We lost 70% of our player base half a year in

[DixieBellOCE]

Yeah, so that still sounds like:

1. Players won't let me explore / read notes
2. Players rush and optimize anyway

Dungeons are wasted on the players that do MSQ. Honestly, remove them from MSQ entirely - Not even joking, the content is 100% wasted on them.

WoW has it right, not everyone wants to do dungeons, so why make them braindead for the MSQ players that don't want to do them anyway. We're basically making both sides suffer because they're catered to the absolute lowest common denominator. Even Variant is just as braindead outside of the boss mechanics.

The overall problem is the content has to pigeonhole itself for literally every type of play, for both new players and tryhards which include side quests, events, and rewards. I don't think it's fair for either of these players. They've now made so many dungeons, and force players to carry MSQ newbies, they can't enjoy the possibility of harder difficulty dungeons. We're forever doomed to repeat MSQ content for leveling and rewards with MSQ sprouts until the game finally dies.

XIV has fallen into the content trap that requires all players to continue the cycle of repeating all past content in order to ultimately avoid making sprouts feel like the game is dead because nobody actually wants to run the content they're doing unless we're forced to.

They're afraid to give us content that diverts us away from Roulettes for too long.

This is an interesting take on it.

What if XIV just.. Removed dungeons/trials from the MSQ and the MSQ just becomes a story with no player interaction required (as it basically is now with Duty Support/Trusts).

Then the people that enjoy combat content in the game can do what they enjoy, with varying levels of difficulty,
The IMVU players can just do their story and go back to afking/clubbing and never have to worry about playing the game again.

Dungeons can be scaled appropriately for the players that do that content without having to worry about the lowest common denominator. Players that want to do combat content naturally get better over time, so having the skill level set higher than average wouldn't be an issue.

I suppose this could work if the MSQ had a 'story mode' where all the battle content is just replaced with cutscenes, because apparently MSQ content is too hard for some people.