Quote Originally Posted by caffe_macchiato View Post
And this is why FFXIV will remain as-is, probably will get worse, and OP will likely just get more and more frustrated. More people will simply defend whatever they get because FFXIV is beyond criticism. Raiders are a small minority that’s ever-shrinking thanks to the drought. The post-Endwalker decline of our gameplay-centric MMO has been met with applause and acclaim. You might not find a problem with this, and that’s okay! Raiders will find a better game to play, and you’ll still be able to pay $13 a month for…whatever this is. Rest assured, business will continue as usual, for better or for worse.
Honestly? Macchiato's right.

The game does release stuff for raiders who usually just clear the thing and are done with it apart from weekly reclears.
Casual content is often pretty boring and reliant on awkward gameplay mechanics (Island Sanctuary having a jank gathering system, Blue Mage having little application, Eureka/Bozja being FATE zones, Variant Dungeons having no decent incentive to be ran past the one reward...).
And even minigames are pretty niche, such as Chocobo Racing or Triple Triad. Nothing that has a larger application outside the Gold Saucer.

Meanwhile housing is pretty niche, mostly just there for decoration. And roleplaying aspects are rather limited. And in an MMO, the roleplaying scene is usually a major component for some people. Interaction with the lore and the game should be embraced... yet there's really not much outside of the chat, glamours and some emotes that provides further interactivity.

Whenever we need some form of "content" that keeps people engaged, it almost always has to be something to be worked toward rather than a feature. And that "something" is content that needs a lot of time to be developped. Meaning we have to wait for months for something new.

The only feature we do have that goes along more or less what I'm thinking? Bard Performance. That's all. And there's a lot we can do in a similar vein.

Not participating in the harder stuff of the game and enjoying oneself at clubs isn't inherently a bad thing. But other MMOs do at least complement the rest of this content with features, on top of also having a relatively robust raiding scene. Ours doesn't have that, it litters the game with side-content you need to work for rather than appreciate the stuff in the game itself, while raiding is intermittent.

Then again I myself raid very little, so what do I know ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I'm just a nutjob who reeeally wanted AST to have an actual divination feature, just as much as how Bards can play instruments. We know the Deck of Sixty exists. I'd just rather not have to make it from scratch on my own to use for my friends when I could actually show them what I'm drawing.