My friend the "content locust" :(

[Doo]

Compared to other MMOs (and despite how adamantly a few people whine on this forum), FFXIV is extremely lenient with how it limits your progression. So unlike other games where you simply get bored because it's too time consuming to get anywhere else, FFXIV just opts to give at a fair pace until it has nothing left to give but Coil runs.

Maybe it's just not FFXIV but just how most recent mmos are. They make it so easy to get everything done that everyone leaves, the game goes f2p, and everyone looks forward to the next hyped mmo.

[Thorauku]

Alot of the contents here are meaningless, that's why players tend to get bored fast.

[Namasu]

The base game is solid and the content + future updates have the potential to be long lasting. Right now, I'd love to be able to challenge T1-5 over and over again with fc members outside of my static group. I already know that the T1-5 lockout will be removed in 2.2 but I want to acknowledge that it's a good step in upping replayability for players who are endgame focused. The dev team is obviously taking the heat from complaints about the lockout and this is a great response but I would not want to wait another 6 whole months to see coil 6-9 lockout removal. That's just ridiculous at this point. At most remove t6-9 lockout by 2.3, but I'd think the sweet spot should be 2.25.

Now onto the can of worm. My main concern for the content development cycle basically come down to this: Crystal Tower will worthless aside from vanity. People are already beginning to realize that they can farm T1-5 all day next month so why bother doing CT? Aside from getting that housing item and gears for vanity, there is absolutely little reason to go to CT for progression even on an alt (not to mention you are limited to 1 loot per week and there is no mention of limit removal next patch). Many veteran players and I will probably tell all new players to just gear up with darklight + relic then go to farm T1-5.

So by the next patch, the first set of CT raid will be effectively invalidated in my opinion. I won't be running it anymore and neither will most of my fc members. If our train of thought fall along with other fc's then we will see a ripple effect and CT queue wait time will be longer and longer until everyone just give up and it will take 2~3 hours to gather 18 poor newbies.

My solution? I don't have one, but I'd like to make a plea to everyone who've read this to also voice their concern about CT soon. We all know that the patch cycle alternate between each set of coil and CT with CT always expecting to be behind Coil in term of ilevel reward . So even in 2.2, we will still be happy grinding coil 1-5 to complete our alts and main classes. That would make coil 1-5 content potentially lasting for 6~9+ months while CT will be a ghost town after being out for measly 3 months. If CT contents will be invalidated so fast then I think that it's a big mistake for the dev to focus on this pattern at all and they should start making major changes.

[Kelvani]

I've played a lot of MMORPG's. and believe me when I say this is nothing new. People who level fast get what I like to call "End Game Syndrome". They have burned through the content before the next expansion hits, and the drive which propelled them is now.. unfocused leaving them with a sense of discontent. Its kind of like that feeling of anticipation you get on Christmas morning as you look at the unopened presents. The sense of anticipation, the excitement, the hope that it will be all you wanted and more... vs Christmas afternoon when the presents are opened (including the obligatory ugly sweater from aunt Gertrude) and the meal has been eaten. Its not like the real world, where you can set yourself a new goal to refocus your drive on. Instead, you wait for expansions hoping for the kind of content you personally are interested to be doled out.

I have often thought game designers need to find a way to involve these players more in the game. Maybe recruit them to host events. Maybe use them as beta testers of new content. Maybe start a think tank with them. Maybe even make them in game consultants where new players (and older clueless ones) can ask them questions and get help.. a guide program if you will. Regardless of what the devs do.. or don't do.. this never ending cycle of reaching the end content then being bored will continue. Its just the way it is for some players.

[Lumiin]

People who level fast get what I like to call "End Game Syndrome". They have burned through the content before the next expansion hits

But that is how THIS game is designed. Yoshi said himself 1-50 is suppose to be fast, he wants to rush you too end game. He also said this game is "more casual than ever" so the time sinks of battling rng isn't there. Just a casual token system. You can't help but to devour all content because he made it easy and a casual's game. This isn't the player's fault.

I've said it a thousands times before i'll say it again. I've played several mmorpgs where they only get ONE expansion a YEAR and I have never seen a "not enough content" or "Omg stop playing so much!" thread/comment. Because those games have proper time sinks and they aren't facerollthrewmykeyboardatawallthendippeditinpaintwhilepickingboogersoutmynose easy.

[Dazd]

Most of the stuff listed in the OP doesn't even count as "content." Leveling a chocobo is not content, it's just another boring grind, the fact that there's going to be future GC ranks is moot because there's nothing you can do about it now, leveling other classes is not content, especially if you don't have an interest in said classes. The only actual content mentioned is PvP, which again is not everyones cup of tea, so telling someone they haven't done everything if they aren't a PvP player is also a moot point.

Anyway it's not so much a lack of content that's the problem it's the poor design of the game itself. Combat gets boring fast, there's no real difficulty, and nothing in the game lasts for more than 6 months so it mostly boils down to "what's the point?"

[Dreamer]

Content locusts are the fault of the games themselves, not the players. There is a reason we're seeing a lot more sandbox gameplay oriented titles in the pipeline. A constant stream of railroad content is nearly impossible to do, unless you implement massive grinds. You can cheat by using time-gated content (this is the method that FFXIV utilizes; GW2 does partially as well), but it's no substitute for real player-driven content. This is also why roleplayers tend to be the longest subscribers to games like this - they make their own game, so to speak.

[Niko_Kishiko]

There is a reason we're seeing a lot more sandbox gameplay oriented titles in the pipeline. A constant stream of railroad content is nearly impossible to do, unless you implement massive grinds. You can cheat by using time-gated content (this is the method that FFXIV utilizes; GW2 does partially as well), but it's no substitute for real player-driven content. This is also why roleplayers tend to be the longest subscribers to games like this - they make their own game, so to speak.

This. They need to add more sandbox elements. I'm not saying give up the themepark completely but it would be nice to have more freedom to make my own adventure instead of playing so much on rails. Maybe add a zone that has no quest hubs, the zone could have random NMs or HNMs spawn or have them spawn during certain weather. Maybe they could allow dueling in the zone and maybe mats that would drop from monsters in the zone that crafters could combine to make new vanity items or something.

Another thing that could help would be a card game in xiv. They could make it work remotely on the vita too. Maybe you could find rare cards in the world by defeating nms or something.

[BlueMage]

Even WoW goes through these phases, where everyone burns through the content they enjoy, and then leaves/hibernates until the next patch. I don't like it, but its the nature of these kinds of games (WoW style MMOs), which revolve around a linear consumeable content ladder. You "beat the game" and then you feel done.

People saying stuff like "Have you done every FATE and leveled every craft class!?" don't seem to comprehend that people only want to do what they enjoy, and when they run out of that, there's nothing left to keep them in the game. Its like saying "Keep playing FF10 to see how long you can run around in circles without your thumb getting tired! That's infinite content right there!"

[Roris]

He's right, there's no point leveling chocobos unless you want to solo SB and even then the more ranks you get the less time you can have them summoned so by the time you reach rank 10 you can only have them out for 15 minutes, yes it's that bad. About the other stuff, there's also really no point in future proofing for the expansion when it's very likely they'll add the Echo buff to everything so new players can catch up in just a month after it's released.

They messed up hard on progression by having just two clear upgrade options and one of them only matters in a dungeon you can only run once a week and already invalidating all pieces of other content. This is a side effect of removing additional stats like Enhancing Healing Potency, Enhances Jump and what not and also relying in just two pieces of content where that relevant gear drops: primals or two weekly locked dungeons, because grinding tomes isn't really content and it's a reward for doing content. Then there's also the fact that we're still missing Skirmish, Hamlet Defense, Chocobo Caravans, Faction Leves, Beastmen Stronghold coffers, NMs, content that was in 1.x and not all necessarily instanced and that offered more variety of sidegrades, sure some of those might not have been that fun but they could have revamped it like they revamped a lot of other stuff.

I agree there's really so much content that the devs can produce at any given time, but it's discouraging when most of it seems to be focused on just dungeons and primals and there's not enough open world stuff or just different types of content, again as an example Skirmish was a fun timed gauntlet against multiple NMs or Hamlet which brought together crafters and gatherers, you're still killing stuff but they offered varied ways of doing it and a creative team should have no trouble coming up with sometime good right? I'm not saying that dungeons and primals themselves are bad either, just look at Pharos, it's a good dungeon but it just doesn't offer anything that makes you want to do again and again over other dungeons that are shorter and more straight forward and offer the same rewards, because really currently the main purpose of endgame dungeons is grinding for tomes and pocket change, there's nothing else worth getting from them aside from maybe the rare minions or housing materials.

Doing stuff only for fun is ok, you can find fun in anything but a lot of people like their time being worth something and this is a videogame and mainly an RPG so they'd also like meaningful rewards and a bigger variety of places and ways to obtain them, at least that's just me and sure because it's an RPG that means there will always be an item that's mathematically superior to everything else and in theory should be the hardest to obtain, but having that item locked behind a once a week barrier also leads to people only playing a day or two and once again thinking there's no point in doing stuff, nevermind that they're removing the locks eventually but you can be sure the next tier will also be weekly locked and thus the cycle will repeat.