We have midcore content... just too little too late.

[Absurdity]

This is honestly a major problem the dev team has with XIV. Many times the rewards for doing the content are not worth doing said content for.

The new EX is a great example, oh a weapon worse than what I have even on my alt jobs because I do savage content. I'm not even going to bother unlocking it unless the skin looks nice, which in general the EX weapons are meh. Plus next expansion they will release a nicer looking crafted version I can just buy on the market board.

Same issue happened with the criterion dungeons. Not going to be arsed to do something for absolute shit tier rewards.

Meanwhile, as an exception as a player I have no interest in Island Sanctuary style content, but the rewards for it are worth the time investment to get it up and running nearly automated, so I pushed through and got my island setup to farm the currency with minimal input and collect rewards.

Basically the content needs to have rewards equivalent to the time spent and relevant for the patch cycle if they have stats attached.

I would add that for midcore content it would need rewards that are both worth doing and require a reasonable time investment.


Let's take Criterion/Variant dungeons as an example again.

Variant had most of the interesting rewards, but because it was so incredibly easy I managed to get the achievement mount and all the rewards I wanted from it within 2 days. I understand that variant dungeons are not supposed to be midcore content, it's the easy mode, but 2 days isn't exactly a lot of mileage to get out of patch content that's supposed to keep you playing for the next 4 months.

Criterion on the other hand only has 1 reward we really need to talk about, the mount, if you're unlucky you will need to run Criterion 25 times to get this mount. Considering the average completion time of Criterion that's something few people can be bothered to do, which means people cleared Criterion once and then never touched it again.

[Atelier-Bagur]

"horizontal progression"
FFXI and GW1 miss ya~!
But obviously we can't have horizontal progression in this game for obvious reasons. Same reasons why classes/jobs have to be balanced to the point of homogenization. Besides, this is SE's yen tree. Why disrupt the formula when there are more than enough happy with the current situation. The forums are just a fraction of the actual playerbase, I would love to see the numbers of active players that use the mogshop and the active posters here. I would bet that the mogshop users outnumber the posters, it's just a situation of majority rules. Sorry. :/

You know what they say, if you cant beat'em






Well..youd be arrested for attempted assault in the first place.

[caffe_macchiato]

It's definitely a community problem. Just look at how many threads we have right now disputing the definition of midcore and how much salt is thrown in either direction.

It’s a money problem. I’m a paying customer and current-level content is becoming more and more sparse. Not sure why billion-dollar companies are so extraordinarily popular, but I guess it’s a generational difference. Back in my day, we didn’t defend megacorps online unless they actually deserved it.

The #1 defense of FFXIV’s content model is that it “lets you play other games”. Sure, that’s true. So don’t make me pay a sub.
The #2 defense is that it’s primarily a single-player story experience. Sure, that’s also true. Don’t make me pay a sub.
The #3 defense is that you can do old stuff with your friends. Sure, I’ll replay what I already bought. But don’t make me pay for it again and again.

FFXIV was never meant to be someone’s main game. I get it. It was never supposed to compete with WoW or other online games in respect to our time and energy. But why is it propped up like one?

[Atelier-Bagur]

It’s a money problem. I’m a paying customer and current-level content is becoming more and more sparse. Not sure why billion-dollar companies are so extraordinarily popular, but I guess it’s a generational difference. Back in my day, we didn’t defend megacorps online unless they actually deserved it.

The #1 defense of FFXIV’s content model is that it “lets you do other things”. Sure, that’s true. So don’t make me pay a sub.
The #2 defense is that it’s primarily a single-player story experience. Sure, that’s also true. Don’t make me pay a sub.
The #3 defense is that you can do old stuff with your friends. Sure, I’ll replay what I already bought. But don’t make me pay for it again and again.

FFXIV was never meant to be someone’s main game. I get it. It was never supposed to compete with WoW or other online games in respect to our time and energy. But why is it propped up like one?

I wish you didnt say things like "Im a paying customer". I get your point but do we got to have the Karen attitude?

[Raoabolic]

You know what they say, if you cant beat'em






Well..youd be arrested for attempted assault in the first place.

*buys a mogshop item*
*gets arrested*
Wew, what a world we live in! lol

[Azuri]

So it's about the destination rather than the journey. I guess I shouldn't be that shocked, that has been a trend since early WoW, lol.
At this point it seems more like a community issue than a dev issue. There should always be a carrot at the end of the hamster wheel we call xiv but you have to admit that the mixmax mentality killed a lot of content in the game. Why should you help with X when Y drops something that is 5 ilvls higher? lol

Yes, the devs being unable to design content where the "journey" is enough to keep players coming back to it is definitely a community issue. Sure thing.

XIV has a very unique and weird style of FOMO. Every piece of content that comes out is a flash in a pan that is over a few weeks after its release and from that point on you will struggle finding groups to even run it. Sitting in half-filled PFs for the entire evening isn't enjoyable gameplay.

There is no "journey", just "stagnation".

[Amarande]

Mid-tier difficulty in this game is weird, because it's difficult for people to come to a consensus of what it is (I know a lot of people who felt like bozja was casual and see midcore content as EX-difficulty stuff) and there's not much incentive to run it repeatedly.

Yeah. For me I've usually defined it as "it's tough enough that you feel a point to gathering your friends to do it together, but not SO tough that you can no longer afford to simply take your besties because you need to recruit your group like it is a job or you don't stand a chance."

But this is in turn also a function of one's own skill level. Personally, as a veteran gamer, I'm pretty handy with games, and even put in a fairly good showing in MMO raiding in former days - but I'm older now, have less time and energy, and my life schedule is not good for static play anymore. So the high end raiding stuff becomes increasingly a source of stress rather than fun (especially now that being "handy with games" is no longer really enough - we're at the point where the kind of tricks that used to normally be reserved for competitive speedrunning are practically expected, and given how many Savage+ raiders swear by Those Tools, arguably, we're getting close to pushing human limits: in most game communities the equivalent to week one Savage prog would even probably have to be labeled as TAS and be counted separately from "proper" play).

But due to having much of my past moxie still, casual content is usually too pedestrian (unless it's got some specifically tricksy bit in it, then I start to stress because, hey, it's casual content! You're supposed to be finding this easy! Are you sure you aren't just BAD, Miyako?).

This is honestly a major problem the dev team has with XIV. Many times the rewards for doing the content are not worth doing said content for

This is a problem on both ends. Rewards did not used to be such a need. Remember older JRPGs where the reward was literally just bragging rights (like "Proof of Omega" from FF8)? Now everything needs a functional reward for some reason, you even see it in the FF mainline series (e.g., FF12's Wyrmhero Blade, which you get way too late to actually make any practical use of, but apparently, Yiazmat and Omega needed REWARDS!).

It wouldnt hurt to have better rewards for this kind of thing but also it feels like a community problem too.

Yep. An outsized, almost arrogant at times seeming valuation of personal time at the forefront, combined with a loss of social camaraderie. Even pick up groups used to be much more fun and lively. Now nearly everyone treats teammates as hired help who exist so THEY can get THEIR personal goal, and any delay is "not respecting my time" to the point that onboarding new players, for instance, is someone else's problem (ie. Duty Complete PF) to the point that people frustrate out once the supply of available "someone elses" thins out (now a positive feedback loop to the point that people almost have to plan their work PTO around content drops, which leads to even more salt when, say, SE has to delay a release and it's too late for people to redo their vacay).

You know what they say, if you cant beat'em

LOL I know it was a throwaway line, but surprisingly relevant: over the years I've noticed that most of the people who had contrary opinions to the community hivemind have pretty much just gone with the "well but whatcha gonna do?" angle and forced themselves to conform with it for the sake of unity (or just quit XIV altogether). Only diehard firebrands like me are left after that, and at that point one's point hardly matters, the contrariness alone is enough to be picked off as a "troll" in most modern communities, especially the heavily centralized ones we see so often lately.

I wish you didnt say things like "Im a paying customer". I get your point but do we got to have the Karen attitude?

Flip side: This sort of learned helplessness customer mindset trend (where, in many cases, it seems that any customer who isn't entirely satisfied and still has the courage to complain about it is branded a "Karen" now) isn't that good, either.

[Ayche]

Now "Theme Park MMO" real definition might be the fact that they are linear experiences with explicit handcrafted experiences, but you can take the metaphor further.
You enter a theme park with a pass, and when you leave the park you know you that is it.
Rides change maybe season to season, but usually theme parks kinda stay the same. So is it ever worth it to go to a theme park twice, or thrice?
Well that is something only you can decide. There is more "value" to a 30-day sub the more you stay away from the game, there will be more content you have not seen than before.
Now if people just straight up do not want to do old extreme trials or criterion dungeons like for the experience, not even ONCE... That is on them really, why WOULD you wanna skip content, skip experiences?

[Minarisweet]

Yes, the devs being unable to design content where the "journey" is enough to keep players coming back to it is definitely a community issue. Sure thing.

XIV has a very unique and weird style of FOMO. Every piece of content that comes out is a flash in a pan that is over a few weeks after its release and from that point on you will struggle finding groups to even run it. Sitting in half-filled PFs for the entire evening isn't enjoyable gameplay.

There is no "journey", just "stagnation".

I always considered myself impatient for not wanting to put up with waiting for so long in pf just to disband in one pull but I guess someone else shares the same feeling!

[Minarisweet]

Also I feel the main point of the thread has been lost, I like the midcore content we get (I consider it alliance raids, relics and deep dungeons) but we dont get enough of it and too late at that.

I understand deeply extreme trials being something very unrewarding since they are my favorite content but the leap in difficulty from normal content to extreme trials is way too big to be considered midcore atleast imo, maybe if every ex trial was like innocence ex or zodiark ex...