"Play other Games" and what comes next

[Gurgeh]

So...
Subbed and played for (over) 4 years straight. Had a wonderfull time taking three years to get form ARR to end of ShB , 'just' in time for EW.

I've now unsubbed twice in... well 2 months. Unsub, wait a month, resub, and unsub at the end of that month's sub.

I've posted before about why I left the first time. (all friends gone after clearing but discouraging EW Exs and huge difficulty jump, 7 week Singularity unreal prog burn out, casual drought of EW, and then the DT MSQ and almost a 'promise' of more drought. Having to tear up estates and leave remaining hope of those friends to flee a Chaos DC with few people ever logged on who even all casual unlocked. And only a promise not to expect cross DC PF for now.)

This time, I only came back for a reason not related to the game. At the end of the day I have intermittent motor control issues, and I needed to test that. Gaming is a good way to see how well I am. But hey while I'm here lets clear Ex3 and try Chaotic (Well you can imagine how that went for someone who'd rather help people clear Icicles for the first time, than join a moody Ex farm abandon group. Something for which I get not a single Helio tome, not 1 gil. And people wonder why I'm gil poor.)

So I'm off to play other games. So when will I be back?

Well, I'm not paying £9 month sub+retainer just for some single Extreme.
I'm not paying £9 for some single alliance to sleep walk four times in the month.
I'm not paying £9 to spend any time farming boring casual rouls for gear with no social connection to keep me going, and not even a medium term reason to do anything. I don't care what content I need its tomes for gear for.
I'm certainly not investing heart in building connections because why will I stick around then if I'm not now.
I've got no pride in my little lala character now. So, there is just no grinding to collect anything I care about. Not minons, certainly not glam, not mounts, not emotes, not relics (see glam). My char is dead to me, this needs to be a divorce. Best thing. I'll just keep our meetings cordial if we have to meet.

So wait and save stuff up?
I don't find any casual stuff fun once party average item level hits around min+10 (if that)
I'm not interested in any High end content that's not still in the High end tab. (see item level)
Also, I basically only like fights if I can first take them as far as possible blind. I don't know how easy that is to do once a fights been out so long its dropped off high end.

continued...

[Gurgeh]

So what would I be prepared to come back for?

Think of how much a months Nextflix costs and what you get to consume for that. Think of the experience you get from an offline £30 indie game 'with no social'.

I'd come back for one of those Ex instances for about £7 absolute MAX not another 99p more. But, I need to be fully condifent I can get fully geared as though I'd never left. Which I can't be bothered to let anyone 'prove' to me is how the games gearing works. E.g. if Latest Tome gear and enhace and materia is what I could conceivably be wearing, thats what I need. Weapon too. 1 weeks gearing. 2 weeks prog. 1 week margin. And I don't have more than 2 hours a night to spare.
Honestly even without a cap, I just don't want to do any OPd casual instances. Not even 7 days worth. I'll do each instance once. New instances only. That's it. I'm logging in getting it done, and getting into Ex prog where there is reason for me to engage with at least some fellow players.
I might come back for normals, but the only reason to do them more than once is to gear. But gear for what now? I'm not paying another £10 for the 1 Extreme that comes after it. And I'm not saving it up to do it with others when its no longer high end.
This is not my world anymore, and I don't want to log in and "just spend time in it".

Well that can't happen.

I just cant imagine how this is going to work, now that the social part of the game is gone, and I'm not developing my character and all I've got left is 'playing' the encounters, and some OP casual conent that I don't really enjoy without the social and feeling 'invested' in the community/sprouts etc.

Why did I post this? In case SQX might be concerned there are others like me, and finding out empowers them to want to change something.

Take care all. Loved you. (for the second time)

[Kaurhz]

Honestly, I would say a lot of people that are still subbed, are subbed largely because of friends.

For myself personally, I probably would have gone on a long-term hiatus by now, if not for the fact of friends that I still have that are still playing and progressing. I think when it comes to most things that the developers try, I feel like they are largely creatively bankrupt, and/or directionally/strategically confused. - What I mean by this is from 1 expansion to the next, they don't seem to know what side of the fence they want to go for, or at the very least seem wholly incapable of balancing what they produce with the feedback they receive.

For what it's worth, I don't think there's a care in the world. If there were, they wouldn't need to be asking why peoples' friends are unsubbing or not playing the game.. I say this because if they cared they would have discovered the reason well over 4-5 years ago.

[CVXIV]

if you spent as much time making gil as you do baiting the forums, you'd be a gilionaire
seriously, it doesn't seem like you enjoy ffxiv at all, so what even brought you to the game in the first place
if you're not willing to engage with anything, or try to make meaningful connections to other players then what's the point

[Dastan]

People really misunderstand that quote. This is not a game meant to drop content every month. There's a reason why stuff only comes out 4 months at a time and tbh they could take even longer if they wanted to. When you are tired of playing this game, yes, it is probably wiser to go and do something else in your life. This game is really not meant to "no life" it, and yet we see people with complaint after complaint about the lack of content. They just don't want to do that. That's what the decision is. So you can continue complaining or literally use your time for something else. The devs don't want people to play until the point of becoming frustratingly exhausted. If you are not having fun, nobody is going to hate on you for leaving. That's the point of them saying that.

[Gurgeh]

People really misunderstand that quote. This is not a game meant to drop content every month. There's a reason why stuff only comes out 4 months at a time and tbh they could take even longer if they wanted to. When you are tired of playing this game, yes, it is probably wiser to go and do something else in your life. This game is really not meant to "no life" it, and yet we see people with complaint after complaint about the lack of content. They just don't want to do that. That's what the decision is. So you can continue complaining or literally use your time for something else. The devs don't want people to play until the point of becoming frustratingly exhausted. If you are not having fun, nobody is going to hate on you for leaving. That's the point of them saying that.

I think your right. And I'm not sure I've seen it that clearly before. Thank you.
It's why my friends left too at the end of the day. And that's the way it should be for the same reason.
(Got this nagging feeling if joined Light rather than chaos, that this wouldn't have happened. Though.)

Cyrus, you've spent too much time on Reddit, twitter, and Farm parties, and it's made you cynical.

If you've thought I've sounded rather too upset and emotional. Yup. That would be accurate.
I'm cynical too. Not because of twitter though.

[Jeeqbit]

You brought up Netflix. Here is how I use Netflix.

I do not care about 99.9999999999999% of the stuff on Netflix. When I first got it, it was just stuff I'd seen repeated on television for years. Old comedies, films everyone has seen by now, etc. Now it's original content I also don't care for usually.

If they do add a single program I want to watch, I subscribe for 1 month, watch it, then unsub.

Often programs on streaming services are released 1 per week to keep you subscribed for multiple months. But you can obviously work around that by waiting for it all to be released, then subscribing for 1 month and binge watching it.

So you see, you can do exactly the same with this and don't need to stay perpetually subscribed here either. Up to you, really.

I need to be fully condifent I can get fully geared as though I'd never left.

You seem to be implying you should get handouts of the best gear as a reward for... not playing? Crafted gear is just fine if you're playing that infrequently.

[ZephyrMenodora]

It is harder for casual consistent players / veterans to find value in the game.

I used to play through the MSQ and then unsub until the next MSQ. Then I would breeze through all content I missed by not being on a gear treadmill for 2 years and would end up in the same place I would have been through poetics as I would had I subbed. I started playing regularly since Endwalker and met my goal of having every combat job at 100 outside Blue Mage which I'm not interested in, and only have 2 more tradeskills to go before those are all capped too.

Right now I'm doing an Anima weapon for lack of anything else to do, which...is mostly just farming 18000 poetics through roulettes I guess.

As far as progression, I already have all the 720 gear and am two weeks away from upgrading it all to 730 from coins from the weekly alliance coin. So I have about a half hour a week of actual progression and then...nothing really. I guess I can farm more sets but why bother.

I was kept busy levelling jobs but now that I don't have that, I'm really at a loss as to how to keep interested as a casual. There is no current content that means anything to me aside from 1 weekly lockout 24 man.

They really should have released relic grinds earlier just for something for casuals to do, as we really have nothing right now. I did already max out the Travel Agency from dailies, and also have completed the PvP grind just from the daily roulette alone. So...I guess I wait 3 months for something new?

[TemporalFruitsAndVeggies]

People really misunderstand that quote. This is not a game meant to drop content every month. There's a reason why stuff only comes out 4 months at a time and tbh they could take even longer if they wanted to. When you are tired of playing this game, yes, it is probably wiser to go and do something else in your life. This game is really not meant to "no life" it, and yet we see people with complaint after complaint about the lack of content. They just don't want to do that. That's what the decision is. So you can continue complaining or literally use your time for something else. The devs don't want people to play until the point of becoming frustratingly exhausted. If you are not having fun, nobody is going to hate on you for leaving. That's the point of them saying that.

Well said, and a problem not unique to FFXIV, for sure.

I will say that all the time-gating serves as a somewhat insidious way for the game to keep its hooks in people who are otherwise done with it: fear of not checking all the daily/weekly checklist boxes leads to continued playing, but just checking the boxes is uninteresting, so they complain about a lack of content, because if they're still paying and playing, they should have something interesting to do, and so on.

The solution, of course, is to realize that not capping tomestones, not getting your raid books, not doing your deliveries -- not doing whatever you feel like you should be done -- it's hardly the end of the world. Life goes on, and the game will still be here when you want to play it again, and when the item level cap goes up again, you'll be back on the same footing as everyone who played non-stop during your hiatus.

[Supersnow845]

People really misunderstand that quote. This is not a game meant to drop content every month. There's a reason why stuff only comes out 4 months at a time and tbh they could take even longer if they wanted to. When you are tired of playing this game, yes, it is probably wiser to go and do something else in your life. This game is really not meant to "no life" it, and yet we see people with complaint after complaint about the lack of content. They just don't want to do that. That's what the decision is. So you can continue complaining or literally use your time for something else. The devs don't want people to play until the point of becoming frustratingly exhausted. If you are not having fun, nobody is going to hate on you for leaving. That's the point of them saying that.

People aren’t angry that they can’t no life the game, people are angry that the game goes months and months with literally no content at all. Your threshold for a “slow calming casual pace” isn’t always going to be the same as someone else

When you are taking regular breaks, consuming content at a reasonable pace and are still ending up with months and months of zero content that excuse of “the poor devs are trying to protect you from no lifing the game” rings a bit hollow. Especially when the population nosedived after DT’s lacklustre reception and yoshi p immediately said “please don’t leave lots of new stuff is coming”

Like does he want people to stay or leave because his current messaging seems to be “we want to release content at a pace that puts you on break 10 months out of 12 but also don’t cancel your subscription during those 10 months”