Who else is bored? Same Content and Formula...Was SB a waste of money?

[Alleo]

You're not going to convince most people in this game to go find random little balls of light with no assistance.

15 jobs that you cant even use in endgame because you are limited by the amount of stones one can farm.

I am not saying that artifact searching is for everyone. It was an example on how to make more use of the zones. (And in rift you do get some stuff out of collecting a whole set of those artifacts) I know that not every content is for everyone but if you create more and more of different kind of content you will reach more people that have more to do. If you have someone that loves the lore you will keep them quite busy if you introduce lore books ingame in all the zones, dungeons and more. Or make it sellable so people can farm this for Gil if they have no interest in the content itself. Gear and best weapons are also not always the best kind of carrot on the stick which can be seen in the new diadem.

Maybe this is why Themeparks are falling out of fashion? It's all much too linear - be it the MSQ or just endgame in general. As much as I love this game, I can't see how bearing through another gear treadmill for SB could possibly be healthy for the game. :/

At least in real life you normally dont go that often to themeparks thus they stay fresh for a while. I am really not sure if a themepark kind of thing is really that great for a MMO where you want people to play constantly (or at least pay their sub). So you play it a lot to get your money out of it thus if you have the same "ride" all the time it will get boring quite fast.

I think that we like prestige rewards in general, but the joke's on us because everytime they add something that requires more than 10 mins to get the forums goes up in flames, because how dare they make us works our butt to do stuff!.
I'm at the point that I'm surprised if stuffs doesn't get nerfed or make easier. I don't want to say that everything should be hard to get, but certianly some things should feel special

The problem is that SE often does not have a good balance between it being too easy or getting stuff nerfed or making it way too much of a grind. Its fine if stuff takes some time (I am slowly building my wins to get the Feast mount) and maybe its okay if there is some RNG in it but then you will have achievements like the tiger mount which will take years if you did not already do a lot of hunts. Or you have weapons like the ones from Diadem that are beyond such a huge layer of RNG and on top of that in boring content, that nobody wants to even truly try it. If you make it too much you will just demotivate people to even start it. Or you just nerf everything to the ground and give everything out like candies thus people just dont feel the need to work towards it when it was fresh. I mean is it truly necessary to put Materia, pets, glamour clothes behind so many contents that they are not even worth a bit? Its okay to make it easier over time but they also overdo it in that aspect.

So you will have content that is not that fun with items that you will know will be nerfed anyway..so why bother? And you have content that will take you such a huge amount of time and luck that you also wont bother. (I am looking at you TT...which I would have loved to get..until I saw all the horrible restrictions and RNG that you need..thus one needed to constantly do it to even get a chance at owning them all..or cheat in tournaments to get certain ones)

[AureliusDraconium]

As much as I love this game, watching someone play a mmo like this one is as interesting as watching paint dry. It's incredibly boring and most Twitch views go to more "competitive" centric games like Overwatch.

As far as recycling goes FFXIV recycles content on a similar level to WoW in my opinion. Sure Legion has some new mini zones being added but it's pretty normal for theme park mmos to recycle as much as they can. Most of WoWs bosses are just recolors or touched up models of older enemies. It's how it goes because it's helps the dev team push out content faster. Do I always like it? Nope. However it is what it is. At this point I do not expect FFXIV to introduce any new formula to the game besides perhaps some slight tweaks. I get the burn out on the gear treadmill but Stormblood has done exceptionally well which encourages the dev team to keep with it. There will be a fall off of people as SB ages but SE and even Blizzard still see it as both games being profitable from initial launch alone. As long as both games keep a certain min number of players active both companies will just keep really working towards producing hefty expac launches but with recycled content in between. Nowadays, keeping your launch numbers is not really top priority even though it seems strange to most older mmo players.

[Sandpark]

Let me blunt here....not once in my original post did I advocate ever removing any raid, dungeon or content! If you truly read my post you would have seen that alot of us want some form of growth or progression system in FF14. We want to have a reason to keep playing other than a artificial lockout they built to force us to stay subbed.

How does it make sense for FF14 when its developers design in mindset that it wants players to leave for months on end only to come back for yet again for a few weeks....confused, let me explain! A vast portion of the FF14 community literally unsubs for months....they play for maybe 4-5 weeks then they yet again unsub!(sub based MMOs make money through having maximum number of active subs!) So literally they design this MMO to have a good portion of its player base only sub for 4 months at most per year while they lose huge profits from not having those same subbers for those 8 months? How does that make any sense? Yes let design a system in where we could have these same subs for a entire year and make that money every month for that entire year....but no, we are ok with only 1/3rd of a year in profits! If I was a investor in SE and I saw them making this statement on wanting its player base to deliberately leave to lose money for the company by not actually going for max profits having as many subbers as we could....yea I would sell my stock!

This might sound weird, but Yoshida himself has said he has no worries if you stop subbing. He wants you to take a break and do other things besides play FFXIV.

It doesn't make sense really, but this game is making a lot of money somehow. Just look at how meaty and often updates come. I don't think any other mmo gets updates as fast as this game. You could argue how much of the design is the same, but different people's opinions will vary on that.

If you truly want to know how MMOs are supposed to be made and designed....then look no further than one of the fathers of the modern MMOs Richard Garriott! These are some of his view in relation to the state of current MMOs:

On Games that Copy WoW: "I love Blizzard’s games. I think they do a FAR better job than most (including me) on the balance of challenge – reward cycle. They also do a great job of art direction. While many of their features are now very overused by copycats, so they too will need to invent some new paradigms."

Lack of Innovation in today's MMOs: "WoW and before that EQ, both of which are truly GREAT games, became the model that most others are now built in. In this model everyone is a combatant, who may also have a side crafting interest. After spending time creating a character and making permanent decisions about class before you have ever played, you are dropped into a familiar looking space…A medieval town with the usual shops, “!” over the heads of anyone important, menu conversations that you quickly click through to get info pumped into your quest log, quest logs that out arrows on the map to follow to the next rat quest, then once a few pelts are in your pocket, you return to repeat."

"In these models players may get together to party or raid, but there is less commonly a true interdependence between hunters, gatherers, crafters, and adventurers. I personally do NOT think Party / raid size is NEARLY as important as to how and why people get together."

In Conclusion: These are core principles of what and how a MMO become and stay successful. Innovation and new ideas are what is needed with the most important factor added to it all....COMMUNITY! Having reasons to work together in your community....not just queing for instance dungeons....but actual content you do with others in the world you exist in!

I respect Mr. Garriot. But let me ask you.

What recent game has he made that millions of players play for hours upon hours?

He speaks on interdependence. There is a game coming out real soon called Pantheon that is supposed to be more like the old mmos where you have to rely on people such as EQ, FFXI, etc. I am anxious to try it out, that will either make or break the fight between self dependant mmos and having to rely on others mmo.

Innovation and ideas are important or things get stale but that innovation and ideas have to implemented good or the standard is better.

Class dependency got gutted, attribute points got removed, things got nerfed, PoTD was supposed to be dynamically scaled so a soloer could win or a party, and tomestones are the defacto progression, gear is recycled and basically worthless stats wise after a few levels/ilevels, the overworld lacks somewhat in depth. That should give a hint that this is not going to become a time intensive , but a casual group based game.

Edit: When I say casual, I mean not time intensive, there is still challenging content like raids. But if you notice, somethings take a lot of time like Fenrir Mount.

I understand your want, but at some point this crusade becomes wanting this game to be something it's not versus just finding that other game. I think stuff like endless progression can work but it has to exist in a vacuum here, self contained, because to do it globally would tell the other players who are used to and like the way it is, sorry, the game will not be like you want anymore. I am fixing to post an idea in a few days that suggest this vacuum type area, but I am guessing alot of players won't like the concept either.

[Remedi]

So you will have content that is not that fun with items that you will know will be nerfed anyway..so why bother? And you have content that will take you such a huge amount of time and luck that you also wont bother. (I am looking at you TT...which I would have loved to get..until I saw all the horrible restrictions and RNG that you need..thus one needed to constantly do it to even get a chance at owning them all..or cheat in tournaments to get certain ones)

Tbh the nerfs are mostly due from backlash from community, which most of the time wants everyting NOW, personally I don't have problems with mounts like the tiger and the 2 seat astrope, they take a good amount of time but if you really want them you can make effort to get them, they are indeed not for everyone (although maybe tuning down the quantity of S ranks kills would be better).
Estimated times honestly means nothing in most cases don't forget that ppl said it would take 2 years to get the 2 seat astrope yet in 3 months I saw a couple going around the server.

You are right that they need to find a real balance between effort - reward, but it is also true that it's not a easy thing to do.

[Alleo]

@Remedi: The mentor mount is different from the hunt mount. You can always go at this with your own pace so if you have lots of time on your hand you can grind this out. The hunts are on a schedule and the S rang are even more limited. You can only kill a certain amount of S per week (now its a bit more thanks to the instances but you also have more people killing hunts) thus if you miss it you will have to go at it for a longer time. Also the hunts from ARR and even HW die way too fast. So if someone is working at the time that a lot of them spawn..well no amount of free time on the rest of the day will help them there.

There was a thread about this on the forum and someone calculated that if you want it and never did many hunts before, that you will need at least years to get that. And this is only when you will get each one of the hunting monsters.. Even those that said that they see no problem with it and that they hunt a lot, just had like half the necessary amount to get it. That one person that got it was the leader of the biggest hunting ls on Balmung. Like the PVP mount this one was wanted by quite a lot of people, yet instead of making it a tank mount (like the Kirin for ponies) or something else more accessible they put it behind such a wall..

I never said that it was easy but I do sometimes wonder who thought that some of those decisions are fine?

[GenericMagus]

I'm not bored playing SB, not at all. To me, there's still plenty of content for me to do, and enjoy with friends, so no, not at all, I don't feel my money has been wasted.

The only thing I would like is more relevant alternatives (stuff like PoTD and PvP is a great addition) during the leveling process and endgame content.

Also, Gold Saucer content that doesn't die like after a week. I want more mini-games that last long, but at the same time, I feel this might not be the right community as they'll probably need to be rewarded for going out and having fun.

[Faeon]

Not bored yet either, i am still leveling my doth, busy doing savage etc. But then I have limited time so maybe its that.

[Critical-Limit]

Very very very bored here. Thinking of quitting for good I'm tired of the same thing for this long.

[Mook_Mook]

The mmo market is a stagnant genre. There has been no major innovation or vast changes for a while. The largest paradigm shift was with the wow and thats really been the last major shift in the genre.

[TarynH]

No matter what you add to any MMORPG, it eventually turns into a slow grind until its death. That's why they're dying as a genre. You can say that other games have varied content, but it's either grinding out levels, grinding out gear (ilevel creeping / loot fests), or some other mechanism to get the latest best thing, and then done. It's all repetitive in nature when you really get down to the technical aspects of it. That's why a lot of people look forward to new stories. Because they add a different aspect to what is otherwise a grind. That's not to say that the stories themselves won't/don't have elements of other stories you've seen/read before.

You simply have to pick the game(s) that is/are fun enough to where you don't mind the repetition.

Edit: I will add that FFXIV's predictability in patch content, actually helps the players. They can see when the lulls are coming, and switch to another game until the next major patch. Or use them to level, or whatever.