Dear Community what even holds you in this game

[Araxes]

Copium that it will get better again.

[Amarande]

what even holds you in the game? Because my honest answer there is nothing left for me and I am really interested to hear what other people still see in this game.

S ranks and friends, mainly.

I've found I really can't take my friends with me when I switch games, and that has been a thing for years. When I take a long break from an MMO to go play another, the friendships built thereupon so often turn out to be tied to the common ground of playing that particular game that they atrophy fairly rapidly (maybe because I don't use social media anymore and Discords tend to get annoyed if you talk too much about competing games? Sometimes I wonder if I should've, er, Zucked it up and kept Facebook around after all, bad as it is, and knowing I didn't use it for like 5 years before I finally deleted it anyway lol).

And in today's world it's steadily harder to find new friends when your old ones drift away.

Meanwhile, I haven't really seen any other game that has the rush of spawning S ranks, which is one of the few sources of happy I still find in this fading star. BDO had spawn scrolls but they got rid of them during a QOL update (because they unified certain reward materials from those bosses - which had previously been separate per boss - and felt the spawn scrolls allowed people to farm the overall resource too easily). WoW has the very occasional world rare that required special engagement to spawn (like that one mob you need the item for in Zereth Mortis) or make fightable (like the one cloud serpent in the Vale in MoP) and that is about it.

TBQH I haven't bought this month's sub Crysta yet and I'm still on the fence if I'm going to, fwiw.

[TheInsomniac13]

Played from 2.0 onwards, got attached to my chara and I find the lore very interesting.

Yeah getting attached to your character is something I can relate to. The Hours I sunk into working on Glams to express her personalety for all the different jobs... will probably be the only thing I lock sadly back on once my sube runs out for good.

Copium that it will get better again.

Same... every time Patches washed another job blank of personalety I believed/hoped that down the road they would finaly walk back... I remember that Yoshida acknowledged that people were complaining about the homogenization of jobs... so I either missremember it or he was simply lying to us.

Fakt is 7.2 broke the last hope I had and I see that they will now walk back on there design decisions any complaining in the Forum is outright ignored which leaves me with the only way to make my voice heard... walking away and taking my money with me.

[Qyoon]

Roleplay, to be honest the rest sucks.

- I am on Chaos so cannot raid unless i travel to Light DC.
- PF is a mess and you waste hours waiting just to have a chance to play.
- The healers gameplay won't be fixed / made fun until 8.0.
- Theres internet routing issues with some ISP and FFXIV ISP, and SQE refuse to do anything beside saying "sorry".
- Everything seems low effort or barely made with any care.

So yeah, roleplay keeps me around, without that i would be gone since a long time.

[LilaIronman]

Having and not wanting to lose a house, basically gun to head kind of situatiom

[ApprenticeSmithy]

Playing with my brother mostly. It's the game we've played together for years.

I do miss the old Bard gameplay though. Now I just feel like a high level archer when playing.

[Boblawblah]

Having and not wanting to lose a house, basically gun to head kind of situatiom

[Skyclaw726]

Came back to the game a couple of weeks ago after a bit of a break to play other games and decided to check the forums. Happy to see it's still consumed by nihilism, bringing a bit of comfort in an ever-changing world.

Now on to the thing that keeps me playing. I actually enjoy the gameplay and story, minority opinion I know.

[Anienai]

My 4 houses.

[EmeraldSerenade]

I'm subscribed to keep in contact with friends. FFXIV's direction has been revolutionary, really... An MMO that treats interaction like a bug.