Everything is dead?

[HyoMinPark]

The cumbersome nature of ARR has been addressed, and the developers are looking into pruning the base game’s story to remove a lot of the needless filler that has been a complaint for years. The future expansions reduce a lot of the needless filler, and their stories are far more griping in terms of writing—the current expansion’s story has been repeatedly praised, for example. To the point that the writer cried when people told her how much they loved her work.

The open-world is barren because there’s generally very little need to be out and about in it. The most active times are usually expansion launches and patch days, because you’ll see players running around and questing. But, otherwise, there’s no much reason to venture into the open world unless you enjoy sightseeing (which is a lot of fun for some, myself included) or if you’re FATE farming.

A lot of things like kiting and CC used to be big back in ARR (read: 2.0 era), but the developers have slowly removed the need for both. Sometimes, a mechanic will come up that will need to be stunned or silenced, but these become fewer and farer between.

I don’t know which “8-man raids” you’re talking about that are requirements for MSQ progression, though? The first 8-mans you’ll encounter that are required for the story are the MSQ dungeons at the end of 2.0. Then you’ll get into the hard mode primals (which are 8-man trials). But no “8-man raids” are required for the MSQ. Perhaps this is just you and I using a terminology difference though—could you be talking about trials? Looking at your Lodestone profile, it only shows you as a level 7 gladiator—you definitely wouldn’t have encountered any trials this early in the game. So which “8-man raids” are you referencing?

Dungeon queues also aren’t that slow. At most, I’d wager you’d be waiting 30 minutes on the MSQ ones, and that’s as a DPS. Tanks and healers tend to be more or less instant—but this could also be dependent on what time you’re queuing for the content. Your profile says you’re on Moogle, which is an EU server. If you aren’t queuing during EU primetime but rather during their early morning hours, queues will take longer. This is the case for all the servers, on the NA and JP data centers as well.

This game has moved away from group play (outside of instances like dungeons or trials where you would use Duty Finder), and focuses heavily on solo play because there are players that prefer to play solo as opposed to being forced to group with others for basic progression. If that’s not your cup of tea, you will be continuously disappointed in this game. EDIT: That said, basic questing can still be done with groups of friends. I went through the entirety of Shadowbringers with my best friend—the only time we dropped our party was for the solo instances. But, otherwise, we did everything else together. I did all the other expansions the same way.

That said, this game isn’t for everyone. If you dislike it so, you can always quit. There’s no sense in trying to force yourself to enjoy it. What the rest of us see and why the rest of us continue to stay subbed will vary depending on who you ask. But, for me, it’s things like the story-telling, the fact that I have met friends in this game and that we do stuff together (even if it’s just goofing off with one another at our housing or running content together), roleplay keeps me in the game, housing (I spent this weekend decorating my personal FC room, and had a lot of fun designing it), raiding with my static and tackling high-end content...there’s a lot of different things that keep me subbed. It will vary between everyone.

If you can’t find a reason to continue paying your sub—even just one reason—then it’s likely that this game isn’t for you. And that’s okay. Not every game caters to everyone.

I mean I have 59 hours /playtime in the game right now im at lvl 57. And over half of that is speedrunning through the MSQ as fast as possible after I got bored with it teleporting from meaningless place A to meaningless place B and clicking meaningless glittery dust C over and over again. I keep hearing things get better but I don't see any light at the end of the tunnel.

I'm gonna take your advice and quit and maybe check back in 5.3 July 2020. Thanks~

FFXIV is a very story-heavy game, and the story is probably the primary feature of it. By skipping it, I do have to say that you are just adding to your boredom. Especially since, if you’re actually level 57 and not the level 7 gladiator your forum profile shows, you’ve skipped most of HW, which was praised in terms of its story-telling.

Quitting now and comping back in 5.3 won’t really help you, as the reworks that the developers are doing pertain mostly to ARR’s story, which you have already surpassed.

I do recommend perhaps joining and FC and making some friends to play with. It makes the leveling more tolerable if you aren’t into the solo aspect of it.