Why FFXIV is losing me :,(

[Fahad]

Hello All..,
I have been playing this game for a while now (since 2013) I love it and everything is great. however, I can't play the contents I want to play.
What do you mean dude?! I'll tell you what I mean.
I want to play 2.0 Savage contents....I want to play A1 - A5 savage contents...I want to farm "Battle of the Big Keep" for Cards...I want to play many things that weren't released in the latest patch...can I find a group? no.
heck even Zurvan I haven't been able to get a learning party, everyone is farming only.

everyone is playing the latest contents...
I don't want to clear things as soon as they are released, I wanna take my time, I wanna upgrade my gear, I want to study the mechanics...I gotta go to work, this week i'm out of town, I can't jump on the wagon as soon as something is released and clear it 1 day later, then farm it the next week and then by a month, no one is playing it anymore.

example, the only contents from 2.0 I haven't cleared are, T7s T8s T9s. for a week I have been putting pf for those contents...ZERO participants ...those contents cannot be just burned unsynced, they need mechanics no matter how high your iLevel is. so all I get in pf, are people who join to tell me to burn the boss, or people who lecture me about how it's pointless to play old contents. I want to play old contents, I paid same as everyone, I want to enjoy old contents.

I wanted to start on Alexander savage, so I have been trying to get a group to help me with A2s...again, all I get are people telling me to play A9s or A12s.

so FFXIV, please stop piling contents on top of each other deeming the previous contents dead. please build the game horizontally instead of vertically.

How about instead, something like this:
stop increasing the iLevel every patch... instead, release multiple contents on the same level so people will divide among them.and can switch between them. let all of the contents have competitive drops.

OR

Check this out... Normal mode contents are for pure story right? they are not hard, you can get them in Duty Finder... yes they die after a while but you CAN find people to play them because some people out there are finishing the story, right?...thats cool.
the problem is with Challenge contents. i.e Savage, Extreme Primals etc. those die quickly, and it's hard to find someone to play with.
Why don't we have those challenging contents, increase their difficulty with patches? so they would be in sync with current iLevel???
OR OR OR
have them drop a special currency that is exchangeable for current iLevel gear ?
like you can take T7 Savage loot to someone who will make it i270 for a fee or a token. something like that...

whatever it is, you have to keep those contents alive, because if the game is insisting on me being present as soon as the contents drop to clear it,.... yeah, no, thanks.

Thank you for reading the words of a poor overworked dude

[Accelerating]

You just have to accept it that this is how the system works. You can do many old trials and raids with Wondrous Tails or search a Free Company which does old stuff from time to time.

heck even Zurvan I haven't been able to get a learning party, everyone is farming only.

I refuse to believe that there aren't any learning parties in the new PF, else open your own.

[Viki]

heres approx why it cant happen. EVENTUALLY some1 will find the very best way of farming current max ilvl gear. if savage T8 is the way to get fastest tokens, then expert roulette dies, alex dies, EVERYTHING dies except T8 savage. its how vertical progression games work. it sucks.

[Kaedan]

Horizontal progression doesn't work with a themepark game like FF14. Horizontal progression only really works with OW sandbox games.

[Belhi]

To be honest, even if it offered the same gear A9-12S dropped, people would likely still only be set up as farm parties rather than learning parties. I don't think shared ilvl on endgame content would make much difference. Further, such a system probably wouldn't make new content particularly appealing since you could just farm the fights you already new for max gear.

This is a vertical progression game and is designed as such. I don't think they are going to completely overhaul the games entire design to change that, particularly with Stormblood only 4 and a half months from release.

[Fahad]

sadly this is all true, guess it is time to move on :'(

[Yasuhiro]

Don't know if you haven't tried this yet but for T7 and such put Bonus right at the start of your PF or say it's for Wondrous Trails. that'll bait people who need it for their journals as for one hit kill mechanics when it comes to burning you just gotta keep at it til you know the HP percentage that triggers it.

[Accelerating]

sadly this is all true, guess it is time to move on :'(

Just forget about it and do Creator / Zurvan.

[ElHeggunte]

How about instead, something like this:
stop increasing the iLevel every patch... instead, release multiple contents on the same level so people will divide among them.and can switch between them. let all of the contents have competitive drops.

This won't accomplish anything besides funneling everyone into the easiest of the available content. You're presented with a duty that takes 5 minutes, a duty that takes 10 minutes, and a duty that takes 20 minutes. They all drop the same level of loot. Why would anyone pick the 10 or 20 minute duties outside of slight variances like minions, titles, or other vanity stuff?

*The maximum ilvl increases every six or so months, by the way, not every patch.

Check this out... Normal mode contents are for pure story right? they are not hard, you can get them in Duty Finder... yes they die after a while but you CAN find people to play them because some people out there are finishing the story, right?...thats cool.
the problem is with Challenge contents. i.e Savage, Extreme Primals etc. those die quickly, and it's hard to find someone to play with.
Why don't we have those challenging contents, increase their difficulty with patches? so they would be in sync with current iLevel???

And have them drop the current highest ilvl? Then that effectively makes brand new content DOA. There's no point in going into and learning new fights when you can get the same gear from farming a fight you've been able to do in your sleep for months.

have them drop a special currency that is exchangeable for current iLevel gear ?
like you can take T7 Savage loot to someone who will make it i270 for a fee or a token. something like that...

And would again instantly invalidate any content above T7 Savage or whatever the lowest cutoff is for that token. If you give players that kind of leeway, they will almost always seek out the easiest path and hammer and the hell out of it, ignoring everything else.

Perfect example: Relic/Anima steps requiring light grinding. Players spam the trials or duties that can be done in the window of five minutes and ignore the laundry list of other content that also gives light.

whatever it is, you have to keep those contents alive, because if the game is insisting on me being present as soon as the contents drop to clear it,.... yeah, no, thanks.

Nope. After a point content just needs to be left alone. It's impossible for every piece of content to stay relevant forever and it's madness to try.

If you want to do older content that badly, maybe you should change your approach. I see groups in PF doing older content all the time to farm things like mounts or gear for glamour and they tend to fill up fast. Maybe change your wording? If you've never done the fights before, maybe mention they'd get a first timer bonus for WT Second Chance points, everyone loves those. Or try to find a FC that likes doing older content. If you can't find one, make your own.

Keeping years old content relevant isn't something that SE is or should be responsible for. Gotta make your own way, chief. And that would be true regardless of whether this game stayed vertical or went more horizontal progression: sooner or later, old content dies off and trying too hard to keep it relevant will just kill off the new content instead.

[JediFirefly]

I don't know about anyone else, but I cringed everytime the OP used the word "contents"