OP, for the most part while playing FF14 I felt like I was being punished while moving forward rather than being rewarded. While the game is simple in nature, I always felt like many of the game elements to punish players for succeeding or paying for a subscription. It was an odd philosophy that they took and I went with it because I wanted to play with my friend. Eventually I just accepted the game for what it was and played just because. I burnt out a few times really bad but now that I am back, I found things that I enjoy like going back and completing every quest for the lore (I like reading), collecting things, etc... I just feel like they need to change their approach to developing content for the game but they keep clammering to traditional ideals and that adding more staff won't make the game more enjoyable. This sound like they are decisions from the higher up at SE saying these things things for the investors and not for the players.

But, we're fastly approaching the end of FFXIV in terms of jumping to a new MMORPG, it may be another 3 or 4 years but it's pretty near considering it may only about 2 expansions away. They may not want to experiment with a revised formula for XIV since the current one works and they may not want to put much more money in the current game because the focus may be to work on a new MMO.

I digress, XIV may not be THE mmorpg for me, but for many it's as close to perfection as it ever can get. So my opinion doesn't matter terribly much. I did spend about a thousand dollars for this game and some mog station items for two accounts (my friend and I) so I get at least the luxury to state my opinion at least lol