I guess it's time

[RobbieH]

Let's put some of this in perspective. Right now, I'm only going to talk about "Battle Content", since that's what the majority of this thread is about.

• There are 29 dungeons pre 3.0, as well as an additional 14 after Heavensward.

27 of them are irrelevant making only 2 relevant, which are the ones in Expert Roulette, you can't classify dead content as content, the only reason people would do those would be if part of lvl50 or lvl60 roulette, and they would do one, what about all the others?

• There are Five 8-man Raids in ARR (including one Savage version), and currently two 8-man Raids in HW, with Savage and Normal difficulties.

There are 5 8-Man raids, only one is relevant, others are useless, absolutely no reason to do Gordias at this point, even less first and second coil, and people only do FCoB because it's for crafting the FCoB Deyable glamour.

• There are three 24-man Raids within ARR and its patches, and two post 3.0.

Again only one is relevant, absolutely no reason to do the other raids at this point, even if people were doing relic it takes 5 weeks of it, that is only 5 weeks, and that is if they don't grind Esoterics.

• Not counting Extreme/Hard versions of fights and including Hildibrand fights, there are 16 trials in ARR along with Five in Heavensward

Are you really expecting to create an argument with Hildibrand and use it as content for the raiding scene?

As for Trials even Nidhogg EX is useless, average ilvl, one to two days to get it, what about the rest of the days, what about relic that is a bit grindy and actually is worth it since it's higher ilvl?

Last relevant trial was Ravana due to the ilvl it offered back then, absolutely no reason to do it now unless it's to farm the bird, same for every trial that came after it.

• DIADEM

Really? Do you really want to bring this up as content?

I think it's a bit disingenuous to say the "game has no content", even if we disregard crafting, Golden Saucer, PVP and other systems.

This game has dead content, dead content can't be classified as content.

Crafting is useless, there's nothing to spend money on really, it's just accumulating Gil for what? Then they throw a bone at crafters with each patch so they have something to craft only to make more gil and have bigger numbers, that's crafting.

Gold Saucer is dead, people pretty much just do the Cacpots.

PvP is dead because they removed rank restrictions from gear, absolutely no reason to grind PvP for the rewards, couple of matches you get full set of glamour, mount of shatter is a reskin of ADS that was hard earned of 200 Frontlines Victories.

Palace of the Dead won't last long either, once people get their weapon they go afk in Limsa again, hurray!

There are also a good number of areas and locations in game to explore, although like most exploration content it's most exciting to explore for the first time.

There's absolutely no reason to explore maps, the closest thing there is to explore in this game is the Hunts since you have to check the whole map, once you do quests there's no more quests to do therefor no exploration, beast tribes it's the same thing day and night with little to no exploration.

Where's underwater exploration? Where's Jumping Puzzles like in GW2? I could write more examples, but these are more than enough.

[Atoli]

Where's Jumping Puzzles like in GW2?

If you want jumping puzzles, how about you go do the sightseeing log? Actually, if you want exploration, how about the sightseeing log?!
God, seriously, what is wrong with people that they need a quest to tell them "go here, do this" for every little shitty thing so it becomes "enjoyable" for them? Isn't the whole POINT of exploration to go out and find places you haven't seen before?
Do we need to dump quest markers and a shiton of gear, Gil or whatever on players for every step they take so exploration becomes "worthwhile"? Well sorry, but in my opinion that is actually 100% the opposite of exploration.

There simply isn't any real incentive to run old dungeons.

That's the problem with all the people who complain that there isn't enough content - they ignore 99% of the content the game has to offer because "there is no incentive".
When has gaming become something you do for the rewards rather than the gameplay itsself? Lots of content has interesting or funny mechanics, some are really hard on min ilvl, and the enjoyment comes purely from making it through them, especially with people you are not familiar with. (And let's not even start on how actually, YES, most of that content is totally relevant, for farming mounts, progressing your relic, new glamours, even highest grade tomestones through roulettes, etc.)

FFXIV is like this big, wonderful amusement park with tons of fun attractions, but lots of people exclusively ride on the rollercoaster because it has a chance for you to win a big prize.
They keep riding on only that rollercoaster even when they start feeling sick, and in the end go home and complain what a shitty amusement park it was because there weren't enough cool things to do.
But from the start, they were the ones who limited themselves because all they could see was the chance of getting the prize, instead of just enjoying all the fun experiences they could have had with all the other attractions.

^EX roulette and all FFXIV has to offer, in case that was too outlandish of an example

[RiceisNice]

If you want jumping puzzles, how about you go do the sightseeing log? Actually, if you want exploration, how about the sightseeing log?!

Funny enough, the sight seeing log for Heavensward is absolutely terrible imo. Nearly all the "hints" are extremely generic and without a huge "Visa point here!" indicator, it's more of a hide and seek thing than an actual exploration. And on the discussion of that, the 2.0 sight seeing logs are essentially the same thing except with weather patterns, it becomes less of an exploration and more of a guide that you look up rather than explore.

Also, you can fly in heavensward. There's no jumping puzzle in that regard.

God, seriously, what is wrong with people that they need a quest to tell them "go here, do this" for every little shitty thing so it becomes "enjoyable" for them? Isn't the whole POINT of exploration to go out and find places you haven't seen before?
Do we need to dump quest markers and a shiton of gear, Gil or whatever on players for every step they take so exploration becomes "worthwhile"? Well sorry, but in my opinion that is actually 100% the opposite of exploration.

Don't take it out of context. Aside from hunts and the aforementioned sight seeing log, the world really offers nothing beyond the atmosphere and beautiful scenery. They do nothing with it as far as the progression development or even additions is concerned. They haven't done much with the world is my personal issue.

When has gaming become something you do for the rewards rather than the gameplay itsself? Lots of content has interesting or funny mechanics, some are really hard on min ilvl, and the enjoyment comes purely from making it through them, especially with people you are not familiar with. (And let's not even start on how actually, YES, most of that content is totally relevant, for farming mounts, progressing your relic, new glamours, even highest grade tomestones through roulettes, etc.)

It's a shame that said gameplay is essentially the same thing that we've been doing for the past cycles. Diadem? Killing mobs with little to no mechanics behind it. Aquapolis? Killing mobs with little to no mechanics behind it. Dungeons? Killing mobs with little to no mechanics to it. The very little variation we get is the circumstances behind it, but they've done little to do even that (aquapolis imo being their best shot, if only for the rewards and the doors) and this is ultimately what gives me very little expectations for palace of the dead.

[Lan_Mantear]

That's the problem with all the people who complain that there isn't enough content - they ignore 99% of the content the game has to offer because "there is no incentive".

That's the reality of it. Welcome to FFXIV. Even FFXI suffered from this. However, their development team dealt with it by utilizing more horizontal gear progression. Kirin's Osode was relevant for a very long time. I wouldn't be surprised if it's still relevant now. How relevant is your soldiery gear? Do new players even know what that is?

When has gaming become something you do for the rewards rather than the gameplay itsself

Since forever. In some cases, the gameplay itself is the reward. Think pacman. Although the rewards can vary person to person in FFXIV. A majority of players play for gear,progression, glamours, mounts, etc. When those have been met, the content becomes stale. It's a corner that the FFXIV developers have pushed themselves to. They are aware of it, and so should we. They have chosen to address this by pushing out new dungeons, trials, gears, etc. Which makes previous dungeons, trials, gears, etc irrelevant. Feeding the cycle.

Acknowledging this doesn't change the fact that I like the game. But me liking the game shouldn't make me turn a blind eye to its flaws.

[RobbieH]

Isn't the whole POINT of exploration to go out and find places you haven't seen before?

Once you do sightseeing is done, absolutely no reason to do it again, hell can you even repeat? I don't think so.

Jumping Puzzles can be done daily since they give a reward chest at the end.

Point of your argument?

[Atoli]

Jumping Puzzles can be done daily since they give a reward chest at the end.
Point of your argument?

And doing the same thing over and over again is totally not what everyone has been complaining about in this thread, riiight?

[RobbieH]

And doing the same thing over and over again is totally not what everyone has been complaining about in this thread, riiight?

People have been mostly complaining about lack of end game and poor rewards.

[WellFooled]

When has gaming become something you do for the rewards rather than the gameplay itsself?

One of the points discussed in this thread and many others is that the gameplay itself is not rewarding enough to stand on its own (No customization, formulaic dungeons and trials and raids, etc). So its not surprising that players are looking for their rewards elsewhere in the form of in-game items. Ideally though content would be rewarding for both its gameplay and the in-game items gained from it.

If you want jumping puzzles, how about you go do the sightseeing log? Actually, if you want exploration, how about the sightseeing log?!

This is off topic, but I think the sightseeing log is an interesting case study in how not to reward players with gameplay. The original ARR sightseeing log had very cool riddles on where to find each point. That makes for rewarding gameplay. If you didn't cheat, the puzzle itself was rewarding to solve on your own or with your friends, plus there are some cool platforming challenges involved in some.

But those sightseeing points also required a certain time of day and weather. So once you figured out the puzzle, once you succeeded in mastering the platforming elements...you had to wait, sometimes for hours, sometimes for days (one log I remember trying to complete would always stop having the required weather the second the required time arrived. I have still not completed that log). That isn't even gameplay. So what would have been a rewarding piece of content (even without any in-game rewards) was destroyed.

When HW sightseeing logs were added the time/weather requirements were removed, but so were the riddles and the platforming elements and the points were given visible indicators. So any sort of gameplay substance was removed from sightseeing logs. At best HW sightseeing is just busy work. Flying around and looking for glowing circles.

[Lorielle]

FFXIV: A Realm Reborn was published in August 2013.

Had to chime in here. XI was released in 2002. Rise of Zilart and chains of Promathia was released in a two year span. Those two expansions alone were filled with relevant content. If you want to push four years, then treasures of art Urghan.

Needless to say, the content release is very minimal in comparison. Especially if you want to deem something relevant to all players

[MaikoRaines]

The outpour of malicious players in this game has increased a lot by the last year - around the time Heavensward was released. That's when my group and I kind of noticed that a bit of the maliciousness of WoW mentality was beginning to find its way to FFXIV. When I rejoined the game from 1.0 back in 2014 I thought that the community at the time was pretty great and that there was a lot of people to help each other out. Without some of these people I wouldn't be where I am today. Even some of the people who I knew were good players have either transferred to other servers or are outright venomous themselves.

Now, I'm faced with the elitist class with "No BONUS" PFs when trying to jump into an EX fight (Seph EX, Eggnog EX) despite knowing the fights inside and out from countless videos and POV for different roles. We've officially arrived to the point where this is the norm. People even suffer from wankers cramp and rage quit after one wipe in a damn learning party. It's a learning party... what were you expecting when you joined?

I also don't run statics at all because I know how draining that can be mentally and emotionally. I also have a career and a marriage that takes a much higher priority than a virtual world.

I've resigned in any faith that I'll never clear them and it sucks because I did want a few weapons from each of those dungeons.

Then of course, there's bird/horse farm PFs - the other day I joined a Bis EX bird farm and one of the DPS could not stop whining about the composition (2 tanks, 2 healers, all DPS) as he was telling us that we didn't need the two healers. We wiped the fight because of a mechanic that was missed, he spazzed and then rage quit immediately after. Drinking the salty AF Kool-Aid no less as his reasoning for this was that he didn't have time for that kind of nonsense and he only does guaranteed clears. I looked at his classes... he only had 2 60s and the one he had on display had considerably less than stellar gear, but enough for the fight so really, he was one to talk if he wants to size up that situation. (By the way, we did about 12 easy clears when he left so yeah)

Of course, there's also people with the sense of being OP with gear and not having to do mechanics so they hang back and are generally lazy - Sorry sweetie, but you still need to be able to do some mechanics.

Then you have the current debate of "early pulling" on hunts and how some people argue that it isn't early pulling because if you're the one to discover it, you're the one who can do whatever you want and you don't need to wait on people. While I can't argue this, I can argue my previous statement on the FFXIV community being completely friendly back in the day and now, you have people that just doesn't GAF about the community - they're in it for themselves. I also have a gripe with people who ride on the tail feathers. What bugs me is that I miss a hunt because I am looking for another hunt pop. Just remember that when the dust settles people will still remember your name and it will hurt when you want to do a run and no one will want you because of your piss poor attitude.

Has it come to the point where salty behavior of any kind is the social norm? Please don't confuse "norm" with "acceptable" because the two are different and some people do have issues telling one another apart.