Data from lucky bancho about participation in field content

[Shurrikhan]

It just seems like "excitement", "enthusiasm", "because people enjoy playing it just to play it" rarely if ever seems to explain content participation. It's always based on either "1-and-done curiosity" or "tangible bribe, followed by dropping once obtained".

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Someone mentioned Normal Raids and it's like... yeah. It doesn't seem like players queue up for E3N at random just to "do it" because it's "fun". It's either 1-and-done for the Story, or grinded exactly as long as necessary to get a gear piece from the tedious tokens (and then dropped like a rock).

Tangent, but when Extreme Trials first hit DF in ARR and mount-farming hadn't completely moved over to tryhardish PFs, I actually loved queuing up for random Extremes during the dead of night. Usually 3 to 5 others of party would be mount-farmers or likewise grinding for fun and were plenty competent, and you'd often see 1-3 people again from one run to the next, but queues were short and it just felt great to be able to drop whenever without inconveniencing anyone despite still playing content that was pretty fun in itself. Never got the mount that way, but could hardly have cared less; I just really liked min-maxing Monk, Bard, or DRG in Levi Ex, etc.

I miss that shit. Though I also miss FATEs being more active, for when leveling or otherwise, as per early ARR Relics. Etc., etc.

And I as braindead as Anemos FATE-trains and pre-work Diadem were, I kinda miss Exploratory Missions, since this character missed the opportunity to get to a high enough level in Bozja to actually move around before everyone else had long since completed it, leaving me no one to grind with. (I mean that quite seriously. It's usually under 15 people for the whole zone, and none of them early level, at the times I can play.) I'd really have loved to see them improved upon instead of more dev time going to V/C dungeon, because the general "Exploratory Mission" model just seems a far more cost-efficient, iconic, flexible, and lucrative fit for an MMO.