What went wrong? Is it the game or the grenre?

[Zfz]

spend a 5hr play session on one day to mark off one inch of progress towards what you are doing

And therein lies the problem. The game is designed so people feel they're working towards something. They feel it's like climbing stairs and at the top of the stair case lies the fruits of their labour. Hence people want that climb to be over quickly.

Now destroy that staircase. Make that a path filled with enjoyable experiences all the time. That means making the leveling experience what the end-game experience is today. Make the expedition into Sastasha feel and play like we're tackling the Binding Coils. Now instead of wanting that leveling time to be over quickly, instead of feeling you have to spend that 5 hours as a price of getting what you want, you are already getting it, while at the same time progressing towards more of it.

All this focus on end-game make us forget that "end-game" really was only born out of a desire to have more of that "game". It's the "one more turn". Turn 1 to turn 500 ("the game") is the foundation, turn 500 and after (the "end-game") is only desirable because people enjoyed the foundation upon which the extra turns are built.

Nobody is saying we should simply make it take 3 times longer to level. Not at all.

[ApolloGenX]

All this focus on end-game make us forget that "end-game" really was only born out of a desire to have more of that "game". It's the "one more turn". Turn 1 to turn 500 ("the game") is the foundation, turn 500 and after (the "end-game") is only desirable because people enjoyed the foundation upon which the extra turns are built.

Nobody is saying we should simply make it take 3 times longer to level. Not at all.

This is evidenced by the playstyle that EQ had... even high end players spent lots of in game time grinding (socializing in parties) for AAs. The end game gear made that a bit easier... and while we raided most nights... most days we were just sitting in groups exping AAs. You wanted to get to max level to be part of that end game community- not because there was a tangible "finish line" of BiS. In fact, there was no illusion of ever being done... it was all about just making the social groups easier.

[Heavell]

SE, can you do something please....

I've just thinking that i pay a month subs is actually only for 4 or 5 days. After finished coil, ex-primals and CT in a row.... next is 6 days waiting time.

Please, can you make one big expansion but without adopting current system. Just don't listen to casual players who whining too much because it's hard, too much time consuming, want have same gear like hardcore players, etc this time.

I feel like i'm on kid's playground where each 3 months. i'll get 1 new stuff and need to play it for another 3 months but actually i only can play it a day each week

[Kyri]

oh man i remember in xi when just seeing someone in full rdm af was drool-able and worshipy. If you wear af here it's a laughable and kickable offense. I -cried- happy tears when I got my rdm af2 hat after years of trying for it. Now the only thing im missing is full BIS gear for my already ilv 90 jobs and that's not that awesome as 80% of the population has it. Im not into fates so I haven't touched Arcanist yet and I miss exp parties.. not fate parties where the whm casts stone and never heals and the pt is 7 pld/wars. Where challenge isn't lag or if you can get to odin in the 1 minute hes up... Ex primals were a step in the right direction but even then I don't really find Titan fun at all.. more like crossing your fingers and hoping that this 89th party of the week has what it takes to dodge. This isn't the type of hard I hoped for

[AjoraOak]

FFXI's gear was neat in that it added bonuses to your abilities and that gave people reasons to keep their AF/random gear with good effects even if the stats weren't the most amazing. That kinda concept doesn't fit well with a gear treadmill based mmo though so they couldn't even keep the AF bonuses from 1.0.

[Zezlar]

All I know is though is that lately my friends list has went from people being online all the time to nobody logging in at all. This game has a serious problem with compelling people with lasting content.

[zdub303]

All I know is though is that lately my friends list has went from people being online all the time to nobody logging in at all. This game has a serious problem with compelling people with lasting content.

This too, regardless of game design choices, 80% of my friends list doesn't log in any more, i'm probably going to delete about 75% of this list here soon when I have the motivation to manually delete each name.

I just left 6 linkshells that haven't had a person speak in them for weeks. I'm down to 3 LSs now. One for my FC, one for my static group, and one for the 'hardcore' players on the server. Everything else is dead. Crafter/gatherer LSs are a joke now with so many omni-crafters in game.

I'm not saying the game is dying or anything like that, but its really starting to feel dead to me considering 4 out of 5 people i've played with and added to my friend's list are no longer logging in.

[Priya]

All I know is that after sucessfully clearing many heroic and hard mode raids in WoW and Tera and knowing I can dodge...getting hit by stupid stuff seems like a waste of my time. So does "instants" not being instant and CD's being used but not landing.

I'll resub when the game is more responsive. I don't mind the slow combat, but I do mind when my commands don't register as they ought to.

[Welsper59]

All I know is that after sucessfully clearing many heroic and hard mode raids in WoW and Tera and knowing I can dodge...getting hit by stupid stuff seems like a waste of my time. So does "instants" not being instant and CD's being used but not landing.

I'll resub when the game is more responsive. I don't mind the slow combat, but I do mind when my commands don't register as they ought to.

While I get what you're saying, it's not "as they ought to" so much as it is "as I want it to". The game is clearly designed to be intentionally focused around the animation. For better or worse, that's the way this game was made. It's wrong to say that they are wrong to design it that way (it's the way they wanted the game to be).

[Grailer]

I want my shiny TREASURE !!!! At end game I rarely get treasure for my character anymore . THAT IS WHAT IS WRONG .