COVID showed why the Developers need to release Relic content sooner.

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Originally Posted by WaxSw

Its content but not new content, its doing the same we've been doing for a year over and over which means that there are a lot of people who have already done it, besides the gear time restriction in savages and tomes makes gearing alt jobs to a decent ilv a hard task so in the end you do endgame content with only 1-3 jobs making the deffinition of "mindless grind" a reality most of the time (just see how many players lv up a job to 80 just to never touch it again). Leveling is something that can't keep a game alive by itself especially when below lv70 a lot of jobs feel crippled making the experience less enjoyable and when it comes to new content even before COVID pandemic this expansion has been very lacking compared to SB

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I understand what you're saying though; while there is truth to what you're saying, the game could benefit from more Ultimate fights/Raids for endgame raiders, hell they could/should add a new deep dungeon to keep people entertained

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Originally Posted by Guntank81

hell they could/should add a new deep dungeon to keep people entertained

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I was so disappointed when SE announced there wouldn't be another for ShB. I'm hoping that they will release something else instead of just not releasing anything of the kind.

Or maybe the upcoming Relic content will fill that hole? Who knows? Just have to wait and see.

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Originally Posted by Penthea

I was so disappointed when SE announced there wouldn't be another for ShB. I'm hoping that they will release something else instead of just not releasing anything of the kind.

Or maybe the upcoming Relic content will fill that hole? Who knows? Just have to wait and see.

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They did say that the Bozja content would fill the void for leveling purposes at least, which is what a lot of people use Deep Dungeon for anyway.

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

They did say that the Bozja content would fill the void for leveling purposes at least, which is what a lot of people use Deep Dungeon for anyway.

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Heaven on High and Palace of the dead existed with the relics at the same time.
The point is that we haven't seen what Hoh/Potd was replaced with in terms of time, cost, and development.

Bozja is a follow up to Eureka, not a follow up to Heaven on High.

While I would have loved to work on Shadow Bringer relics (had all before the COVID delay), I used the time to level all combat jobs (except BLU) to 50 on my alt. Now, it might surprise some people, but I actually enjoyed doing it. Running these dungeons again after not doing them for so long was quite refreshing, even if it was low level stuff. This also got me to properly to take the time to try the new Ninja. Since Ninja was level 80 on my main before the rework and I never really liked playing ninja, I never properly tried to play it until now. Even the levelling up to 50 made me try it at 80 and I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.

I shouls have been working on Eurekean weapons though, oh well.

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

They did say that the Bozja content would fill the void for leveling purposes at least, which is what a lot of people use Deep Dungeon for anyway.

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I won't deny that a lot of people use it for that purpose but for me Deep Dungeon was never about leveling, I found the process to be mindnumbingly boring and everything dies so fast that you never learn anything about the job you're leveling. Deep Dungeons for me were about the challenge, the 4 man challenge to be exact, something this game is severely lacking in and Bozja does not fill that void.

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Originally Posted by Amnmaat

Heaven on High and Palace of the dead existed with the relics at the same time.
The point is that we haven't seen what Hoh/Potd was replaced with in terms of time, cost, and development.

Bozja is a follow up to Eureka, not a follow up to Heaven on High.

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While the look and feel is definately leaning towards a Eureka feel, I do believe the devs stated Bozja was going to be the PotD as far as alternative leveling choices. Obviously it's not the same format by any means.

For your comment on dev time- of course I don't know, but from what the live letters seem to say, they've invested heavily on the story of this Bozja content. They said something like the equivalent of a feature movie's worth of cutscenes or some such. I'd guess that's where the time went.

'course it's all speculation! Personally thought/hoped there would be a Secret of Mana "Mana Fortress Remnants" PotD dungeon in the ruins in Rak'tika.

they'll release it when it's ready, i'd rather wait a bit longer for content than get something that's rushed, bozja looks like it could be pretty good and i'd hate to see that ruined by it being rused to release.

Wow OP you'd be wonderful at leading a company keeping people on a timer like that.

A lot of people make things sound easier than they most likely are. I don't mind a lull in content, you know....during a PANDEMIC... I'd rather them take their time and stay safe right now than to cater to people being booty bothered about not getting what they want. We'll get it when we get it. How dare a world wide pandemic slow down anything *shakes fist*

There's a high chance it wasn't ready when the proverbial shite hit the spinning device. Covid slowed everything down in the world. Games included.

The point of the OP is "Square should make sure the long-lasting grind content is out earlier in the expansion, both in anticipation of unforeseen events causing disruptions in the patch cycle and because people who want to casually grind these would like more than half an expansion to work on them in." Bringing up Covid was just illustrating that an unforeseen event happened, disrupting the patch cycle; I don't assume malice on the OP by putting the words "you wanted them to work through a pandemic and put their lives on the line for your entertainment," and frankly I think it's disingenuous of everyone who is putting that on OP.

The strengths and weaknesses of the 3-month patch cycle are well known. One thing that mitigates one of those weaknesses is getting grind content out sooner. Waiting until halfway through the expansion was a problem in Stormblood as much as it is in Shadowbringers in my opinion, the pandemic just exacerbates the issue.

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Originally Posted by StriderShinryu

Should they have released the relic content earlier? I mean, maybe, but to tie it to the current situation is really silly. How could the developers have known there would be a global pandemic in enough time for them to plan a relic grind long enough to occupy players through (hopefully) the worst of it. Once again, the only reason this later release of the content really feels noticeable and notable is because of the delay. If it had come out on time almost nobody would be batting an eye.

I mean, what if the pandemic had struck before the release of 5.1? Does that mean they should have released the relic content in 5.0 instead as something to keep the players busy?

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You're misinterpreting. No one is faulting SE for the delay but merely using it to highlight why the current design philosophy is extremely flawed. A two month delay should not have the game crumbling under its own weight. People already complain content simply doesn't last long enough, and the staggered releases make it especially worse. For argument's sake. Say Covid never happened and 5.3 released on schedule. Almost everything in that patch can easily be done within a handful of hours; a couple days tops if you're slow. That patch is supposed to last six weeks following an already lengthily fourteen week cycle where content longevity is once again quite sparse. Releasing the relic earlier and not making such a paltry step at least gives people something to focus on should they choose. And had they done that, then this delay wouldn't have felt nearly as bad.

Look at the Heavensward relic and how much better spaced out it was. Sure, it had problems but the dev team should be working on improving the criticisms people had not cutting them out entirely.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

A two month delay should not have the game crumbling under its own weight.

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Is it though?
Because whenever I log in there are still ques.
When I go into hunt trains there are still enough people to lag my setup like it's frying.
Everything still seems to be popping in game.

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Originally Posted by ItMe

Is it though?
Because whenever I log in there are still ques.
When I go into hunt trains there are still enough people to lag my setup like it's frying.
Everything still seems to be popping in game.

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Because it's attracted new players. I never said the game was dying just that content cycle is flawed. Of course new players will have tons to do. They're new after all. 3.1 is routinely cited as the worst patch in this game's entire history yet for me, I never felt its impact. Why? I had just started playing. That doesn't mean 3.1 wasn't a bad patch. I just wasn't far enough yet to notice the severe drought in caused.

Veteran players also want to enjoy stuff to do once they've reached endgame. Hence why people are frustrated over the relic being shifted so late into the expansion.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

175 Days.

That is how long it took to drop 5.3 from the previous patch.

And during that time we could have been working on the more grindy bits / stages of our relic.

Simply put: Relic content needs to be released MUCH sooner than it currently is and has been in the past, IMHO it should be released on the X.1 patch.

Releasing it earlier provides a safe, reliable fall back in cases where there is a lull in content. That's the point of relic, to be grinded out. Something to keep players busy.

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I totally understand where you're coming from, but this world we in right now is all cray cray. I won't even begin to try and understand what they've guys have gone through to still provide the new content and also keep to the adjusted schedule to avoid any further delays. If that content was ready to go before covid hit, we would have likely got it. Best to make sure it is right than to rush it and then have to do kinds of fixes.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

Because it's attracted new players. I never said the game was dying just that content cycle is flawed. Of course new players will have tons to do.
[...]
Veteran players also want to enjoy stuff to do once they've reached endgame. Hence why people are frustrated over the relic being shifted so late into the expansion.

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If it was something they let people start working on earlier, doesn't that just mean they'd ultimately have to give the relic weapon more steps so the content still ends at the point they want the relic to be fully relevant?
And thus, wouldn't making more content for the relic weapon mean they'd be making that instead of the other stuff we got in earlier 5.x patches?
No matter how I look at it, it doesn't shape up into more content. It's like cutting one end off of a blanket, sewing it onto the other, and saying you have a longer blanket.

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Originally Posted by ItMe

If it was something they let people start working on earlier, doesn't that just mean they'd ultimately have to give the relic weapon more steps so the content still ends at the point they want the relic to be fully relevant?
And thus, wouldn't making more content for the relic weapon mean they'd be making that instead of the other stuff we got in earlier 5.x patches?
No matter how I look at it, it doesn't shape up into more content. It's like cutting one end off of a blanket, sewing it onto the other, and saying you have a longer blanket.

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Honestly the first steps of this relic were pretty much a joke. I'm not complaining because it was extremely easy to get a 480 weapon (which are generally supposed to be the hardest things to get). But in doing so made so much content irrelevant.

Totally agree with the original post here. I hope this is something the dev team considers in the future in regards to what kind of content gets released when.

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Originally Posted by ItMe

If it was something they let people start working on earlier, doesn't that just mean they'd ultimately have to give the relic weapon more steps so the content still ends at the point they want the relic to be fully relevant?
And thus, wouldn't making more content for the relic weapon mean they'd be making that instead of the other stuff we got in earlier 5.x patches?
No matter how I look at it, it doesn't shape up into more content. It's like cutting one end off of a blanket, sewing it onto the other, and saying you have a longer blanket.

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Depends how they go about it. The Anima relic essentially had us going through old content which doesn't require much in the way of development work. Instead of starting off the relic in Bozja they could build towards it. A prime example would be borrowing from say, the Wondrous Tale system to incentivize content on an evening playing field; something that was an issue with the Anima relic. If in the end, it meant we still lost something like the solo instance for Memoria. Honestly, I'd be fine with that. While it's cool and all, the problem is like so many things in this game. It's one and done. They spent a lot of time developing that instance for us to go their once and never again on the same character.

Ultimately, the excuses need to stop. FFXIV severely lacks in content longevity. There needs to be a focus on making at least a few things have a longer shelf life than a couple weeks.

I understand that people find these long periods between updates quite annoying from time to time.
But like others have already mentioned, the state everything is at right now we can't really blame SE that it takes longer to make the updates.

Personally I have always done so that when I log in and there's nothing to do (for me) I just put the game on the side for now and play something else while waiting for an update.
No one is forcing people to keep logging in and play if they find it boring from time to time. It's ok to do something else while waiting and then come back when there's new content.
Don't make it a bigger issue than it really has to be.

I leveled all classes and calling it a content is just stupid, this game is sucks at long-lasting content and people have all rights to complain about that, being triggered and reporting people are not helping, GCBTW.

The pandemic could've hit before 5.1. Not sure how advancing it would change anything.
I will say that I would enjoy more content in between raid tiers that don't have ultimate fights.

Not really sure why folks keep citing the same 'just quit during downtime' sentiment. If everyone did that the game would be dead.

The whole point of a subscription is that you pay monthly with the expectation that you will continually be fed content, this game isn't a one and done deal. It's an MMO and it needs to be at least somewhat evergreen or why even charge a monthly fee? Might as well just charge for patch entry and leave it at that.

I feel like the idea that the game isn't designed to keep you playing is just a weird excuse to be lax with content releases. You guys should expect more from the companies you give money to.

And as a side-note, no I don't think the devs should endanger themselves to work on the game, but they should definitely be a lot smarter/professional with their practices so events such as these aren't so damaging to the game.

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Originally Posted by Euphares

Not really sure why folks keep citing the same 'just quit during downtime' sentiment. If everyone did that the game would be dead.

The whole point of a subscription is that you pay monthly with the expectation that you will continually be fed content, this game isn't a one and done deal. It's an MMO and it needs to be at least somewhat evergreen or why even charge a monthly fee? Might as well just charge for patch entry and leave it at that.

I feel like the idea that the game isn't designed to keep you playing is just a weird excuse to be lax with content releases. You guys should expect more from the companies you give money to.

And as a side-note, no I don't think the devs should endanger themselves to work on the game, but they should definitely be a lot smarter/professional with their practices so events such as these aren't so damaging to the game.

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The game was designed for people to keep playing. You'll find there's plenty of people here who never unsub. Some people just like to pretend content they don't like doesn't count as content.

To those people, the most logic answer is "Unsub and come back later".

Yeah... 5.1/5.2 have definitely been lack luster for battle jobs, got Ultimate for raiders which is fine but... that's about it really, definitely would like to see relic grind stuff much much earlier in an expansion, especially if its suppose to be a replacement for deep dungeon. Also sucks that relic stuff is still a mid patch thing, by the time most folks finish their weapon, they get like a month or so till next patch drops and relic basically get replaced with the newer gear anyway... >.<

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

Depends how they go about it. The Anima relic essentially had us going through old content which

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... which is something they explicitly said they won't be doing for this relic due to player feedback.
That's why we only had relic quests heavy on reusing old stuff in ARR and HS. And since they've moved away from that approach they would have needed to take notable time and manpower from other content to make relic stuff happen earlier.

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Originally Posted by ItMe

... which is something they explicitly said they won't be doing for this relic due to player feedback.
That's why we only had relic quests heavy on reusing old stuff in ARR and HS. And since they've moved away from that approach they would have needed to take notable time and manpower from other content to make relic stuff happen earlier.

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Again, lets not act like the SE devs are going to re-invent the wheel here.

Eureka was nothing more than re-used assets (save Paz/Lou/Penny) in FATES.

I doubt Bozja will be different. I hope I'm wrong. I hope Bozja is amazingly fun, but with SE's track record I doubt it will be anything majorly exciting.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Eureka was nothing more than re-used assets (save Paz/Lou/Penny) in FATES.

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They reused monster assets, but there still a lot they had to make.
Big maps, quest chains, coding the magicite system, cutscenes, making and balancing all the logograms, etc.
There's a not insignificant amount of work that went into eureka, and it's looking like the Bozjan Resistance will have been no lighter on the devs than Eureka...

Forgive me if I'm taking this the wrong way or repeating arguments. But..

"Developers should plan for unprecedented global disasters (that are not over BTW) so we can play the game we like more." feels.. entitled.

Sure it'd be nice if they weren't trying to have big fancy patches and could instead release stuff slowly for us to do...

But that was really not the example to use.

Not only are we getting the revamp to ARR we've been asking for forever.. we're getting a bunch of other reworks and conveniences, mostly interlinked. It's possible the systems had to be dropped as a whole.

Yes more content would be nice, yes they could plan for minor delays and inconveniences. This was not one of them.

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Originally Posted by Krotoan

Forgive me if I'm taking this the wrong way or repeating arguments. But..

"Developers should plan for unprecedented global disasters (that are not over BTW) so we can play the game we like more." feels.. entitled.

Sure it'd be nice if they weren't trying to have big fancy patches and could instead release stuff slowly for us to do...

But that was really not the example to use.

Not only are we getting the revamp to ARR we've been asking for forever.. we're getting a bunch of other reworks and conveniences, mostly interlinked. It's possible the systems had to be dropped as a whole.

Yes more content would be nice, yes they could plan for minor delays and inconveniences. This was not one of them.

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I'm not sure how its entitled. No amount of preparation can completely mitigate something to the scale of Covid(global pandemic,) however it quite literally looked like they had zero fail-safes in place. We truly don't know how deep the damage to the game's future content schedule runs but we can speculate.

In a game that has already skeletal content releases, their current methodology just doesn't work, and we are directly observing the consequences of the stubbornness from them, and I feel Shadowbringers will forever be tarnished as the 'what now' expansion which is such a shame because it started off so strong.

All the updates they are putting forth are extremely welcome and good additions to the game, I'd never say otherwise. But they are not worth a six-month content drought. I resubbed at the very tail-end of this patch and I'm still feeling the effects the lull is having(worth noting that I am someone who enjoys pretty much everything this game has to offer.)

Additionally, there is nothing suggesting that this won't be a pattern for 5.4, 5.5, and maybe even the next expansion. Sure people are okay with a one-time deal, but can we really say its acceptable if it becomes the new norm? Should we be okay with such giant gaps for content that rarely has longevity? In my opinion I don't think so and I think its valid to call it out as a flaw of the dev team.


If we are expected to still pay the full subscription during this crisis then its not unreasonable at all to expect the devs to remain somewhat on track during it as well.

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Originally Posted by Euphares

Not really sure why folks keep citing the same 'just quit during downtime' sentiment. If everyone did that the game would be dead.

The whole point of a subscription is that you pay monthly with the expectation that you will continually be fed content, this game isn't a one and done deal. It's an MMO and it needs to be at least somewhat evergreen or why even charge a monthly fee? Might as well just charge for patch entry and leave it at that.

I feel like the idea that the game isn't designed to keep you playing is just a weird excuse to be lax with content releases. You guys should expect more from the companies you give money to.

And as a side-note, no I don't think the devs should endanger themselves to work on the game, but they should definitely be a lot smarter/professional with their practices so events such as these aren't so damaging to the game.

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I understand that. But people also have to understand that creating content takes time and it's impossible to keep a steady flow of content without any downtime between.
Also, it's up to the players themselves to make something to do while waiting and not just sit and wait to get spoonfed content when they got multiple options ingame to do.
But if one might have already done everything there is to do, just take a break.
Even YoshiP have said to do something else while waiting if the downtimes are too much for you.

海外ゲーマー
ミスター吉田、俺は『FFXIV』が大好きなんだ。でも、ずっとプレイし続けるのが辛くなってしまって、いまはゲームを休んでいるんだ。すまない。何かずっとゲームを続けるためのコツや、モチベーションがあれば教えてくれないか？
"Hey YoshiP, I love FFXIV, but it's hard to keep playing your game (because of the lack of content) and now I'm taking a break here. Sorry for asking this but is there a way or a reason to keep playing? or anything that can you teach me how to keep my motivation for playing your game?" - A player asking Yoshida during Gamescom

Yoshida's answer
無理して毎日やらなくていいよ。ゲームなんだし、辛いならやめればいい。むしろ、いまはたくさんゲームが発売されるから、ひとつに絞るのはストレスだよ。だから、メジャーパッチがでたら一気にプレイして、飽きる前にパッとやめて。ほかのゲームをやればいいよ。またメジャーがでたら戻ってくる。僕はそれがいちばんうれしいし、結果、それがいちばん長くゲームをプレイするコツだと思う。
Yoshida "It's alright not to play it everyday. Since it's just a game, you can stop forcing yourself if it's hard on you to keep that up. Rather, it'll just pile up unnecessary stress if you limit yourself into playing just that one game since there are so many other games out there. So, do come back and play it to your heart's content when the major patch kicks in, then stop it to play other games before you got burnt out, and then come back for another major patch. This will actually make me happier, and in the end, I think this is the best solution I can answer for keeping your motivation up for the game."

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...otivation_and/

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Originally Posted by Evergrey

-snip-

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While this sentiment does have merit, and is refreshing in the age of companies exploiting every ounce of money from its players.

There is still a content threshold not being met in this game (imo), especially when you consider the X.Y patches aren't even the full package and major features are gated behind X.YZ patches which are also staggered.

And some people might not like this, but when you compare an entire patch in this game to other MMO's, its basically peanuts; and yet this game costs effectively the same as other games on top of having micro-transactions. I don't think that this is sustainable, and if everyone just quit after consuming this sparse content we're given the game would quickly lose lots of revenue. For even when I was a casual player (2 hrs of playtime a day, sometimes 2 days), I completed patches in less than a month. FF14 is really lucky in that its gotten a lot of (deserved) attention and traction, and has avoided a lot of traps other MMO's have fallen into because its a newer game, but I also feel like the devs are creating pitfalls for themselves that will ultimately hurt this game's lifespan.

My solution: Stop spreading patches out and just front-load them at launch. Things that we get teasers for should just drop with the X.Y patch, it would feel a lot better to stay subbed for two consecutive months and quit instead of unsubbing, resubbing, then unsubbing again, to consume every mini-patch. Redo the code to allow in hot-fixes, and release mini-content updates that way and much quicker, and if the current code doesn't allow it then stop putting out stuff until it does, I would've had no problem waiting six-months to allow the devs to update a lot of the subpar coding that restricts them and this game a lot. Because I at least would know that this would affect the game positively in the future.

As far as what new content they could put in to bridge the gaps, I would suggest adding in incentives to visit older zones and ways to keep old content evergreen, roulette's do a good job of this, but they are once a day. FATES, Side-Quests and more broadly the entire over-world in this game needs an overhaul to be worth traveling to instead of players just naturally afking in cities in between duities. Because the first thing I thought when seeing that ARR zones have flying is "who cares?" Due to the fact that travel in this game is already quick enough due to a well-made teleport system, and the fact that after you outlevel the zones there's nothing that warrants a revisit. Even something as simple as 'go complete a hunt-log in an old zone for progress on an end-game system' would be very good. XIV has a giant, beautiful world with tons of nifty nooks-and-crannies, but its wasted because virtually all things worth doing are instanced.

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Originally Posted by Euphares

My solution: Stop spreading patches out and just front-load them at launch. Things that we get teasers for should just drop with the X.Y patch, it would feel a lot better to stay subbed for two consecutive months and quit instead of unsubbing, resubbing, then unsubbing again, to consume every mini-patch.

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I suspect this solution was the problem to which its solution was to "spread patches out" instead of "front-loading them at launch".

I also suspect you may have unintentionally stated a more achievable solution to the problem of "unsubbing, resubbing, then unsubbing again, to consume every mini-patch" :

For the tail end of each major patch just "stay subbed for two consecutive months and quit". It should feel a lot better.


Jokes aside, stay safe everyone and be well.

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Originally Posted by JohnSpawnVFX

The game was designed for people to keep playing. You'll find there's plenty of people here who never unsub. Some people just like to pretend content they don't like doesn't count as content.

To those people, the most logic answer is "Unsub and come back later".

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Not really a response to you directly, more of an “I agree and also blahblah”

But, Pretty much what you said. I will often take a break and play other games, but I never unsubscribe since I can still do dailies or whatever to earn some coin or a quick roulette.


In my case I’m happy to keep paying monthly fee even if I only play an hour or so a week. FFXIV is my fallback where I always know I can go and do something when I’ve got nothing else going on.

That said, if certain content isn’t someone’s “thing”, or if they are getting burned out too fast, they should consider unsubbing, cutting down on playtime or picking up a side game. Guildwars 2 was a pretty good alt for me for a while, especially because no monthly sub. It’s always good to play/try other things.

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Originally Posted by Euphares

My solution:...:

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It’s not a bad idea to have a ton of extra content frontloaded, but it causes problems:
Certain players blaze through the content very fast, so unless it was hella-grindy, they will still run out of things to do. Moreover, it will make it hard for everyone else to catch up (which isn’t a bad thing necessarily).

I think being upfront about having a very time consuming grind to get BiS, but being very transparent along the lines of making the grind super easy when it’s no longer current. Like how easy older tomestone gear is to get.

It would mean people who absolutely want BiS will work hard for it/have something to do, but when it’s no longer BiS that particular step becomes es easy to catch up on.

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Originally Posted by ItMe

... which is something they explicitly said they won't be doing for this relic due to player feedback.
That's why we only had relic quests heavy on reusing old stuff in ARR and HS. And since they've moved away from that approach they would have needed to take notable time and manpower from other content to make relic stuff happen earlier.

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Except they are. While Bozja is available, you'll be able to do separate quests that essentially works like the old relics. Yoshida even came out and admitted his surprise at how much feedback they received asking for the old system back as they disliked Eureka.

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Originally Posted by Euphares

I'm not sure how its entitled. No amount of preparation can completely mitigate something to the scale of Covid(global pandemic,) however it quite literally looked like they had zero fail-safes in place. We truly don't know how deep the damage to the game's future content schedule runs but we can speculate.

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Entitled in that regardless of severity of the reason, it's been asked that the GAME we play continue to have stuff to do. Does this not sound like slightly misplaced priorities and expectations? We lost a seasonal event. They said they plan to remain on schedule for the rest of the updates.

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Originally Posted by Euphares

In a game that has already skeletal content releases, their current methodology just doesn't work, and we are directly observing the consequences of the stubbornness from them, and I feel Shadowbringers will forever be tarnished as the 'what now' expansion which is such a shame because it started off so strong.

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While I don't feel the same your perspective is just as valid. Truly if they maintain their pace they will lose players like you, but how many of the players are as desperate for content as you are? It's been pretty consistent for the last couple patches and as the TYPE of content has changed it was to be expected that the actual content of the updates changed. Different things take different development investments and as we know the team rarely changes size (not the devs fault, SE likely don't provide them with extra headcount regardless of success), the speed at which we get things will change.

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Originally Posted by Euphares

All the updates they are putting forth are extremely welcome and good additions to the game, I'd never say otherwise. But they are not worth a six-month content drought. I resubbed at the very tail-end of this patch and I'm still feeling the effects the lull is having(worth noting that I am someone who enjoys pretty much everything this game has to offer.)

Additionally, there is nothing suggesting that this won't be a pattern for 5.4, 5.5, and maybe even the next expansion. Sure people are okay with a one-time deal, but can we really say its acceptable if it becomes the new norm? Should we be okay with such giant gaps for content that rarely has longevity? In my opinion I don't think so and I think its valid to call it out as a flaw of the dev team.

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Why would something with a cause like a once in a lifetime pandemic REPEAT? They are adjusting, they continue to work to produce our GAME despite what goes on in the world. If the reason the updates come slower is because people outside are DYING I'm absolutely fine with it being slower or non existant. There is also the possibility a significant person or department gets decimated by the virus. What will you say then? They should have planned for people to die?

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Originally Posted by Euphares

If we are expected to still pay the full subscription during this crisis then its not unreasonable at all to expect the devs to remain somewhat on track during it as well.

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Therein lies the misconception. You are NOT expected to pay during a dearth of content. You are welcome to stop until it resumes. Therefore it is unreasonable to expect that the devs maintain pace even with extremely impactful unforseen global disasters.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

Except they are. While Bozja is available, you'll be able to do separate quests that essentially works like the old relics. Yoshida even came out and admitted his surprise at how much feedback they received asking for the old system back as they disliked Eureka.

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This. However, I'm miss remembering or he also mentioned that this second option will come on a later date?

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

Except they are. While Bozja is available, you'll be able to do separate quests that essentially works like the old relics. Yoshida even came out and admitted his surprise at how much feedback they received asking for the old system back as they disliked Eureka.

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Exactly.
They are.
They're doing new shit and old shit.
That's a lot of content and that supports my point that having it ready earlier would have detracted from making other content.

If they are going to make the first stage always this simple. They need to release it on the X.15 patch

We are going from a complete content drought to a complete content overflow, not that I am complaining

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

You act like the developers can't multitask and develop multiple pieces of content at once. Besides, lets be honest, most of the content in FFXIV is re-using the same assets just in different ways. It's not like they're re-inventing the wheel here.

Have they been short staffed over the years? Yes, and that's 100% on them at this point. Since 2.0 they haven't invested in gaining new employees much, yet when things get pushed back it's "oh, they're short staffed".

Has COVID made it worse? Yes. But having the right people power to get ahead of issues is important for any company, SE is no different.

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I'm well aware the developers can multitask. I know they can develop 4.4, 4.5 and 4.55, at the same time as developing 5.0. Do you want sub par content? Do you want quantity over quality because it seems like that's what you're advocating? Do you want the developers to crunch to give you what you want?

Being short staffed is one thing, working to a budget is another thing. Money is not unlimited. They've (COVID excluded) kept to the same strict schedule for 7+ years and that is admirable.

You haven't addressed my point that there's lots of content in this game that you could have done in the last 170 days. You can't chose to not participate in half the content in the game and also complain there's nothing to do.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Honestly the first steps of this relic were pretty much a joke. I'm not complaining because it was extremely easy to get a 480 weapon (which are generally supposed to be the hardest things to get). But in doing so made so much content irrelevant.

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This quote right here just backs up my point. The first step of the relic had a lot of cutscenes, an interesting story, and a long and impressive single player instance, followed by an EX version of the final fight (yes before you say it wasn't part of the weapon quest, I know, but it was still part of the relic series). It was a lot of content, and if all of that was a "joke" to you then I don't know what else to say.

The alternative to this is a long and tedious grind, which it seems you want, but then you also complained about how bad Eureka was, so I really don't understand what kind of content you want.