Why this Live Letter Matters

[Renathras]

The problem is that island sanctuaries, which could have been quite some extensive content, simply wasnt that, its extremely dull and repetetive, and features barely anything to do. Even for those who like gathering, the rewards arent even nearly worth it (effort to value conversion rate is absolutely horrible). If they involved content that required for example combat, and other special events, it could have worked. But it simply wasnt that.

Honestly, it's not even that: It's that it didn't involve gathering or crafting at all, almost. You had the SIDE version of gathering and crafting (completely disconnected with your regular DoH/L classes), AND you can't even craft or gather THE GOOD STUFF. You have to send the Granary expedition out to get the good rare items you can actually sell for the better of the Coweries (the ones that all the items people want have to be bought with), and you can't craft handicrafts to sell even if you want to spend hours doing it - neither as a DoH NOR with the "press one button and wait 2-3 seconds as your character pounds on the sand - literally" crafting. No, you get to be a middle manager of a sweatshop organization and WAIT for your minions to do the work for you over a 24 hour period.

Not only does it not involve combat, it doesn't even involve crafting and barely involves gathering after you've built things. Up until that point, I actually DID enjoy it. But when it became "Office Space: The Game, without the humor or stapler", I was like "Wait, this is what this is?" I generally don't play games to be Thomas Anderson at the beginning of the Matrix working a desk job at a cubicle in some kind of business world middle-management hell. At least the island hub has better views than a corner office, but you can't even log out there, you have to go stay in your hotel room if you want a bed!

I get they didn't want people to grind and burnout, but whose video game fantasy is being a middle manager??

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Yes, I'm a bit jaded over that.

ANYway, that aside, this:

The thing is if they dont respond to anything then their metrics indicate that the problem isn't as big as people make it out to be. They have the tools to track player engagement/retention and if they are seeing decline in aspects they would of looked to the forums or discord or reddit with their teams that are purely there to gather feedback or research the market for what others are doing in the genre. I just can't imagine this Live Letter really doing much to what Aveyond wants and I don't think at the same time they should. Peoples likes or dislikes have shown to be wildly on either side of the fence. It is pretty much the same 3-4 negative posts fighting the same 3-4 positive posters and just butting heads with the odd user here and there.

7.0 matters....6.4/6.5 do not...their content and roadmap was done well over a year ago...whatever is here is set in stone. No wild last minute changes would be happening here is my best bet.

And this:

Aveyond, I really doubt a single LL is going to satisfy what youre looking for at this point.

All the information we already know thats coming in 6.4 from pre-LL interviews and the roadmap they shared a while back isnt going to be the grand overhaul that youd expect within a single patch.

Im gonna be realistic with my expectations and just expect the usual stuff with perhaps maybe some improvements in variant/criterion rewards.

Just like how anyone should take their expectations with anything in life rather than trying to find hype in things.

Are likely correct.

Fanfest is what you're looking for. Even the "acknowledging some people are upset" happens in Yoshi P interviews, not Liveletters.

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Oh, but I don't know what you've been smoking, these 24 mans are fun and most people seemed to enjoy them. A lot of people DIDN'T like NeiR (I started out liking them, but by the end, I kind of didn't like them) since the story had literally NOTHING to do with FFXIV and they didn't even try to give it a tie. It was a NeiR infomercial, not a raid. And so far, I've enjoyed all the raid fights of EW 24 mans. They're just fun to run in and do and that's the point.

I didn't HATE NieR, I hated how it was put into the game. The fights were generally interesting and the first and last raid I liked the environments of (the second was kinda meh), but the story made no sense, had no connection to anything, and I still don't see the point of it. The NieR raids are my least favorite in the game of all raids at this time. I'm sure NeiR fans loved them, but lots of people play FFXIV that have never played a NeiR game. Keep your game in your game unless you're actually giving it lore ties to ours. At least other FF game references make sense as its the same series and many people who play FFXIV have played at least one other FF game, and probably several.

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I agree with you, OP, on some things - not having an Exploration Zone was a mistake, and not having AT LEAST an HW/ARR Relic grind ON TOP of that ALONG WITH patches being 2 weeks longer was a big mistake. The only "grindy" content we have are Criterion and Orthos, both of which require PF premades so aren't "pick up group" in the sense that Eureka/Bozja or even ARR/HW (FATEs) were. You can't just run across people and join them, and you can't DF que them. You HAVE to make a party before you can even access the content passed the base level. That was also a mistake since it's the ONLY girndy content they put in.

As it is, in content lulls, I'm finding things to do...but they're old things that are only so repeatable, like finishing up every sidequest in the game (just 3 zones left...) that can only be done one time on a given Character, so they aren't repeatable content or grindable content once run through.