Last Popular thread was in July...

[Kerii]

I am not an apologist for the game. There are many things that have been implemented poorly. The thing is, complaints on a forum are a dime a dozen. Less than a tiny percentage of the people playing the game actually look at this board regularly. If people were to really unsubscribe in droves, like you claim will happen, then it would be a wake up call for the developers. After that they may start changing some of the more lackluster practices. To be honest though, as long as people like you are happy to come here and complain, yet keep paying your money until more of what you want shows up then they won't ever care.

[Eidolon]

still curious what kind of crazy vacation have the development 2 months of extra development hell time.

I mean... Ive never heard of it, but is it a Japanrse thing? Like do they have long vacations?

I dunno. It just seems sorta like the cash shop. SE is trying to see how much they can take before players out a foot down.

[Lilith_Merquise]

^^ Especially when it's content that provides pink gear which will get phased out in 3.2 (It's pink gear guys, PINK, you know that is not going to last longer then a patch, wake up) No point in doing Void Ark other then story or boredom because the gear won't be better then raid gear anyway. And nobody asked for Verminion, much less for content to be on hold this long for it... I'm basically wanting 3.1 to drop, just so I can start counting down til 3.2 because none of this content is going to be relevant anyway.... Pink Gear Island Adventure will be for Alex Savage raiders to finally start clearing the content consistently and thats it.

[StrejdaTom]

Snip

I see it in different way.
In my opinion people who care for the game and think it can improve come to forums and contribute. People who don't care about the game or think it is beyond repair/ improvement just unsub.

Yoshi/Devs (whoever) have shown that they somehow care for feedback and want to improve things, unsubbing is kinda the last solution, because many people who would unsub as a way of protest to the problems wouldn't probably come back. Also if 100 000 players unsubbed in a few months and no one said a single thing on forums, devs would have no idea why it happened. Well, I think that even people in SE must realize that there just isn't enough endgame for now (that's probably why the whole airship voyage thing is coming), but they probably rather hear from players "give us more mid-core content, more fc content etc" rather than see people unsubbing with no words.

[Aldora]

And so let them have their terrible gear treadmill to their heart's content, but making it so that there is essentially only 1 EG event in the game.... In 11 you had Dynamis, Sky, Sea, and Salvage for years, til Abyssea came out even even then some of that gear was still worth getting for min/max.

You are forgetting one thing though Lillith. All of those features you've mentioned there were released over the course of 10 years.

• Sky was released through the first expansion pack from FFXI, namely the "Rise of the Zilart", at the end of 2003.
• Dynamis followed about 3 months after that and wasn't well received at that time. It needed another month or two to expand on it and make major changes to the feature as a whole to make it enjoyable for the players.
• Sea on the other hand was released with the 2nd expansion pack, namely the "Chains of Promathia" (which was released at the end of september 2004, roughly 4 to 5 months after the big Dynamis update). The introduction of Sea also brought along Limbus.
• Salvage, Einherjar and Nyzul were released through FFXI's 3rd Expansion pack, namely the "Treasures of Aht Urhgan", which was released mid April 2006.
• The Walk of Echoes was introduced through FFXI's 4th Expansion pack, namely the "Wings of the Goddess", which was released around the end of November 2007.
• After the "Wings of the Goddess" expansion pack, SE took a different turn by releasing 3 "Battle Add-on" (they were not calling it an expansion pack) in the form of Abyssea, which were: "Visions" (released in June 2010), "Scars" (released in August 2010) and "Heroes" (released November 2010)
• And then finally, FFXI's 5th Expansion pack (the "Seekers of Adoulin") was released in March 2013.

The only reason that the content from the first 4 Expansion Packs remained relevant, was because of the fact that during the lifecycle of the "Rise of the Zilarts", the Level cap was increased from 50 to 75 and then stayed like that for a grand total of almost 7 years. 7 years... During that time, the only form of progression we had, was the horizontal progression, which requires a lot of grinding from the players which would make the 2.x relics seem like child's play. Or even camping NM's with insane spawning windows, which are being camped by a lot of people which would make the FFXIV hunts seem hilariously easy.

FFXI players will feel nostalgic to those days and wish that FFXIV would be more like that, but let's be honest here... Do you still want to grind for months in order to get a relic? Would you still camp at NM spawning spots for hours, waiting for it to pop and hoping that you will be able to claim it before someone else does? Because, back then... If you didn't claim it, tough luck. You won't be getting the drop. Better luck next time.

Times have chanced and if SE would even dare mention that they are implementing these kinds of features, the forums would literally be on fire and even more people would jump ship.

Technically speaking the game has been failing for a very long time, AKA 1.0, and only began redeeming its self with 2.0 to standard MMO levels. Then 3.0 rolls around and putting in little substance content into the game basically leaves it where its at and is bleeding out. Also 1 month of waiting isn't bad, when the content you introduce is worth 1 or even more. This content is barely worth a few weeks making the month departure extremely noticeable. If you don't see that I recommend checking que times for content these days, they are pretty gross.

Yes, we all know that people have stopped playing FFXIV due to a "lack of content". Not everyone is happy with every single job the game has to offer, doesn't want to craft or gather items, doesn't want to/can't do Alexander Savage, but that's ok. There is no shame in taking a break and waiting for the next patch to be released.

SE is still working on releasing a patch every 3 to 4 months. However, they took a breather after releasing Heavensward, so 3.1 has been delayed. It will be released around the 10th of November, which is in less then a month from now.

What we know so far about 3.1, is that it's going to introduce 2 new dungeons, a new 24-man Raid, the Airship Exploration (of which its description sounds an awful lot like Sky to me) and add more Main Story Quests. Hard-core raiders who are only interested in running Alexander Savage, will have to wait till 3.2 (which should be released 3 to 4 months after that). But, it doesn't stop there...

We all know that FFXIV didn't deliver what the original team promised their players with 1.0. With 2.x they completely turned it around and build a solid foundation on which they can continue building. They are going to expand on that foundation with the 3.x patch series. The first step they've made was making the zones bigger, introduce flying, the Company Workshop and the introduction of a "Normal"-mode for the 8-man raid. They are working on introducting more types of content for us to play with. The next one on the list is the "Airship Exploration" (which i've mentioned earlier), introduce the "Lord of Verminion" add-on for the Golder Saucer, but also introduce a "Beginner's Hall" (somewhere along the line).

We will get more things to sink our teeth into. "Rome wasn't build in a day". The only question remains: Will you be willing to wait for it?

[Gilthas]

I see it in different way.
In my opinion people who care for the game and think it can improve come to forums and contribute. People who don't care about the game or think it is beyond repair/ improvement just unsub.

This logic has one tremendous flaw: people that are happy with the game don't come to the forums to complain. So don't blame them for leaving when SE changes the game they loved into something else.

Then there's also the fact that SE can't please everyone, so there will always be people that won't be satisfied and will leave.

I think FFXIV is a great game, but the excessive grind that they've put into almost everything prevents me from being able to enjoy all the content and is honestly just frustrating (and I used to play 4-5 hours per day, more in the weekend). So much for this being a casual game.

[zosia]

Please make more poor excuses for this game when people are unsubbing and community participation is at an all time low since 3.0. I would love to see how much more a player can do on its knees for this game.

I am telling you, it does not matter how you articulate your points or how valid or invalid your criticism is.

These forums are full of apologist. This game is miles wide and in inch deep. Just come back in a year or two when the game is falling apart and f2p and bump this thread. Happened with LoTR, it will happen to this game.

[Dererk]

I agree about the gap between content being very big but the majority of the playerbase are casual players, so obviously SE are going to cater to the majority.

I think that that is the real problem. Their making to many easy things that can be done in a day. One hard mode end game content isn't enough.
This all comes back to how gearing up is designed I think.

I see it in different way.
In my opinion people who care for the game and think it can improve come to forums and contribute. People who don't care about the game or think it is beyond repair/ improvement just unsub.

This ^ right here. Its the people who are complaining more about what's wrong with the game who are the real supporters. Yet people keep getting replies such as I think you should take a break, this probly isn't the game for you and so on.

I remember some one posting said Yoshida said that people should probly take a break till 3.1....X_X....if this is true something is definitely wrong here.

[Lilith_Merquise]

@Aldora, yes that is the span of 10 years worth of content, agreed. But lets see here, in the time that 3.0 has been out til now is the same time duration it took for Aht Urghan to release Nyzul, Salvage, Assaults, and ZNMs to be already out. Einherjar didn't come til a while later, but just that content alone formed the bulk of FFXI EG content that lasted at least 3 years! What content has FFXIV introduced that lasted a year?.. As for camping NM's, NOBODY is asking for that, what an 11 player IS ASKING FOR is the content that is tried and true.

And your right, times did change, which is exactly why SE essentially phased out NM's of that nature realizing it was a poor model for player retention, and went on to form Voidwalkers, ZNMs, and Pop NMs in Abyssea. Where as this game has essentially none of those and hands out participation awards for mediocre content that makes the hardcore content rewards irrelevant for the extra effort.

[Alahra]

still curious what kind of crazy vacation have the development 2 months of extra development hell time.

From what I understand, the staff had been so busy following through from the re-launch to HW that they *couldn't* take vacations, so they worked almost 2 years straight with no vacation time.