Time gating should be stopped

[BabyYoda]

I would suggest Mr. Yoshi P get spare of his time on other projects to redesign endgame loop without time gating,12$ feels like scam with current endgame loop.

there is no problem in milking content but Its time to find a proper way to design an MMO end game loop.

[Johners]

Except timegating is the proper way to design an end game loop for an MMO. These games die if people don't have a reason to comeback at regular intervals. Savage raiders, for example, would spam farm for BiS and then leave for 8 months if they could. Same thing with ultimates initially having the weekly lockout on getting a totem etc. The underlying business model of all subscription MMOs is designed to keep us putting money into the machine, every player that stops hurts the business and at some point if becomes unviable to keep going. If they were going to get rid of all timegates, yes the weekly lockout system is a timegate, they might as well take the MMO servers offline and just make a single player action combat game using the Unreal Engine.

[TemporalFruitsAndVeggies]

Time-gating serves a very useful purpose in MMORPGs, which is to ensure that content remains relevant and active for a long period of (calendar) time. FFXIV's bigger problem is that there's very little interesting to do once you've hit the point of being time-gated.

[TomsYoungerBro]

Except timegating is the proper way to design an end game loop for an MMO. These games die if people don't have a reason to comeback at regular intervals. Savage raiders, for example, would spam farm for BiS and then leave for 8 months if they could. Same thing with ultimates initially having the weekly lockout on getting a totem etc. The underlying business model of all subscription MMOs is designed to keep us putting money into the machine, every player that stops hurts the business and at some point if becomes unviable to keep going. If they were going to get rid of all timegates, yes the weekly lockout system is a timegate, they might as well take the MMO servers offline and just make a single player action combat game using the Unreal Engine.

Ultimates only have a lockout initially because the Savage tier is still in a lockout. If the weapons were not BiS ilvl, they would not be locked out weekly. Ultimates are the best form of end-game content this game has created due to their longevity, and there are still tons of people re-clearing and progging UCOB to this day.

[BabyYoda]

Time-gating serves a very useful purpose in MMORPGs, which is to ensure that content remains relevant and active for a long period of (calendar) time. FFXIV's bigger problem is that there's very little interesting to do once you've hit the point of being time-gated.

I agree, but let's think about it, if you are someone who plays more than 3 jobs you will suffer gearing BiS..

each expansion another job and another way to keep time gating worst

[Jeeqbit]

I agree, but let's think about it, if you are someone who plays more than 3 jobs you will suffer gearing BiS..

That is an issue, yes, but it doesn't mean there shouldn't be time-gating. Not everyone plays multiple jobs or tries to get BiS on all jobs. So instead they could work out a system to exchange gear between jobs or make it so if you get a piece for one job you get it for all of them somehow.

New jobs don't actually increase the amount of gear you have to get except the weapon though, and they did improve that by adding a weapon coffer in addition to direct weapon drops.

[Colt47]

The time gating only works if there is underlying content that makes it worth sticking around for. Personally, I think that FFXIV is doing much better than most games in the genre but it has certain areas it struggles with like having a system where one character can be every job, but then suffering from the consequences by having a huge historic backlog of gear bloat. You wouldn't think a problem that some people suffer in real life with having to deal with a basement full of your grandparents and parents stuff would happen in an MMO, but it happens here. The other place FFXIV is struggling with now is finding its footing after completing the big story loop of started after the calamity. Job design quibbles aside, they shouldn't have done what they did with the story. A lot of plot points that an entire expansion could have been birthed off of were concluded in minor raid series, to the point they even killed off all the Gods in a single 24 man raid series. It's like they are allergic to something around that old plot and now we have this really weird story where this land has literally ZERO repercussions economically from the rest of the world pooling its resources to deal with an ancient calamity.

If I were guessing, I'd say most people are stopping because of those two main issues more than the rate people are getting geared. I've seen better times in the content drought between patches during Endwalker than this and that says something considering Endwalker had nearly nothing to do outside catching up on older content, island sanctuary, and maybe manderville stuff.

[Chiru_Kai]

Except timegating is the proper way to design an end game loop for an MMO. These games die if people don't have a reason to comeback at regular intervals. Savage raiders, for example, would spam farm for BiS and then leave for 8 months if they could. Same thing with ultimates initially having the weekly lockout on getting a totem etc. The underlying business model of all subscription MMOs is designed to keep us putting money into the machine, every player that stops hurts the business and at some point if becomes unviable to keep going. If they were going to get rid of all timegates, yes the weekly lockout system is a timegate, they might as well take the MMO servers offline and just make a single player action combat game using the Unreal Engine.

Reality disagrees.
Do you think the majority of active players right now are all savage raiding?
No, they're not. Very unlikely, or PF would be filled to the brim with people looking. Recruitment discords would be constantly looking for people. And they're just... not. There's like a handful of posts per day at most.

What do the vast majority of players do? Very clearly, non-timegated content. Because there really isn't anything else in the game that is timegated THIS HARD, and yet people keep on playing. Mysterious, isn't it? So timegating content is not a driving force for this activity.

The issue isn't that stuff is timegated either. It's rather that the timegated activity is pretty much the only thing TO DO if your main interest is in raiding and it's being artificially limited while other content... isn't.
Like okay, sure, you are a decent player, you have a static, you log in once or twice a week to do reclears...
and then what? If you like raiding, what is there to do in that regard? Ultimates? I've done two ultimates. Not enough people do them. People are already scared of savages, you think people are just lining up for ultimates? Last time I did ultimate through PF I was sitting with a party finder up for an average of 3 hours before I had a full party. I simply won't do it again, it is an absolute waste of my time. And many people likely feel the same.

I think what OP is asking here, is more raid content that isn't timegated, still rewards something fun and worth the time, and is also challenging to tickle the 'raid brain', but is also approachable for many players. Extremes are way more popular than savages, for example. Unreal Trials as well, I always see parties up and they tend to fill quite fast, so I think difficulty like that is what a lot of people are interested in.

[BabyYoda]

Reality disagrees.
Do you think the majority of active players right now are all savage raiding?
No, they're not. Very unlikely, or PF would be filled to the brim with people looking. Recruitment discords would be constantly looking for people. And they're just... not. There's like a handful of posts per day at most.

What do the vast majority of players do? Very clearly, non-timegated content. Because there really isn't anything else in the game that is timegated THIS HARD, and yet people keep on playing. Mysterious, isn't it? So timegating content is not a driving force for this activity.

The issue isn't that stuff is timegated either. It's rather that the timegated activity is pretty much the only thing TO DO if your main interest is in raiding and it's being artificially limited while other content... isn't.
Like okay, sure, you are a decent player, you have a static, you log in once or twice a week to do reclears...
and then what? If you like raiding, what is there to do in that regard? Ultimates? I've done two ultimates. Not enough people do them. People are already scared of savages, you think people are just lining up for ultimates? Last time I did ultimate through PF I was sitting with a party finder up for an average of 3 hours before I had a full party. I simply won't do it again, it is an absolute waste of my time. And many people likely feel the same.

I think what OP is asking here, is more raid content that isn't timegated, still rewards something fun and worth the time, and is also challenging to tickle the 'raid brain', but is also approachable for many players. Extremes are way more popular than savages, for example. Unreal Trials as well, I always see parties up and they tend to fill quite fast, so I think difficulty like that is what a lot of people are interested in.

I agree, Bozja content was the reason why I logon everyday,
I want to play challenging content but also repeating it better be meaningful.
Trial and Unreal gives nothing interesting for me but interesting to play with friends.. and once you finish it you have no reason to do it again.

[Colt47]

Reality disagrees.
Do you think the majority of active players right now are all savage raiding?
No, they're not. Very unlikely, or PF would be filled to the brim with people looking. Recruitment discords would be constantly looking for people. And they're just... not. There's like a handful of posts per day at most.

What do the vast majority of players do? Very clearly, non-timegated content. Because there really isn't anything else in the game that is timegated THIS HARD, and yet people keep on playing. Mysterious, isn't it? So timegating content is not a driving force for this activity.

The issue isn't that stuff is timegated either. It's rather that the timegated activity is pretty much the only thing TO DO if your main interest is in raiding and it's being artificially limited while other content... isn't.
Like okay, sure, you are a decent player, you have a static, you log in once or twice a week to do reclears...
and then what? If you like raiding, what is there to do in that regard? Ultimates? I've done two ultimates. Not enough people do them. People are already scared of savages, you think people are just lining up for ultimates? Last time I did ultimate through PF I was sitting with a party finder up for an average of 3 hours before I had a full party. I simply won't do it again, it is an absolute waste of my time. And many people likely feel the same.

I think what OP is asking here, is more raid content that isn't timegated, still rewards something fun and worth the time, and is also challenging to tickle the 'raid brain', but is also approachable for many players. Extremes are way more popular than savages, for example. Unreal Trials as well, I always see parties up and they tend to fill quite fast, so I think difficulty like that is what a lot of people are interested in.

To be fair the gearing baseline in this particular MMO has a bit of a weird quirk to it. The general idea is that the baseline gear for the expansions end is the artifact gear, and then the baseline gear for the post expansion MSQ is the lesser tomestone gear. Then there is the sloshy, messy world of "in-between" content patch gear that spans usually 10-20 item levels. The 20 item level jump is the baseline gear for the next content expansion since it goes down to a minor tomestone purchase, but then there is this 10-15 iLvL tier that is behind exactly 5-10 iLvLs from the crafted and raid tier sets representing the casual / pre-raid prep gear level.

The rate of iLvL gain feels like it is taking into account savage fights because without the savage fights the only thing someone is doing is logging in to cap 450 tome stones, do the four raids, and log. Rinse and repeat until infinitum or the universe implodes. Most likely people are growing bored of doing the same thing over and over which in turn is the reason why the gear grind feels too slow. I actually noticed during Endwalker that was when people started really grilling them on the rate of gear progression. What I think might be happening is that there isn't enough things to do to keep people in the game, which decreases the value of the gear progression because if all the stuff is going to reset anyway there isn't much point redoing the raid tier for tokens. At least not unless someone wants the glam, and that starts getting into the issues of the inventory system.