Lack of content on patch release

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Originally Posted by Adeacia

They could release all the content that will ever be in Stormblood, at the expansions release, and in a week people will complain about nothing to do.

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If this is the case, either the complainants are trolls or the developers have to seriously rethink the design of the game as this would not be appropriate for an MMO.

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Originally Posted by Remedi

Don't take offense, but you are simply setting up yourself for disappointement

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You are most certainly right. But one can dream.

If people like it this way, good for them. As for me, I don't think I could go on doing the exact same thing for another expansion.

Wish they would stop focusing on house Barbie dress up. We get the same dungeons every patch. How about they make smaller dungeons with a lot more creativity. It doesn’t have to be the same thing every dungeon SE. let us transform into monsters or something in a dungeon. Let us kill things with one hit with random power ups like deep dungeon. Give us items to use that make the dungeons quirky. Time trial within dungeons that give more rewards. Individual loot chest for each player. Random chest drops from monster kills. Random chest appearing out of nowhere. A nemesis system where an assassin or random monster boss appears to targets one player due to their constant monster killing level or something. Killing this nemesis would drop tons of personnal items for each person in the group. Like the loot sack in diadem 2.

On the topic of staggered content between patches; I think it's necessary for them to stagger content. But only because they have to. Most of their (battle) content isn't designed to hold the attention of most of the playerbase for very long. They all feel designed as novelties at best. It's why things like EX primals really only see activity the first few weeks before the active players have either totally farmed or were lucky enough to quickly collect what they wanted from it and shelf the primal for the foreseeable future. People get their tokens from Normal/Savage and Alliance raids and stop doing it for the week (especially with this new Greed-only raid). Content like Eureka and PotD that don't fall victim to the "memorize the dance, beat, repeat" model tend to live longer and I get the feeling that's why they are "saving" that content so that it doesn't compete with participation of what they do release that has an incredibly brief shelf life.


Unfortunately, 4.3 just so happens to not contain any enduring battle content. Unless you count PvP, which for some reason the devs don't care what's going on with their new PvE content- they'll throw a start of a new Feast season on the 1st day of an expansion if they want to (chill, mostly hyperbolic) and Frontlines usually lasts for a while until another one comes along to kill it.

Go play something else then.
Maybe this isn't a game for you.

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Originally Posted by LeoLupinos

Go play something else then.
Maybe this isn't a game for you.

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Hate to say it, but this does hold some truth.

This game was designed to be casual-friendly unlike most MMOs that want to gobble up all of your free time. Yoshi-P himself has said that he wants you to be able to play FFXIV and other games too.

A gamer that hangs in one game and just that one game is going to get bored, burn out, or just become miserable. He wants people to have fun playing the game, and a part of any gamer's healthy fun is variety. Play FFXIV for awhile, get all the content, take a break and play something else for awhile and come back when the next major patch comes out.

That's what Yoshi-P wants you to do.

He wants the more casual people with lots of IRL job hours, etc to be able to keep up. Can't do that if the game asks for 5, 6+ hours a day from you.

The main issue I have with the devs spreading out content is it just makes for unnecessary down time in which players can't play. You have 24hours to add in all the content theirs no real reason to spread it out.Like this 4.3 that just happened felt like their was not much to add and it nearly took them 24 hours to add? Just add in everything come 4.4 and onward. These 4.x.1 or whatever is getting abit out of hand. It's especially annoying when they advertised the new POTD and it's something so many players wanna play and then Yoshi-P peeks his head out of the corner and smiles and goes "It won't be released until like 2 months later" then slowly moves his head off screen(This didn't actually happen but it damn well is close enough). For someone who saved this game from death he does some of the dumbest choices in my opinion.

If you weren't here for 3.1 then you have absolutely no idea what a true zero content patch looks like, just saying.

More serious answer, it's a catch up patch, they've always been thin on content. Yeah they might be spacing out releases, but why is it such a big deal? You'll only be done with it in a matter of days then sit and complain about nothing to do. Take up crafting and gathering, we have lots to do this patch. That might not be "content" in your eyes but it is something to do. Worst case scenario, just stop playing the game for a while until the content you like doing comes out.

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Originally Posted by Miyafuji

For me this latest patch has been the most lacklustre patch to date, after farming the new trial, getting the weekly drop from the new 24-man raid and doing what feels like the exact same Namazu quest 3 times per day there isn't much left to do within the patch.

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Yeah, agreed. Like normal with Stormblood thus far, though. There's a lot of content in some sense: a new dungeon, new 24-man Raid, new Trial, new Beast Tribe, and of course the attendant QoL changes, MSQ additions, etc.

The problem is that it's all shallow as hell. There's a bit of a learning curve with Ridorana, which is fun. There's a learning curve with the EX Trial, also fun. The MSQ is fun. Annnnd once that 20 or so hours (tops) of content is done, there's nothing appreciably distinct from the equivalent content tier we had before 4.3. Same old shit, different coat of paint.

SE needs to slow down the pace of iLevel improvements, and introduce content that actually has some meat to it. There is one area of the update that features this, actually: but it's exclusive to crafters. The upgrade path to the new 3-star Crafting gear is suitably meaty. There's a nice mix of items required, there are some reasonable time-gates (unless you want to spend tons of money), and it's not a carbon copy of something we were doing a month ago (though it is more or less a mirror of content we were doing back when the last gearset released - but that was far enough back it feels alright, at least to me). It's worth noting, by the way, the differences between DoH / DoL upgrades introduced in 4.3, and those for combat jobs:

(1) The DoH / DoL gear stays relevant longer; I can count on it being BiS likely through to 4.5, just as the Ala Mhigan gear was BiS through 4.3. Combat gear? Hah. Not only does this make the DoH / DoL gear more desirable, but it also means that the various repeated mechanics required to obtain it don't feel so goddamned dull. I haven't made a push to farm for DoH / DoL gear crafting since 4.1, months and months ago. Combat gear, though? There's always a latest EX Trial; there's always a latest 24-person Raid; there's always an Expert Roulette; for the mid-core player, these activities just get drilled in for weeks or months until we're burnt out on them. Swapping the tilesets and the mechanics does very little to combat this burn-out, because it's still the same sort of content rotation.

(2) I can 'feel' the difference my new DoH / DoL gear makes. I can't feel the difference in combat gear. That exacerbates the feeling that 4.3 didn't really give us anything.

(3) The DoH / DoL gear is a significant time sink. Hundreds of timed node items are required, there's a ton of Yellow Scrip items needed. The Namazu currency puts something of a soft cap on progress. There's rotation planning, especially if you're new to 3-star items. There's long-term Meld planning and materia acquisition to occupy you once the items themselves are made. Combat jobs? Yeah, I'm spending what, maybe 3 hours per week on dungeons? Call it an hour in Ridorana, and three Expert Roulettes which take at most forty minutes each including queue time? We'll be closing in on 4.4's release date before it can compare to the time I spent on my DoH / DoL gear, and that's assuming I didn't decide to make extra copies of the gear for friends or profit. If I did, the DoH / DoL content - a simple couple-dozen recipes or so - just completely outclassed the new, fancy Dungeon / Raid / EX Trial.

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TL;DR - It's not that XIV doesn't have content, or doesn't get enough content added. The problem is that it's the wrong type of content. Ridorana feels fresh for maybe a run or two, at most; then it's just another possible item to get in the Alliance Roulette. The same sort of dynamic exists with the new Trial, and the new dungeon. New content has to be more than a fresh tileset and remixed mechanics, particularly when said content types are built to be repeated steadily for weeks or months on end. Eureka is a great example of what new content can - and should - look like; if SE can manage to release content like that regularly, and without displaying such amazing levels of incompetence in terms of balancing and general supporting systems, XIV will transform into a true AAA experience. Until such time as that, however, it's very much a one-trick pony. The game's great, but we're pretty much playing the same game we had in 2.1 / 2.2 or so, only with expanded Roulettes and a higher iLevel. That'll only entertain people for so long.

Edit / Addition:

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Originally Posted by Maeka

This game was designed to be casual-friendly unlike most MMOs that want to gobble up all of your free time. Yoshi-P himself has said that he wants you to be able to play FFXIV and other games too.

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Yeah, this gets thrown around a lot. Absolutely brilliant statement, and exceedingly deceptive. Two things I'd point out about it.

Firstly, FFXIV is not very casual-friendly. It's incredibly mechanics-intensive, which is quite punishing for people who are more casual gamers. There's a significant number of abilities available, and mastering them is complex. The 'real' end-game (Glamours and such) are murderously expensive, or insanely time-consuming to acquire. The Relic weapons - supposedly the casual player's path toward end-game level gear - have, prior to Eureka at least, been ridiculous time sinks. The storyline bloat and the sequential nature of the MSQ makes getting started a brutally time-intensive process as well (but, oh, wait, you can pay extra to skip this... what a convenient fix). FFXIV is good about enabling people to catch up to modest gear levels upon hitting level cap. That's really about it, as far as newbie-friendliness goes.

Secondly, aiming to be casual-friendly does not excuse Yoshi-P and the development team from treating shallowness almost as a point of pride. The original statement was a positive one (affirming commitment to a good experience for casual gamers), not a negative one (avoiding a good experience for anyone with more than 10 or so hours a week to play). So can we discard it as an excuse for the sort of bland bullshit SE has been feeding us for well over a year now?

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Originally Posted by LalafellDown

Wish they would stop focusing on house Barbie dress up. We get the same dungeons every patch.

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The thing is that a lot - I would anecdotally say the majority - of people play this game for the 'Barbie dress up'.
I don't say this as a negative but it's definitely a thing that needs to be accepted. FFXIV just steers its ship in that direction.

People have been complaining about this for YEARS.... the devs simply don't care. Which is sad.

There is a lot of content, but none of it takes very long to complete. So you do everything there is to do in like 2 days.

From the standpoint of challenges, the game does lack the content each VU. in 4.3 the challenging content is just the new EX, dungeon is a cakewalk and the other new battle content is tuned to be easy.

In theory the Ultimate content would be released at the same time as all other content but for the sake of allowing players to finish other content before grinding ultimate they hold it off for two weeks.

With Deep Dungeon I'm not certain but I do wish this content could see more production earlier in the patch cycle rather than the 3rd Version update, pretty much a year after Stormblood release, it provides the most bang for your buck when it comes to challenging content on top of RNG to get loot that other content doesn't provide.

Though there is also the question of wasted resources, aka Squadrons, releasing 3 new areas NPCs can go to with players does use up resources that could be used to make other content I honestly don't see the worth of doing Squadron instances since the game already provides a bunch of other ways to level a DOW/DOM. If they had worked it to be it's own entity unique from just npcs can go to dungeon with you and play as well as Tataru plays arcanist. . .

What could help a lot is if SE considered releasing standalone boss encounters of all the raids tuned to 8-man content. Imagine all the bosses but extreme versions, while yes it would require resources to produce it would have the benefit of already having the main assets designed for the boss while adding more layer on top of it.

Basically using what they deemed overtuned fora casual 24-man experience and create unique challenging 8-man encounters.

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Originally Posted by Vhailor

Firstly, FFXIV is not very casual-friendly. It's incredibly mechanics-intensive, which is quite punishing for people who are more casual gamers.

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Let's not kid ourselves, the game is very easy all around, it only gets mechanically intensive when you reach savage and ultimate level, it's not that complex before.

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Originally Posted by Miyafuji

Feels like most of the content of this patch won't be released for a while until eureka and deep dungeon eventually come out which seemingly could be anywhere from 2 weeks time and 2 months time.

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I just wished that they had at least put one of the two casual updates in it. Ultima might be nice for hardcore raiders but its not something for casuals and thus we have to wait more weeks to get more content. I am fine if they dont release all of it with the patch but putting all of the meaty content for later releases feels just a bit bad. Stretching all of their extra content out like that really feels like they themselves dont believe that its longlasting content..even though the palace is still run even today so the new tower should keep us busy for a while.

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Originally Posted by Adeacia

It doesn't matter how much content is added at once. It's always the same idea of "take time off of work, rush all the content on the first day, complain there is nothing to do on day 2."

People make it their goal to do the content as fast as possible. They could release all the content that will ever be in Stormblood, at the expansions release, and in a week people will complain about nothing to do.

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There will always be those people that can play a huge amount of hours per day and yes you probably wont have enough content for them to do. (Other than truly restricting everything with a weekly limit) But why should we force ourselves to just play the patch a minimum amount per day so that we might have enough for a few days more? This patch has nothing in it right now that takes huge time to complete. MSQ and any side quests can be done once. I read through every text slowly, I talk to all the NPC near the quest to see if they say something else, so I dont race through the MSQ. Heck with this patch we had another server problem so I could only do the last part of the MSQ later that day. Yet with doing everything without true rush I was done with the majority of the patch in 2 days.

Now I have only the daily quests and the weekly stuff left from the patch itself. How much more should we hinder ourselves so that the patch feels bigger than it is?

I have other achievements ingame and as soon as a friend comes back from his break we will try to do palace runs again but shouldnt a new patch itself at least keep the people busy for a few weeks? And leave the rest of the game and achievements for those weeks till the next patch comes out? Right now it feels more like the patch is done in less than one week and I have to try to find something else from older content to find, to keep me busy for the rest.

The only way to make patches have a longer lasting feeling would be ditching the idea of casual from running 24 man and have them to be a real raids feeling. There's really no other way. Maybe also tuning dungeons to be much harder that it's not a 15 min clear.
Outside of that there's really no way that you can make lasting content outside of grinding.
No game had patch content lasting for longer than a day, what they had however were walls either timed/skill/grind/gear walls that lead you to take time, be it forming a group, gear up or skill up or wait to get things done.

Think about it as the game change that it was CD beignj resetted on wipe. You now save so much time between wipes that a 100 pulls inc requires much less time to be cleared. In the same way, having no real lock on the content, and a duty finders too has speed up it's consumption incredibly, but the creation time has not really speed up.

That is why Legion has spread all the quests of the story on a timer, why they are still reliant on mission tables and why they now release raids on .5 patches which leads to why now they are able to release an expansion before the 1 year mark of the release of the last raid.
And this is important because it's a known fact that the FFXIV dev team and the Wow team do look at each other.

And honestly i MIGHT just be fearmongering here now but I believe they'll split story in parts next even before the last patch of an expansion

This game is wide as an ocean but only deep as a puddle.

4.1 was more lackluster imo. Also every patch is lackluster for us who already got everything leveled to cap.

(If you feel strongly about this please consider voting on my post in the live letter Q and A thread (it's the 1st one) to help make it more visible)

Those saying to play something else during the downtime really don't get the point at all. Personally, I have been in the position where I am spending much more time on other games since I finished with Eureka, which is months ago. The little bit of questing and half-hour of daily content really gives me almost nothing to do, and I am tired of being on a break!!!

Eureka and Deep Dungeon are the things that I have been looking forward to because they are the things that I can spend a lot of time on. Having to wait longer for these things, the specific things I am looking forward to, is extremely disappointing.

I'm not going to say that the new content is bad. The main story was enjoyable as always and the new dungeon is great. The dungeons are always good, even though the fact that they are so similar at this point makes them boring (I'll save that rant for another day). It's just that there's nothing for me to spend my time on.

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Originally Posted by number473

I'm not going to say that the new content is bad. The main story was enjoyable as always and the new dungeon is great. The dungeons are always good, even though the fact that they are so similar at this point makes them boring (I'll save that rant for another day). It's just that there's nothing for me to spend my time on.

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I didn't mean to come off like i was complaining. Problem for us who play more than 1 hour per day the content feel fresh and fun for a week or two then it just repeat mode doing expert daily and namazu for 10 min.

There will never be a time where MMOs can put out enough content to make people who complaij about it happy. Gaming studios take years to create those single player games that you run through in 8-100 hours. You are givijg this dev team months between updates. The only way to give lasting content is to create grinds of doing the same thing over and over, which is why MMOs do exactly that.

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Originally Posted by Vhailor

Firstly, FFXIV is not very casual-friendly. It's incredibly mechanics-intensive, which is quite punishing for people who are more casual gamers.

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Only when you get to the non-Casual (Savage) Content.

Duty Finder is very casual-friendly except for a few outliers (Shinryu, and maybe Fluminis).

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There's a significant number of abilities available, and mastering them is complex.

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Not really. I haven't found a job yet that I couldn't play casually and passably well for Duty Finder content.

I've gotten NIN to 60, RDM to 59, PLD and WHM both on 70. Nothing about any of those jobs is all that hard.

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The 'real' end-game (Glamours and such) are murderously expensive, or insanely time-consuming to acquire. The Relic weapons - supposedly the casual player's path toward end-game level gear - have, prior to Eureka at least, been ridiculous time sinks.

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I don't know of any casual player who NEEDS the Relic Weapons. The current "Relic" weapon is from Eureka, and that one isn't that bad, I hear players being able to do it in 6-10 hours.

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The storyline bloat and the sequential nature of the MSQ makes getting started a brutally time-intensive process as well (but, oh, wait, you can pay extra to skip this... what a convenient fix).

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It can be done quite casually, an hour here, and hour there and you will eventually get there. That's how I did half of it, I would log on for an hour or two and whittle away at them and just enjoy them cutscenes and lore.

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FFXIV is good about enabling people to catch up to modest gear levels upon hitting level cap. That's really about it, as far as newbie-friendliness goes.

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Everything in Duty Finder and outside of Savage/Ex is casual-friendly, lol. FFXIV is a game you can log on for just a bit and do your daily roulettes, any beast tribes you're interested in and still have a little time to do put into other things too (gathering, GC turn-ins, what-not). Now if you're a casual player, then no maybe you can't afford the most expensive glamours, maybe you won't have a mansion, etc, but you don't NEED those things to have fun in FFXIV.

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Secondly, aiming to be casual-friendly does not excuse Yoshi-P and the development team from treating shallowness almost as a point of pride. The original statement was a positive one (affirming commitment to a good experience for casual gamers), not a negative one (avoiding a good experience for anyone with more than 10 or so hours a week to play). So can we discard it as an excuse for the sort of bland bullshit SE has been feeding us for well over a year now?

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If they did give things that were 10 hours per week of content, then casual players would get left in the dust because they simply couldn't keep up with that kind of ridiculous content release.

As I previously said, Yoshi-P says he wants us to play FFXIV for awhile, turn it off, and play something else for awhile too. He can't have a game like that if he dumps a ridiculous time sink that causes us to feel like we MUST play 10+ hours a week.

As it is, players have no control over themselves already, as evidenced by the relic weapon quests pre-Eureka where people would grind hour after hour after hour doing nothing but that grind and then burn out and then complain that they don't like FFXIV because it's too grindy. Nobody held a gun to their head and forced them to do that grind. Why do you think there's a 450 Tomestone Cap per week? Why do you think you can only do 12 beast tribe quests per day?

Because time-gating is the ONLY way to get players to limit how much they do, otherwise they would log on for 48 hours straight and gobble up all the content like greedy pigs at the feeding trough and then complain when it's all done and there's nothing left to do.

Players have no self-control, they've proven this in any MMORPG that has ever existed. They have to do it RIGHT NOW. They gotta have it NOW NOW NOW NOW. They can't proceed at a steady pace, oh no. It's gotta be ASAP.

EDIT: Just look at the whine threads about maintenance if you want a dose of players chomping at the bit to devour the content as soon as absolutely possible.

Wish they would have released one of the two (Heaven or Eureka) with Ultimate next week. I know they probably have weapons comparable to the new EX weapon which is one of the reasons they are delaying it as to not kill the new EX primal so quickly since they have a history of doing this. (Waiting a month to drop other content/relic with same ilvl weapons as EX primal or better)

They could have changed it up and added another set of accessories or something instead of a weapon and just add the weapon later. Accessory choices are really lacking. That way, we could either have Heaven for players who want to level alt jobs through there and 4 man content or Eureka for players who don't do Ultimate.

Anyone elae feel like this is mimicing American Idol, "stay tuned for the most shocking/exciting/surprising elimination yet". If all eliminations are (insert appropriate adjective here) are any of them? If all patches are "lackluster" are any of them?

Ultimately I do find 4.3 was a disappointment mainly due to the fact they had been showing so much content in all the build up and trailers only for a majority of the content (heaven, Eureka 2.0, new ultimate) to be pushed back to 4.35 or later.

I'll repeat what I said earlier about the greatest patch in history, 3.1.

Guess what it contained, content wise? Thordan extreme, Void Ark, Vanu Vanu, 2 dungeons, like 4 MSQs, Verminion, and Diadem 1.0. 2 of those were dead on arrival, and beast tribes are apparently not content. So all we really had to keep us going until 3.15 (Anima Weapons) was literally just Thordan, and he was hard, not many people could even get to his first mini phase after the ultimate.

The icing on the cake? The raiding scene was an absolute joke, Gordias was tearing statics apart and causing people to jump servers constantly. A3S walled people so hard they just gave up. It was a mixture of the content being way overtuned and gear gated, as well as people still adapting to the new complex rotations and strict timers they introduced with Heavensward. We needed a breath of fresh air with 3.1, we needed them to throw us a bone and give us something to do other than bash our heads against Living Liquid/Manipulator. They gave us 3.1. Not only that, but 3.1 itself was hugely delayed and didn't come out until the November since the staff took a holiday after the release of Heavensward, making the wait even worse.

So don't even try and claim that 4.3 is anywhere near the most lacklustre patch to date, because you would be factually wrong.

I did everything the patch had to offer in one day, now its back to weekly lockouts and grinding old content to level up other jobs. Gets kinda boring pretty quickly. They need to find a way to make content last longer, but really they are just making it very grindy and "daily".

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Originally Posted by CorbinDallas

until 3.15 (Palace of the Dead/Aquapolis/Anima Weapons)

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Just a nitpick but palace and aquapolis were 3.35, 3.15 only had anima weapons .

Though I would say that 2.0 release content was worse in the term of lasting effect and quantity, though one could say that the overall difficulty of progressing was hiding it well, not to mention the willingness of ppl of excusing that, but imho ppl should realize that the reason we'll get less than say 2.1 is that because the game was barren at the start many standard qualities for a MMO had to be added during 2.x series.

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Originally Posted by Remedi

Just a nitpick but palace and aquapolis were 3.35, 3.15 only had anima weapons.

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My bad, Heavensward was all a blur to me. I guess that makes 3.1 even worse than I initially remembered. I'll edit my post to correct that, thank you!

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Originally Posted by CorbinDallas

I'll repeat what I said earlier about the greatest patch in history, 3.1.

Guess what it contained, content wise? Thordan extreme, Void Ark, Vanu Vanu, 2 dungeons, like 4 MSQs, Verminion, and Diadem 1.0. 2 of those were dead on arrival, and beast tribes are apparently not content. So all we really had to keep us going until 3.15 (Anima Weapons) was literally just Thordan, and he was hard, not many people could even get to his first mini phase after the ultimate.

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So how is that much worse than 4.3? (We are purely looking at 4.3 and not 4.3x)

We have MSQ +side quest, one ex primal, one 24 man raid, one beast tribe, Doman reconstruction and another delivery quest. That is not much more than the original 3.1 had, especially since doma and the delivery quest are just weekly.

It was much worse because the side activities were a failure and there was nothing else to lean upon, which is not the case now, also we are waiting for content while the only new content coming for 3.1 was a grind (which everyone knew about).
Ppl that cleared gordias had nothing new for them aside thordan which btw didn't even had birds till 3.2
You had to gear up by using tomestones since dungeon would require 170 ilvl, alexander too and void ark 175 as such you had no choice but run foreverreap for tomestones since also the new farming zone diadem was effectively garbage to gear up alts or new character.
I could go on but I'd say this is enough, true most of the points can be traced to the fact that most of the side activities of now are not linked to 4.3 but this is all the worse for 3.1 imho because since it was coming 2 months late it HAD to have good content in it, which it didn't.

Frankly as said 2.x and 3.1 were really the point of nothing for the game, but while 2.x can be said to be saved by 2.1 and onwards, you can't say the same for 3.1 which you needed to wait till 3.3-3.35 to get something else.
4.3 true doesn't give nothing new but the foundations of the game are much more solid than before to the point I'll say this SB is a much better expansion from this point of wiew simply because the game is better foundation wise. I enjoyed HW very much but If I need to be unbiased I can't say that 3.0-3.3 was really that great. The only real goal that it had was the longass grind of anima weapon

edit: Also let's not undersell how dungeopn gear is 345, not UCOB has perhaps the best choice of selection of gear that pve content has ever had

edit2: btw I think that comparing 3.1 MSQ to 4.3 is a bit unfair, 4.3 mops the floor with 3.1 story

Well for starters the MSQ in 4.3 blows 3.1 out of the water. The trial is actually farmable by pugs unlike Thordan, and the 24 man is relatively challenging this time around. Not only that but there's actually more stuff to do in general. Crafters and gatherers got a bunch of new things to do aside from the Namazu, we got a new roulette which breathes life into dead content.

4.3 is far greater than 3.1 in terms of substance, taking into consideration the dead on arrival Verminion and Diadem becoming Dino Island on day 2.

Now let's look at the .3x series as a whole, even though you said no. What we got between 3.1 and 3.2 were the anima weapons, that's it, and were you around for that initial i210 step? It was absolute hell. In comparison we're getting a new ultimate encounter, another post 60 levelling method, and a new stage of Eureka. It might be delayed, but it's something.

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Originally Posted by Maeka

Only when you get to the non-Casual (Savage) Content.

Duty Finder is very casual-friendly except for a few outliers (Shinryu, and maybe Fluminis).

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I disagree, unless you define 'casual' as 'experienced gamer who is time-limited'. My girlfriend is what I'd call a casual gamer: she's got a fair amount of free time, but has never strayed beyond the friendly confines of mobile games and the occasional Nintendo title. She wasn't comfortable running dungeons on her own until she'd progressed all the way to 70. Think about that: she sunk in hundreds of hours over weeks of effort before she was comfortable queuing up a Roulette on her own. Now that she's got enough experience, sure - anything short of EX / Savage / Ultimate content, she can do. But there's a steeper learning curve than you're admitting to.

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Originally Posted by Maeka

I've gotten NIN to 60, RDM to 59, PLD and WHM both on 70. Nothing about any of those jobs is all that hard.

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There's more complexity to the jobs than you're admitting to, and very little help provided. Consider a Bard, for example: for even your standard, run-of-the-mill dungeon run, you'll need to be able to maintain uptime on songs, watch people's TP / MP as appropriate, and maintain enough DoT to generate Rain of Death procs. That's just for standard trash pulls. To make matters worse, many of these demands are seen almost exclusively within dungeons, meaning there's little ability to practice - because oh, right, those Squadrons require quite a bit of progress before you can really take advantage of them. Really casual-friendly, that decision was.

Oh, and all of this of course is combined with handling increasingly diverse boss mechanics. It's a lot easier when you're doing your second, third, fourth job: all you're focused on is the ability usage, because mechanics are almost on autopilot by then. That first one's not so easy, though, particularly for people who are more casual gamers.

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Originally Posted by Maeka

I don't know of any casual player who NEEDS the Relic Weapons. The current "Relic" weapon is from Eureka, and that one isn't that bad, I hear players being able to do it in 6-10 hours.

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Yes, Eureka is easier (so far). I exempted that one from my post, if I remember correctly, but maybe not.

However, it's not about need. It's about who this content is accessible to, and who it's targeting: casual gamers on up. And in the past, it's been quite brutal.

I'd also point out that you've kind of made my point for me with this response, too. Introducing long grinds is perfectly OK, so long as it's not to the exclusion of more friendly goals.

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Originally Posted by Maeka

Everything in Duty Finder and outside of Savage/Ex is casual-friendly, lol. FFXIV is a game you can log on for just a bit and do your daily roulettes, any beast tribes you're interested in and still have a little time to do put into other things too (gathering, GC turn-ins, what-not). Now if you're a casual player, then no maybe you can't afford the most expensive glamours, maybe you won't have a mansion, etc, but you don't NEED those things to have fun in FFXIV.

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Depends on the player. Some will, some won't. And, no, not everything in the DF is casual-friendly, as I explained in more detail above, with an example player for evidence.

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Originally Posted by Maeka

If they did give things that were 10 hours per week of content, then casual players would get left in the dust because they simply couldn't keep up with that kind of ridiculous content release.

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So... what about Relics? What about Savage? What about Ultimate? SE is already making content for players with more time and/or experience.

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Originally Posted by Maeka

As it is, players have no control over themselves already, as evidenced by the relic weapon quests pre-Eureka where people would grind hour after hour after hour doing nothing but that grind and then burn out and then complain that they don't like FFXIV because it's too grindy. Nobody held a gun to their head and forced them to do that grind. Why do you think there's a 450 Tomestone Cap per week? Why do you think you can only do 12 beast tribe quests per day?

Because time-gating is the ONLY way to get players to limit how much they do, otherwise they would log on for 48 hours straight and gobble up all the content like greedy pigs at the feeding trough and then complain when it's all done and there's nothing left to do.

Players have no self-control, they've proven this in any MMORPG that has ever existed. They have to do it RIGHT NOW. They gotta have it NOW NOW NOW NOW. They can't proceed at a steady pace, oh no. It's gotta be ASAP.

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Wow, bias much? Since when is a different play style / more available time a reason for getting defensive on behalf of a development studio?

Here's the thing: FFXIV shoots itself in the foot with this crowd because it is so fucking shallow. If it would stop its steeply vertical progression tree, this problem would disappear. SE releases tons of content, as I said before, but when they eradicate the relevance of all content six+ months old, they leave players with an awfully small segment of content to focus on. Is it any wonder that when something truly new comes around, people gorge themselves on it?

Hell, look at the game most people in this 'not enough content' boat pine for: FFXI. It had time gates all over the place! 2-3 day spawn timers on HNMs (with competition risks!); 72-hour lockouts for Dynamis; lockouts on Einherjar; lockouts on Salvage. Want to know why people weren't bitching? Because all of it was relevant at the same time, so you could space things out. Dynamis a couple times a week. Einherjar a couple times a week. And these were long events!

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One other thing to consider: this vertical itemization path SE is on, and the rapid depreciation of items, is inherently anti-casual. Personally, I felt FFXI was more casual than XIV. If I took a break for a few months in XI, which I routinely did, my gear was still roughly as relevant as it was when I left. My Mog House wasn't cleared out and destroyed. My SPs and Linkshells hadn't replaced me to make space for someone new, because most content was quite flexible in terms of how many people could actually participate.

In FFXIV? None of that. My gear right now is significantly depreciated in three months, and almost what I'd consider baseline in six. Always. My house would be bulldozed, and I'd be left with a message along the lines of 'your shit's in storage, don't let the door hit you on the way out'. Any SP I had would have had to replace me, because every Duty in XIV requires exact group numbers for the most part.

SE can do better. They can build deeper content that stays relevant longer, and in the process silence complaints about having nothing to do, and make the game more friendly for people with erratic time needs. The only thing stopping them is themselves. And, the oddly defensive players on the forums who seem to think it's their job to defend problematic design decisions.

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Originally Posted by Maeka

Play FFXIV for awhile, get all the content, take a break and play something else for awhile and come back when the next major patch comes out.

That's what Yoshi-P wants you to do.

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If that's what Yoshi-P wanted people to do, people wouldn't be punished for unsubscribing.
There also wouldn't be such a large amount of content that can only be completed weekly that lasts a short time.

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Originally Posted by CorbinDallas

If you weren't here for 3.1 then you have absolutely no idea what a true zero content patch looks like, just saying.

More serious answer, it's a catch up patch, they've always been thin on content. Yeah they might be spacing out releases, but why is it such a big deal? You'll only be done with it in a matter of days then sit and complain about nothing to do. Take up crafting and gathering, we have lots to do this patch. That might not be "content" in your eyes but it is something to do. Worst case scenario, just stop playing the game for a while until the content you like doing comes out.

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I wasn't comparing 3.1 to 4.3 but sure, I'll bite.
I was around for 3.1 and 3.1 also had more content on release. Sure, it wasn't good content but it was still something new. They did try new things which could have been done much better to make the patch memorable.
However, my issue with this recent patch is that the content that I'm sure a lot of people were looking forward to: Heaven on High is set to be released to what I can only hope is less than a month from now essentially baiting players into subscribing longer.
Catch up patches haven't always been thin on content either, 3.3 for example had a ton of new things to do. We got essentially what has been released for this patch and more including aquapolis being introduced, relic weapon and a new frontline map. (this was 2 years ago and there hasn't been another frontline since.)

A lot of people who disagree with this thread have simply stated that I would just complete or get bored of any content within a few days and complain, which are just petty groundless accusations. I've been pretty happy with almost every patch that's been released, from joining in 2.0 I've only been unsubbed between the final patches and the expansion, with this being the first patch I've felt this way. Seems to me that you (and others) hurl these accusations to anyone that disagrees.

And yes, I have enjoyed what little there has been to do in 4.3 so far.

not the meatiest patch I've ever seen to be frank. having everything to 70 no levelling to do, so I just do the lighthouse once a week and a few exp roulettes or a little eureka to make tomes. In both cases I would do more, but they're both capped. doing namazu, but that isn't going to last much longer (and takes a whole 10 mins anyway). mainly just catching up on the fishing now. The new eureka and deep dungeon cannot come fast enough.

This is mostly a reply to a part of someone's post, I saw, when my page loaded in. It's not meant to stir the pot or anything.

ca·su·al

ˈkaZHo͞oəl/

adjective

1. relaxed and unconcerned.

"she regarded his affairs with a casual indulgence"

synonyms: relaxed, friendly, informal, unceremonious, easygoing, free and easy; informal,laid-back

"the inn's casual atmosphere"

2. not regular or permanent, in particular.

synonyms:temporary, part-time, freelance, impermanent, irregular, occasional

"casual work"

By it's own definition, the word casual has nothing to do with time invested, skill level, knowledge, or any other descriptors people like to mention. It just means something that is relaxing and done infrequently, without a set schedule. So by that account a good majority of us are casual, even raiders. The only individuals who wouldn't be casuals are the people getting paid to play or advertise the game.

Now, I know I'm using the literal denotation and not the more common connotation. But I just wanted to point out that we ate all in the same boat. A better way to say things might be to use the terms light, medium, and heavy, as those give a better feeling as to how much someone plays. Like you wouldn't expect a 2nd grader to know what a 6th grade knows, nor a 6th to know what a 10th grades would....

Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? Lol

I find there's not a great deal for me to do on a daily basis. I don't need tomes as I've completed my mains gear, my off job has the eureka gear and sigma normal accessories. I just seem to do the namazu quests, cactpot and frontlines roulette (until I cap wolf marks), so im done in about 20 mins. Weekly its just the 24 man raid, dhoma and delivery turn ins. I cant wait for the next relic step.

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Originally Posted by Remedi

It was much worse because the side activities were a failure and there was nothing else to lean upon, which is not the case now, also we are waiting for content while the only new content coming for 3.1 was a grind (which everyone knew about).

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Side stuff being a failure is something that one can say in hindsight of it. (After trying it out; Eureka for example was a failure for me)

Right now I have not much more to do in 4.3 than I had in the 3.1 patch. I still can only run one new dungeon/raid/trial and the older ones, I still can only do daily beast tribes and the rest is all something that will only come later. The only parts that adds a bit more to the patch is the Doma reconstruction and the new delivery quest but that is nothing huge. Both of them together will take like 20 minutes per week.

It might be that more will come in a few weeks/months but that does not change it that for me the initial 4.3 patch was boring. They could have put the new palace in it and my opinion of the patch would be quite different, since the old palast was something that busied me for long hours and I can see the same happening with the new one.

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Originally Posted by CorbinDallas

Well for starters the MSQ in 4.3 blows 3.1 out of the water. The trial is actually farmable by pugs unlike Thordan, and the 24 man is relatively challenging this time around. Not only that but there's actually more stuff to do in general. Crafters and gatherers got a bunch of new things to do aside from the Namazu, we got a new roulette which breathes life into dead content.

4.3 is far greater than 3.1 in terms of substance, taking into consideration the dead on arrival Verminion and Diadem becoming Dino Island on day 2.

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Just because the MSQ is better (which is subjective) does not change the substance much. Its still a once done deal. People could also argue that the trials are getting to easy and that Thordan might have been a nice challenge that could keep people playing it longer. 24 man is also subjective and something being a bit more difficult does not give the game more substance..because that would mean that creating a 24 man on savage levels would give the game huge amounts of depths.

Crafters and gatheres always have stuff to do if new items come out and the roulette is only just another way to run old content.

Again we are talking about real new content and there the 3.1 may have had more. Diadem 1.0 was new content and was even longer alive then the second version. It was a failure in the long run but it was something new, the same with LoV. So if we look at the patch without the hindsight of "x was a failure" and just pure content, 3.1 had still more.

If we compare the whole 4.3 with all the other still coming patches than this might be more than 3.1 but we are just comparing the original 3.1 and 4.3 without the .xx patches. And there I dont find more to do.

That's your opinion, but facts are that you need to consider those x.x5 patches too because it means you have something to count on, while 3.1 had very few to count on AND coming 2 months late.
Also 4.3 MSQ blowing 3.1 is not up to opinions imho, the sheer amount of direction and care on it were much higher compared to 3.1. without even considering the content of it. Heck 4.1 was blowing 3.1 out of the water too as a story, the only MSQ of SB that is comparable to 3.1 quality is imho 4.2 since both are essentially setup MSQ, but then again 4.2 had 2 solo trials.

If ppl really think that 3.1 was better than 4.3 in any shape or form I'm afraid I'll say that they are simply deluding themselves, you are not putting things into context, 3.1 was a terrible patch much worse than this one and regardless what you think of the content having staggered release this patch has still things to come, while 3.1 had nothing and we also got an apology for that.
You can hate the staggered release how much you like, but honestly if you feel like you would have complained eitherway about the lack of content later in the patches at least admit that before complaining there's nothing to do now, because having HoH and eureka released earlier would have changed nothing.

And frankly in the past ppl on the forum have always looked down on ppl making lists because quality is better than quantity yet now some of those are doing lists, I'm very disappointed of this

Feel a bit against the grain here but I thought there was more than enough. I only just got around to doing the MSQ yesterday and still am only on "Under the Moonlight" having completed the trial. I'm loving the namazu and though people are claiming it's only 10 minutes, I spend 10 minutes alone flying around Azim on my Mikoshi xD
The new Raid was super fun and I've had a great time learning the mechanics and trying to get better at it. It's also had me running Rabanastre more often now for the upgrade coins so I've spent a fair bit of time doing that. I'm levelling Dragoon up to 60 so I've got something to level once HoH comes out (yes it wasn't in 4.3 but it is in 4.3x and it's pending arrivial has given me a reason) The challenge Log addition to Eureka has made levelling there a lot quicker for someone who isn't just hitching a ride on the train.
I'm loving the addition of Swallows Compass to Expert Roulette and the design of the dungeon was great. The music in 4.3 overall has been fantastic from Swallows Compass, to namazu to the the mikoshi theme.
I've taken my time and enjoyed everything it has to offer and can benefit from a lot of the additions ad I know some of my friends have also loved this patch so far and been very complimentary about it and we still have Eureka & HoH to look forward to^^

I think had they released the Deep Dungeon this patch would have been so much better and lasted longer for players content wise.
1 single dungeon per is nothing overly exciting even if Swallows Compass is an enjoyable dungeon.
The Beast Tribe i rather enjoy but people are correct in that it is only 10 or so minutes a day, i would have enjoyed if it was longer tbh :/

Yeah I agree, I've felt that I don't have much to do this patch.

If Ridorana didn't have greed only and the other 24 mans too, I would do them more often, but as it is, I don't do Ridorana more than once a week per character, and I really don't enjoy the other 24 mans either. I use to run the 24 mans for fun, but the only reward I get is usually tomes, and that's just not enough. I'd rather go sit in Eureka if Imma grind tomes only.

When you're capping multiple characters and still feel like there isn't a lot to do... >>; ehhh