please give us something to stay in the game! (and keep keep the subscriptions up)

[ruskie]

As someone has said a break isn't necesserily bad but also not always good. And yeah there needs to be more risk taking from the devs in what they implement. Diadem was one such thing - they've learned something from it and will be able to keep that lesson in mind going forward. I love the puzzle quests - the problem comes if things get localized poorly at times for such quests but I'd like more of them.

The Vanu beast quests I enjoyed a lot because it wasn't all about go kill N mobs here or there but more do this, do that, grab this etc...

[Vydos]

I fully agree with the OP on this matter. And breaks aren't helping at all with this game for me. I took one for more than a month. Only to log back in and just feel like the game is a chore, repetitive grind (repetitive grind, in the sense that new content is released that simply replace what we did before).

I need a goal that keeps wanting me to log in and play. HOUSING would have been mine if the dev team did housing right. And I'm sure it would have given lots of people purpose and a goal.
If housing was creating in the way that everyone could buy one if they simply worked hard enough. And were able to move from a S-sized house -> M-sized house -> L-sized house, through sheer effort and dedication. I know I would have spend days, weeks, months just for that.

Not to mention that it would have caused a nice gilsink that this game desperately needs. I'm hearing tons of tales of people not knowing what to do with their millions of gil.

[Aldora]

When reading threads like this, you tend to read messages from players who say that they are getting bored or burned out on the game and that there is not much to do.

In general, if you the same thing over and over again for an extended amount of time, you will get bored of it. If you put every minute of your spare time to do one thing, for instance running dungeons, you will get burned out.

But, that’s pretty normal and something that happens with basically everything you do. Whether or not you’re playing a game or not.

We need something that will prickle our curiosity, taunts and challenge us to beat it. But, these things are different for every individual. Not everyone is interested in raiding, grinding for gear or relics, or collecting glamour sets.

But, what i miss in most of these threads is:

What would you like to have in the game that:

• Peaks your interest
• Challenges you as a player
• Makes you smile/laugh
• Make things unique from your point of view

In short: “What would make you want to play this game?”

The FFXIV team wants to know how you feel about the game and they acknowledge that the current state of the game isn’t where they would want it be and how they would like to address things moving forward.

Saying that things are starting to get boring, stale, etc is one thing, but that doesn’t help them come up with things the players would like to see/do.

There are a bunch of threads on the forum of people saying that they want more dungeons to play, but at the same time people are saying that they don’t want to the same dungeons over and over again. Statements like these are a bit contradictory, which makes it harder to the FFXIV team to know what they should be focussing on.

Right now, they decided to focus more on new types of content. The Diadem, Lords of Verminion and The Feast (PvP) are the first iterations of that “new type of content”. We’ve seen how the Diadem was received and the kind of feedback that followed with it. That’s why Yoshida mentioned that they will we working on large scale expansions of the system with the players feedback in mind.

However, let’s face it. The creation of new kinds of content, as well as implementing feedback received from the players, will take time. It’s up to us (the players) to decide if we are willing to wait for it or not.

Just keep in mind that “Moderation” is the key word here. If you feel like you are getting bored or feel burned out, don’t force yourself to keep playing it. Yes, it’s true what CookieMonsta said:

To hell with this take a break mentality of this forum, seriously? thats how you deal with dissatisfaction?
You guys do realize the whole "take a break" is a terrible piece of advice? many people take a break and never return, and these are usually vet players with much to offer the community.
Instead of telling dissatisfied people to take a break, maybe lets examine why they are dissatisfied?

It is not a good thing to tell people to just take a break from the game if you are not satisfied with it, get bored of it or even burned out on it. But, you do have to take good care of yourself as well. If you are getting bored or burned out, it will only get worse if you keep at it.

At times like that, it’s best to take a step back and think about what drives you. So, again… Stop for moment and think hard about it...

“What would make you want to play this game?”

Write everything you can think of on paper and post it here. Share your thoughts and ideas with the official forums. It doesn’t matter if they are crazy or unrealistic, because something interesting can still evolve from it by brainstorming about it.

In fact, make them as crazy as you can think of. The crazier the better! Be as creative as you can be with your thoughts and ideas!

You might get negative responses, but when you do, challenge them to come up with a counter idea instead. Keep them feedbacks flowin’~!

[Whocareswhatmynameis]

C'mon guys! We all know the real FF14 endgame is Blade and Soul!! or was it glamour? i forget!

[Chessala]

I 100% agree with the OP. I have been playing for about 1 1/2 years now and I get to the point where I log in, look around and....wonder what I should do? Run the same roulettes again? Well yes because what else is there to do? You don't need to cap your tomes to have equipment for most of the end game unless you want to run your head against the wall in A4S.

Which brings me to the point: What is with the badly designed raids? A big point in endgame for ANY MMO are raids, challenging raids that yet can be completed by people. The concept here is Faceroll or overly high dps checks. I liked CT (until the groups became unbearable) and I like VA but they are no challenge. Raids are not running from boss room to boss room only...bring versatility into the raids, make each of them a unique experience.

Which brings me to...being unique. As OP says, there is hardly anything in content that feels unique. Dungeons feels like a never-ending repeat of each other with some exceptions. Raids all feel the same or pointless, FATEs are all the same with some different enemies. And then, to reinforce this, they copy the old relic system 100% on the new one and make you grind the same old things over and over again. There is only so many times you can repeat the same content. Bring versatility into your content - randomize dungeons, include traps, random encounters, optionals that can be completed. Make people actually think and anticipate a dungeon because they do NOT 100% sure what they will experience. Let people run dungeons when they are BELOW the level you assigned for the challenge.

Also - Open World content. How about some invasions in towns? Some settlements have enemies right at their doorstep and all the enemies do is look at the guard and thing "Nah, not bothering!". Really? Give us some massive invasions.

Diadem: nice idea, horrible execution. Diadem should be about nice and casual exploration - it turned into a grind fest as well. This content should have never offered rewards stronger than anything available like this, it ruined the whole idea. Did you really expect people would support and help each other? Please, get in touch with your own community.

RP - Make the game more RP (and ALT) friendly. This is easily done by unlocking content account wide instead of character wide. Right now the game is not very open for people making alts. Make it optional to run through the story again, who wants 2 warriors of errands? Well, if they do they can have it but don't force people to.

Stop restricting every single damn thing. If I want to spent my day grinding the newest tome, let me. You don't actually give the content more longevity by not letting people run it. You can have all classes on one character. What will keep me playing longer: a) being able to grind stuff to equip all classes or b) only being able to grind a miniscule amount of items required every week, making a chore for months? I tell you it is not option B because after I equip my main class, I'll just show the grind the finger.

I really love FFXIV and I think one of the things I can still play it for is crafting and gathering but even those are getting stale (scrip cap, hint hint)....so please, give us stuff to do....so far the Gold Saucer has unfortunately been a huge disappointment in filling that gap.

[KrenianKandos]

I've been reading a lot of threads lately about how the game is dying, the game is stale, the game isn't really appealing to people anymore, and it took a moment to sit down and look at my own gaming tendencies and how they have declined drastically since the release of Heavensward.

Recap: I've been here since 1.0 and have religiously played 2.0 and beyond on a daily basis to the exception of when 3.1 finally hit. I then saw a drastic decrease of play time.

So now, I need to sit down and figure out exactly why, personally, I've come to the point that I barely play and just keep my three month Legacy sub going.

Here's what I feel.

1) The content in 3.0 has not pulled me in like the 2.0 story did. In my opinion, Heavensward is a weaker form of story than 2.0's story. The battle of the Dragonsong War really did not interest me as it based itself off of a place we barely knew and that the entire story feels concentrated to Ishgard and not the whole Eorzea area. It feels like we're pretty much saving Ishgard from itself and not really the world right now. The primals were always a threat to the whole of Eorzea. The Empire was also a threat, and they took a back seat in this expansion to the Dragonsong War. In short: it just doesn't feel the same. I'm not engaged.

2) The content in 3.0 feels shorter than the 2.0 version. 2.0 came out with 50 levels worth of content from three different city-states. That's a lot of content. When I heard that 50-60 would have the same content as 2.0 did when released, I was highly skeptical but I felt like I would give S-E a chance as they've always produced quality stories in most of their games. I feel like the story really did not last that long. The content felt dragged through zones due to only leveling 10 levels and it was pretty dull content. The Moogle area (And if you talk to my FC, you will know that I live for Moogles) pretty much burnt people out and added nothing but fluff story to the entire main story itself. In short: The game, story wise, felt shorter than it was advertised to be. Kinda bummed out but I also kinda expected it.

3) Six months of wait between 3.0 and 3.1 really killed the flow that S-E had introduced in 2.0. They took six months to add two dungeons, a main story quest that was done in an hour, even if you didn't jump the cutscenes, did not really add much of a pivotal fight scene in the main story quest, and just fell flat. I recall each patch I played in 2.0, I would get excited because a new primal with its own story was being introduced in the lore. 3.1? It seriously just felt like a setup for 3.2; a bridge between chapters. It's that chapter in a book that is dull but required to link two scenes together. That discouraged me even more because once the story was done, it was just.."meh". I realized that I honestly have no attachment to any character whatsoever. I'm one of those people who never really got excited about Hauchefant. Felt like he was always there, and yeah, he helped you get in Ishgard and was a good friend, but his death honestly never struck me as an "Oh my gods!" moment. I simply said "Aight, you are killing my allies? Time to go slay you all." The impact wasn't there. The impact hasn't been there for any of the story at all lately. The only impact was the fact that Ishgard finally stated they were the cause of the war which made me go "Well...crap."

4) The change of content being added. I didn't think that the difference between 3 or 2 dungeons would impact me as much as it did and well..it kinda did. Repeating the same two dungeons made me wear out faster than I thought to the point I simply did not run them, no matter what incentives. (Poe tomes to buy relic items, Eso tomes to get gear for other classes.) I was so sick and tired of running the same two in 3.0, that it took me far less time to get sick and tired of the 3.1 dungeons. While I noted that their adventures in new content like Lords of Verminion or The Diadem were brave jumps, they were, unfortunately, poorly implemented. The mini game is just that: a min game. And it isn't even something that I was interested in much. I was expecting and hoping a more "Pokemon" style game similar to what World of Warcraft developped. That would have been far better but they chose this design, so be it. The Diadem had potential. But after doing it twice and realizing: "Wow..I'm in here for 20 minutes and doing objectives which are great...it becomes a grind on mobs for random drops that may or may not be great." It blew my mind just how much of a missed opportunity this was. But this is new, they will learn from this and hopefully, they will elaborate on it to make it decent content. This is a very rudimentary version of FFXI's Dynamis but far less scary.

In looking at all this, I personally came to the following conclusions in regards to my gaming needs:

1) I don't like cap increases. I really don't. You can increase the gear score of gear if you want, but the idea is you need to expand on your world, not make it to a point where you are so focused on leveling that a) you wanna skip the entire story which leads to b) putting poor story in sidequests that no one pays attention to then complains there's no content because of it. You're doing a disservice when you do this to your game because people simply don't care enough to read the text. They just blaze through to get to the cap to do the endgame stuff, thinking it'll be good. By not increasing the cap, you can fully implement your team to focus on the story, and make it so that in key moments, you unlock new skills. Or, you start looking into weapons giving you different sets of skills. I know we all love increasing our power as we are exploring new world and staying the same way just doesn't compute the same, but I think you have tools where that isn't a requirement. Look at FFXI, again: Merits. Merits work by increasing set stats as you gain experience. Make it around 10 levels worth of merits with allow you different options could also alleviate the need that people have to have some sort of flexibility. But, as we saw with the point system for our stats, sometimes it just flops to a point that it's no longer necessary. Bigger people who make more money know better about this so I leave it up to them to think up something.

2) There needs to be longer content when patches release. I'll give 3.1 the benefit of the doubt that it was a hiccup but 3.2 is set in the same fashion as 3.1 in regards to content which makes me worried we're going to get another small chunk of main story and a slew of side stuff. There has to be a balance: yes, give us side stuff to do, but try to keep some main stuff being the main piece of addition when a patch hits. Hopefully I'm wrong in 3.2

There's a slew of other minor issues but I had slew of issues in 2.0 which were bearable. Alexander is subpar compared to Coil. The Anima relic grind is kinda boring, truthfully; after having done the Relic grind in 2.0, redoing it in 3.0 kinda is dull. Doesn't feel like they put much thought in the process of getting the weapon. Just slapped a grind just like any other and they said "Have at it." While I get that, it doesn't make for compelling gameplay. Adding it to do daily beast quests that have been done before and you're recycling 2.0 content in an expansion which isn't really exciting whatsoever.

All of this has made me come to a point where I rarely log onto the game anymore. When the time comes where most of the people including my significant other no longer plays, I'll hang the Roe boots up on my character. I'm not there yet, but 3.2 is kinda of a medium to gauge what kind of direction S-E is taking this game on. I might decide after that..

This got longer than I expected it to be but like I said; I normally avoid the whole "The game is dying, ah mah gawwwwwwwwwwwd." threads. But I wanted to just post my opinions about why I have suddenly lowered my playtime with this game. Hopefully, they answer my questions and reservations in future patches.

[melisande]

I have been playing since 1.0.
The only long term thing i have to show for it is a tattoo, and a couple mounts.
I could delete my character and be back where i am in a month.
This isn't very encouraging, the game needs much more long term goals.

[Instrumentality]

I would like more bosses. Pity the XIV battle team is tiny and nobody can work with them that is any good at it because speaking Japanese is a strict requirement.

[RainDurell]

"We want NEW long-term content!"
Introducing Diadem.
"Wtf Diadem is garbage don't ever do this again Squeenix!"
Introducing new polished PvP for both casual and hardcore
"Im not a PvPer. I played Frontlines once, got confused, didnt explore any further because w/e its not the 'real' game."


... Jeez

[SpookyGhost]

"We want NEW long-term content!"
Introducing Diadem.

How is.. Diadem.. long-term.. exactly? Or do you mean mindless grinding for min/max secondary stats that have extremely minimal effect on your overall DPS/HPS/mitigation? If not that, you've lost me.