FINAL FANTASY XIV Welcome Back Campaign Kicks Off!

[Raldo]

"Hey guys, I'm back for less than 10 days! Anybody want to help me do such-and-such?"

That sucks for you guys and all, but seriously, nobody likes helping someone who's just going to disappear again. You wonder why the community is "closed off"? It's partially because we can't count on people to actually stay, therefore a majority of our efforts go to waste.

[TacoTaru]

While I completely agree with you (I've dropped quite a bit of money materiaing gear for friends only for them to leave days later) and I understand the sentiment, we can't be a snake eating our own tail forever on this. Something has to give as far as willingness to help and hope for the best or acceptance that we're always going to be a small community. I'm willing to take the chance on the former and possibly make some friends/LS mates along the way.

[Raldo]

Oh, I know. I'm just trying to give some perspective from the other side of the fence as to why they shouldn't be at all surprised by all these reports of "nobody will help me". We can't actually identify who is and isn't actually here for the free period or not, so that's probably not the issue, but a majority of people who pay to play have been bitten more than one by making friends then having that friend abruptly disappear. Shortly after launch, I was co-running a linkshell with a good 50+ members. It didn't take long for that to dwindle, and now I'm just jaded.

A lot of people that actually pay to play accomplish things mainly through pick-up groups. Sorry, but the systems are not in place to make your life easy right now (Content-Finder or whatever).

What would have been ideal would be if SE made a temporary linkshell or something for all the people coming back during this period so they could all help each other out. Sadly, knowing their already-existing problems with chat channels, I'm sure that was an impossibility.

[Lordender]

"Hey guys, I'm back for less than 10 days! Anybody want to help me do such-and-such?"

That sucks for you guys and all, but seriously, nobody likes helping someone who's just going to disappear again. You wonder why the community is "closed off"? It's partially because we can't count on people to actually stay, therefore a majority of our efforts go to waste.

Lol I agree, SE should of probably nerfed the AF quests down to solo difficulty before doing this 10 day campaign. They could have also made temp AF gear that WB campaign users get in a crate which would expire after the 10days were up so they could play around with jobs to see what the jobs are about.

[Lucavi]

Lol I agree, SE should of probably nerfed the AF quests down to solo difficulty before doing this 10 day campaign. They could have also made temp AF gear that WB campaign users get in a crate which would expire after the 10days were up so they could play around with jobs to see what the jobs are about.

There are about 5 good ideas on this page alone. Come on, SE. Think a little.

[blythe]

"Hey guys, I'm back for less than 10 days! Anybody want to help me do such-and-such?"

That sucks for you guys and all, but seriously, nobody likes helping someone who's just going to disappear again. You wonder why the community is "closed off"? It's partially because we can't count on people to actually stay, therefore a majority of our efforts go to waste.

My issue isn't that people won't help - as you said, why should they?

I'm bothered by the fact that "helping" is even neccessary at all. Why are there all these party-required, one time quests that seem to only serve as a cock-block for reaching future content? E.g. the Moogle and Garuda pre-quests, the recent Grand Company storyline, etc

And why is it that almost 2 years after release, the community is so starved for content that they rush through the new stuff within a couple days after patch? If I were a paying customer, I'd be unsatisfied with that.

As someone said earlier it's an issue of having there be multiple rewards people can gain from any given activity. The AF quests taking you do the various instances was a step in the right direction on that front. So if someone wanted to do Darkhold, they could group up with people who needed AFs for various jobs, etc. There needs to be more of that.

[CasualPlayer]

This is a problem with most MMOs not unique to FF. I guarantee TERA will have the same problem once everyone caps their favorite jobs.

[Waraji]

I'm waiting for the day (perhaps 2.0? although I am not holding my breath) when they release the floodgates and add actual endgame content that is not 7/7'ed in a week or 2. Sky/Sea esque content, Relic type content. I personally have never been part of a game in this current state where the only player base is at a near constant halt waiting for the next patch, to only eat it in a matter of days. Sort of like trying to hold in Lemmings into a wall, and stay there waiting till SE builds up the "perfect(the two weeks)" road to the hole that is the next enclosure.

I'm really curious to see how long it would take to attain those actual endgame content items come the day it is actually released. Here's hoping for a 2.0 expansion.

[Cichy]

This is a problem with most MMOs not unique to FF. I guarantee TERA will have the same problem once everyone caps their favorite jobs.

It already does since they speed up the leveling process. This is nothing unique to XIV. People nowdays want to burn through content at a pace developers cant keep up with. Than they dont want to go back. Than they want meaningful content.

[Grey Jorildyn]

That's kinda the current state of most MMOs nowadays. It's a product of watering down content and not rolling shit out fast enough. People are blowing through shit really fast without any meaningful long-term goals (awful grindy achievements, luminary weapons, really SE?). Nobody's really figured out a good way to deal with that other than giving players something to do on the side between lockouts (usually much longer than 15mins), like dynamic open world content, pvp (BGs), queued mini-dungeons, etc.

[Katlan]

"Hey guys, I'm back for less than 10 days! Anybody want to help me do such-and-such?"

That sucks for you guys and all, but seriously, nobody likes helping someone who's just going to disappear again. You wonder why the community is "closed off"? It's partially because we can't count on people to actually stay, therefore a majority of our efforts go to waste.

there is also the possibility that some of those people who are trying the game out again, may like it and decide to play it for longer. But if the community feels closed off they won't give the game another shot.

A good example of that is Aion. I tried the game out again when it became F2P (and I had a maxed level character w/ great gear before the F2P xpac), yet the community was so absolutely terrible that I lasted less than a week. It didn't matter how much I actually enjoyed the game, because I do enjoy it, because the community was so absolutely terrible that I couldn't enjoy the game

[Raldo]

Yes, it is quite the catch-22.

People leave because they don't have fun.
Others aren't helpful because people leave (or treat them badly because they haven't completed everything).
People don't have fun because others don't help.
Rinse, repeat.

Your move, SE.

[Thiefami]

they could make the content.., ya know, fun? We play games to win, but we also play them because they are fun. If they created dynamic FUN content they wouldn't have this problem. I also agree with Katlan. I also tried Aion a little before it went free to play and stayed roughly a week after free to play, and encountered the same reason I have a hard time signing into XIV, the community.

[Croy]

they could make the content.., ya know, fun? We play games to win, but we also play them because they are fun. If they created dynamic FUN content they wouldn't have this problem. I also agree with Katlan. I also tried Aion a little before it went free to play and stayed roughly a week after free to play, and encountered the same reason I have a hard time signing into XIV, the community.

The current game only has filler content right now (Lots of stuff stretched to last long item wise, but less stuff that takes genuinely a long time to complete, and a lot of content with little to no interaction with the world other then a destination point) and has severe limitations on party balance due to the outdated server architecture being employed. Furthermore most the new 'content' looks be to designed with their new 2.0 Cross-realm content finder system for 2.0 but its obviously not in yet. This is namely the primal battles, hamlets, and even dungeon/raids.

Personally I think the biggest issue with our community right now is simply the community tools are still horrifically lackluster and in many ways broken and look like they will remain broken till 2.0. The biggest of which is inability for people to get kicked from an ls while they are logged off still. I think the community would be a lot more welcoming about adding people into their activities if they didn't need to worry about the ls player limit and fearing never being able to remove a person they will never see again. Another community tool missing is the delivery/mail box system. Basically if you have to actually go find someone to help them, the would rather not do anything at all. But at least with a mail box system some friends or perspective ls friends could send you stuff while you are gone or from far away to help you.

[Lucavi]

This is a problem with most MMOs not unique to FF. I guarantee TERA will have the same problem once everyone caps their favorite jobs.

Right now everyone is running alts up to cap, which kind of works the same as XIV, although its a longer process. Once everyone caps every job, though, yeah, you probably won't be seeing much help, especially through instances, considering the drops are nerfed if someone outlevels the instance.

You'll see help with BAMs, but honestly, not much stuff in TERA requires a full-blown party to clear, outside of instances. Yellow quest BAMs can be blown up by a single character if they outlevel them, and the lowbie still gets the reward, so its not hard to blow a friend through early level content. Its pretty easy to blow through entire quest zones on a higher level class. I don't think you can do that in XIV, though.

[Meko]

I didn't join for the free week/10 days whatev because the game sucks. With the other games that are out or coming out, it's just not reasonable to try and play this for 10 days. Walled "zones" and a 45 minute crafting sessions and I'm already looking to do something else with my time.

[Siatdiat]

Meko! Log into 14 and afk with me while you play other games that are more fun!

[Stanislaw]

I'm waiting for the day (perhaps 2.0? although I am not holding my breath) when they release the floodgates and add actual endgame content that is not 7/7'ed in a week or 2.

AF weapons seem to be this, although people are QQing about the (supposed) requirements already even when the whole thing isn't even out yet. lol

[Corrderio]

Well if it requires annoying timesinks like that 25K seal item and hamlets, can't really blame them.

[Fievel]

Well if it requires annoying timesinks like that 25K seal item and hamlets, can't really blame them.

Aren't time sinks exactly what people are asking for?