Or play the boring clicker that is the private island. Stardew Valley and Runefactory provide more engaging farming sim gameplay anyway so you mind as well play that. For some bizzare reason, there is no endgame combat zone like Eureka or Bozja this expansion. This expansion is pretty desolate. If 7.0 is more of the same then I'll unsub.

The way you talk about it makes me think you should of unsubbed a long time ago as this trajectory has been in play over the last like 3-5 years at least so if it's held you till now what has really changed? I am missing an endgame zone granted bozja wasn't that great to partake in outside of critical engagements. I much preferred Eureka in that example, like I said in my original post I'm wondering if it is desolate because they are focusing more resources on the groundwork foundation then say our current endgame.

I actually laughed at this comment for like 5 minutes straight.
Yeah, have fun with the game turning into a trash heap because the quality is shooting the sheet these days.
Might get a dungeon that you literally enter and win. All Jobs with 1 buttons in your horizon!
Wait, Jobs? Don't need them. New jobs now are all grey suits and stand there!
But you expect it, and enjoy it so more power to ya! Can't wait to see you be the only one standing with
600000000 bots by your side because people are sick of this crap and left. XDDDDDDDDDDDDd
Good one, mate!

Edit: Also why isn't POTD back in? This was one of the best things they added into this game
that people actually stuck through and played instead the failed attempts of Eureka.
Diadem is saved thanks to Ishgard but come on dudes. You're doing less and it is pathetic.

A very exaggerated stance....this game is their cash cow if they even saw any sort of decline or trend towards that they would probably look more towards feedback to placate or remedy it over granted a long-term plan because nothing they do is super quick. Are you playing the game now? I know job homogenization is heavily discussed and I can see that being a problem, especially with the 2 minute burst meta which really needs to go...I am wondering if they are trying to set a new groundwork to go off of. I could be heavily wrong that and we don't know the end goal here.

[Deceptus]

As a healer it's make or break for me. I've stuck with the role for years where it's languished, been reset, then barely innovated.

6.0 showed they really don't know what to do with healers. 7.0 is probably where I leave if I don't see some massive improvement or at least the developers admitting there's something wrong with healers as a role and a concrete plan to fix things.

Because right now they're not engaging in 90% of the content, they're often the first replaced or dropped in group content.

[keichirou]

I mean your viewpoint of 6.0 is of course your opinion but sales and player retention and growth of player count shows the opposite

this part is slightly flawed, mainly because the reason why sales were astronomical is because we had the "Idea" that said expansion was gonna be like the previous ones, outstanding.....each time we get an expansion ,we get no glimpse or demo,anything except for what the devs shows us on a CGI trailer or tell us on LL. so we Have to assume the expansion is gonna be good,hence GOOD sales....yet there's a lot of discomfort with EW myself included(i dont voice it and like myself there's thousands), so i wouldn't keep high hopes 7.0 will break any records

[Imoye]

I think the graphics update is the only major change we are expecting in 7.0. Who knows, maybe they will completely revamp the job system or do a story squish or built in skip.

They really need to do something about how jobs play... Literally EVERYTHING plays the same, follows the same formula and nothing you do feels impactful. Healers are particularily bad, but everything really suffers from massive homogenization and streamlining. It's boring as heck. FFXIV has one of the most unimaginative jobs/classes in the entire MMO genre.

And don't even get me started on the reskinned copy-paste dungeon designs lol.

[Deveryn]

The QoL changes have been great and the dev team seem to be working flat out, but I don't have much hope for 7.0.

They're pouring all their effort into the wrong things. Endwalker was their big chance really. They had a huge chunk of the WoW playerbase in the palm of their hand and a lot of attention from the gaming community. And all they did was rush and toss aside their main story plot and stubbornly stick to the same safe tired formulas or reinforce them. More tomes, roulettes, bland 3-boss-corridor dungeons, shared fates, 2 min burst meta, trimmed down jobs, 5 minute a day beast tribes, cheap crafted gear, same old treasure maps and so on. I'm all for "if it works, don't try to reinvent the wheel" and WoW was notorious for sledgehammering good systems, but there's a middle ground and only so many years you can do the same thing over and over.

Such ignorance to the process, which is a shame considering they actually make it a point to talk about it every so often. Everything is planned well in advance, so by the time the exodus happened, EW was in the final stages of development. There's no adjustment to make in response to that and it took quite some time to get more hardware to accommodate more players. They likely took notes and are working on responding to all that's happened. As we discuss this, they're well into development of 7.0 and beyond, so it's just a matter of waiting to see what's next.

[Heroman3003]

Such ignorance to the process, which is a shame considering they actually make it a point to talk about it every so often. Everything is planned well in advance, so by the time the exodus happened, EW was in the final stages of development. There's no adjustment to make in response to that and it took quite some time to get more hardware to accommodate more players. They likely took notes and are working on responding to all that's happened. As we discuss this, they're well into development of 7.0 and beyond, so it's just a matter of waiting to see what's next.

This. Ongoing MMOs most commonly have production pipeline be approximately one expansion ahead of current day. It took them until into EW to even implement all new worlds and servers just to act on the exodus which happened... into ShB. And that was the 'immedeate' and relatively simple to implement reaction. More longer-term and thought-out changes based on effects of such things like big population boost would have to be released even further down the line.

[Hurlstone]

I am really excited to see what 7.0+ will bring. As someone for who story is a big part of why they play, and I may add really enjoyed EW/likes the 6.x content, I am looking forward to whatever the big new adventure will be. There are so many different directions they could go now they are leaving (most) of the Hydaelyn/Zodiark story behind. Will we end up going to Meracydia or somewhere new? Where will this new campaign take us? I cannot wait. Of course also looking forward to new gameplay stuff too, like a new class or two (Will I finally get Puppet Master?) and the graphical update, which I feel may actually be more important then we realize (As in, this could be when some characters start to age and we get an actual time-shift happen.) We shall see!

True, they could drop the ball and fail in all these areas. Thats a risk of every expansion or new change a game makes. As I said though, I have been enjoying the ride so far so am walking more towards the side of excitement then caution haha.

[ThaCa]

I just want them to finally have a dedicated PvP team, so it gets some of the most glaring issues fixed. At least they have done some slight balance tweaks and pushed out a weird new map, but the issues on large haven't been dealt with.

Rival Wings and CC still lack roulette.
There's next to no reason to play Ranked since the rewards are practically the same for Casual, and Casual games are generally faster and easier.
Frontlines damage reduction makes playing melee favorable, small skirmishes are pointless because most people can just walk out of them due lack of finishing potential, large scale skirmishes are decided by the few potent AoE Jobs comboing properly.
Idlers, griefers, hackers go unpunished for long durations despite numerous reports.
Inherent team balance in CC doesn't account enough for total roles and melee/ranged. 1 tank, 1 healer 3, dps vs 5 dps should be 1t4d vs 1h4d instead. Similarly Tanks and healers should have some weight towards melee/ranged split on teams for the matchmaker.
There's still no queuing up with friends. Casual is already unbalanced as it is with first timers playing with top 100, so might as well let people play together. A lot of my friends would play it more if they could queue together and it would make the Series grind more appealing to people with little interest in PvP if they could goof with their buddies. Of course this is ripe for abuse from very high ranked stacking, but those people are more likely to play Ranked in first place.
And so on.

I know it's side content at most to general playerbase, but some of us log in to play it.
There's also so much more they could do with it if they put in some resources, we got gatherer and crafter relics so something like PvP relic would be nice and it could cover all the gametypes.

It's a shame that they have pretty decent base for all of these, but it just kinda lingers half-way there.