Why do long time players play the game so differently?

[SeiyaSoiya]

I started playing this game recently, and I noticed that there is a massive difference in the way people who, like me, started playing after the wow death craze, and the people who have been playing since Heavensward, ARR or even have legacy accounts.

1. They don't seem to care about actively improving their gameplay: A few veteran players I know have been parsing and using ACT since 2015 (when it was first released for FFXIV), and they don't seem to have the same drive I and others like me have to continuously improve my rotation and gameplay and to become more skilled. Their job's kit changed drastically since the days they first raided, but they don't make an effort to learn the kit to its fullest, and sure as hell don't care about their parse. Some of them are parsing green and blue and they only do the savage tier to get BiS and be done with it, even though checking their old logs they had high purples and many of them oranges.

2. They don't seem to want to play the marketboard: many of them refuse to engage in marketboard selling and buying, which is undisputably the most efficient way to make money, and prefer to earn money using passive methods like levequests, FC submarines and doing their weekly challenge log/doman enclave donation/retainer 18h ventures. Some of them often times complain about lack of money as much as newer players like me do, but they don't seem to want to put in the effort to earn it.

3. They are more interested in doing outdated content than current seasonal content: they do their savage raids, but they spend a lot more time doing older savage and extremes unsynched, the deep dungeons, side content like ocean fishing and diadem gathering, mount collecting, minion collecting and other things that don't increase their ilevel or their parse number.

I don't get it, does something fundamentally change about your gameplay once you spend a long time playing this game? These veteran players don't seem to be obsessed with the same things I and other newer players are obsessed with.

Is it really worth it for me to spend so much time improving my gameplay and skill and rotations and my parse number, if once I've played this game for 5 or more years, I will no longer care to do so anymore?

The community seems to put a lot of emphasis on being good at the job, but what it looks to me is that I will burn myself out optimizing and improving for one savage tier, maybe two, maybe for a whole expansion, but then never do it again.

[Avatre]

...I'll take the bait.

You ask why they do what they do, well the answer is VERY simple.

Because it's what they enjoy(particularly the "non-seasonal" things you mentioned). And usually, there is an insane amount of grind to get all the achievements from those things.

[Canadane]

Not everyone has the same goal in the game. Generalizing groups of people won’t help you.

[KageTokage]

Those are some really weird generalizations and I can think of several long time players of 5+ years (Myself included) who don't fall into any of those camps.

This half-sounds like one of those typical bait topics from a certain somebody....

[Iscah]

This half-sounds like one of those typical bait topics from a certain somebody....

Only half?

[Chie_M]

Only half?

Well, sure. Their female characters usually over-use kaomoji sparkles.

[TheMightyMollusk]

Many of us have been playing long enough that we aren't as interested in burning out anymore. I blew through my "hardcore raider" phase waaaaaay back in Wrath of the Lich King back in WoW and never got that far back into it. Turning a game into a job doesn't appeal to me these days.

Also, on the marketboard bit, I already have plenty of gil and nothing I particularly want to spend it on. I only bother to list things at all to get them out of my bags. Game just doesn't have much for money sinks and accumulating wealth for its own sake isn't my thing.

[SeiyaSoiya]

Many of us have been playing long enough that we aren't as interested in burning out anymore. I blew through my "hardcore raider" phase waaaaaay back in Wrath of the Lich King back in WoW and never got that far back into it. Turning a game into a job doesn't appeal to me these days.

Also, on the marketboard bit, I already have plenty of gil and nothing I particularly want to spend it on. I only bother to list things at all to get them out of my bags. Game just doesn't have much for money sinks and accumulating wealth for its own sake isn't my thing.

ignoring all the other troll replies and replying to the only legitimate post, I must ask:
The main reason stated for parsers and ACT being a legitimate tool is that it helps people improve their skill, which is a net positive for the community as it makes duty roulettes more enjoyable.
How could something that is only ever used for self-improvement cause so much burnout that veteran players no longer have any interest in it? A lot of people I know use ACT in normal duties and alliance duties, so they don't necessarily use it for "hardcore raiding"
Of course, they do love posting their high numbers in normal duties for some reason.

[Kes13a]

ignoring all the other troll replies and replying to the only legitimate post, I must ask:
The main reason stated for parsers and ACT being a legitimate tool is that it helps people improve their skill, which is a net positive for the community as it makes duty roulettes more enjoyable.
How could something that is only ever used for self-improvement cause so much burnout that veteran players no longer have any interest in it? A lot of people I know use ACT in normal duties and alliance duties, so they don't necessarily use it for "hardcore raiding"
Of course, they do love posting their high numbers in normal duties for some reason.

ah, I get it, this is a troll post meant to praise the glory of parsers and ACT in order to belittle others

now the odd generalizations make sense.

the only thing missing was "weebs" and "filthy casuals"

and 2016? new? you have achievements back to 2014... so you are DEFINITELY not "new". Which WoW "death craze" was there in 2014? I must have missed that one

[Chasingstars]

and 2016? new? you have achievements back to 2014... so you are DEFINITELY not "new". Which WoW "death craze" was there in 2014? I must have missed that one

There have been quiet a few, unironically.

There was the 2012 to 2014 era for Mists of Pandaria which, between pandas as a playable race and the long content drought at the end of the last patch which lasted 14 months, created a slow loss of players but we are talking going from like 8 million to 6.4 million players.

Then there was the 2014 to 2016 era one known was Warlords of Draenor, which the only things you could really praise was the dungeons and raiding experience, everything else was barebones. The playerbase briefly shot up from 6.4 million to 10 million players and then the following month lost about as many players, then kept sinking down till it went below 5 million in which Blizzard stopped posting the sub count. Take with a grain of salt from mmo-population, but it dipped well below 1 million. So fastforward for WoW, with Shadowlands, a similar trend happened based on its peaks and valleys and ravines for player count, but it also featured a long content drought from its 9.0 to its 9.1 patch.