Where is the "never before seen content"?

[Yzuna]

I just don't think I've seen any game in this sub-genre really ever solve this "dedicated player ennui" problem. There's never enough content, and the sense of "pointlessness" eventually settles in, except when your experience is driven more by the people you play with and those social connection become the real content that keeps you engaged. Horizontal progression MMOs, on the other hand, tended to foster more long-term engagement from dedicated players (since you could always work on your own objective that wouldn't just be rendered pointless in six months), but at cost of accessibility to new/casual players. People are pitching this as a FFXIV problem (and sure they could do more to obfuscate the pattern), but fundamentally it's a trademark problem of this design approach in every game that's used it (at least in my experience, anyway).

I agree with almost everything you said.

But, that doesn't mean that they shouldn't try to be a little more horizontal and a little less vertical as far as progression goes.

And even if they keep doing ultra vertical progression, they could do it better. Are you excited when you get a new weapon/armor ? You get almost the same exact stats, exept in higher numbers. This is the only game that has, in my opinion, a gear system so poor.
Look at WoW, EQ, TESO, GW2, Rift, hell look at FFXI and FFXIV v1. They all had set bonus, proc on weapon, reactive on armor, skill buff/change on either, even hidden/latent effect for FFXI. A LOT more than STR+5 and VIT+4 on your new shiny armor. And I'm pretty sure it help keeps people interested, if only a little.
Even with vertical progression if, at least, the new gear you get to farm is different from the old one not only in term of look (because, let's be honnest, most of the player base uses glamour instead of the default armor look) but more importantly, in term of caracteristics.
Theory Crafting/min/maxing as of now is almost pointless in this game, because the way stats are handle right know is beyond ridiculous. You just grab and equip the one with the higher ilvl and don't even look at it.

But, they could go for more horizontal, I think.
They have an armoury system that let you change your gear pretty easily, why don't use it. They could start releasing all sorts of armor sets/weapons with very different bonuses. Some better for certain type of content/mobs/playstyle whatever.
People could either focus on one or all of them, depending of their playtime/dedication.
And yes, maybe some of them would be better that others, maybe some ellitist people would create PF saying "X set needed for Y" , but wouldn't it be better to risk some balance issues and have variety, than staying in this blank and dull system ?



On another subject, I tried Eureka yesterday...Is that the "new super fun system" that took almost a year to develop ? Fate train ? The thing they keep doing since the Atma days ? The one that everyone hates ?
They developped a new levelling system so we could do fate again ?

It's not all bad though, there is some degree of difficulty in the open world, which we desperately need, you lose HP when you die, the elemental wheel could be a good tool (not practical as of now though). But FATE train...whyyy?!
They could have done something similar to Sky/ZNM (FFXI). You farm key item from mobs/small bosses, that allows you to summon a boss, which might drop another key item to summon a more powerfull boss.
That way you have a group/Linkshell content. And the last Key Item allows you to summon the zone boss or something similar, that needs an alliance to defeat.
I mean, FATE train aren't fun, they don't build community. group/alliance content that need to be coordonated does. And, in my opinion we really need community builder content.