Like most “modern” MMOs, FFXIV is based primarily on the endgame,after the player reaches maximum level, they do dungeons and content in order to get new and better gear to do more dungeons to get better gear and so on and so forth.
While this is a tried and tested formula which can be effectively used to increase a game’s level of content, there is the issue of what to do when a player joins late in the game. Often when a player begins playing an MMO after many updates are passed, there is a massive stretch of new gear to get, dungeons to do and bosses to fight. While this may seem good as there is a large hill of content for players to conquer, it can often leave people feeling alienated, as fellow players in their guild are doing much more advanced dungeons and raids, and don’t have time to guide a newbie through content in which an experienced player has no benefit from.
In order to combat this, FFXIV seems to streamline the acquisition of medium to high level items through their endgame currency system.“Tomestones” can be gained from finishing dungeons/bosses and most content. Tomestones can then be traded for endgame gear such as armour and weapons. These come in different types and flavours, for example; Tomestones of Mythology purchase item-level 90 gear, while Tomestones of Soldiery purchase item-level 100 gear. However, with new updates add new gear which can be purchased with Tomestones, and older Tomestones are often removed, and their gear made easier to obtain (sometimes being able to get several pieces of mythology gear from one dungeon).
Players are complaining about this, saying that their hard work to acquire good gear is being invalidated, as what once took them weeks to obtain can take new players a couple of days. These same players feel as if the endgame is “shrinking” and older content is no longer relevant and has no real purpose, rendering entire dungeons obsolete.When players work months to get to the level that a newbie can now reach in a week, it is hard to feel a large sense of progression, and it can become somewhat disheartening to see gear that used to be rare and difficult to obtain made common and easy to obtain.
However,other players support this decision saying that it helps to recruit newer players and get them up and going into guild activities easier,without having to work incredibly hard just to get up to scratch.While some members of a guild can be willing to guide new players through the content needed to get to a higher level, it is much easier for that content to be streamlined, allowing players to easily get the gear required to do the harder dungeons and raids. These players also say that there is still a ridiculous amount of content to pursue, and that the early endgame content pales to the amount of later endgame content (such as levelling relic weapons and doing Hunts).
Gear such as this has been invalidated by the easier acquisition of higher
item-level equipment
Should an MMO appeal to long term players over new players? Should it streamline its endgame content (in the process making the game"shorter") in order to reduce the amount of players alienated from a difficult climb to the top? Is there a way to appease both parties, making the game easy to get into without making existing content obsolete? How will it handle the new content added by the upcoming Heavensward expansion? It is still unknown how FFXIV will answer these questions, while FFXIV is just over a year old, it is still relatively young for an MMO, and as for now only time will tell.