You people can't see the forest for the trees. Do you even have a concept of power creep or a vibrant endgame?


The OP is exactly right. What kept XI alive and interesting for so many years (granted they kinda held onto it all a bit too long and then changed everything in 1 update so it was a massive shock all at once, as opposed to a gradual thing) was the horizontal progression. It's not *just* about validating the effort put into the game; (and just because that doesn't matter to you doesn't invalidate it as a legitimate thing - the only difference between an accomplishment in a video game and one in a sport is that one is more based on physical activity and the other mental, so either they both count or neither does. I'm not gonna listen to any Fascist telling me otherwise.)


It's about having a wide variety of things to do, a REAL "theme park" with something for everyone. Stuff that the casuals or average player can do, and really grindy or hard as balls content for the hardcore player who has nothing better to do (or simply chooses to ignore other obligations lol) than play the game. XI was great for that for a good 7 yeas, with all kinds of endgame content. I'm all for accessibility, don't get me wrong - XI had a lot of problems that I'm glad are gone and don't care to see repeated (in most cases the concepts were good but the implementation was awful. like absurdly low drop rates on NMs. Forced partying is another example, it was a good method but the grind itself was just far too tedious for entirely too long.)


What we're getting with this current design philosophy is effectively just the flavor of the month. The only content that effectively matters is the current patch's, and that is an incredibly narrow and shortsighted approach to design. As the OP stated, power creep will eventually come back to bite them hard as we're all just hamsters on a wheel. The difficulty isn't ever truly increasing, only the bar of entry - to the point that our gear will be so absurdly strong that it'll throw all semblance of balance out the Window. WoW has been struggling with this for a while now, and so is XI with the introduction of the Delve weapons (not to mention how badly the pissed off al the REM weapon owners).


We don't gripe because we're spoiled little children. We're complaining now to get the Dev's attention in the hopes of steering the ship away from the rocks that we're drifting ever closer to before it's too late because we genuinely like this game and want to enjoy it/see it do well.