Final Fantasy 14's grinds feel horrible to midcore players

[Lyth]

...

But that's how an MMO grind works. Everything has an opportunity cost attached, be it learning a raid tier, farming Ex trials for mount drops, collecting Relics, or obtaining PvP kills. The value of the reward is always proportional to the time cost, because that determines scarcity. You just need to determine if the reward is worth it to you personally and how exactly you want to pace yourself. It's okay to take years to obtain a specific achievement going after a rewards that you want, if that's a function of your time commitment. It just means that you progressed in a more laidback fashion. Doesn't make it any less exciting when you actually get there.

I think the problem is that people compare themselves to everyone else, and then spread themselves out too thin only to achieve nothing. Or they view this as an obligation and go after things that they really have no interest in, simply for the sake of completionism.

[Avidria]

But that's how an MMO grind works. Everything has an opportunity cost attached, be it learning a raid tier, farming Ex trials for mount drops, collecting Relics, or obtaining PvP kills. The value of the reward is always proportional to the time cost, because that determines scarcity. You just need to determine if the reward is worth it to you personally and how exactly you want to pace yourself. It's okay to take years to obtain a specific achievement going after a rewards that you want, if that's a function of your time commitment. It just means that you progressed in a more laidback fashion. Doesn't make it any less exciting when you actually get there.

I think the problem is that people compare themselves to everyone else, and then spread themselves out too thin only to achieve nothing. Or they view this as an obligation and go after things that they really have no interest in, simply for the sake of completionism.

We'll see my point is that there are not enough rewards with an amount of time investment proportional to their value to me, personally. The sliding scale outside of savage and ultimate raid prog pretty much consists of quick and easy, maybe a week or two of work, and then, again, actual literal years, with not a lot in between. There's a consistent lack of easy casual grinds that feel rewarding along the way, and it's a problem I've had with the game for a while. It's not a big enough problem to keep me from playing, but it's enough of one that I'm currently at the point where there are very few things I'm interested in doing in game at all because my options in things that aren't going to take months to years to complete (read: get literally anything out of) are extremely limited, and I'm super not interested in that kind of time commitment at the moment.

Personally my current solution to this is going to be unsubbing once my raid team finishes P4 re clears until enough new content has been added to draw me back in again.

Edit to add... I think part of the disconnect here is that I do not care about scarcity. I like having rare things, sure, but I also just like having things to do that are fun or worthwhile. In an ideal world, the best case is for the thing to be fun AND worthwhile. I'm not saying they should take out the obscenely long grinds, I'm saying they should add more things that fall in the middle ground.

[TaleraRistain]

I think they need to be a little more innovative and consistent with their rewards. I want to go out on a limb and say that even certain content which you may otherwise typically do just once and done, can be further incentivized by creating achievements that are job-based. E.g. completion of a solo deep dungeon on a particular class. Certain rewards and grinds such as the Pteranodon could do well by having better milestones. Create another for 100K on each class, another for 250K, and then the final one for 500K. As it stands some of these grinds reward you for an entry point, but then require you to make a full-on commitment for any additional rewards. -- I must admit that achievement-wise Ocean Fishing has been a fantastic experience thus far.

As far as the point milestones go, e.g. 20 points for something mediocre, whilst another has approx. 5 achievement points for tenfold the effort. This practice I don't necessarily mind, really. What I do mind, however, is that beyond the now abolished veteran reward system, all rewards contained therein have just been relegated to achievement tokens, and there are not nearly enough rewards locked behind these tokens. Add more mounts, minions, etc. I'm sat on approx. 330 of these tokens and I have…

Absolutely nothing to use them on... and this doesn't account for not recently retrieving them. The sad part is they already have fairly good systems in place, they just don't execute consistently enough, or even utilise them to a fraction of their potential.

I like the idea of milestones. We see that already in the achievements that are I, II, III, etc and then the final reward for V like Custom Deliveries. You get the goodie at the end but you get those hits along the way as you fill up that achievement bar.

They could also stand to revamp systems like challenge log, hunt log, and sightseeing log to make those more viable. And resurrect levequests as a system with good risk versus reward. Doesn't necessarily even have to be all new rewards since that could be prohibitive with dev time. Maybe alternate ways to get things we can get now, like bicolor gemstone items. Or another path to crafting / gathering items. The hunt log could tie into the Hunt system and give another daily way to build up those tokens. This could also be a way they could keep it from feeling like you have to log in every day, but you still get a goodie for doing tasks.

[Johners]

I do find it rather amusing that a game which "respects your time" lacks quality of life changes for a lot of the old grinds. I appreciate that some grinding is always going to be some part of a subscription MMORPG, that's just the business model, but there's old content that still needs to be played like it was originally implemented. A Realm Reborn relics are a prime example of this in needing to grind various sections of ARR content until you get the required drops which includes the ARR FATE grinding very early on into the acquisition. Was this fine by ARR standards? Probably but in 2022 this doesn't need to exist. Newer relics from Stormblood and Shadowbringers are nowhere near as bad in this regard plus have their own unique content associated with them (even if participation is usually at the minimum acceptable level for the ShB stuff).

I quite like that Square Enix have used a modern battle pass-style system for the new PvP content but how they can take that model and apply it to other content areas isn't so clear. At the very least quality of life changes to the time needed to do old relics, beast tribes and other grinds should be considered at this stage. Newer players doing a time commitment reduced version of older content is better than it not being played. Until then, it's just a growing list of do X task 100s or 1000s of times until you want to rip your eyes out.

There is a lack of a middle ground that probably needs addressing. You can either play with a fairly minimal time investment and not fall behind on the obvious progress curves like gearing or you can play this game like a full-time job and have every single grind completed for every expansion and job. For people that want something in the middle... it doesn't really exist.

[hunkygladiator]

I think this is relevant once again

[CelestiCer]

What other MMO's do right? is an (unspoken) emphasis on keeping PvE combat " Exciting ". Many MMO's manage to pull this off in several ways even before or without P2W.

But Square puts an Emphasis on " Content ". When Job's are made a joke to master or play? in grinding environments with near no peril? It's no wonder that there are Players requesting any grind like the Moogle-Tome once to just hasten cause nothing is worse then a Long Grind with " Zero Excitement ".

Yoshi-P said " Just take a Break " cause Square knows the appeal of XIV is mostly " Content ". When there's a drought of new content? XIV feels boring. Much rather preferred XIV to focus on keeping Jobs more engaging since you take a Job to anything PvE combat even a grind. Keep Jobs engaging? and any content is more appealing to do. Hollow out Jobs to be more boring? yay then any content becomes less appealing to do. " Grinds included "

[CNitsah]

This forum is tiring. Why are you all getting triggered by the fact He used Lost ark as an example. Guy made a developped post about with an intersting point, and you just all go "He said Lost Ark, nothing he said is worthy". You all need a breath of fresh air, sometimes. (And before you all jump on my back because "I defend Lost Ark", I never played or watch someone play that game.)

On the subject of the thread, I do share a similar view. As someone that has no interest in the high difficulty content (hear that I don't like the idea of needing a static roaster with a calendar saying "those days, every week, it's prog on extreme/savage/ultimate), I just don't do it. I don't mind the grind, but I like it being accessible (and I don't mean easily unlockable, but either "you don't need to wait for 20+ min to enter and/or don't need to organise a premade party" but can easily join on the fly). It's something Eureka (well, I still want to burn Pagos down) and Bozja/Zadnor were good with. But the perfect counter-example to me is the last deep dungeons.

When you look at Eureka Orthos, I feel we have casual content (stage 1 to 30), and hardcore player content (stage 31+). If I consider stage 31+ as hardcore player content, it's not because of the difficulty of the content, which is not that hard for 31-70, but because of the accessibility of the content. Stage 1 > 30 can be done with random people, by series of 10 floors. If you want to do them in several session because you lack the time, don't like that content that much but still want the reward, any reason, you can.

From stage 31+, it's not possible anymore. You need a fixed party. There is 2 possibilities there, either you can find 4 friends that have one of their 2 slots free, and then it's ok, either you don't, and you have to make a PF, and commit to a often several hours farm. Because of how it's designed, you can't paused after a serie of 10 floor and pick another time. Despite having some mid-tier rewards (silver-tinged sacks), the conditions to get to those are the exact same you have to accept to get the high tier rewards, that are made hardcore players. It's just not worth it for a lot of players, and it has been a problem for a long time before Eureka Orthos. Sky pillar is pretty much ignored, and even entering with the auto-team tool can take an hour. When you add to that it's more of a reskinned content than a new one, and one that was never really popular, Eureka Orthos was on a programmed death from its release.


So to me, we should have something like:
casual content > few grind, and easily accessible (see what I mean by accessible earlier)
midcore content > a lot of grind, but easily accessible (for deep dungeon, that could be making stage 31 to 50 being doable with auto-party, while dropping less mid-tier sacks than 51 to 70),
hardcore content > a lot of grind, but not easily accessible.
And obviously, something worth your time in both mid-tier and hight tier rewards (another crab mount, really?).
In a lot of EW content, the middle step doesn't exist anymore. If you still have some older content to complete, it's the perfect time. If you don't, the game kinda feels at the worst it has been for a long time. The lack of Eureka/Bozja content is strongly felt. I wouldn't be surprised it's the content that people go to during this period of the game.

I also argue the way the content is presented add to that feeling. The return of all the trials to the msq made disappear the trials storyline we had since HW. The content is still technically there, but the sense of diversity is not there anymore.
Same goes with the relic storyline, it was reduced so much it feels inexistant. We're back at something similar to what ARR had. Here again, there is no real loss of content compared to those time. A lot of relics steps ended being farm some old content or get some memo. They added a few alternative ways, but those stopped being worthy in later extensions. But yeah, the way it was presented was more creative, even in ARR and HW.
There is also the fact the MSQ of 6.3 was kinda not to the lvl of the previous patch. The 2 generals weren't as well build up as the previous 2, and the whole Garlemald part felt like a side quest to shoehorn the twins in there.

In the end, despite having a similar content we lost several storylines, which also mean several things to wait for/be excited about. And the one one we still get are not that exciting. For a game focused on story telling, that might be the biggest mistake. Right now, the game is not selling dreams on what's coming. That feeling might not be present with people that are not up to date with the content, but it feels pretty strong with those who are. I really hope the reveal of 7.0 teaser will change that.

But to circle back to the point, that weakness of presentation makes the only grind we have as midcore player (the relic one) feel totally unrewarding. It's litterally farming the roulette and content of EW that have been there since far before the relics, without any hint of recontextualisation. As I said in another thread, I prefer that to some relic 80 steps (the one which asked to do either PotD or DR, which none, by the definition I gave earlier, are accessible), but it still feels kinda underwhelming.

[hunkygladiator]

When you look at Eureka Orthos, I feel we have casual content (stage 1 to 30), and hardcore player content (stage 31+). If I consider stage 31+ as hardcore player content, it's not because of the difficulty of the content, which is not that hard for 31-70, but because of the accessibility of the content. Stage 1 > 30 can be done with random people, by series of 10 floors. If you want to do them in several session because you lack the time, don't like that content that much but still want the reward, any reason, you can.

From stage 31+, it's not possible anymore. You need a fixed party. There is 2 possibilities there, either you can find 4 friends that have one of their 2 slots free, and then it's ok, either you don't, and you have to make a PF, and commit to a often several hours farm. Because of how it's designed, you can't paused after a serie of 10 floor and pick another time. Despite having some mid-tier rewards (silver-tinged sacks), the conditions to get to those are the exact same you have to accept to get the high tier rewards, that are made hardcore players. It's just not worth it for a lot of players, and it has been a problem for a long time before Eureka Orthos. Sky pillar is pretty much ignored, and even entering with the auto-team tool can take an hour. When you add to that it's more of a reskinned content than a new one, and one that was never really popular, Eureka Orthos was on a programmed death from its release.

Eureka Orthos is a big disappointment. IDK why they made it way easier by removing dangerous autos and in turn removing a lot of the fun in pomander management, kiting, charting a safe route through the floor etc. Orthos now is just open a second screen to look at the monster mechanics and use pomanders at 3 and I guess Storm at auto-heal penalty.

[hunkygladiator]

What other MMO's do right? is an (unspoken) emphasis on keeping PvE combat " Exciting ". Many MMO's manage to pull this off in several ways even before or without P2W.

But Square puts an Emphasis on " Content ". When Job's are made a joke to master or play? in grinding environments with near no peril? It's no wonder that there are Players requesting any grind like the Moogle-Tome once to just hasten cause nothing is worse then a Long Grind with " Zero Excitement ".

Yoshi-P said " Just take a Break " cause Square knows the appeal of XIV is mostly " Content ". When there's a drought of new content? XIV feels boring. Much rather preferred XIV to focus on keeping Jobs more engaging since you take a Job to anything PvE combat even a grind. Keep Jobs engaging? and any content is more appealing to do. Hollow out Jobs to be more boring? yay then any content becomes less appealing to do. " Grinds included "

Huge draw of Lost Ark was the combat gameplay. Even in dailies you farm for a month it feels fun.

[SturmChurro]

Huge draw of Lost Ark was the combat gameplay. Even in dailies you farm for a month it feels fun.

I tried, I really did, but that game is too much. It became too much for the majority of the playerbase too. I just couldn't do it, plus after taking a break, I had a huge amount I had to catch up on. I appreciate that it is a great PvE game, and has well designed fights, but the entire game is essentially just for high-end PvErs now. You can't really be casual or midcore, I feel, in the long run. UNLESS you pay to keep up. You either live your life in the game, or you pay. Nobody was even doing any of the horizontal content anymore, and expected people to pay to complete their weekly raids. It was awful. It's too bad, because that game has probably the best aRPG combat IMO, and a lot of other positives.