Quote Originally Posted by Evtrai View Post
it absolutely doesn't mean the content was bad or was boring.
Agreed, most of it wasn't bad or boring, especially at first. Though I don't think I could have done two years of Dynamis twice a week if I hadn't had the responsibility of pulling to keep me engaged.

The issue is that for something to stay relevant for a long time, it has to remain rewarding for a long time, and the way SE generally did that in FFXI was to have very low drop rates. There also wasn't all that much variability to the events. Dynamis - Xarcabard the first time was exciting and tense and dangerous. Dynamis - Xarcabard the twentieth time was exactly the same, minus all the excitement, tension, and danger, because you know exactly what to expect from every pull.

It was something they got better with over time, certainly. Each Salvage area had multiple different routes you could take, to engage different enemies and try for different rewards. Nyzul Isle was semi-randomly generated, and no two runs went quite the same.

I'm all for horizontal progression in theory, but:

1. The content needs to be repeatable, without being overly repetitive.
2. The content needs to remain rewarding, without the rewards being too infrequent.
3. The rewards need to be compelling but, because this is horizontal progression, not too significant.

The last point is particularly difficult, especially in an environment like FFXIV's where you can only use a single piece of gear in a particular slot for a particular encounter. How do you ensure that the idea that's better for one encounter isn't universally the best, without getting into uninteresting stats like elemental damage/resists?