The Content Cycle needs to break.

[Valence]

"No expansion has launched with a relic since ARR" Maybe they should. "Field op always comes halfway through the expansion." Maybe that's an insane decision and always has been? Yoshi P stood in front of a giant image listing all the content coming to the game in Dawntrail and it's been six months since launch and the only piece of it that released is an Ultimate, content designed for the top ~5% of players. Any other MMO would be raked over the coals for that. Imagine if WoW had talked about how important Delves are and how they're a huge part of the game alongside raids and dungeons, and then announced The War Within wouldn't get any until a year after launch. You know exactly how that would be received.

People have short memories. Anima relics started with 3.15, so projected onto Dawntrail that would be happening right where Chaotic-Trial-Boss-Inspired-From-Alliance-Raids will release in a couple of weeks. ARR Zodiac weapons released in Vanilla.

Relics only started happening later when they decided to tie them up with exploration content (which prior to SB was Diadem, unrelated to relics, and Diadem still happened in 3.1 anyway).

[Kalocin]

I only resubbed for one month and I'm already sick of hearing the Strayboroughs theme for the hundredth time. The new alliance raid was fun but I don't need the gear and I don't really care what it looks like. Outside of that, there's plenty of other multiplayer games out there that I'm enjoying instead of grinding my face in the sand. There's plenty of games out there that are a much better time investment. If all there is, is bite sized pieces of content and there's little issue catching up on gear, I may as well just wait until this time next year when they actually decide to have a reason to resub. Simply put, other than a house being held hostage, there's not really a reason to STAY subbed outside of the obvious top end raiding. I even had more to do during BfA in WoW and that's saying something.

[DynnDiablos]

Since this game is now for logging in and sending out my retainers and that is it, I've found some serious fun playing Inifnity Nikki (which seriously shouldn't be scoffed at it, very well done). I am finding more fun playing gacha dress up than this.

[HyperiusUltima]

Blah blah blah. Casual have shit tons to do, you are just bored of the game.

It’s not that I’m bored(active mainly because FC friends) but rather I’m taking a different lens and looking at it from a new player’s angle. While there are shit tons to do, new players may not want to do it because it’s “tedious” or it’s “boring” to them, or heck; even “too hard” is common for a lot in reference to EX and Savage.

I’ve been playing this game for a long time, but it’s important we call out what the problems are with XIV’s player retention in regards to these huge patch lulls, since while it has felt normalized for a while, the same formula can only work for so long before the playerbase goes stale on it.

In Live Service, it’s important you spice up the experience every now and then and take player feedback into mind. Shades’ Triangle is still a ways off(which will definitely be our holdover unless they somehow botch that bigly) and Chaotic is geared towards EX/Savage Raiders, not your middle of the road Casual Player.

We need an in-between so that there is a pipeline to EX/Savage(which Alliance Raid isn’t it, as much as we want to praise its design minus EW and Crystal Tower Alliance Raids). If anything, they need a different approach to condition people towards it, so it may be time for them to crank out a new difficult of dungeon that isn’t Variant.

[Amarande]

In From the Cold was the peak solo duty design, but because people complained, we now have "Very Easy" mode, and some players use it to skip the challenge in all solo duties entirely.

Difficulty levels actually used to be a common, even almost a normative thing in video games ... then for some reason they became "oh no, no no no, GIT GUD!" demonized.

It's like the older generation of gamers doesn't count for anything anymore and we're supposed to go on, git, move aside and accept Generation Fromsoft as the standard.

(Also Very Easy is a very valid escape hatch in case of tuning issues; especially in the past, there were story duties that were far too disproportionately hard on certain Jobs, and then you have times where major class features got yeeted but the class duties still clearly expected you to have them e.g. Gladiator 30 or some of the Arcanist/Summoner duties ...)

Edit: I think quest design is underappreciated, largely because it can feel tedious when playing multiple alts. What’s exciting the first time often becomes a chore on subsequent playthroughs.

This as well. Replayability is a vital thing in MMOs and I've noticed it's an issue in FFXIV in particular.

Wanna play an alt? Get ready to do all the quests you really hated all over again. Also get ready to reclear all your content with PFs with two left feet because as far as they know you're just another hopeful holding back groups by estimating personal progress too optimistically. No account-wide achievement to link to leaders like WoW (heck, we still can't link achievements in chat at all afaik).

And speaking of PF, it feels like an awful lot of mainline endgame content lately feels ok to bash your head through the first time but becomes an awful chore to farm for rewards unless you shelve it till unsync or you get particularly well-oiled parties (typically only available early on which further fuels the destructive "content rush" and hyper-selective grouping mindsets). Again, replayability issue.

Maybe SE kinda doesn't really want us playing alts anymore even if we buy the full sub? (Several issues go away with one character per player, e.g., the fact that it took so long to get account-wide blacklisting, the fact that alts still aren't very well visibly linked which still allows people to get around social consequences fairly easily, the fact that anti-alt design means people with loads of houses come under at least some pressure to decide if they still want to hang onto that many, the jank of trying to move inventory to alts, the "this premium item is only available on a single character even though often you can only register it once per account" mess, etc. Oh and it would sell more Fantasia, which is honestly MTX lightning in a bottle since it's such an attractive buy for many players while not giving any advantage)

Another thing that made me roll my eyes about the criticisms levelled at ‘From the Cold’ was that people on this forum often ask for difficulty. ‘From the Cold’ explores an old difficulty mod : removing clear quest objectives. To say that it was not appreciated would be an understatement. It's paradoxical to demand difficulty but only expect difficulty that is comfortable for us.

There is certain gameplay people seek out in a game and certain gameplay they avoid. I expect a lot of the issue is that instead of being able to play a definite type of game, MMOs have had an increasing trend towards "you need to be good at almost every kind of video game or you can get off the bus now" and that is what people dislike.

I was caught offguard by the QTE and failed that duty before but it didn't feel awful to me. I liked how the game doesn't hold your hand and lets you explore this foreign and dangerous area....

I think I'm grateful to have experienced it prior to its adjustments? I remember doing the MSQ on an alt and it just didn't feel the same because the quest objectives (iirc) are there to handhold you.

Wow, I don't think I've ever seen anyone praise QTEs before ...

Anyway the rub with IFTC is that the whole challenge lay in having to figure out where things were and what order they had to be done under a time limit with little margin for error. Once you have the knowledge, it is as easy as everything else.

Unfortunately, knowledge as a challenge doesn't really work well in today's media world (which also tends to negatively impact a lot of gaming in general as it seems to be the cause of the trend towards everything becoming a mouse-on-Monster sensory overload fest as when you have Google at your fingertips the only possible skill challenges are physical: I expect this informs a lot of older gamer burnout in particular)

On that 2nd playthrough, the final solo duty in base 6.0...I was so excited for it, but my second run I wanted to prolong it, to see what happens if I die, if there's extra dialogue etc...

And to my shock, I discovered how excessively difficult it was to actually die even if you get hit by everything, everything is disappointingly slowly telegraphed and your HP regen essentially guarantees a win. When I discovered this, I was really disappointed.

This is likely necessary because of class balance - else there would be a return to the ARR situation where tanks and healers basically get a free ride while DPS (especially ones like Dragoon and Bard) find things particularly cursed. Moreover, that was a duty that particularly screamed out "you really should do this with your main" for story reasons as well ...

[Hyperia]

I did some basic number crunching and by my guess, we won’t see 7.25 and our “grindy” content until sometime in June of 2025. Nearly a full year from the launch.

During that time, we will have had multiple EX trials, 8 complete Savage raid bosses one Ultimate and all the casuals get for major content is the FF11 event.

So help me, if the next relic is a vendor bought weapon…. I’ll… I’ll… I don’t know, I’m already in hibernation… it may be time to fully check out.

[HyperiusUltima]

I did some basic number crunching and by my guess, we won’t see 7.25 and our “grindy” content until sometime in June of 2025. Nearly a full year from the launch.

During that time, we will have had multiple EX trials, 8 complete Savage raid bosses one Ultimate and all the casuals get for major content is the FF11 event.

So help me, if the next relic is a vendor bought weapon…. I’ll… I’ll… I don’t know, I’m already in hibernation… it may be time to fully check out.

To be honest, Yoshida seemed to like this idea given we have a lot of jobs currently. If we're going to talk Relic, then the mainstay has to be we need something with a story - not to mention something that isn't a glorified tomestone grind. We DO NOT want another EW situation where we're farming tomestones upon tomestones upon tomestones for our Relic every step of the way because that is a surefire way to flare up playerbase annoyance than repeating what they did in EW.

With Shades' Triangle I'm hoping they decide to do something constructive or new with their systems, since if this foray doesn't deliver then DT might as well be a failure in itself, at least in terms of content being delivered and being varied.

[grinkdaboy]

tying in relics to criterion would have the biggest most scrumptious dub of ew but they decided they wanted ew and now dt to be raidlog expacs

[Hyperia]

tying in relics to criterion would have the biggest most scrumptious dub of ew but they decided they wanted ew and now dt to be raidlog expacs

The criterion its associated savage mode were straight over the top overkill for the target group for the relic. While I enjoy difficult content, my savage static looked at criterion, said it looked cool and skipped out. We decided to finish progging our savage raid instead of progging a dungeon. Needing to have a static and having to prog it shows that criterion was massive overkill. We want harder content, not content made by the savage team.

If they want to give us harder dungeons, how about them letting us pull, not wall to wall, but start to boss for better loot or tokens that can be turned in for goodies? Let the players make the dungeons harder by bigger pulls or even more wild, pulls to the boss and fight them all for even crazier rewards or titles. They dont have to make any new dungeons, only a new mode where all the walls are gone. Yes, that means if your truely insane, start to finish pulls... yea, think about that madness.

[Azurarok]

They dont have to make any new dungeons, only a new mode where all the walls are gone. Yes, that means if your truely insane, start to finish pulls... yea, think about that madness.

The area between the first and second boss of Doma Castle allows for this and it's probably the most fun dungeon pull in the game. The level it's synced to also helps

Unless you also mean the walls between bosses too. That'd be wild