Next step

It's been 1 week since I'm done with Neo Nyzul(Thaumas 5/5), and I can't help but start thinking about the future of this game.

I have to say I'm quite impressed with the performance of Thaumas. It's a huge improvement compare with my TP set pre-Thaumas. In dyna I often engage one EP mob, and dropped it's HP to 5% before proc before I even notice, 3 months ago when I started solo dyna, my TP dmg wasn't anywhere close to this back then, with the addition of lots of DEX and items like rancor collar, it has noticeable improvement.

However, during certain conversation with Moghat ppl, I've been wondering, or maybe somewhat worried, about the direction of this game is going.

Basically, I 5/5 entire set of gear in about 1 month. Although I did some run before optimal setup was discovered, but after I finish Almace and started static with 2x SCH, took about 1 month to 5/5, which is one of the fastest 5/5 endgame gear in my life.

Look at other 75 era gears that I have 5/5:

AF2: Took me 10 months to 5/5 my BLU and COR relic, about 1+ month to +2 and finish EXP trial for COR.  NQ was done before dyna update though, now that you can enter dyna everyday solo, probably can 5/5 in a month. However, now that NQ AF2 is also no longer that great for many jobs.

Campaign set: Took me 4 months of campaign to obtain 3 pieces starting from rank 1 and 0 AN, and a couple more months to get 2 more piece to finish the set. Campaign body was the best COR melee body back then, pants being 2nd best and feet sidegrade, those 3 were the main piece I trying to obtain, after I got head/hands it took more than 8 months total. It's however much faster to grind AN nowadays though.

Assault set(Yigit): Took me 2 assault statics to finish 5/5 too, so that's probably 8~9 months.

Hydra armor from Dyna-tav: Took me a couple of days of EXPing in Tav to 5/5, but that was after dyna update when those armors now total shit. If it's 75 era probably need months too.

Other incomplete gears:
Crimson gear set(w. abj): Got my 1st piece of crimson greaves 2.5 years ago, now still missing body to 5/5.

Homam: Did limbus for 5 months to get my pants, homam set stayed at 2/5 for years.

Athos's: Spammed VW since they're out for 5 months, still missing head.

Salvage: Never have more than one piece of Morri feet...........

ZNM Enki set: Never have more than one pieces of legs too..........

Compare with the above mentioned, Thaumas not just takes least time to complete, also provides biggest upgrade and widest utility. Personally I use it for 3 different WS(WF, last stand, Exenterator) and melee TP, for all those category it's major improvement, not just sidegrade. And it literally trashed majority of old gears I owned.....My Athos's is mostly evasion set(body/feet) only with little use since I can cap eva in majority of situation when evasion needed with just thaumas. Athos's legs took me a while to get and spreadsheet shows it only possibly beats Thaumas in very few occasion. And Athos's set is still new, out for 5 months, already became a set of gear that's not all that useful, that's why I still don't have head. I don't even know if anyone bother to do VW now, as many of the VW gear is fairly pointless to have and never drop, the reward/effort ratio isn't nearly as good as Nyzul.

Considering it's being reported even none-optimal setup with NIN DNC WAR MNK SCH SCH can beat F100 with 20 clears on their first run, and you can pick your own gears after F100 clear, and really only need 1 month or less to clear 5 times, it's fairly safe to say Nyzul is another "hand out items" event like Dyna revamp and Abyssea. Hand out items means you have a lot more chance to get that gear by doing the event and reward/effort ratio is slightly better than 75 endgame.

About 2 years ago SE released Abyssea, with new lv cap gears like AF3 and empy, which trashed old gear by a large margin, and fairly fast to obtain, ppl been saying SE hand out items in Abby.

Then there came dyna revamp, a mostly boring grind, but able to solo a relic in 1~2 months, this is SE's move to hand out relic.

So majority of player either do Abby for empy/AF3, or relic.

Then there came Nyzul V2, after some adjustments everyone and their mother on the street has F100 gear too, which trashed majority of gears came before it, even newer AF3 and VW, that is as broken as ebody back at 75, but much faster to get and much more bandwagon. This is SE's move to hand out top tier armor.

Now 95% of player is either doing Abby, grinding relic in dyna(ADL included), or doing Nyzul when they log on.VW, legion and WoE much less popular now, when they require more effort to put a group together and reward/effort ratio not as good.

Now that if any event doesn't hand out items, nobody want to do it.

I've been wondering what's SE's next move. More revamps, and there really isn't much to attract more players unless SE hand out top tier items again.

So it became a loop, SE do more revamp, hand out more items, while player base getting smaller everyday. If reward/ratio isn't as good as abby/dyna relic/nyzul v2, nobody wants to do it, complained, and quit because they're tired of killing same VW for 500 times and no drop. And when they do hand out items, player finish everything in 1 month and have nothing to do again and quit.

I guess it's finally time for this game starting to get stuck in a wall. SE is unwilling to put more resource into anymore content, it seems that player base just shrinking really fast, majority of player on my server are JP now, and about 1.4k ppl on my server on NA prime time, which is much lower than 1 year ago when server just merged.

I wonder what next step would be? The idea of limbus doesn't sound attractive, and after I finished nyzul my life is pretty much reduced to dyna+provenance only(since provenance never give me shit). Maybe I should try legion, or maybe I should secretly lv a 3rd job and play with it for the sake of it, as the point to keep playing getting smaller and smaller everyday when player base getting this small.