That time has come for me as well...Follow

It's a long post and there is no TL;DR so please continue at your own risk.

And after much consideration last week I finally decided to cancel my subscription.

Still I thought it might be useful to express the reasons behind my decision and I sincerely hope it gives others a different perspective of the game, either to provide some constructive feedback or simply to enjoy it more over all.

I'm not an SE fan anymore, the reason this is given upfront is because my comments may step on some people's toes and that's really not my intention, hence if you understand where I'm coming from it may be easier to swallow the things I'm going to say.

The main reason I'm leaving the game is because I feel I go one step forward and two steps backward with my character, as a casual player the distance between the hardcore gear and the gear I can get by my lonesome is getting farther and farther apart, not to mention the expiration date vs the time it take to actually get the gear.

Back in August last year when the game started it took me about 6 weeks to get to maximum level and a weapon ilvl 90 which was essentially the best in the game (bar the Allagan weapons which were almost impossible to get, even for the top of the hardcore players) after those 6 weeks I enjoyed the supremacy of that item for almost 6 months until march when the patch 2.2 hit bringing to the table the new armor/weapon tier into the game.

I'm not going to waste your time telling how the hardcore/casual gear options evolved but in short in order for the casual player to keep up in gear you now have to invest a significantly larger amount of time to get your gear and unlike before the gear you get is not even on par with the ilvl of the gear the hardcore have access to.

It can be said that people spending more time in the game should get better rewards, I can understand that, yet is not one bit less discouraging for those of us who simply do not have the time.

The second reason why I'm leaving the game has to do with the content, the casual player is forced to repeat and revisit content over and over again (daily roulette, atma/animus/novus quests) while the new content is mostly oriented to the hardcore, probably the most disappointing example of this was the atma acquisition, to quote one of my favorites "they are pissing on us without the courtesy of calling it rain", still I tried to look at it as a fluke, the animus quest was a bit better, but the novus upgrade was simply the straw that broke the camel's back. Bottom line the way I look at it, the casual crowd has to endure the lack of content if they wish to keep playing the game. I guess many would be willing to do so, unfortunately for me it is not fun anymore.

Still it is a beautiful game though, I couldn't possible like my character more, it is simply not possible to find more beautiful character and landscape models in any other MMORPG in the market, the gear design is amazing, for the most part each class is unique and fun and the story is extremely compelling. Still I feel 12.99 monthly is a bit expensive for a digital barbie (even if it is the best digital barbie in the world)

To wrap this up, I simply want to say that I'm truly sad to leave the game, if anything I'll take a look around during the expansion and probably come back for a month or two to give it another chance, until then I hope you all the best on your future Endorzean endeavors.

Good bye.

Ken

I can relate to Desmar's post.

The character I had started on Lamia is in the 40s... 43 I wanna say?

And her crafts are in the 40s with a couple high-30s and when I kept reading all of this stuff about how huge of a time sink the game is, I started losing interest and fast; I simply don't have that kind of time with a variable hour RL job, and I didn't like the twitch gameplay aspect this game seems to have (and how unforgiving it can be at times). I liked the game aesthetically, the UI is good and pleasing to work with, the combat itself is reasonably fun, the crafting is one of the most awesome things I've ever seen (though from what I've read, it sounds like they just got ridiculous at Endgame with the amount of work it takes to progress once you hit Lv50).

Well, I had stopped playing for quite some time, a couple months. Then a friend of mine from somewhere else mentions he just got the game, and it turns out he rolled on Faerie instead of Lamia. At first I was like "ugh... really? I wish you'd told me first." but then I made a decision to start again from scratch on Faerie.

Since then I've been having fun. The journey to 50 (at least for me) seems like more fun than what I was experiencing in the mid40s and what 50 has to offer (duty roulettes constantly sounds like something that could get old after awhile, and then the atma weapon farming I particularly didn't like the sound of).

But who knows what'll happen when I get to 50. For now, I've been enjoying the journey again. My new CNJ is almost 27, I'm just after Ifrit in the main quest and I just started my crafts, this time I'll do them in a bit more structured way and I'll have more idea of what to keep and what to toss (my first character had ridiculous inventory problems because I was reluctant to throw anything away) etc.

Starting a new character breathed a bit of new life into the game for me, though hopefully they add more casual stuff to do at Endgame beyond duty roulettes.

No offence, but there is a reason it's called "hardcore" content. You even state yourself that you are a casual player so when a new coil comes out, it isn't meant for you. Second coil is going casual in 2.4 so that is when you will be able to do it. Using the echo and presumably i120/130 gear.

Nearly the entire game is built towards the casual player in mind but it's a problem that the hardcore has one dungeon that casual players can't do? I really can't sympathize with you. If you think the game already doesn't have a lot of content, as a hardcore player I can assure you that for us, it's even less.

My FC and I were happy that they finally added a separating factor between casual and hardcore players by requiring a sand to upgrade gear. We knew that eventually oil/sand would be available to everyone by other means, but at least for a time our work in coil meant something. Being able to easily buy i90 gear when first coil dropped i90 gear also was a slap in the face to hardcore players.

I also can't see how "hardcore players are so far ahead of casual players". a 10 ilvl difference is a huge gap? really? at i100 you can do all the content in the game, including most of second coil. You are still able to play catch up with everyone else, but requires work to fill in those last 10 ilvls which seems completely reasonable to me. If you don't have the time to fill those in then you don't have the time. You don't get a free pass because of it. You don't go to work and get money by not working. I'm pretty sure "I don't have the time to work" won't fly by the boss.

It simply comes from your personal feelings.

As a casual player myself, I don't find it necessary to have all THE BEST gear. At ilvl 100 you can easily do most content that is hardcore. This obviously matters to you, so I understand. Good luck to you.

dont let the door hit you in the **** on the way out..

I liked the "FFXI NIN shadow" version of this statement better.

This game is really easy to catch up on and SE did a good job with that.. Because of Duty roulette it is so easy to finish the first 1/2 of your relic now..
Also with UAT's dropping form ST getting a 100 weapon is pretty easy..



Edited, Aug 19th 2014 12:27pm by Nashred

"Casually grinding out Soldiery and Hunts..."

Oxymoron.
Kenages post actually reassured me that I made the right decision some months ago.

The only problem is it sorta removes motivation to keep playing. For casual players it's not a big deal, but SE's new definition of casual... well, the bar is set much lower in comparison to other games. I'm OK with that because there are plenty of other options, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't bother me a little. I wanted XIV to be my MMO of choice. I just can't bring myself to sub > unsub > re-sub every time I lose interest.

Despite people being a bit overly sensitive about any talk of XI, I feel it's relevant to mention here. Most of the friends I have I can still find online in Vana'diel. They aren't logged in for as long as they used to due to some of the changes, but they're all pretty religious about how often they log in. ARR's model has a different impact on the community. It didn't break my spirit, but it did put me off a bit when friends I'd made in ARR would go missing for weeks or months at a time.

Some people are also fans of a particular franchise, though.

I happen to be very fond of the Final Fantasy Franchise; I've played all of them except 3, X-2, 13, and 13-2. Well, I played X-2, but got side-tracked while I was early in game and never did go back to it.

What do you say to the people who love the Final Fantasy franchise, but want an MMO set in the Final Fantasy Franchise, but for whatever reason, don't like XI (it's "too old", or it's UI is not up to snuff with today's games, or whatever reasons they might have) and they don't really like XIV either for whatever reason (the OP's reasons for example)?

What then?

They should hop on a kickstarter bandwagon even though the game is obviously not a Final Fantasy game, and obviously does not have any Final Fantasy elements in it (it had better not; I hear SE's lawyers are very aggressive with copyright enforcement).

I can understand some disappointment, some irritation at a game that is "almost perfect" except for a dealbreaker or three ruining the whole experience. As far as "why tell everybody about it?" I think they're more trying to get the word to the devs for that small glimmer of hope that said dealbreaker will be fixed in a future patch and they can come back and enjoy the game again (small chance of that happening, but who knows? Depends on the dealbreaker).

Edited, Aug 21st 2014 7:32am by Lyrailis

The time has come for me... to play Diablo III on PS4 for awhile.

I juts can't believe how awesome the game is without the auction house, optimized for next-gen console. I had fun on PC, but I just can't believe how much improvement I'm seeing in the PS4 version.

And there you have it. Still subbed, and yet the fun-value of the current FFXIV can't really be measured on the same scale - FFXIV is pounds and Diablo III is tons.

*shrug*

I'd only agree with this to an extent. Within the last decade, we've seen plenty of games that offer quick and easy quest hub leveling, auto-group dungeon/raid queues, optional crafting, some optional PVP features, tiered items often with "item levels," end game currency grind, etc. We'll see minor differences from one game to the next, but if you've played one of these games and jump into another, you'll probably have a pretty good idea of what to expect. Some of these games become decently popular, some don't, but nothing so far as even come close to the success that WoW achieved using this formula.

Creating a more niche title is a risk, but if they create something that fills a void that people actually want to play, that risk has the potential to pay off. Look at Eve, for example. A game that has 500k subscribers as of last year, that has been released for 10 years at that time. On a somewhat lesser note, look at the original Guild Wars, which sold 6 million copies on a buy to play model and completely throws WoW's vertical progression gear treadmill out the window. These games didn't target the typical standard modern demographic (especially Eve, which predates WoW and is nothing like it, and is still doing quite well for itself) but they still succeeded on their own merits.

Guise........the time has come for me too.........



Off to work, be back later! Second coil has been raining gear on my WHM's tiny, little head. Got dayam that healer chest looks good!

Thing is with this game, sticking to one sole class is kind of like kicking yourself. It you only have one class, it's easy to catch up that class to the current ilvl standard. But what if you have multiple 50s? That's where your time spent is truly shown. If you have multiple classes geared at ilvl100, that's shows how much work you have put in.

Even with catch up methods, it's not easy to catch up all your classes at once. True progression, I feel, comes from your versitality.