Data from lucky bancho about participation in field content

[Shurrikhan]

Ah yeah, in case it came across wrong, I'm not trying to imply or accuse "every" player of having that attitude.

Just that whenever content participation gets brought up, one of the major points loaded into a lot of responses is something along the lines of,

"Yeah, but were you there at the time? Everyone hated it and complained constantly, they only did it because [X] "

And it made me start thinking, "Uh, do most of the players actually 'like' anything, or is it always just 'doing it because [X] while complaining' for Y percentage (that seems to be implicitly large) ?"

Understood. And I agree with the general conclusion; I wasn't trying to use my anecdote to refute it.

My point was more that there have been times where rewards have felt less immediate a concern due to perhaps to the 'layout' or 'implementation' of those rewards (that you didn't need to put in X hours before you even had a chance at any worthwhile reward, and/or that there was a larger span of activities that could feel decently rewarding).

Or, put another way, I don't think it's (just) that the community has become so much harder to appease; while reward oversaturation or the like may increasingly negatively impact the community's perceptions of content, the reward schemes/balances themselves also play a significant part, I would expect.

[Eorzean_username]

My point was more that there have been times where rewards have felt less immediate a concern [...]

Yeah I agree with that, I just can't quite "put my finger" on why.

I have this vague sense that there used to be a lot less of an aura of "exhaustion" with having to "do" anything in the game, and players having a little more zeal for "playing just to play", with the rewards being mostly a bonus for doing that, rather than the explicit purpose.

But I can't tell if it's just coloured selective memory or not.

And I think you may be right that it's partially something to do with a certain sense that something is "off" about XIV's reward structure at some fundamental level, though this isn't an area that I feel confident elaborating on further since it's not something I personally think about too much (because I'm not a collector-type and I'm personally not motivated by much besides 'Is this fun for me to play').

We. dont. know.

Well to a degree yes, but the thing is, I see these sorts of sentiments expressed across a broad slice of the XIV discussion "pipelines".

Like it doesn't matter if someone brings up Exploratory Zones in a Discord, r/ffxiv, r/ffxivdiscussion, XIV Twitter-sphere, etc — I'll consistently see people pop-in pointing out how much hostility there was about "glorified FATE grinding" and that "people only did it because they had to for Relics".

Generally when a sentiment, for example, survives with positive vote count on both r/ffxiv and r/ffxivdiscussion, that suggests to me that there's probably some element of accuracy to it, since it's managing to bypass the distinctly-different "firewall filters" that each community attracts.

I see something similar with Orthos / Deep Dungeon and even Variant / Criterion too: "Not very much fun, got boring fast, insufficient rewards, abandoned now... [etc] ".

And so I began thinking, "Why does it seem like XIV creates a lot of content that people just viscerally dislike actually 'doing' beyond the X hours of Story that it provides ?"

[Shurrikhan]

Yeah I agree with that, I just can't quite "put my finger" on why.

I have this vague sense that there used to be a lot less of an aura of "exhaustion" with having to "do" anything in the game, and players having a little more zeal for "playing just to play", with the rewards being mostly a bonus for doing that, rather than the explicit purpose.

But I can't tell if it's just coloured selective memory or not.

And I think you may be right that it's partially something to do with a certain sense that something is "off" about XIV's reward structure at some fundamental level, though this isn't an area that I feel confident elaborating on further since it's not something I personally think about too much (because I'm not a collector-type and I'm personally not motivated by much besides 'Is this fun for me to play').

I'm similarly no collector and have been just taking things easy (lack of patience for static play after work, then grad school, etc.) and mostly just play whatever I feel like playing... but the fact that, say, Savage statics increasingly ramp up their ilvl requirements well above the default minimum so that one has to have done the previous tier or dropped millions on the new crafted gear just to be able to play it before its forks into just farm parties and trap parties, and I will occasionally feel pressure during a week I can't play much to just, say, get my tomes via the most efficient way possible so that I can retain the ability to PF Savages (usually just on my tank char of late) on at least one gear class.

I definitely got the same impression that there has been a shift and would agree that changes in zest and zeal are largely to blame, but I really do think the reward schemes both take the remainder of the cause... and probably indirectly caused much of that change in player (in)tolerance. But, I'm likewise not the best positioned to speak on the exacts of those problems in the fundamental reward schemes or what ought to be done about them.

All I can wish for presently is very rough: that 7.x and onward increasingly tries to break down, shorten, or thin out barriers between week-one-participants, between "real" content and all else, and between with-obvious-rewards content vs. transient content (for most, get your weapon/accessories and be off) vs. purely optional/no-obvious-rewards content -- better letting us instead just play what we want, with far less pressure to get in on the release rushes