Grinding in FFXIV vs Other MMOs

[BabyYoda]

As FFXIV player do you enjoy grinding for power? Or do you prefer time gating each week you do 2 hours of grind and that's it?

As MMO player I find more people who enjoys grinding bozja as an example is grinding area for power but it is specific to special area.

So what are you standing for.. is it weekly time gating or grinding for power like other MMOs?

[Ath192]

Time gating killed this game. There's no reason to be subbed year round. Just buy the expansion, beat it, maybe do one savage tier for fun, unsub until next expansion and catch up everything you missed in like 1 day or 2.

Hardly any reason to stick around or build communities in this game as its design actively discourages it.

[Jeeqbit]

I find Bozja and Eureka grinding fun, yes.

But obviously the result of that is grinding it and then being done with it. It can also have the downside of, because you can grind it all at once, it can burn you out, whereas the timegating actually forces you to take breaks so that you don't overdo it.

A lot of people actually didn't like Eureka and Bozja. Most people did not like Eureka on release - the vast majority of people talked negatively about it at the time. In all the game chats, it felt like people were having the time of their life in there, but when you asked them they said they didn't like it. And I think a big reason for that is they did it all at once and didn't space it out like I did.

How I did Eureka when it was current was to just hop in there casually for 3 hours a week. It was very casual, but each time it was a lot of fun and a chill grind. But a lot of people will do it all at once, grind all relics and burn themselves out.

[Avoidy]

Time gating killed this game. There's no reason to be subbed year round. Just buy the expansion, beat it, maybe do one savage tier for fun, unsub until next expansion and catch up everything you missed in like 1 day or 2.

Hardly any reason to stick around or build communities in this game as its design actively discourages it.

Yuuuuuuup and this is a huge part of why it's so hard to build FCs nowadays. Used to help build a community FC from the ground up, but sure enough during one of these scheduled 4 month downtime periods, most of them quit and keeping it going was impossible. Yoshida encouraging people to take breaks is great, but it also kills the sense of community this game can have unless you're part of one of those rp communities or those dance club communities that just log in and idle in a basement. even my hardcore raider friends basically just log in on tuesday, do their weeklies, and then log off lol. Now imagine being a casual who's caught up to Dawntrail and doesn't care about savage. What do you do, spam FATEs? Hit up the Gold Saucer? Easier to just quit, than go out of your way to squeeze blood from a stone. And that's what loads of people do, and the communities they were a part of get deader and their free companies rot until they're down to literally 1 guy who feels compelled to log in so the house doesn't disappear until he, too, vanishes or makes his own solo fc.

And all of this is to say nothing of the appealing allure of solo fcs, or the way there's almost no objective incentive to be in someone else's fc when you can just make your own and have all the same benefits, but that's unrelated to the main topic. I'm just mad that this game goes out of its way to kill guilds unless you just spam limsa all day and recruit strangers or your guild is basically your tiny friend group and you're just praying none of them quit I guess.

[Wolferey]

I prefer grinding, but to a certain amount, and sadly FF14 does neither grinding nor time-gating well.

You either get content that takes 1 day of savage reclears/hunt trains/unreal trial etc. then 10min daily for 6 days, or heck you have fishing where 99% of your time is spent waiting to fish for 10min...

...or you get 1000 s-ranks, 1 timeworn relic per DR run when you need 250+ runs, 50 alliance rolos that take minimum 20-30min each run etc. like the grind is so artificial and so poorly thought out you wanna kick a dev in the balls so they can feel a fraction of the pain they wanna put you through. Nobody on the team sat down, thought how would a sane person split this up to stay sane, oh they can't because they gotta grab at least 1 run per day for a fucking year and hope people still run this shit after after 100+ days.

As long as its reasonable, I prefer the grind, I can jump on, do it on my own time, jump off, progress made, happy. Eureka/Bozja has some of those good parts, and some of those bad parts.

Fuck anything time-gated though, it'd be dead content in a week if you didn't so you are just stretching it to desperately try and make it last except it just breeds resentment and hate for you and your content instead. Specially when none of the time gating really matters at all, which is why I just stopped doing it.

[Ardeth]

Time gating killed this game. There's no reason to be subbed year round. Just buy the expansion, beat it, maybe do one savage tier for fun, unsub until next expansion, and catch up everything you missed in like 1 day or 2.

There is hardly any reason to stick around or build communities in this game as its design actively discourages it.

Exactly. It's literally meta to play an expansion at lauch. Bask in the hype. Ignore it for two years. Rise and repeat. A lot of the FCs I have been in have been like that. People disappear for years at a time and come back to do the new thing and leave again.

I just don't know how they would fix it? Wow added one of the best pieces of solo progression in decades, and I got bored of it pretty quickly. I hate Bozja and Eureka. I'm just kinda lost on what is good content to do over time. I'm currently subbed to get everything to 100. I don't have much, and I'm going slow, but it's a boring journey.

[PercibelTheren]

I like Bozja. The grind is quite enjoyable and you can do it completely at your own pace. As a bonus, you get to level alt jobs through it, so it feels like, no matter how little, you are always making some kind of progress both in and outside of it. I'm not much of a fan of time gating. I'm willing to accept it to some degree, but FFXIV pairs it with insane content droughts. I see those as the biggest issue. I relate to trying to keep an FC going but it being really hard when there's nothing to do for months at a time. People are off playing other games, barely anyone shows up for in-game events and I can't really blame them.

[Kuroka]

Exactly. It's literally meta to play an expansion at lauch. Bask in the hype. Ignore it for two years. Rise and repeat. A lot of the FCs I have been in have been like that. People disappear for years at a time and come back to do the new thing and leave again.

I just hate how this changed... my FC was never THAT full but usually during major stuff you had your core members being there, but now, so many just dissapear as they either burned, or just bored out... Im kinda done looking for new ppl, it just feels pointless to even try. Unless youre into the Live simulator stuff and mods which i despise with all my being lol

[mtPrimo]

I feel it lacks sometimes. I've been playing some of the other MMOs, including one that recently released (T&L) alongside WoW and FFXIV. I feel we could have more FC interactions, and more replayability with special stuff dropping from dungeons and whatnot. I understand the casual mindset regarding the game design in itself, but I don't know. I just log, do stuff, level an alt, talk with the folks on FC, and theres that.

[Hallarem]

Why would I bother hunting gear other than for glam? Anything you grind or put effort into gets replaced by a crafted item or in the next patch.
There's no proper ladder for loot, no in between, no "building up gear to try this dungeon" or building your stats. Nothing to work for, nothing to feel accomplished by aside from making a good looking glam.

Would be nice to run dungeons and grind in open world content with your FC for loot, drops, materials, anything. Instead of playing a dance simulator in boxed out arena fights.