Hi, guys! Linking to an interesting thread I read on the official forums. While I am quite happy with my personal experience of FFXIV:ARR (having such a great group of people to explore Eorzea with helps), I found the observations made in this post to ring true (for the most part). Anyway, I thought it was an interesting analysis of the current state of affairs (as of patch 2.28) so here it is:

Current State of End-Game Contents - A Blog Post from A Japanese Player.

Wow, that's an interesting read. Thank you for sharing it. I believe the OP does a great job of framing the issue, though on some points I agree with him, on others I don't.

I did years and years of FFXI and I'm all sorts of happy that I don't have to farm pop sets to even *try* a fight in this game. Though, with how gimmicked fights are, I'd love for there to be a "practice" mode. You couldn't get the clear, but you could practice say, final phase of Titan EX as many times as you'd like without having to do the 3 phases before it. I think that'd help tremendously.

From a FC point of view… this exact issue (participation and making content accessible) is one of the things we really wanted to focus on as a group. Our goal isn't to be bleeding edge hardcore, but we firmly believe that everyone in the FC can (and should) have the opportunity to access later content. Yes, it may be a bit plodding at times (I think we've been on Titan EX for a couple months now), but we've all done it and we're all better players for having done it. There was a time when Titan HM seemed impossible, but we knocked that down too. We're working on learning and practicing Turn 5, and that makes me really proud of how far we've come as a group.

As a leader, the thing that frustrates me the most about new content are the lockouts. Once we have Turn 5 under our belts, teaching Turn 6 will become difficult because it uses the formers lockout method. Folks (understandably) go into statics and it just doesn't gel as well when you're trying to bridge a group of folks larger than 8. As I said, we want everyone to have opportunities to try it and succeed, so the lockouts just stab our intentions in the face -.-

The last thing I'd like to say is to thank you guys for being patient as we work on helping everyone and always willing to chip in. You guys are the ones that give our FC strength. These challenges are doable for us, I always firmly, 110% believe that from the bottom of my heart, but they require patience and practice. If we have those going for us, we'll always be successful eventually. I see our progress in endgame content more as taking joy in the journey rather than the item I get at the end that might not be that great anymore, but yay trophy.