Never Make Your Players Have to "Find the Fun"

[Radacci]

All these gates just make it harder for the new players to catch up

except they were handing out ironworks set, to new players, so they could get right into HW.
now you just need to spam alexander for relic and ilv 190 set. soon they will unlock eso gear and void ark.
that's not hard to catch up.

[Andrea]

It's not really the gates that bother me, its more that every patch is the same thing.

New raid/ 2 dungeons to farm for another 4-5 months and a trial. Then you get a random thing every patch (Gold saucer/LoV) thats dead before the next patch even comes out.

ARR was fine for me because patches came at an ok rate to avoid being bored. Since Heavensward we've gotten one major patch. And the majority of that patch is dead already, Looking at you diadem and LoV.

[Archaell]

except they were handing out ironworks set, to new players, so they could get right into HW.
now you just need to spam alexander for relic and ilv 190 set. soon they will unlock eso gear and void ark.
that's not hard to catch up.

Perhaps you do remember that alexander normal was gated too and relic was... introduced late.

I managed to get to i199 in 5 weeks, starting the character the day relic /annoyed me/ was released. But that was only possible due to the Relic/Va/Alex-gate-being-removed, which was quite late in the raid cycle. (The character will still be behind the casual gear level till the new tomes)

The issue is that end game content is gated behind the item level. Things like savage or Thordan require you to be of ilvl XYZ to have reasonable chance to clear or even be allowed in the groups.

Alt jobs and the new players are in the same boat - unable to really catch up with the others due to the gates.

[Vespar]

While I agree with not gating content so everyone can get on the same page, I just wanted to throw in some insight I've discovered over the last 2-3 weeks.

I was growing increasingly frustrated with XIV because of all the hurry up and wait, and lack of story content since the wait between patches was starting to get to me. I decided I'd try playing some other MMO's in the mean time. So I searched some popular MMO's (mostly free-to-play or one's with free trials) and found a hoard of them. I tried a bunch of them but something always drove me to quitting every single one of them. Tera had nice character designs, but its controls and UI were a mess. Blade & Soul was visually pleasing but my first attempt to play it I sat in queue for 3 hours and then upon login was disconnected (never did play it). Tried WoW again after ages; the horribly dated graphics (despite the sprite updates) turned me off it. I went back to FFXI and while I loved it, it's equally dated and the more I played the more I missed my old FFXI buddies who have long since quit, leaving me with this nostalgia factor that just can't be repeated anymore.

My point in all of this, is that while playing several different MMO (many I didnt name here), it gave me a huge appreciation for FFXIV. FFXIV may have its flaws and I have faith some will be fixed eventually, it does so many things right (atleast for me), putting it far in front of the rest of the pack of MMO's in its genre. WoW also has gated content, but I've investigated WoW enough over the past few days to realize that their end game is "hurry up and wait" and do the same daily quest day after day while you wait for a new expansion with rarely any new content introduced in between. Furthermore, everytime you want to play a different class for some variety you have to start back at level 1 or pay your way to 99 (which can be a bad idea if you know jack-all about the class your trying to play or are just starting out)

FFXIV has many great things, and I realize it's not the MMO for everyone, but if you're bored "trying to find the fun", play some other MMO's for a while and perhaps you'll find that XIV is really very polished and way better than many other MMO's out there. Perhaps it will leave you with the same appreciation I now feel for it.

[Radacci]

Perhaps you do remember that alexander normal was gated too and relic was... introduced late.

I managed to get to i199 in 5 weeks, starting the character the day relic /annoyed me/ was released. But that was only possible due to the Relic/Va/Alex-gate-being-removed, which was quite late in the raid cycle. (The character will still be behind the casual gear level till the new tomes)

The issue is that end game content is gated behind the item level. Things like savage or Thordan require you to be of ilvl XYZ to have reasonable chance to clear or even be allowed in the groups.

Alt jobs and the new players are in the same boat - unable to really catch up with the others due to the gates.

you can pretty much always catch up to 20ilv below cap, quite easily, and that's all you need to clear any content in the game.
if you didn't see it, there was a group of people in China, that cleared alex savage 1-4, within 4 days; they were all sub-ilv190; ofc that's really hardcore, but for thordan, you don't need ilv 200+ all you need is the ilv 180 stuff; but at this point it's faster to get alex gear. ofc even with ilv 210, people still suck and fail at most things, so gear is always secondary.
SE has made a point for it to be easy to catch up.
when alex nm was gated, ilv 190 was basically the max, and you only needed the normal ilv 170 tome gear, to clear it.
and when they add ilv 230 primal, all you'll need is upgraded eso gear, which will then be uncapped, so it will be easy to go do it right away.

[Callback]

My point in all of this, is that while playing several different MMO (many I didnt name here), it gave me a huge appreciation for FFXIV.

Funny, playing XIV has given me an appreciation for a lot of the MMOs I played in the past. Many of them originally upset me with their grinds, but their core gameplay was so much more fun than anything XIV has to offer, even with its sub fee. And even despite all of that, XIV STILL has insane grinds that feel even worse than the f2ps because of how dull the actual gameplay along those grinds is.

[CrystalWeapon]

I'm personally taking my first break from FFXIV since early access 1.0 due to how stale things are with the repeated patch cycle content that they've been doing since 2.0. That and I don't fully like how simplified the combat, player attributes, gear stats, and dungeon design is. Every dungeon is just basically (Non-branching path with trash mobs > Boss#1 > Non-branching path with trash mobs > Boss#2 > Non-branching path with trash mobs > Final Boss > nom nom nom new tomes.) I know there is little faith in the problem solving skills of random duty finder party members but come on. Throw in some random solution puzzles so not every dungeon is speed running to the tomes. They shouldn't be designing every bit of non-raid content for the lowest common denominator.

[Zeonx]

Though I am glad the expansion was gated behind a fight.

RMT cannot get to the other cities and spam and that is a big plus on that, something I probably wouldn't change and hope the next expansion is gated also by a fight.

[Vespar]

Funny, playing XIV has given me an appreciation for a lot of the MMOs I played in the past. Many of them originally upset me with their grinds, but their core gameplay was so much more fun than anything XIV has to offer, even with its sub fee. And even despite all of that, XIV STILL has insane grinds that feel even worse than the f2ps because of how dull the actual gameplay along those grinds is.

Obviously this is to each their own. What MMO's you enjoy and your reasons why will always be personal preference. It's just food for thought that if your struggling to enjoy a game you once liked, try other games and if somehow those games make you want to play the old game, then try going back to it after a break.

That was essentially my point in that post. It could be any game really, the reasons I listed were my own preferences, but it works the same for anything.