Final Fantasy 14 is starting to lose appeal because...

[Sawamura]

Real problem is SE try please with everyone. While carry those:
Hardcore player
Limit data (FC house is a good example)
PS3 limit issue
Casual player
Heavy lag with open world content (behemoth,odin, S rank, fate)
Player already experince old content or similar content beforehand
Keep Final Fantasy style
1.0 Fail make them extreme careful with new idea. Become limit to them think outside of box.

[KingOfAbyss]

This pretty much. Just take a break and come back in 3.1 if the game is getting stale from the monotony. Once the new content comes out for the added story, new 24 man raid, new primal fight, gold saucer log and event additions, beast tribe quests, open world airship content, and eventually the new relic grinds come out there should be more lively stuff to do again like most other patches.

But that's what we are saying: New 24-man raid, we have it already. Beast tribe Quests, they'll be a refresh of air because things are getting stale for a lot os us, but.. we had beast tribes already. new relic grind: we had one relic grind already.. >.<

This is what lots of people are complaining with.

For sure we'll try all of the new contents, I for one will be very happy with it. 2 'new' dungeons will make those who are capping tomes, a refresh as well (let's hope)

But hey, this is how this game is setup so far. to change everything, we would have to name it FFXIV:ARR-4.0-remasterized

Only a few days before TGS, excited to take my Eyeball floating mount <-- sound better than Ahriman ^^ into the high skies!

[Gyson]

It probably goes without saying.. but you guys don't have to play a game until the end of days. Leaving it behind when you've had your fill is a completely reasonable option. Just because a game only managed to hold your interest for a few years instead of eternity doesn't mean it failed as a source of entertainment.

The problem with a fun game is that you want to play it as much as possible, and with that kind of determination from the players it is impossible for the developers to stay ahead of the curve. Eventually you will consume everything a game has to offer and be stuck repeating older content you've grown tired of playing. You can either patiently wait for new content (which is never going to come out in a quantity that satisfies you) or say "Well, I had a lot of fun for a while there" and move on.

Invest yourself in something else for a while, and possibly come back in a few years and enjoy everything new that has been added since your departure. Except, this time, don't burn through it at a crazy pace in an attempt to reach "the end" immediately.

[DreamAngel-Ren]

The problem with a fun game is that you want to play it as much as possible, and with that kind of determination from the players it is impossible for the developers to stay ahead of the curve. Eventually you will consume everything a game has to offer and be stuck repeating older content you've grown tired of playing. You can either patiently wait for new content (which is never going to come out in a quantity that satisfies you) or say "Well, I had a lot of fun for a while there" and move on.

Invest yourself in something else for a while, and possibly come back in a few years and enjoy everything new that has been added since your departure. Except, this time, don't burn through it at a crazy pace in an attempt to reach "the end" immediately.

THANK YOU!

[Rakeesh]

I remember having a weekly schedule that wasn't always so.. redundant. In FFXIV, it's pretty much log on, do a Roulette, check some ventures, and then log off and wait for tomorrow. In FFXI, it was Dynamis on one day, then Limbus on another, then Einherjar and off to Sea or Sky farming, back to Dynamis and Limbus, then perhaps a free day to do whatever you wanted (like Nyzul Isle, Salvage, Assault missions, ZNMs, VWNMs, etc). And the array of things made it more dynamic. Dynamis wasn't just Dynamis, with one zone that you ran two times a week. One day you were in Windy, then another in Sandy, then maybe Xarcabard or Beaucedine.. or you went into the CoP zones like Valkurm or Tavnazia. Same thing for Limbus. You had Temenos and Apollyon, with multiple variants thereof, all leading to a fight with Proto-Ultima or Omega. And all of this isn't even considering if you were chasing HNMs like Fafhogg, Tiamat, Aspidochelone, KB, Khimaira, Cerberus,etc

And do you also remember if all that content was available on release of the first expansion or was that added during the course of it's lifetime? Same with "or you went into the CoP zones" which was from a seperate expansion than the first one?

Nostalgia glasses are fine and all but try to keep the content comparisons realistic. You can't compare the content of several expansions to the the first expansion of an MMO with no content patches released yet. That's just plain unfair.

FFXIV's problems lie in cookie-cutter builds due to vertical progression and short-lived rewards, and redundancy in the daily choice of activities. It's not that there "isn't enough to do". It's that what there is to do is starting to get stale and uninteresting, because it's always just more of the same old tired thing.

That's what needs to change.

I think it's pretty fun actually. From the descriptions of FFXI of farming months for a single piece of equipment (even if it lasts me god knows how long) that sounds boring as hell. If I want to play an RPG with others with such slow progression I'd find a Pathfinder P&P RPG group and play with them weekly.

It also sounds horrible for new players. If it takes them months to get gear to join the endgame you are expecting a lot of patience from them. And the problem gets worse the further the game progresses. In a system like FF14 the ability to catch up and join endgame is much more convenient, since every expansion is a clean slate.

There's no need for me to have raided the Coils for me to join in on Alexander for example. Which kinda sounds like it would have been the case in a system like FF11.

[Kyri]

Invest yourself in something else for a while, and possibly come back in a few years and enjoy everything new that has been added since your departure. Except, this time, don't burn through it at a crazy pace in an attempt to reach "the end" immediately.

The problem with this logic is that, in a few years, people won't be doing the content you need to do to get the iLvl necessary to do the new things that have been added. In addition, based on the current format, it will still suffer from the fact that you will be required to grind older content repeatedly to obtain the gear you need to grind newer content repeatedly which will make all of the previous grinding you just did pointless.

[Stanelis]

The trick to this, and it's something newer MMO players don't want to hear, is to implement content that has a much longer effort-to-reward cycle.

No, the game need compelling content. If that content is meant to last for a long time then it must bring to the table a lot of thing to do (which must not be mistaken with a lot of stuff to farm). The content in FFXIV cannot last long because the amount of content is very tiny. The longs efforts to rewards cycles are already in FFXIV but on tiny scraps of content (hey 1 M MGP rewards or ridiculously overtuned savage raids).

Back in the golden era of wow there were some awesome content in the game (such as karazhan), which took a decent time to complete while staying exciting, because there was a lot to do. Now, in modern MMORPG, developers try to make players play as long as possible on the tiniest amount of content possible.

That cannot work (well, at least on a subscription based MMO).

[Kyri]

And do you also remember if all that content was available on release of the first expansion or was that added during the course of it's lifetime? Same with "or you went into the CoP zones" which was from a seperate expansion than the first one?

Nostalgia glasses are fine and all but try to keep the content comparisons realistic. You can't compare the content of several expansions to the the first expansion of an MMO with no content patches released yet. That's just plain unfair.

My comparison is completely fair. FFXIV:ARR was launched on August 27th, 2013. That is two years ago, also evidenced by the two-year anniversary "The Rising" event. FFXI launched on May 16th, 2002. By 2004, Rise of the Zilart and Chains of Promathia were already released. How am I being unfair? They have had equivalent lifetimes in making these comparisons. I suppose I could discount activities after CoP as being invalidated by lifecycle, but even then you still had Dynamis, Limbus, Sky, Sea, Zilart HNMs, etc.

It's also quite unfair of you to state that FFXIV has had absolutely no content patches. There have been TONS of content patches. Adding Leviathan was it's own content patch. Same for Ramuh. Labyrinth of the Ancients. Syrcus Tower. World of Darkness. Second Coil. Final Coil. Before the Fall. In all of these patches, old content is rendered obsolete and only the newer content matters anymore. There is no replay value to ANYTHING in this game. This is a statement that cannot be said of FFXI.

[Iromi]

Isnio

Except...we don't really burn through stuff super fast. Again, I've said this a million times on this forum, my BF is a full time engineer student at a demanding NYC university and we still managed to do everything in about 2 weeks. There is no denying this game is very lacking in PvE right now.

Also once most people leave they don't come back. Telling someone to take a break causes a chain reaction usually. I know it did for me, when I went to Tera..guess what, my whole 66 member FC went to tera with me...that is not a very wise thing to do. They need to put in content that has longevity. Lineage II did it, FFXI did it, Tera did it, Aion did it...and this game cannot? Mind you, I am referring to these games during their first expansion btw.

You don't have to play 24-7 but at least have enough stuff to do that a month sub is worth it...atm..it is not...as much as I want it to be, its just not

[Gyson]

The problem with this logic is that, in a few years, people won't be doing the content you need to do to get the iLvl necessary to do the new things that have been added. In addition, based on the current format, it will still suffer from the fact that you will be required to grind older content repeatedly to obtain the gear you need to grind newer content repeatedly which will make all of the previous grinding you just did pointless.

It's been a two years since the relaunch and people are still doing older content. Going forward several more years, and I suspect the developers will have continued to keep older content in the loop so newer players have veterans to play with as needed.

I also disagree with your assessment of the current format in terms of gear requirements. Right now the bridge between older and newer content is easier than ever to cross. When you reach level 50 you're provided with a free set of ilevel 90 gear. That immediately qualifies you (gear-wise) for the expansion zones. It doesn't get any more convenient than that when it comes to meeting equipment requirements. There is zero gear grinding necessary there.

Yes, you still have to "grind" through the older parts of the story, something I see as "continuing to play through the game I was already enjoying anyway". I'm not sure why people refer to that as a grind. If you've reached the point where it's a grind, then you're obviously not having the same kind of fun you had when you first started playing FFIXV. Hopefully nobody tried out FFXIV for the first time and was like "decent game, but man this grind to level 7 has been ridiculous.. how much more of this story and cutscenes do I have to go through to start raiding?". Seriously, when you reach the point where you feel like you're grinding and not having fun playing the game, it's probably time to move on and find something else to play.

Except...we don't really burn through stuff super fast. Again, I've said this a million times on this forum, my BF is a full time engineer student at a demanding NYC university and we still managed to do everything in about 2 weeks. There is no denying this game is very lacking in PvE right now.

If you consumed everything the expansion had to offer in "about 2 weeks", I would argue that you either a) have far more gaming time on your hands than you think, or b) were intentionally burning through the content much more quickly than a truly casual player, or c) are limiting yourself to very specific portions of the expansion.