FFXIV is becoming a grind fest with little enjoyment.

[Kosmos992k]

Have you read what you have written?

Yes, I have. The question is, did you. I refer you to tbis specific point;

I think that the biggest problem we have is that Yoshi-P and his team give the players in general (and NA in particular) much more credit than we deserve. They create content that in an ideal world would be great for players who react as they predict. The problem is that their prediction of player behavior is just too optimistic.

Yes player behavior could be predicted, if you assume the worst case scenario, and design for that you end up with a very different game than what we have. The problem is that Yoshi-P and team have a vision, and a more rosey view of people than is realistic. However, I have a hard time criticizing people for being optimistic about others.

[Iromi]

Lot of good suggestions in this thread here. I agree though with a lot of them...especially how Yoshi P needs to stop the "stressful" thing and start to put in some interesting stuff...

I dunno why they don't...sigh lot of my friends quitting too and not coming back, they went back to their respective games. I never have anything to say to keep them anymore because I know content has been lacking for quite some time now. Also agree with the elemental wheel. Man...there is so much good things they could take from FFXI, heck even 1.x had interesting stuff....

[Evangela]

Grinds aren't the problem (MMOs are literally built on "the grind"), it's just the reward to them doesn't make it worth it and the activity that you are doing is so brainless that it feels like assembly line work... monotonous and repetitive.

Doesn't mean it's a good thing in MMO. It's the reason why MMO is not as popular as it used to be in early 2000's anymore. Games like DotA, LoL, HoN, Counter-Strike keep the players playing the games because it's very fun to play, while MMOs in the other hand are still trying to keep the players with time-sinking content. I want to see FFXIV to be the MMO that make people subscribe because of its entertaining content, not just repeat the same mistakes that other MMOs done.

[StrejdaTom]

I personally don't mind the grind, I mind the rewards.
Probably every MMO I have ever played was built on grind, but you were always rewarded with gear with special stats, set bonuses, randomised special abilities etc.
The closest we got to that was Diadem, which really isn't worth the time for me as I have i210 ESO/AS gear and even the best Diadem gear would mean only a very very small improvement.
There are and always will be two camps, one camp is against deeper itemization and stuff like special stats and abilities (simply because they are afraid they wouldn't be able to put enough time into it to get such items) and then the camp that would welcome it. Untill we get some kind of a poll I really don't know what the majority wants..

[Galibier]

Everything in human society is built off of prior influences, but becomes "new" when it advances...
XIV is not even close to this gray zone. It is point-and-click auto-target non-interactive meter-balancing "combat", in exactly the WoW-clone style.

Universal is in a weird state. It's part "standard" theme park, part Disney clone, Stop sidetracking /snip!

I and others are NOT side tracking. To you a video game is clearly only about the combat. You made the claim "WoW clone" we are just calling you out on that. I play only games where I feel I get cool combat AND story etc along side. irl I get enough combat, I want other stuff to distract me so maybe I see the rest of the game where you do not. You all but admit here that your issue is with a point and click interface. That one similarity does not make a clone... it makes you first line I bolded and underlined. That is it.

[Nalien]

Untill we get some kind of a poll I really don't know what the majority wants..

Oh damn, that's something they really need to copy from XIV, as in 1.0... When Yoshida commented that he didn't need polls anymore, because he had the forums for feedback, I was honestly amazed... He doesn't seem like a stupid man, but that comment was just... Well it was incredible, for the wrong reasons... As if everyone uses the forums. As if these forums are in any way coherent... "71% want X, 17% Y, 12% Z" sends a very clear message, making sense of these forums? The work of madmen. No offense, Community Reps.

Lords of Verminion is perhaps the perfect example. When that April Fools joke hit, people begged for it, and people got it, and many (at least on the western side of things) didn't really like it... Too much complexity, amongst other things... There was no real feedback on what people wanted from Lords of Verminion, and it was essentially just a vocal minority asking for it. Had they done a poll though? Then they'd know how many would actually play it. They'd know what kind of content people would want from minion battles (and I can't help but guess something more akin to Pokemans would have ranked far higher than Verminion). And so on. They'd have solid information, to go over and interpret, and make the ideal piece of content as a result.

Lol, have you seen how the hairstyle contest went?

It was based on which you "liked" last, rather than total # of like ... or a poll

This forum has no proper polling method, and a serious poll shouldn't even take place here to begin with, since only a minority visit the place. Should be an optional survey somewhere around log in, that way at least everyone can have their say.

They did proper polls in the past, and it lead to a fairly successful launch. The fact that they've since abandoned doing them, and are arguably still working off very outdated results (IIRC, Dark Knight ranked highly on what Jobs people would like to see way back when), is really quite worrying... They took their tiny playerbase back then, got consist and meaningful information from a poll, and made A Realm Reborn with it. Then they got far more subscribers than they could ever dream of, and they stopped caring about player feedback.

Sure, they listen here occasionally, and sometimes give us feedback, but that isn't player feedback, that's forum feedback. They have no idea what their current playerbase wants, because they've never asked. At best, they know what the forum wants, but as highlighted by this and every other thread, the forum wants different things. They have no meaningful way to determine what content they should work on. How do you make heads or tails of some of these threads? "Some people want this, and some people are against that idea", that isn't remotely useful information.

They only listen here occasionally, too. If they listened here all the time, do you think we'd effectively have Atma again? This forum hated Atma, I imagine a poll would have reinforced that view, but they didn't do a poll. If they did a poll they'd have to act upon it, they'd have no excuse for adding it in again when the poll clearly shows everyone hates it. Instead they "listened to the forums", and conveniently turned a blind ear when it suited them.

Doesn't even need to be a bulk poll like 1.0s, since I imagine that would be hell to work through given the games newfound success. This game doesn't even have a "Why are you quitting?" poll, something like that should be absolutely essential to any MMO, heck any business. If there is a trend in why people are quitting, you absolutely want to know what that is, so you can address it to retain/win back customers. Instead they spend their time making Verminion trailers... Sigh...

[myahele]

Oh damn, that's something they really need to copy from XIV, as in 1.0... When Yoshida commented that he didn't need polls anymore, because he had the forums for feedback, I was honestly amazed... He doesn't seem like a stupid man, but that comment was just... Well it was incredible, for the wrong reasons... As if everyone uses the forums. As if these forums are in any way coherent... "71% want X, 17% Y, 12% Z" sends a very clear message, making sense of these forums? The work of madmen.

Lol, have you seen how the hairstyle contest went?

It was based on which you "liked" last, rather than total # of like ... or a poll

edit: They did have a poll by using the lodestone for where the EU fanfest should be held. This was also done not too long after the hairstyle contest. http://eu.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/topics/detail/267bc3e8a39f10cf6864c8564bc9d439da61290e

They can do polls if they wanted

[Dyvid]

Oh damn, that's something they really need to copy from XIV, as in 1.0... When Yoshida commented that he didn't need polls anymore, because he had the forums for feedback.

Yea, I wondering this too. I"m sure it's easy on the JPN side of the house where the dev can just openly read post but how much does English, French, and German post actually filter to the devs? I do think we should have some kind of poll every January asking us how we feel about the game and how we feel about the devs idea on where they want to go. I still use the age old tradition of [dev####] for my suggest post but not sure how much good it does.

[Mixae]

I'm just going to say compared to another certain game with begins with W my SO plays, at least this game has constant updates and the devs implement changes based on what we say. Would you guys rather play a game with no updates for basically a year? None of the other MMOs are so good atm either. Wildstar is very fun but I think endgame is like eh? Once again not a lot of bigger updates. The rest are pretty poop or free to play so. o.O Maybe it's because I don't no life this game all the time so I haven't leveled everything and finished all the quests...I think there is some things from WoW I'd like in this game though. But again, that game is a lot older and so are the other games so those features were added in gradually. I remember when ARR came out I literally said "This game is perfect for me any changes they do to it will be a bonus." But that's my opinion.

[Whocareswhatmynameis]

I'm just going to say compared to another certain game with begins with W my SO plays, at least this game has constant updates and the devs implement changes based on what we say.

Ya this game is very fun until you get towards the end on a couple jobs, then you start running out of things to do and the boredom starts to set in pretty hard.... Such is the life of "casual MMOs." I don't think its a fault of FF14 necessarily, but the consistent dumbing down of the genre. I miss the oldschool MMOs where you just flat out couldn't run out of interesting stuff to do.

I think a big reason the boredom came quicker in HW is because 50-60 was way faster than 1-50 was, also the way raids were set up wasn't great with one roflstomp mode and one impossible mode.