Please consider scaling back the "time-gating" on some older content

[Iscah]

You're going to feel like a real idiot for having spent months doing turn-ins for your Doman Enclave back in the day when it's now available to you in a matter of hours.

Why would you feel like an idiot for that? Same amount of effort either way and you still got the end result earlier than if you waited for it to be ungated.

It becomes a matter of how much effort people want to put in now versus how much they're willing to wait. Already we know it's likely to become easier to do things later, and yet people still put in the time to get it now. Sometimes more effort than it would take if they waited.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

• Nothing seems to matter anymore. Why invest time in any of the content when you know that in six months it's going to be handed to you for free?
• You're going to feel like a real idiot for having spent months doing turn-ins for your Doman Enclave back in the day when it's now available to you in a matter of hours.
• New players will burn through all the old content the game has to offer in a matter of weeks. There isn't enough current content to keep anyone engaged (by design), so there will be a giant drop in subs.

1) This is already the reality of any content in the game, it becomes easier over time. Mount farms? just wait till end of the expansion, or wait till next expansion for unsync. Same for raids. Same for most glamours, minions, mounts being shoved into next expansion's lockboxes. Same with moogle tome events having a ton of rare rewards in them. Relic steps become easier. Yet even knowing that stuff will become easier over time, the majority still farm stuff in the here and now. Why? because its content to do in the present, and because they can enjoy the reward far, far earlier than those who wait. That's the point of FF14's content design. Things always become easier if you're willing to wait potentially years, it's the tradeoff between how much you desire a reward and how much you're willing to wait. This Modus Operandi has been around since ARR, and it hasn't 'destroyed the game' in the slightest.

2) Whether you could do it in one afternoon or across 14 weeks, it's the exact same amount of work for the Doman Enclave, how would it make anyone feel like an idiot? The quests haven't changed, you'll still be reading/mashing through the exact same amount of message boxes as anyone else, talking to the same number of NPCs as anyone else, etc. In fact, it's arguably more work if you could do it in a single afternoon since you'd have to go through the effort of buying/making/etc all the items needed to fund the Doman Enclave's box in a single day, rather than just passively picking up items while waiting week to week. There's also just the point above that I got to enjoy the doman enclave's rewards for literally 4-5ish years now ahead of anyone starting now, even if they made it doable in a single afternoon. That's already a titanic positive and far from idiocy.

3) You honestly think that the weekly stuff that takes like 10-20mins to do and then you have to wait an entire week to continue is keeping people subbed? Most of the old time-gated content is stuff you can finish all of it under and hour or two a week. After that, what's keeping that player engaged for the remaining 166 hours of the week? I can guarantee you, that old timegated content isn't keeping people subbed if they weren't engaged. They'd just continue it when their sub is next running, not paying $15 a month to spend 2 hours a week on the game doing old time gated things.

Not to mention, half of the old time-gated content is irrelevant anyway - the mounts from the ARR beast tribes can be bought from any single moogle trove event in 1/100th of the time it takes to rank up them normally, making the time gate on ARR beast tribes even further pointless.

There's a time and place for time gating content - when its current, on things that could possibly generate infinite amounts of gil for little effort like leves, etc. Old content that's already been so extremely nerfed and/or had its rewards already chucked into other parts of the game isn't it.

[dspguy]

Maybe they can stand to scale back some relic steps once more. Maybe cut the atma books in half for ARR. Maybe lower the lights for HW relics a bit more. Other than those, players have nothing BUT time in an MMO. Either you invest the time in what you want or you don't. This is an MMO that will live and breathe for years yet. It gives players a reason to login and let's not forget, to keep paying that sub.

[Oizen]

By the time I finished the Nier weekly and got the ending, I forgot what the quest's story even was.

[Jennah]

By the time I finished the Nier weekly and got the ending, I forgot what the quest's story even was.

That's fine, I'm pretty sure there wasn't really one.
The raids themselves were great mechanically, and fun to do. But if they were supposed to serve as an advertisement for NieR for people who've never played it (like me!) - they failed on pretty much every level imaginable.

[Vahlnir]

That's fine, I'm pretty sure there wasn't really one.
The raids themselves were great mechanically, and fun to do. But if they were supposed to serve as an advertisement for NieR for people who've never played it (like me!) - they failed on pretty much every level imaginable.

Yeah, I loved the boss fights in the Nier raids. They were engaging and fun for me. But as a long time Nier fan...it was absolutely terrible from a story standpoint. Crossovers are meant to be a form of advertising, sure, but...come on now. I know that Yoko Taro could have done better than this. But I guess this is what happens when they recruit a guy who doesn't even like the game he's doing the crossover for and gives 0 hoots besides. He's a quirky individual to begin with, but his heart just wasn't in it. I wanted to be thrown onto an emotional roller coaster and I was violently tossed into the merry-go-round instead.

[Vahlnir]

These things are time gated, sure, but they have almost no bearing on the MSQ. Players are free to do as they wish. If they want to stop doing the MSQ to focus on optional content they can easily come back and do later with no drawbacks then that's on them, not SE. They can also do all of these things while they do the MSQ. Time gates exist to keep players busy. That's just how it is.

[Jeeqbit]

Time-gated content is content for some people. While there are many casual players who want things right now, there are also a lot of players who are bored and want something "to work towards". You can't work towards something if you get it instantly.

I feel happy when someone's story progression grinds to a halt because of these grinds, because they are getting into the game enough to care about more than just the story and actually care about the progression of their character and decking them out with mounts or glamour.

The Doman Enclave takes 2 minutes of your time each week. Beast tribe quests take 10 minutes of your time each day, although it would be simpler to reduce the ARR quests to 3 per day so that it's like the expansions.

After all of the years that have gone by, I still haven't done most of the Custom Deliveries but I'm not concerned about how long they will take. Spending 2 minutes of my time for 4-6 weeks is nothing.

[hagare]

Yes, but your reward in that case is that you get access to the latest and greatest content with your in-game friends while it's current. It's a tradeoff that most people are happy with. What is the up-side to doing the same for solo content?

But she's not talking about current content.

[Ronduwil]

But she's not talking about current content.

I wasn't responding to her. I was responding to you. At what other time do you grind for gear that you get for free later? When else would you be talking about?