DT writing is not even the biggest problem XIV has right now.

[ZephyrMenodora]

My main complaint is that there is little to nothing for a max-level character to do on a casual to mid-core level. The only relevant content is maxing tomes which is 20 minutes a day for 5 days, and normals which if you only play one job you have all that gear already.

I used to be a "play the MSQ and quit until the next MSQ" pre-EW, but now the MSQ itself wasn't really any good. When I run out of jobs to level, which I mostly do as "something to do" rather than actually loving 21 different jobs, I have no idea how I will entertain myself.

There is nothing to really grind on any meaningful level, and no exciting RNG gear drops that would keep me interested in other MMOs. They also have no bonus customization for grinding more XP, and the levelling is pretty fast. The concept of building a character is pretty slim in this MMO compared to many others.

[BunnyQueen]

snip.

I agree with a lot of this but also the fact that tanks are overtuned and healers aren't allowed to heal. Heck they could add a new deep dungeon instead of another bozja that would solve the nothing to do issue

[WaxSw]

These people love raiding (and there is nothing wrong with that), but the thing is, the raids are developed at the expense of other types of content.

This is entirely false tho. Do I need to remember how the first thing they cut during the pandemic was the 2nd Shb ultimate raid? Or how in EW we didnt get any 24 man raid outside alliances? That is without mentioning how they haven't increased the amount of Savage raids since they were invented that without mentioning how the amount of casual side activities has actually increased and the job changes are mostly made with casuals in mind

Raids arent designed at the expense of any other content nor raiders have a hold on the game's design.

Also the whole "chores" before raid is a boogeyman you have just invented to blame raiders for something that doesn't even happen. If the devs didn't add the chores before raiding is because they treat raiding as its own separate thing that only affects market boards and materia selling

[WaxSw]

Well, for starters, they objectively have more outreach than non-JP players. And some of them are extremely vocal on JP social media, posting stuff that is apparently not always nice. (this is from a documentary aired in Japan, it talks about FFXVI release, but the same reportedly happens for FFXIV as well).

Now, about the raiders in particular, let's do a little thought experiment: imagine that you have to do some kind of additional activity besides MSQ to unlock savage. An attunement quest, a gearing-up effort that involves more than crafting a 710 set and run normal for 710 blue gear, some reputations to unlock etc. That kind of measures would not be popular with some raiders, because for them, it would take time from raiding to do these "chores". How would they react? Well, essentially, see above.

These people love raiding (and there is nothing wrong with that), but the thing is, the raids are developed at the expense of other types of content. And that's where the twist comes: since JP players run Savage much more than EU/NA players, SE sees no qualms about persisting in this logic. The problem is that they turn off a lot of players in EU/NA in the process.

This is entirely false tho. Do I need to remember how the first thing they cut during the pandemic was the 2nd Shb ultimate raid? Or how in EW we didnt get any 24 man raid outside alliances? That is without mentioning how they haven't increased the amount of Savage raids since they were invented or how the amount of casual side activities has actually increased and how the job changes are mostly made with casuals in mind

Raids arent designed at the expense of any other content nor raiders have a hold on the game's design.

Also the whole "chores" before raid is a boogeyman you have just invented to blame raiders for something that doesn't even happen. If the devs didn't add the chores before raiding is because they treat raiding as its own separate thing that only affects market boards and materia selling

[CNitsah]

I agree with a lot of this but also the fact that tanks are overtuned and healers aren't allowed to heal. Heck they could add a new deep dungeon instead of another bozja that would solve the nothing to do issue

The problem with deep dungeon is that it's lacking reward wise, and give us no reason to (re)do it but the satisfaction to say "I've done it". That's probably why they're mostly ignored. But yeah, with reworked progression system and rewards, a deep dungeon could do the job if implemented right. As I said, it's more about having a content that fills the role of engagement content by giving you long term objectives and keep you occupied and interested (one way of doing that is to regulary unclock new reward like in the tribal quest, opposed to things like farming a bicolor gemstone mounts, that basically tell you "spend 300h and you'll get a mount in at the end, nothing in between"). That's why I think the job balance is another problem, and solving it won't change anything. You could fix all the job problems, and make them more fun, that would not be enough to solve this problem.

Also the whole "chores" before raid is a boogeyman you have just invented to blame raiders for something that doesn't even happen. If the devs didn't add the chores before raiding is because they treat raiding as its own separate thing that only affects market boards and materia selling

I don't know about the rest, but calling the whole "chore" before raid a boogeyman is severly lacking in MMO culture. That has been one of the recurring complaints about WoW for... ever (I've heard it so many times from so many people while I never played WoW). FFXIV was specifically designed with the idea of avoiding those problems. Adding them would be a betrayal of the promise of the game, No, FFXIV always has been about avoiding gating things behind anything but the msq and that has to stay. Plus I would argue that giving more things to do to raiders (that are a minority) would not solve the problem at all, since the people would still not do it, since they don't raid.

[Ghost_of_Ebina]

I would agree the lack of something like Eureka or Bozja in EW or DT (I think they don't have plans... unless the "Cosmic Explorer" thing falls into this) is a let-down.
Eurkea / Bozja as contents still have regular engagement in both NA / JP servers that I play on.

On the other hand, the "Variant Dungeons" are abandoned once people get all the nice shiny items. Square-Enix need to realize the concept was a failure.

[CNitsah]

I would agree the lack of something like Eureka or Bozja in EW or DT (I think they don't have plans... unless the "Cosmic Explorer" thing falls into this) is a let-down.

They announced one, the bermuda triangle thing that was mentionned in one of the early quest of DT. But from how it happened in earlier extensions, it's not happening before 7.25 (nearly halfway through the patch cycle). And as much as I hope this will be a better Bozja/Zadnor, they only communicated about the social aspect of it, people wanting to do things in large group. I can see them doing that while stripping the engagement mechanics to the bare minimum, since they never acknowledge that problem. This one is a big wait and see for me. I hope they will do it right, but I hate being right all the time when it comes to bad feelings.

[WaxSw]

I don't know about the rest, but calling the whole "chore" before raid a boogeyman is severly lacking in MMO culture. That has been one of the recurring complaints about WoW for... ever (I've heard it so many times from so many people while I never played WoW). FFXIV was specifically designed with the idea of avoiding those problems. Adding them would be a betrayal of the promise of the game, No, FFXIV always has been about avoiding gating things behind anything but the msq and that has to stay. Plus I would argue that giving more things to do to raiders (that are a minority) would not solve the problem at all, since the people would still not do it, since they don't raid.

I meant under the context of that argument.
If there is no chores is because XIV devs saw that and decided to avoid those problems not because raiders have the some kind of hold over the content that XIV releases, especially when XIV tries very hard to appeal to a more casual audience.

They just did mental gymnastics to blame raiders for something they are not blame

[Hallarem]

The main problem is that this "MMO" is not evolving. Its repeating the same formula and cashing in, which would be fine.... but its not complete enough to do that. And now that the story is crap the cracks are showing.

There are currently two options. You either are casual or you're an end content person. Generalizing, yes, but this is the options the gameplay gives us.

There is no inbetween content. No heroic dungeons, difficulty either ramps to max or youre doing cutscene dungeons. And you arent even rewarded anything decent for it. Gearing is non existent, you just craft your gear and go. Open world is just a pretty canvas with Soken music and fates littering the map in an ugly fashion.

Vanilla WoW is a well balanced open world game with challenge and well crafted itemization, sweeping questlines and item gathering leading you to raiding.

Wildstar had the best housing system ever made for an MMO

Combine that with the graphics of FFXIV and some well deserved polish and attention, more voice acted npcs, quest types, QoL and more and youd have the perfect MMO. But honestly. My take. This is an MMO designed for Japanese officeworkers. That have 2.3 hours of gametime per week

[TemporalFruitsAndVeggies]

XIV's biggest problem has long been the roulette system, but it's taken several years for that to become glaringly apparent. The roulette system incentivizes players to return to irrelevant instanced content by offering them rewards detached from that content: additional XP and tomestones. Because the majority of this content is tied directly to MSQ progression, and much of it cannot yet be completed with AI party members, there must always be a sufficient number of players queuing for roulettes to prevent newer players from being blocked from progressing.

If they added enough other rewarding stuff to do elsewhere in the game such that too few people were queuing for roulettes, it would be disastrous. So every update just feeds the same content into the roulette system. Every dungeon and raid and trial is roughly the same length, because people would stop queuing for certain roulette types if there were a chance they'd get something too long or too unrewarding. It is a prison in which the developers trapped themselves. That's why the post-story gameplay mostly boils down to something more akin to Deep Rock Galactic than a true MMORPG: a lobby where you queue for a game and then play a little instanced content for 10-20 minutes before going back to the lobby.

The solution? I have no idea. I can't really see a viable way out of it.