Stop with the FOMO

[PercibelTheren]

And yet, I cannot participate in those that have come and gone. The experience is lost to me.

Don't get me wrong, I get it. They're tuned in such a way that keeping them through skill/potency/stat changes and so forth would defeat the whole purpose.

But it remains an entire system I can't participate in unless I rush myself faster than I care for.

(the adjacent Wondrous Tails as well, to a much lesser extent. Unless you're at endgame, you get 60-capped duties with appropriately lesser rewards)

I think they're going to end up being on a rotation. There is very little point in making anything past ShB into Unreal, at least for now. This should mean that the older ones will be back at some point.

[Hurlstone]

Honestly out of all the online games I have played, FFXIV has perhaps the least amount of FOMO.

For example, we rightfully complain often about how short seasonal events are, but the upside is that you just need to log in once, do a 15-30 min quest, and you have everything. In alot of other games where you need to farm currency to get anything over a number of days. Not saying its a good approach, as I have said many times I would like events to be longer and have more earnable items including past rewards (Rather then justs ticking them up on the cash shop*), but it feels like currently they do approach events purposely trying not to invoke FOMO.

Thats not to say its absent from the game at all, I would love if we could play past event missions somehow, and fear of loosing your house due to not logging in is painful (Though more symptom of how bad housing has been handled in FFXIV then anything else.) It sucks and it should always be criticized, but so long as the aim is to make money almost every online game will try it in some shape or form.

* Sod Capitalism

[Absimiliard]

Aren't the PvP series rewards supposed to become available again at a later date? Hasn't happened yet, but I could swear I remember them saying that. Granted, SE isn't exactly good at keeping its promises, but still.

[Fyrebrand]

That's a hard disagree from me. I love Guild Wars 2, but there is plenty of FOMO in that game. Were you around when the Living World system first kicked off? Each chapter was only "active" for a limited time, and if you didn't play it while it was up you missed out forever. Eventually, the entirety of Season 1 came and went, simply erased from the game for YEARS until they brought it back fairly recently.

Things improved with Season 2 and onward, where all you had to do was log in and claim each chapter within their time frame, and you unlocked it to play forever (for free, which was amazing). However, if for some reason you didn't log in and you missed a chapter, you couldn't get it unless you paid for it. Granted, you could pay for it by converting gold to gems -- which is reasonable, but still -- it's literally a FOMO-based release schedule.

With the new expansion coming out, GW2 is doing away with Living Story entirely, in favour of... just making paid expansions more frequently. Is that better? I dunno, I guess we'll have to see.

The Gem Store is really full of FOMO, too. You can't just buy whatever you want in the store; not all items are available all the time. There's a rotating selection of availability, so if there's something you really want to buy, you have to buy it when it shows up. Who knows when it will return again? Some times were gone for years, with no word when or if they'd be back.

Now, when it comes to PvP rewards and holiday events, Guild Wars 2 knocks FFXIV out of the water. The holidays come back every year, with lots of different activities, minigames, scavenger hunts, achivements, etc. Whatever you didn't get done one year, you can always catch up with the next year. Holiday content doesn't go away forever, it's just temporary on a predictable schedule. And there are tons of PvP reward tracks with different prizes, which you can select and choose to work on at your leisure -- they don't disappear if you didn't do them fast enough.

So, I guess GW2 beats FFXIV at holiday and PvP rewards, but... I'm not sure that's really all that significant. I stay subbed because I love the game and want to play it, but when I want to take a break for a while I don't feel compelled even a little bit to stay subbed just so I can do holidays and PvP. Does anyone do this? I doubt it.

I would say the real FOMO in FFXIV is getting your house demolished (if you can even get one). Personally, I don't have one so it doesn't effect me, but I find it the infamous Yoshi-P line of "it's fine to take breaks to play other games" a little disingenuous when you stand to lose something significant if you're gone for more than a month and a half.

[Jojoya]

Guild Wars 2 is adding a great feature on already a great game that doesn't punish you by not being on it at the same time.

Is contradictory that the director of XIV says "Leave and play other games".

But then you lose on the chance of participating for a items, events, achievements, etc which really have no reason to be time-gated/one-chance only aside the fact that it generates a false sense of value derived only from FOMO.

All events, rewards, achievements, etc, should be aviable to obtain based on a reward structure that allows to get those through participating in the content which should be always aviable or return recurrently and/or through a complete economy based on rewards of already existing content to get them.

This of course speaking only from 2.0 onward.

I went to GW2's website to get more information about this new system you're talking about.

Are you referring to the Wizard's Vault or is there some other new feature you're referring to?

If it's the Wizard's Vault, it's not going to be what you're implying. You probably should read what's on their website again.

[Avoidy]

Yeah it's "weird" that seasonal events don't give you the opportunity to get older seasonal items from past seasonal events of the same kind. It would've been nice if the moonfire faire event had had all of the vendors from previous moonfires, for example. In this way, seasonal events would age like wine, getting better every year by offering more. But alas, to get those items you missed, you'll need to wait a year and then buy it in the cash shop. This is just one way that the game was made worse in order to promote the cash shop.

"Make a bad system so you can sell people solutions" is a standard tactic seen in free to play games, but one would not hope to see it in a game that is simultaneously buy to play/pay for expansions/monthly sub. Once you see it, you can't stop seeing it either. For example, if you want to list an item on the marketboard, people can only buy that full amount. They can't select an exact amount and then buy from a stack of 99. This means you'll probably want to list your bulk sales in numerous slightly smaller chunks, since most people wouldn't buy a full 99 stack of something expensive. But your retainer can only hold so many items at once, and now you just filled him with your divvied up 99 stack! Forget the fact that most games with a marketboard simply let you list as much as you want without a middleman, or let you just drop a 99 stack on the board and then players can buy 6 or 7 from that stack. We need the retainer here, and we need him to be as restrictive as possible. Why? So he can fill up, and you can feel pressured to buy another retainer. "Force a nonsensical problem, sell the solution." You'd expect to see this sort of thing in Maplestory or BDO but it's here too. I could do this all day. You're at the aesthitician getting your hair done, but oh! This new color doesn't match your eyes. Surely he can change your eyes, right? It's like putting in contacts. Oh, wait, nope. Sorry. For some arbitrary reason, this minor 10 pixel sized change will cost you 10 dollars in the cash shop via fantasia. And if you realize you don't actually like the way you look once you're out and want to revert back? That'll be another 10 dollars. On and on with this. The leveling process for most jobs is a mind numbing slog with a boring start, and maybe this would get fixed, but if leveling were quicker or more engaging then how could they sell you skips. Post-ARR is a known slog, 87 shitty fetch quests in a row, that puts off thousands of new players every year, but if it were ever truly condensed or summarized to address this issue in a meaningful way then how would they sell skips into heavensward?

I put "weird" in quotes at the start because I was being facetious; it's not weird at all. It's completely normal for the kind of company that controls this game. Square Enix is like EA, but Japanese. People just turn a blind eye to all the crap because Yoshi is a good spokesman and a nice dude, but SE loves quadruple-dipping in the XIV community. "You're telling me these people will buy the base game, buy any new expansions we put out, pay a sub, AND buy from our cash shop? Holy moly." Even the most egregious free to play games with the nastiest cash shops blush at this because they'll usually offer the product for free to get people into the cash shop, but Square's out here selling you the base product and letting you stay only if you pay monthly, and on top of that there's a cash shop with items in there going for like 35 dollars and stuff. Nexon and Pearl Abyss out here WISHING they had their players on lock this hard. You can't even bring this up without players coming out to defend all this, and their arguments will sound like the kind of copium you hear on f2p game forums. "It's pay for convenience!" tier arguments. Okay cool, I expect that in a f2p title but do you really want that shit in a game that's b2p/sub??? You get the game you deserve I guess.

[Midare]

I put "weird" in quotes at the start because I was being facetious; it's not weird at all. It's completely normal for the kind of company that controls this game. Square Enix is like EA, but Japanese. People just turn a blind eye to all the crap because Yoshi is a good spokesman and a nice dude, but SE loves quadruple-dipping in the XIV community. "You're telling me these people will buy the base game, buy any new expansions we put out, pay a sub, AND buy from our cash shop? Holy moly."

Has the idea of being responsible with your money and not overspending on things that, I don't know, might not be exactly needed to enjoy the game crossed your mind?

Don't get me wrong, I have a lot of issues with the cash shop, I think emotes, furnishing and dyes shouldn't be there at all, but comparing it to EA when the easy solution it's simply not paying extra seems a bit of a stretch.

[SophiaDL]

Has the idea of being responsible with your money and not overspending on things that, I don't know, might not be exactly needed to enjoy the game crossed your mind?

Don't get me wrong, I have a lot of issues with the cash shop, I think emotes, furnishing and dyes shouldn't be there at all, but comparing it to EA when the easy solution it's simply not paying extra seems a bit of a stretch.

I mean it's the same for EA though ? Just dont pay

if you go down that route then it's the exact same thing, you dont have to pay in either cases

[Nebelheim]

For seasonal events even ff11 let you purchase previous year's event items off an npc. I'm surprised they didn't do that in ff14 but with the cash shop it doesn't surprise me they stick seasonal event items into mogstation after a year.

[LianaThorne]

Tbh a system added to the game to let you revisit old events, earn some form of completion token and exchange for the old items wouldn't be something I'd be mad at. It would allow for people to get items without needing to wait a year to open their wallet for them. Would solve all the issues too: people who want to rush events can still do so while others who don't could just do it at a later point. I've never understood the idea of locking past event items to real money tbh. LOTRO has a shop for all their events where you can purchase old items with event currency, so if you have no interest in current rewards you can farm out old ones.

Genuinely just comes off like greed to me when a f2p/sub optional game can push out dozens of new rewards for free each event and not lock them behind a pay wall. Meanwhile we get a 10m event and 1 or 2 items that half the time someone can't use.