The Formula won't change

[Jeeqbit]

I feel like this game is slowly going on a maintenance mode

We have more content than we've ever had. We didn't used to have 2 Ultimates, 3 Variant and 3 Criterion Dungeons, Field Operations, Deep Dungeons, Chaos Raids and misc content like Ishgard Restoration/Island Sanctuary/Cosmisc Exploration in ARR. Their older content like FATEs and hunts didn't used to be as rewarding but now have mount grinds. These things were added to the formula over time, including in recent expansions, but people want to pretend it doesn't exist and say the game is in maintenance mode.

They are not releasing less content or anything like that. People just randomly started saying this. The content formula has barely changed since Heavensward aside from the addition of the aforementioned content, removal of most sidequest dungeons and an extra month between major patches...

If the removal of 2 dungeons constitutes it being maintenance mode for people then they should try other content or suggest what content they'd like.

I believe it is coming not from the actual lack of content, but from a design philosophy that we should not “waste” our time playing this game too much

True. So you do see it from my perspective then.

it has only 2-3 expansions left to live

I don't necessarily disagree on the basis that 3 expansions will take up the bulk of the next 10 years, and that is enough time for the population to change significantly.

But the returner factor is powerful. 30 million adventurers is a pool, from which only 1-2 million are subscribed at a given time. From that pool, different ones subscribe at any given month, and they return without all that burnout. Once a game is popular for long enough, returners can hold it together for a long time (did I mention FF11 is still around albeit in actual maintenance mode?). Also, this game's population used to be far smaller in Heavensward and it was doing just fine then in my opinion.

I want midcore content to be harder. This is a game, but more importantly an mmo, and it doesn’t feel like any of it, so the game must change.

I kinda agree because their casual content isn't genuinely threatening in most cases. The main exceptions tend to be hunts, alliance raids, field operations and deep dungeons. These things actually kill you and you actually see bodies everywhere, yet are regarded as more casual content. And they took it in turns to give only one of field op or deep dungeon for ShB and EW respectively.

When you see deaths from hunts you'll even find mentors and ultimate raiders among them. That's all I want from the casual content. Not to be so hard that we don't kill it, but so that it's genuinely threatening enough that people die to it sometimes.

This is also what made Eureka and Bozja great. The fact it wasn't so hard that you didn't clear it as a clueless player, but that things were threatening enough to kill you.

Part of the problem in a lot of content is also the item level sync. It's good at the gear it was designed for but in practice everyone's gear exceeds it. But I also don't like when it's intentionally designed for tank busters and raid-wides to not require mitigation and attacks are slaps on the wrist.

Weekly restrictions will be applied upon clearing the raid as usual, but only to the role you cleared with.

I suggest the role coffers and role tomes.

Good ideas. We kinda have role coffers already but role tomestones and per-role weekly restrictions are an idea. I think the only problem is really that it would give us yet more currencies and we have a lot.

This game is being advertised as the game where you can play every job on one character.

Is it? It seems like that is how players advertise it rather than SE (but player advertising is huge for this game). It felt like SE always intended us to "choose a main" for the tier but they have acknowledged people play multiple jobs more often now.

People think that if you are a raider you have something to do in this game, but in reality reclears are done in an hour

People are referring to prog. While some people prog through quickly in under a week, a lot of people don't get through raids anywhere near that quick, thus making it long-lasting content for them.