Thinking Of Returning But...

So i have been away for about a year and i am uncertain about coming back.

Main concerns at the time was the dwindling player base which led to difficulty on less desirable content/unexplored content, it almost got to the point where everyone knew everyone and whos mule's were whos etc. One of the other problems which to be fair isnt new as i always struggled with it but its the GMT time zone that i play in.

So my questions are,

Has inventory space been relieved?
Has the player base gone up or down significantly from 1 year ago?
Are there any reasonably serious LS's for GMT timezones around?
As i left i saw some new equipment begin to surface with what seemed to be ridiculous stats, has the game changed toward obsoleting all past gear? (basically are we heading toward new patch new batch of gear?)
How has the development team done in terms of improving the game?

I appreciate any replies people can give perhaps even any other information i'd find useful. Thanks in advance.

70 of these threads...

There is a lot of inventory, but it's never enough.
As of a year ago, down slightly.
EU playerbase is practically non-existant.
It's not new patch=new gear, it's 119 all the things until next ilvl patch.
There's been a shitload of QOL changes, (unlimited warp ring being EPIC) However, they ALL should've been around for YEARS.. Too little too late.

If I could quit (again) there's no way in hell I'd come back with ilvl in the game now.

Yes its worth it

I think Draylo has that answer set to auto when it sees the word returning...lol

QOL is up pretty substantially. Warp Ring(as mentioned), new home point crystals at inconvenient places like Sky, and the ability to teleport inbetween any home points.

An additional 80 slots similar to Sack/Satchel, and another 80 slots for only gear pieces that you can equip from directly rather than having to move to your inventory.

Base movement speed has been increased(max has not however, so things like Flee feel slower).

A lot of synthesis things I don't really care about, but easier to lazily grind up a subcraft, or use a macro command to repeat a synthesis many times over.

No longer need three people to enter things like Assault/Salvage.

Update to weaponskills makes a pretty decent power spike for everyone.

With respect to gearing, Artifact/Relic has been updated to be meaningful equipment for a lot of jobs. Emperyean/NNI/Salvage still has its uses for support roles or some situational low end content like Dynamis farming. Essentially there was a shift with the release of Adoulin, an additional shift for introducing item-level, and after that they returned to the side-grade/situational gear releases.

1. Inventory space has somewhat been relieved. We now have what's called a Mog Wardrobe. It is 80 additional slots, made only for gear. You take stuff in your current inventory and transfer it there, and then you can equip items from there, along with your main inventory. Giving you 160 item slots to equip gear from.

2. Player base on Bismarck is about the same as it has been.

3. No idea about GMT zone LSs.

4. The way the new gear is designed, everything new has an item level (ilvl). ilvl gear is equipable at 99, but has approximate stats as if you actually lvld up to that ilvl. Example: a dagger with an ilvl of 119 has dagger skill +242, since if we lvld up to 119, we would gain about 242 dagger skill levels. Armor is the same way. It has a crap ton of stats, due to us gaining some of those stats if we leveld up to the particular ilvl for the gear. Hope that makes sense.

4. We get small updates every 5-6 weeks, instead of large ones every 6 months.

5. Few things the devs have added.
Showing other players in PT and Ally TP, next to their HP
Allowing us to change a full gear set with a single macro line
Stacking logs, ores, most other single slot crafting items.
Bunch of other stuff