the normal content is too easy

[ForteNightshade]

I think this is core to the problem. Whatever changes may have been made in job or encounter design, this has always been a theme park MMO. It's never been something that was developed in a manner to be someone's only game or something where the game gives you hard reasons to need to log in and accomplish things every single day. There's always been a bit of our needing to find our own reasons by partaking in content available. And I think a lot of arguments come from this expectation of being kept busy every minute in whatever someone's given content is. But your suggestion is the sort of thing the devs advocate. They want us to enjoy what we like about XIV and then if we're away a bit, it's still here for us to enjoy when we get back.

The issue with this design philosophy is they simply don't make enough content to sustain it. Look at the upcoming 6.1. Here we have a patch intended to last us four months and unless you're attempting Dragonsong, none of that content will take more than a week. Even if you casually farmed Endsinger, it would still only take a few weeks. Everything else is one and done story content. Which is far from a bad thing. In fact, I welcome it. However, once you've completed each quest, there's nothing else. So we're taking breaks for 2-3 months at a time. I don't necessarily want FFXIV to demand my attention every waking second like some MMOs do but I'd like to more than a week's worth of content. It continues to baffle me why they delay the relic for so damn long when it's the ideal grind content to keep people occupied. Granted, longevity as a whole has been something FFXIV struggles with badly.

[Ronduwil]

Here we have a patch intended to last us four months and unless you're attempting Dragonsong, none of that content will take more than a week. Even if you casually farmed Endsinger, it would still only take a few weeks. Everything else is one and done story content. Which is far from a bad thing. In fact, I welcome it. However, once you've completed each quest, there's nothing else. So we're taking breaks for 2-3 months at a time. I don't necessarily want FFXIV to demand my attention every waking second like some MMOs do but I'd like to more than a week's worth of content. It continues to baffle me why they delay the relic for so damn long when it's the ideal grind content to keep people occupied. Granted, longevity as a whole has been something FFXIV struggles with badly.

The patch is not intended to last month four months. There's a widely referenced Yoshi-P Q&A where a player asked how he was expected to keep his motivation up between content droughts. Yoshi-P's reponse was to play another game for a couple of months and then come back to FFXIV for the next content drop. SE isn't Blizzard. They don't introduce a bunch of busy work into the game to artificially extend its longevity. Once you've exhausted the content, you're encouraged to do something else and come back later. I personally think it's better that way.

[ThivraK]

Yoshi-P's reponse was to play another game for a couple of months and then come back to FFXIV for the next content drop. SE isn't Blizzard. They don't introduce a bunch of busy work into the game to artificially extend its longevity.

what do you think a demolition timer on a house, is? especially funny considering that yoship said before that they'd never ever introduce such a system in the first place

[Ronduwil]

what do you think a demolition timer on a house, is? especially funny considering that yoship said before that they'd never ever introduce such a system in the first place

The demolition timer is intended to prevent players who no longer even play from squatting on a house indefinitely. Housing is so hard to come by that it makes no sense to allow players who have left the game to keep their property forever. It wasn't specifically introduced to keep you logging in every single day. If you haven't even visited your house in over a month, you clearly don't care all that much about it. If housing is your end game, then how are you ever running out of content?

[Liam_Harper]

The patch is not intended to last month four months. There's a widely referenced Yoshi-P Q&A where a player asked how he was expected to keep his motivation up between content droughts. Yoshi-P's reponse was to play another game for a couple of months and then come back to FFXIV for the next content drop. SE isn't Blizzard.

I'm impressed how much people cling to this one line and parrot it over and over.

There is a big difference between dropping your sub entirely and leaving for several months, and just keeping it running while you spread your time out over multiple games. No developer wants the first one, that's financial suicide. If the entire playerbase played a patch for 1 month and quit entirely for the other 3, the game would die.

All Yoshida meant is that unlike WoW they don't employ infinite treadmill grinds where you'll fall behind on progression if you don't play constantly. So if you want to do other things in your spare time, you won't sacrifice progress and always be behind. It doesn't mean they don't care about player retention. It's not an excuse to provide less content. It doesn't mean content shouldn't have long term and replay value.

[Illmaeran]

There is a big difference between dropping your sub entirely and leaving for several months, and just keeping it running while you spread your time out over multiple games. No developer wants the first one, that's financial suicide. If the entire playerbase played a patch for 1 month and quit entirely for the other 3, the game would die.

I'm not sure I agree with this. Plenty of companies succeed on games that are one-time purchases. SE's essentially selling a new game every 2 years and likely getting even more income than that with subs between, even with people coming in a month here and there. If a single person subs for only four months in an entire expansion cycle, that's two full Once-and-Done games in a two year period. Not quite an insubstantial or game killing amount of money.

[Ronduwil]

All Yoshida meant is that unlike WoW they don't employ infinite treadmill grinds where you'll fall behind on progression if you don't play constantly. So if you want to do other things in your spare time, you won't sacrifice progress and always be behind. It doesn't mean they don't care about player retention. It's not an excuse to provide less content. It doesn't mean content shouldn't have long term and replay value.

1. Please show me where I said that he told us to unsub. Let me be more clear because you got the wrong impression. If you're one of those people who played 24/7 the first week that the game came out so that you could be ready right when the raid dropped, then you've created the drought for yourself. Those of us who took our time had weeks worth of MSQ. I still haven't completed all the role quests, either.

2. I'm impressed that you know that Yoshida intended to speak out against grindy progression systems when he was replying to a player who specifically stated that he was having trouble finding the motivation to even play anymore because of the lack of content. He literally replied with this:

It's alright not to play it everyday. Since it's just a game, you can stop forcing yourself if it's hard on you to keep that up. Rather, it'll just pile up unnecessary stress if you limit yourself into playing just that one game since there are so many other games out there. So, do come back and play it to your heart's content when the major patch kicks in, then stop it to play other games before you got burnt out, and then come back for another major patch. This will actually make me happier, and in the end, I think this is the best solution I can answer for keeping your motivation up for the game.

There was no mention of progression systems or treadmill grinds in this context. He was literally talking about content when he said this. His advice was simply to take it slower.

[Liam_Harper]

His advice was simply to take it slower.

How do you take content slower when it's designed to be one shot and done?

Dungeons, Alliance, Normal raids, they're all made to be beaten the first day you go in. Then there is no reward that you can't just craft a better version of. Crafting has been designed so that it only takes a few days to level, Master Recipes have been designed so that you can craft them easily the day they're released. Gathering has been made easier. None of the materials are hard to get.

The average player runs Pandemonium once for the story, runs EX a few times for the weapon then ignores it until they can farm it with Echo + buffed drop rate, gears their crafters effortlessly in a week, makes a 580 set and all they have is Savage. Dungeons are worthless.

The rest is just stuff we've done since ARR. Endless FATEs, bland side quests, roulette chores, TT cards. Even the classes have barely changed from ShB, they're just the same thing with a new button and a few traits.

It seems that you're meant to RP walk and limp through fast food content, then somehow go and enjoy things you've done thousands of times every expansion and if you don't like it, you're at fault.

[ForteNightshade]

His advice was simply to take it slower.

Piggybacking off what Liam said above, I'll outline what my friends and I plan to do come Tuesday.

1. Unlok and complete the 24-man
2. Test out the new PvP mode
3. Unlock and clear Endsinger

Without even factor in the MSQ, which won't take more than two hours, we'll have completed nearly everything 6.1 has to offer in a single day. Are we supposed to only do one piece of content a week just to artificially lengthen the patch?

Now, obviously, PvP and Endsinger are meant to be continuous content but even that has its limits. First and foremost, PvP has... a pretty horrendous track record in this game. And farming Endsinger 50 times won't exactly take long. Even if you only did five runs a day, you'd be done with her in less than two weeks unless you really want her mount early. I'll certainly spam the 24-man a handful of times but running the same thing over and over only has so much staying power.

Hence why the whole "stop rushing!!" argument has never held water. Even at a slow pace, the patch cycles simply don't have nearly enough content to last even a month. They're entirely dependent on you loving the content so much you'll spam it hundreds of times "just for fun". Which, hey, more power to people who want to do that. It doesn't change the fact there isn't much content to begin with.

[TaleraRistain]

The issue with this design philosophy is they simply don't make enough content to sustain it. Look at the upcoming 6.1. Here we have a patch intended to last us four months and unless you're attempting Dragonsong, none of that content will take more than a week. Even if you casually farmed Endsinger, it would still only take a few weeks. Everything else is one and done story content. Which is far from a bad thing. In fact, I welcome it. However, once you've completed each quest, there's nothing else. So we're taking breaks for 2-3 months at a time. I don't necessarily want FFXIV to demand my attention every waking second like some MMOs do but I'd like to more than a week's worth of content. It continues to baffle me why they delay the relic for so damn long when it's the ideal grind content to keep people occupied. Granted, longevity as a whole has been something FFXIV struggles with badly.

It's not intended to last 4 months. It's the content we're getting and then four months later we'll get more. We can make it last a week or whatever amount of time we want. There are players in this game who could make that content last the entire time. I'm not one of them. I tend to be a content piranha for what I enjoy. Then I go back to an old goal or whatever.

We also don't have all the details about the longevity of all planned content. We don't know that the Omega series or Tataru's line won't be intended to provide some sort of reward we work toward. And they're making changes to try to make PvP rewards more accessible. That's never been my content but it's still content for players. And some players finish relic steps on what, day one, day two? There is absolutely no way SE could ever make enough content for players who consume it like that. And their design has never been to do so. We partake of what we want. We find goals or rewards we want to work towards. And sometimes we take a break here and there or spend some nights on something else.