Xenosys Vex explains how to save the game

[Raven2014]

No offense, but you speak on behalf of a tiny segment of the playerbase.

No offense, but I think you missed 99.99% of the point I made.

Hint: I even had it bold-faced.

[Noumenon]

I think you missed 99.99% of the point I made.

What did I miss? You said EX trials are fine because you farm them to get mounts, so they don't need to be grindier. Alliance raids are fine because you literally try to get every single piece of glamour for them, which necessitates a huge ton of grinding.

I daresay the amount of people who grind alliance raids to get every single piece of glamour are rarer than people who complete Savage tiers on content.

He finds the rewards lame, you don't. He chases ilvl and BiS gear, you chase alliance raid glamour. Both of these are rewards. And you can squabble with him about that, about which is more important, while the huge majority of the rest of the playerbase and potential playerbase (those players who have quit FF14 because of how lackluster and dull its gameplay is) are yearning for meaningful gameplay.

While you two are arguing about what is worth grinding for, everyone else is terribly bored about the the game itself.

[Supersnow845]

No offense, but you speak on behalf of a tiny segment of the playerbase.

Most gamers actually want to play video games, not just collect mounts or glamours. Good for you if you're satisfied with grinding EX 100 times, but for the vast majority of players, that is mindnumbingly dull, regardless of the reward behind it. 24-man raids are even duller. Both you and Xeno are focusing on the rewards that the content give you when most of the dissatisfaction people are feeling now is with the actual content. You are satisfied with the rewards, he is not, but neither of you are tackling the fundamental issue that the gameplay in FF14 is now extremely stale.

The carrots only work on a small minority of players - minority because data shows that this game has an insanely high churn rate - more than 20% every single patch.

Despite all its flaws and being built on the same stale combat system EW can at least claim the somewhat dubious title of “expansion where they tried quite a bit of new content”

But then you look at all the content and it all died on patch, nobody runs CV dungeons, nobody interacts with IS besides setting up the weekly spreadsheet, it’s all just there

Meanwhile 2 expansion old field content still has a massive and lively playerbase because there is so many glam and mount accessories locked behind eureka

If people truly didn’t care for mounts and glams eureka would have died on patch on CV would be flourishing, instead it’s the reverse

[Raven2014]

What did I miss?

The context, for one. Watch his vid again, then read my original post.

Also, you're putting word in my mouth, I literally said NONE of what you're claiming I said.

Also noted that I was very carefully said his point is NOT invalid, rather it's coming from a very narrowed/limited perspective.

[OgruMogru]

I daresay the amount of people who grind alliance raids to get every single piece of glamour are rarer than people who complete Savage tiers on content.

I do both of these things. I like reasons to do content. I haven't touched criterion because the rewards are garbage.

[Noumenon]

Despite all its flaws and being built on the same stale combat system EW can at least claim the somewhat dubious title of “expansion where they tried quite a bit of new content”

But then you look at all the content and it all died on patch, nobody runs CV dungeons, nobody interacts with IS besides setting up the weekly spreadsheet, it’s all just there

Meanwhile 2 expansion old field content still has a massive and lively playerbase because there is so many glam and mount accessories locked behind eureka

If people truly didn’t care for mounts and glams eureka would have died on patch on CV would be flourishing, instead it’s the reverse

I'm sorry but this is ridiculous - neither of those content are lively nor have a massive playerbase. Most people actually do Criterion in statics, and the amount of people using PF as an indicator is mind-boggling. If you look in recruitment Discords, barely anyone does Criterion, but it's certainly high enough that it's above 100 a day on patch. But the same goes for Eureka - there's maybe one or two BA runs every day or so on Aether. On average, less than 100 people participate in BA every day. It's frankly ridiculous to say that Eureka has a "massive and lively playerbase" when it can barely fill an instance on Aether. And on DCs like Dynamis, it's practically just bots and no real humans.

EW cannot claim to "try a bit of new content". Can anyone with a straight face say that Variant dungeons are innovative? It's three linear corridors mashed into one, with the "innovation" being giving you a paragraph of lore whether you knock a tree down or not. Does that really pass as "innovation" these days? Have our standards got so low?

Island Sanctuary is by far the most unique new types of content they've done in Endwalker, but it's horribly designed and serves only as a case study of how you should not be innovating. Island Sanctuary has a higher completion rate than on-patch Eureka, but the content is even more dull, even more braindead than on-patch Anemos. No one can seriously say that they actually tried to innovate when it comes to IS. Trying implies effort, and IS has none. If I splash paint randomly on the floor, it is certainly unique, but the word "innovative" has a positive connotation, and it most certainly should not be used on that mess of a floor.

If FF14 aims to retain players by satisfying either:

--- the people who want a mindless grind (at the extreme, those achievement hunters who grind for 20,000 Accursed hoards in PotD by repeating Floors 1-20 again and again)
--- the people who want to do next to nothing and get everything they want (extreme casual players who treat this game as Second Life and love the new tomestome weapons)

Then this game is going to die.

Because it was never about them.

Because most gamers care not about the carrots but about the actual meat, the substance of the gameplay. And most of these players have long since quit, which is why we have a remaining echo chamber of players fighting over rewards when players should be debating over how to make the actual gameplay more fun.

The context, for one. Watch his vid again, then read my original post.

Also, you're putting word in my mouth, I literally said NONE of what you're claiming I said.

Also noted that I was very carefully said his point is NOT invalid, rather it's coming from a very narrowed/limited perspective.

Exactly what are you saying then? Why are you bringing up your experience of grinding alliance raids for months to get every piece of glamour and then concluding that you speak for a lot of players and that players don't want it to be grindier?

Glamour = reward.

Hence, you're saying that you're satisfied with the rewards you get from grinding and that it is at an appropriate level of grind for you.

I am saying the debate over what level of grind is appropriate or what rewards should be behind those grinds is far from the primary concern or even the primary issue that plagues FF14 today - the staleness of gameplay. I am saying your disagreement with Xeno completely misses the mark on why this game has a 20% churn rate every patch, and why the vast, vast majority of players who played in HW and SB have long since unsubbed. It's like debating whether a patient dying from lung cancer should be treated with natural remedies or surgery for the fifth pimple on his thigh.

[Oizen]

Finally people will agree that Stormblood was the best expansion.

[ThaCa]

I'm probably repeating myself a lot by now but if the game had better reward structure for evergreen stuff like PvP and Mahjong (and more of such modes, remake chocoboracing and lords of verminion thx) it would carry a lot of people over the patch lull where they have done most things they wanted from the patch.

Player centric stuff that has enough variance from players themselves can create long lasting and enjoyable content.
If they want to take PvE approach, just combine the fancy additional skill and itemization from Eureka/Bozja into Deep Dungeons and add tons of more modifiers and pathways to them, turn it into crazy roguelite where you slowly build overall power but each run can be dramatically different based on your party size and things you find and meet.

[Noumenon]

If they want to take PvE approach, just combine the fancy additional skill and itemization from Eureka/Bozja into Deep Dungeons and add tons of more modifiers and pathways to them, turn it into crazy roguelite where you slowly build overall power but each run can be dramatically different based on your party size and things you find and meet.

This would have been excellent for Eureka Orthos. Sadly, we've just been getting reskins and reskins nigh on forever. People say Endwalker is ShB 2.0, but it's more like HW 4.0. I genuinely can't think of many instances of true innovation ever since HW. Even field content (not talking about the raids in them), which many have been clamoring for, is basically repackaged ARR FATEs.

[Jojoya]

snip

Those who consider themselves gamers are not the only ones who play video games.

Considering the number of reward-obsessed people I know who do consider themselves gamers, I'm not certain you know gamers as well as you think you do.

If you feel the problem is the gameplay and not reward structure, then address what is wrong with the gameplay.