Community expectations

[Yonanja]

-snip-

I agree completly. Without the harder stuff to do, what's left in the game to give anyone a feeling of "there's still more to do"? It's true that maybe only 10% or even fewer of the playerbase might see and do the harder stuff, but at the same time, it's something that keeps many of them playing the game. Hoping and dreaming about being able to do it and having the rewards from those places. Without the harders stuff, what would keep players from just going "well, I've seen and done everything now, better unsub until next patch", leaving the game a graveyard after a month of every major patch.

FF have enough trouble keeping players yerning for "the next step" as it is, every other patch being more or less a complete gear-reset.

[Kallera]

Snip.

I disagree with this, there are plenty of games I happily buy and play stages and missions over and over, without really getting bored or losing sight of goals. It's only because this game is incredibly on-rails ("look at all this customization with materia! now slap on one type of materia onto your gear in the parameters we dictate with our caps or get judged by your peers." "raised all your members again with lb?, good, you're doomed anyway at the end with my 99990 move." "crafted that fancy sword, good job, you made the weakest weapon this tier. should tide a returnee over for two weeks.") that they run into this problem time and again.