I hope Square doesn't keep deeming certain content unnecessary

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Originally Posted by DPZ2

Wondering what 'content' is kinda lackluster? The new end-game raids? The lack of Hildebrand to spice things up? The story-line just not doing it for you? Bozja front not your thing?

The traditional MMO used to solve the 'content' problem with ... nothing, really. For months and months and months. < flashbacks to the what-seemed-to-be-the-eternity of the Hour of Twilight patch >

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I was around during all of Stormblood's patches, I just felt like I did stuff and then I was done with it for ShB. I loved the Tribe Quests, I enjoyed doing the Firmiment reconstruction, but it felt like a lot was missing?

i remember when patch had 3 dungeons , 1 new one and 2 hard modes ....oh those were the times

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Originally Posted by ZedxKayn

I see where some of their money is going in this post at least. :rolleyes:

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i wish i was some kind of paid shill for the company. I want money too. LOL

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Originally Posted by KizuyaKatogami

It's still around the same amount of mechanics. Hell one of the critical engagements is literally a pazuzu clone lmao.

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Let's do a comparison.

Sabotender Carrido in Anemos has:

-Raid Aoe
-melee aoe around it
-targetted aoe
-stack marker

That's it. That's literally open world mob level mechanics; you can even argue its literally a cactaur mob given a stack marker. Compare the very first, weakest Critical Engagement, the Mandragora thing:

-Raid Aoe
-stack marker
-tank buster
-Multi-person targetting aoe that unleashes 3-4 sets of aoes back to back
-Managing a color debuff that will one shot or deal incredible damage if you don't swap colors on each set, along with making sure you're not standing in the black insta death zone.
-Dodging a constant rotating carousel of adds from the outside rim that spew hearts that need to be dodged or they deal high damage + confusion, putting you in a vulnerable state for the ground aoes, the color mechanic, etc.

Well over half of the Eureka bosses were literally just normal, open world mobs given 1 extra mechanic. The only ones even comparable to Critical engagements were the ones close to the zone's level cap, and even then a lot of them are super forgettable. This is even before the fact that Castrum's & Dalriada's bosses are basically on the same level as 24 man raid bosses in terms of mechanical design. That's also disregarding the duels that are leagues above anything in Eureka outside of Ozma in terms of mechanical design & complexity.

Let's not keep our rose-tinted glasses on. Eureka had quantity in bosses due to more zones; whereas Bozja's bosses are much higher quality in fight design. There was even the fact a good majority of Eureka's bosses weren't even threatening if you were a caster or ranged, since half their mechanics couldn't even affect everyone at the NM due to the game's internal target limit on enemy attacks when you had like, 100+ people all targetting the poor thing.

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Originally Posted by Daeriion_Aeradiir

Let's not keep our rose-tinted glasses on. Eureka had quantity in bosses due to more zones; whereas Bozja's bosses are much higher quality in fight design. There was even the fact a good majority of Eureka's bosses weren't even threatening if you were a caster or ranged, since half their mechanics couldn't even affect everyone at the NM due to the game's internal target limit on enemy attacks when you had like, 100+ people all targetting the poor thing.

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Idk what kind of rose tinted glasses you’re talking about, besides the people trying to pretend as thought there isnt blatant content loss. Yes, the anemos bosses have fairly simple mechs, because it was the first zone, and it was something new. Might i add that the systems in Bozja aren’t even new? They’re literally reused from eureka so it’s not like it was extra effort and time put in. Things like the actions or the logos, what have you. Each eureka zone had its fair share of complex bosses. Whether it be pazuzu,strider,louhi,angra mainyu,cassie,penny,etc etc. They still had complexities to them and multiple mechanics. Critical engagements barring a few of them really don’t have that much going for them. Again, one of the ones in Zadnor is literally just a pazuzu reskin. Belias too. This still doesn’t change the fact how much content loss we’ve gotten. Yet people still want to hide behind the covid excuse. Give me a break.

Eureka bosses? Complex? Yeah, no. All of them could basically be zerged by a brainless train. Don't try and act like CE are not more mechanically complex. It has to be the most disingenuous thing I've heard in a while.

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Originally Posted by Nyarlha

Eureka bosses? Complex? Yeah, no. All of them could basically be zerged by a brainless train. Don't try and act like CE are not more mechanically complex. It has to be the most disingenuous thing I've heard in a while.

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You can literally cheese half of them with reflect...

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Originally Posted by KizuyaKatogami

You can literally cheese half of them with reflect...

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The fact that you can cheese CEs and duels doesn't make the time spent designing them somehow disappear. Which is the point of the discussion : CEs and duels took more dev time than Eureka NMs that had zero relevant mechanics.

As an example, you mentioned Louhi earlier? Louhi had nothing beyond a few cleaves, raidwides and some adds. And it was the end boss NM of his zone. Don't come and tell me it was as complex as a CE.

As someone who prefers Eureka over Bozja ... Bozja CE's are way more mechanically complex.

Also not only was there Covid, but we had the ARR rework in 5.3 to revamp the new player experience. And also we had the male Viera, female Hrothgar thing. I think there were a number of reasons why content was a bit light this expansion but hopefully the next expansion will be rich in the sort of content everybody is looking for :)

Island sanctuary will be amazing but hopefully there'll also be 2 Ultimates to satisfy the raiders :)

This just makes me want to see the carnage of the red choco ce in eureka

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Originally Posted by linayar

Speaking of, I actually don't like when there is content that just stops but is still in the game. Guildhest and combat guildleve are two such contents. I've said in the past that combat guildleve is my favorite type of open world content, but since they're not updating it, I'd rather these two contents be removed and adjust the rewards for other contents to compensate.

I'm not sure how I feel about contents that seem to be replaced, like squadron-trust. If they roll trust to older contents, then I would be fine with removing squadron. Otherwise, I guess it could stay as it has distinguishable features, like being related to the GC.

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Removing content, even old, vestigial content is never good optics and I think the bottom line is that updating, cutting, or compensating is just more work for them whereas letting the content sit there forever is zero work.

I don't do ex trials or savage raids so that left me to do some of these other fringe bits of content like squadrons. I'm still a bit peeved that the effort I put into squadrons was just thrown to the wayside by a replacement that offers less control and optimization, and is just tortuously slow.

Nothing, however, bugs me as much as the lack of attention the Gold Saucer receives in general, and chocobo racing in particular. Chocobo racing and breeding was a pretty popular bit of side content for 7 but in XIV it gets totally neglected for years with no new tracks, no new rewards, and minimal improvements. Player engagement really comes down to incentives and it baffles me how readily S-E will abandon casual/fluff content they have in place to put something new out that they will soon abandon as well. I'm willing to bet Island Sanctuary ends up being one-off content that dies by the end of Endwalker, yet they go that route instead of working what they want to do with IS into a better housing system.

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Originally Posted by Rae88

As someone who prefers Eureka over Bozja ... Bozja CE's are way more mechanically complex.

Also not only was there Covid, but we had the ARR rework in 5.3 to revamp the new player experience. And also we had the male Viera, female Hrothgar thing. I think there were a number of reasons why content was a bit light this expansion but hopefully the next expansion will be rich in the sort of content everybody is looking for :)

Island sanctuary will be amazing but hopefully there'll also be 2 Ultimates to satisfy the raiders :)

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SB had Female Viera and Male Hrothgar in the works, while also implementing diving,world transfer, 4 eureka zones, a new housing district etc etc, had upgraded things from HW without cutting out on content. Yet for Shb, it’s just been downgrade after downgrade from SB. Honestly, seeing as how things like ocean fishing,chocobo racing,mahjong etc were abandoned and rarely played, i see Island Sanctuary being no different. They keep implementing fluff like this that just ends up being dropped once the expansion is over, and ignore serious issues like either content loss itself or things like the shitty housing system. I’m just tired of seeing people continue to make excuses for the devs when there’s obviously something wrong and we need to call it out instead of babying them.

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Originally Posted by FrogDog

Nothing, however, bugs me as much as the lack of attention the Gold Saucer receives in general, and chocobo racing in particular. Chocobo racing and breeding was a pretty popular bit of side content for 7 but in XIV it gets totally neglected for years with no new tracks, no new rewards, and minimal improvements. Player engagement really comes down to incentives and it baffles me how readily S-E will abandon casual/fluff content they have in place to put something new out that they will soon abandon as well. I'm willing to bet Island Sanctuary ends up being one-off content that dies by the end of Endwalker, yet they go that route instead of working what they want to do with IS into a better housing system.

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At least there's something big supposed to be coming to the Gold Saucer in Endwalker. So hopefully it makes people happy :)

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Originally Posted by KizuyaKatogami

SB had Female Viera and Male Hrothgar in the works, while also implementing diving,world transfer, 4 eureka zones, a new housing district etc etc, had upgraded things from HW without cutting out on content. Yet for Shb, it’s just been downgrade after downgrade from SB. Honestly, seeing as how things like ocean fishing,chocobo racing,mahjong etc were abandoned and rarely played, i see Island Sanctuary being no different. They keep implementing fluff like this that just ends up being dropped once the expansion is over, and ignore serious issues like either content loss itself or things like the shitty housing system. I’m just tired of seeing people continue to make excuses for the devs when there’s obviously something wrong and we need to call it out instead of babying them.

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They've been constantly working on data center visit since that point. Diving was an incredibly superficial system that didn't add almost anything to the game TBH and I wish was never introduced. Ocean fishing is still very popular, I don't see how you can say it was abandoned. Mahjong hasn't been dropped and last I heard was INCREDIBLY popular in Japan (there's an annual mahjong tournament).

I'm not into making excuses for the devs, but I've played a game where the devs DO drop ALL the endgame system every expansion and introduce new ones each time and FFXIV is nothing like that. Squadrons were abandoned presumably to keep the incentive of playing with other people and that's fair enough :)

EDIT: Also Island sanctuary was originally supposed to come in Shadowbringers I think, which would have fleshed out content a bit but oh well. Things got delayed

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Originally Posted by Rae88

They've been constantly working on data center visit since that point. Diving was an incredibly superficial system that didn't add almost anything to the game TBH and I wish was never introduced. Ocean fishing is still very popular, I don't see how you can say it was abandoned. Mahjong hasn't been dropped and last I heard was INCREDIBLY popular in Japan (there's an annual mahjong tournament).

I'm not into making excuses for the devs, but I've played a game where the devs DO drop ALL the endgame system every expansion and introduce new ones each time and FFXIV is nothing like that. Squadrons were abandoned presumably to keep the incentive of playing with other people and that's fair enough :)

EDIT: Also Island sanctuary was originally supposed to come in Shadowbringers I think, which would have fleshed out content a bit but oh well. Things got delayed

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Squadrons were abandoned to make room for trusts which....just function way worse lol. A downgrade in a sense. Instead of expanding on squadrons they dropped them for something worse. Ocean fishing has arguably no use once you’ve hit cap on fisher unless you want achievements. Mahjong sees almost little to no play in the West and is only popular in like you said JP, which makes sense. It was content designed mainly due to the popularity of one group. Diving was at least something new and gave new ways to explore which is more than can be said for ShB which introduced nothing of the sort. None of this really addresses the other downgrades though like the missing voice acting in the weapons series. The missing primal weapons for gnb and dnc and the missing unique Ultimate Models for them as well. The loss of hildibrand quests or allied beast tribe quests. The missing pvp set, missing end of expansion set....

Squadrons were tons better. The problem I see with it is if you can upgrade squadrons significantly two things can happen. First it encourages you to run significantly more content on your squadrons and second people will or may always find a way to upgrade so that it's more efficient to run with the squadrons then PUG. And Square is trying to keep people running old dungeon content so new players will always have short queues :)

I hated diving TBH. I'm not great with directions when it comes to elevation so diving was just horrible, and there was almost no reward for doing it. Quest markers, some nodes, it just made getting to those points really annoying for me.

The missing Primal Weapons for GNB and DNC was REALLY disappointing TBH :(

I'm looking forward to Endwalker. They've been open to doing another deep dungeon in the patches, and if they get the deep dungeon, island sanctuary, Ultimate raids, and hildibrand out, and Yoshi P has said he'd like 2 ultimates in Endwalker and they're trying for the others, then I think people will be a lot happier :) Especially if the Gold Saucer addition is really good :)

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Originally Posted by DrWho2010

Plus the usual catboi villain guy doesn't exist on the First either. It was a stretch that he was there for the Stormblood one.

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I feel like this is a really weak argument because, just like there's a First's equivalent of Rowena and Gerolt in the form of Mowen and Grenoldt, they could have added a reflection of him. I just get the impression it was scrapped last minute and the emote, presumably Flower Shower, was put on the Mog Station instead.

It seems like a lot of content was scrapped relatively late in the cycle, like the conclusion of Bozja building up for a possible continuation, but then doing a complete 180° and wrapping everything up through the Field Notes (plus Matsuno's confirmation on Twitter that the story is over).

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Originally Posted by KizuyaKatogami

Honestly, seeing as how things like ocean fishing,chocobo racing,mahjong etc were abandoned and rarely played, i see Island Sanctuary being no different. They keep implementing fluff like this that just ends up being dropped once the expansion is over, and ignore serious issues like either content loss itself or things like the shitty housing system. I’m just tired of seeing people continue to make excuses for the devs when there’s obviously something wrong and we need to call it out instead of babying them.

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It's funny how much WoW gets crapped on for its one-expansion-and-done borrowed powers systems, which were at least granular and integral (everyone used them, and they could be interacted with or progressed in nearly any way one pleased), with so comparatively little scorn falling on resources here that neither promote the game nor are played by any significant portion of players even in their few moments of vitality.

We've got quite a lot of content of which development amounts more to reskinning than reiteration, thereby neither meaningfully improving on old designs nor reusing old assets -- a worst of both worlds, development-wise. I'd have much rather have seen, for instance, PotD improved and stretched a further 10 levels than get a barely-changed reskin in the form of HoH. Bozja at least brought relevant and variably enjoyable plot tie-ins, but I'd have rather seen the fundamental systems -- such as mob behaviors and something, almost anything, beyond merely FATEs / CEs and killing X mobs of type Y to spawn them, and early span being designed in a way less susceptible to starving under too few active players in the given area -- improved further upon if Bozja seemed worth having at all. There needs to be a plan for longevity, beyond the current expansion alone, especially in side-content.

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Originally Posted by lezard21

To be honest, this is pretty much the reason why we have less content. Square enix factually made less content, with comparison charts to prove it, while making more money than ever, but Square forum warriors will contort themselves into a human pretzel trying to justify it.

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Show these charts then.
Prooves will be more objective than calling people blinded-warriors like.

Because what's the comparative point ? ARR ? HW ? SB ?
The more the game goes forward in time, the more they have to do in general. We have significantly more classes to balance, more race to care about with hairs and gears and weapon to do.
We got a lot of QoL in several department, content for crafter/gather as well as battle content.

So yes, please just show real proof that they put less effort in the game.
Because it's easy to not have what you want and then cry on forums saying devs cut content without taking the big picture.
People have been complaining of the "lack of content" since.... the game is out.
So they surely need to work on certain things they didn't, but saying they do less to earn more out of nowhere... Anyone can do this.

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Originally Posted by KDSilver

Show these charts then.

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On a quick search this is the one I could find which only does a comparison between SB vs ShB.
https://i.redd.it/tf0qkejsuxs61.png
* To that chart I would add that before we used to have a questline for each job, and now we only have a questline for each role, which is a very drastic reduction.
I remember a more popular one that compared all expansions, but right now couldn't find it. Will get back to this later.

The only thing that has consistently increased through time is cutscenes, with ARR only having 3 hours of voiced cutscenes, HW having 4 hours, SB having 6 hours, and ShB having 9! hours, and EW has been announced to have even more cutscenes. Forgive me for not being part of the "FFxiv story circlejerk", but I'm paying a videogame sub to play a videogame, not watch a movie.

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Originally Posted by lezard21

On a quick search this is the one I could find which only does a comparison between SB vs ShB.
https://i.redd.it/tf0qkejsuxs61.png
* To that chart I would add that before we used to have a questline for each job, and now we only have a questline for each role, which is a very drastic reduction.
I remember a more popular one that compared all expansions, but right now couldn't find it. Will get back to this later.

The only thing that has consistently increased through time is cutscenes, with ARR only having 3 hours of voiced cutscenes, HW having 4 hours, SB having 6 hours, and ShB having 9! hours, and EW has been announced to have even more cutscenes. Forgive me for not being part of the "FFxiv story circlejerk", but I'm paying a videogame sub to play a videogame, not watch a movie.

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Would like to also add. Despite there being more voice acting in the msq of ShB. We’re missing voice acting in both the alli raids and the weapons trials(SB had both voiced alli raids and the 3 fiends questline trials were fully voiced). Quite the downgrade.

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Originally Posted by Krissey

In other words FFXIV did followers better but now they’re unsupported :(

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Well, they're still usable for their level ranges.

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Originally Posted by Fland

Combat guildleves and guildhests are mostly for new players still levelling up. They will always be "new" contents to new players just starting.

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I get that. But every time I make a new character, I'm sad that they're no longer for me. On the other hand, new players wouldn't miss them if they were removed. And I support making new experiences for leveling to replace them, ones that can hopefully be extended throughout the expansions.

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Originally Posted by Goji1639

Squadrons are a lot better than trusts; a fully leveled squadron all set to offense clears dungeons faster than most DF groups, so replacing it with trusts would gimp our ability to level 1-60.

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I get that. Personally, I don't care about speed, and I value TRUST helping me with mechanics for the most part and being indepndent for the most part more. But as I said earlier, I wouln't mind a mix of the two systems.

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Originally Posted by SaberMaxwell

The argument that ultimate was cut doesn't stem from how much work was put into it. The argument that ultimate has been "cut" is derived from the assertion that the content cycle's norm is 2 ultimates per expansion.

If we accept that each expansion has two ultimates, then unless endwalker has three ultimates (the one delayed from shadowbringers and the two assumedly slated for it), then an ultimate was cut. Maybe not dragonsong ultimate, but *an* ultimate.

In the framework of this argument, let's say endwalker has only two ultimates; one would be dragonsong ultimate, which is a Shadowbringers Ultimate, and the other would be an endwalker ultimate. This means that, unless 7.0 has 3 ultimates, including the second from endwalker, an ultimate was cut.

One can argue several points; the premise is flawed since we have a data set of two (storm blood and Shadowbringers) so we cannot form a pattern from that. This would be the more legitimate argument imo. One could also continually make the argument nothing was cut and everything was just delayed, which... Well, the devs can ride that "borrowing from the future" train forever to never admit that content was cut, we'll just have this same scuffle every two years about the subject.

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The real answer is it's both cut and delayed depending on what "it" is.

An Ultimate was cut from Shadowbringers, not because Stormblood had set a precedent for having two Ultimates per expansion, but because they've announced plans for a second Ultimate for Shadowbringers. There is now no second Ultimate in Shadowbringers, therefore, an Ultimate was cut.

However, the specific Ultimate (Dragonsong War) that was supposed to be in Shadowbringers was delayed, because it will still appear, only this time in Endwalker, and at level 90 instead of 80.

So it (an Ultimate content) was cut from Shadowbringers because it (the Dragonsong War Ultimate) was delayed to patch 6.1 of Endwalker.

Regarding whether there should be three Ultimates in Endwalker, that's a different issue. There was no promise for two Ultimates in Endwalker (as far as I know) before they announced delaying Dragonsong War to Endwalker, which means it can't be said that an Ultimate was cut from Endwalker if there are only two instead of three. As these are major contents, there is a low possibility that they're thinking ahead beyond completing the next Ultimate and maybe planning for the one after that.

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Originally Posted by ZedxKayn

The next ultimate being originally planned for 5.5 but later delayed does imply that 2 per expac is the intended cycle norm.

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Perhaps, but that doesn't mean specific Ultimates were planned yet for Endwalker. Ultimate was new content in Stormblood, and they tried it again with Shadowbringers only to have unexpected difficulties.

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Originally Posted by ReynTime

If the content is still in even if not expanded upon then there are going to be people, even if very few, who like it being there.
I for one like the concept of guildleves and wish there were more combat leves past 58. The issue I take with them is that they added QoL improvements over 1.X but also made them ultra trivial to complete and super unrewarding in Heavensward. The fact you lose allowances for accepting to join a duty was a really stupid oversight too, in addition to Heavensward's levemete being located only in Ishgard, making trips take a chunk of the little gil reward you get just to confirm completion of leves.

Honestly battlecraft leves would be a neat alternative for leveling with a party of select few friends when you're tired of duties and FATEs don't let you do it at your own pace. I'm really disappointed they just dropped them. But I also use them for alts ocasionally and would hate to see the ones that exist removed.

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I don't disagree. It's just a personal wish based on my own feelings. I like things to be "cleared" if "unfinished." It's why I would create new main characters when my old characters started on something, but then I don't complete it.

It's why I love that FFXIV doesn't have too many things that are account-wide, as I can have a near reset every time I make a new character.

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Originally Posted by FrogDog

Removing content, even old, vestigial content is never good optics and I think the bottom line is that updating, cutting, or compensating is just more work for them whereas letting the content sit there forever is zero work.

I don't do ex trials or savage raids so that left me to do some of these other fringe bits of content like squadrons. I'm still a bit peeved that the effort I put into squadrons was just thrown to the wayside by a replacement that offers less control and optimization, and is just tortuously slow.

Nothing, however, bugs me as much as the lack of attention the Gold Saucer receives in general, and chocobo racing in particular. Chocobo racing and breeding was a pretty popular bit of side content for 7 but in XIV it gets totally neglected for years with no new tracks, no new rewards, and minimal improvements. Player engagement really comes down to incentives and it baffles me how readily S-E will abandon casual/fluff content they have in place to put something new out that they will soon abandon as well. I'm willing to bet Island Sanctuary ends up being one-off content that dies by the end of Endwalker, yet they go that route instead of working what they want to do with IS into a better housing system.

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It may be easier for them to leave it in, which is why I'm not pushing for their removal, but expressing my preference for them to either be updated or removed rather than stay as is. But I won't be mad if they just stay as is.

I think the difference with the various Gold Saucer activities is that there is always a chance of them being updated. I do not ever see contents like combat guildleves and guildhests being updated, but I welcome the surprise.

I imagine because they have so many different kinds of content that all get a bit of development time, they also have a good idea of who spends time on them. I'd imagine if something niche gets a lot of player engagement they'll be willing to put more into it, but for some things they probably don't have too many players want to do it so they move resources away from it.

The curse of an mmo is that there'll never be enough content for everyone, even WoW with considerably more resources and content already in it barely put out anything in the last year.

I know my biggest disappointment is the lack of Hildibrand, doing that after the often heavy events of an xpac (and this one absolutely had some heavy parts) is like an amazing break to have some laughs.

I do hope between the pandemic lifting and maybe SE seeing the massive surge in interest that they can invest more into this game, because I feel like what the dev team is being given is not enough yet they're still putting out an amazing product.

Even popular content has been neglected/abandoned over time though. I loathe Hildibrand, though I'll acknowledge that he's popular - yet ShB went without a quest for him. We didn't get an Allied Beast Tribe quest this time around, either - despite being an established tradition for each expansion.

I'd rather not see old content removed. That's exactly why I left World of Warcraft. Well, one of the major reasons at least. Guildhests are great - quite often my Mentor roulette is a guildhest, so there's definitely players still queuing up for them.

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Originally Posted by lezard21

On a quick search this is the one I could find which only does a comparison between SB vs ShB.
https://i.redd.it/tf0qkejsuxs61.png
* To that chart I would add that before we used to have a questline for each job, and now we only have a questline for each role, which is a very drastic reduction.
I remember a more popular one that compared all expansions, but right now couldn't find it. Will get back to this later.

The only thing that has consistently increased through time is cutscenes, with ARR only having 3 hours of voiced cutscenes, HW having 4 hours, SB having 6 hours, and ShB having 9! hours, and EW has been announced to have even more cutscenes. Forgive me for not being part of the "FFxiv story circlejerk", but I'm paying a videogame sub to play a videogame, not watch a movie.

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And to add to that, the story quality is variable and is down also to subjective tastes. I liked most of 5.0 and portions of 5.3, as well as 5.5 part 1, but not to the point that it would suffice to hook me to the game. And it can also cut both ways on that basis; 6.0 will be a bellwether for how they're likely to handle future writing, even if the plot moves away from the H/Z arc, so if I dislike it and the PVE content is underwhelming, I'll find something else to play.

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Originally Posted by KizuyaKatogami

You can literally cheese half of them with reflect...

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Shame the classic put reflect on yourself to neuter it (reflect vs reflect) doesn't exist in Bozja/Eureka content. It'd be nice to see it trivialised.

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Originally Posted by KizuyaKatogami

well i have to say it certainly doesnt feel like it. They have the same amount of mechanics as a eureka boss, theyre just in an enclosed space. Nevertheless though my overall points still stands. We're missing content. We were missing content before covid was a thing, and we're still missing content period. I hate seeing it used as an excuse when there were already things beforehand we were missing out on.

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It proves they're pretty adept at wasting resources.

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Originally Posted by linayar

The real answer is it's both cut and delayed depending on what "it" is.

An Ultimate was cut from Shadowbringers, not because Stormblood had set a precedent for having two Ultimates per expansion, but because they've announced plans for a second Ultimate for Shadowbringers. There is now no second Ultimate in Shadowbringers, therefore, an Ultimate was cut.

However, the specific Ultimate (Dragonsong War) that was supposed to be in Shadowbringers was delayed, because it will still appear, only this time in Endwalker, and at level 90 instead of 80.

So it (an Ultimate content) was cut from Shadowbringers because it (the Dragonsong War Ultimate) was delayed to patch 6.1 of Endwalker.

Regarding whether there should be three Ultimates in Endwalker, that's a different issue. There was no promise for two Ultimates in Endwalker (as far as I know) before they announced delaying Dragonsong War to Endwalker, which means it can't be said that an Ultimate was cut from Endwalker if there are only two instead of three. As these are major contents, there is a low possibility that they're thinking ahead beyond completing the next Ultimate and maybe planning for the one after that.

Perhaps, but that doesn't mean specific Ultimates were planned yet for Endwalker. Ultimate was new content in Stormblood, and they tried it again with Shadowbringers only to have unexpected difficulties.

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^ The fairest and most complete take on the subject I've seen.

you know... eventually you all are just going to complete everything the devs make for the game. congratulations. you beat it.

they won't have anything more for you. you know what happens then?

you go play something else. ezpz

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Originally Posted by lezard21

On a quick search this is the one I could find which only does a comparison between SB vs ShB.
https://i.redd.it/tf0qkejsuxs61.png

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"No limited job"
But... BLU got an update twice... both lvl 60 and 70. You can't ignore that.

DoL/DoH got ocean fishing as well, the rework of diadem (that probably took time they could have have spend elswhere) for Ishgard as well as the big readjustment of crating. We can't ignore that too. That's dev time.
They got some of the lvl 70 crafted primal weapon. Not every pieces from lvl 50 though indeed. But are we going to ignore as well that having 2 more jobs in the game mean more time spend on creating weapon in general ? Same goes for the new races that isn't even listed.

What really dislike with this is, it doesn't take into account everything that should be.
This chart alone doesn't cover every single QoL ShB brought as well that definitly took some dev time.
ARR overall for example isn't mentionnted either.

I would have gladly shared the general opinion if it was honest. This chart shows it's not.

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Originally Posted by DrWho2010

you know... eventually you all are just going to complete everything the devs make for the game. congratulations. you beat it.

they won't have anything more for you. you know what happens then?

you go play something else. ezpz

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That’s not the point. Quit blindly white knighting SE. The point is that we’re getting less content than we’ve gotten last expansion. We should be seeing upgrades as the game progresses further and it gets more money. Instead we’ve just seen downgrade after downgrade this expansion. It’s not about finishing the content. It’s about the content missing which leaves us unable to even attempt it.

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Originally Posted by KDSilver

"No limited job"
But... BLU got an update twice... both lvl 60 and 70. You can't ignore that.

DoL/DoH got ocean fishing as well, the rework of diadem (that probably took time they could have have spend elswhere) for Ishgard as well as the big readjustment of crating. We can't ignore that too. That's dev time.
They got some of the lvl 70 crafted primal weapon. Not every pieces from lvl 50.

What really dislike with this is, it doesn't take into account everything that should be.
This chart alone doesn't cover every single QoL ShB brought as well that definitly took some dev time.
ARR overall for example isn't mentionnted either.

I would have gladly shared the general opinion it was honest. This chart shows it's not.

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There are a lot of things from SB that it doesn’t mention as well though. Like the world transfer, diving, an extra trial(yojimbo), voiced alli raids and 3 trials, etc etc. Point is again, a lot of things in ShB are a downgrade from past expansions. As for your primal weapon comment....gnb and dnc got 1. Shinryu. That’s it. Meanwhile Rdm and Samurai got lvl 50 primal weapons, lvl 60 primal weapons, lvl 70 primal weapons, AND they both god unique Ultimate weapon models. You know what Dnc and Gnb got for their weapon models? Shire for Dnc, and then a random dungeon weapon model for Gnb. That’s pathetic. The guy gave you a fairly good set of data which you asked for. Idk why people are still trying to fight this when its blatantly obvious we're losing out on things.

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Originally Posted by KizuyaKatogami

The point is that we’re getting less content than we’ve gotten last expansion.

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That's subjective.

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Originally Posted by KizuyaKatogami

We should be seeing upgrades as the game progresses further and it gets more money.

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That's... not up to us as the players to decide how they spend their money and resources. You disagree you vote with your wallet/sub button. It's prettty much simple as that.

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Originally Posted by KizuyaKatogami

Instead we’ve just seen downgrade after downgrade this expansion. It’s not about finishing the content. It’s about the content missing which leaves us unable to even attempt it.

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https://i.redd.it/x19uhrsjnat51.jpg

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Originally Posted by KizuyaKatogami

There are a lot of things from SB that it doesn’t mention as well though.

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And that's part of the problem.
If you don't list everything that obviously took dev time during the expansion, you can't properly judge if yes or no there is less effort or not.
Because if it took time to do... of course it won't go elswhere until the next expansion will come out.

And we can't do a good comparison by only seeing what we want to see and forget about the rest.

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Originally Posted by KizuyaKatogami

There are a lot of things from SB that it doesn’t mention as well though. Like the world transfer, diving, an extra trial(yojimbo), voiced alli raids and 3 trials, etc etc. Point is again, a lot of things in ShB are a downgrade from past expansions. As for your primal weapon comment....gnb and dnc got 1. Shinryu. That’s it. Meanwhile Rdm and Samurai got lvl 50 primal weapons, lvl 60 primal weapons, lvl 70 primal weapons, AND they both god unique Ultimate weapon models. You know what Dnc and Gnb got for their weapon models? Shire for Dnc, and then a random dungeon weapon model for Gnb. That’s pathetic. The guy gave you a fairly good set of data which you asked for. Idk why people are still trying to fight this when its blatantly obvious we're losing out on things.

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Well, nobody got unique weapon models for TEA tbf. Even Rdm and Sam got shiny Bismark and leviathan weapons respectively.

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Originally Posted by SaberMaxwell

Well, nobody got unique weapon models for TEA tbf. Even Rdm and Sam got shiny Bismark and leviathan weapons respectively.

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Okay but my point is. For their first Ultimate (in SB), both sam and rdm got unique weapon models because they didnt have relics which is what the ultimate models were based around. Dnc and Gnb got no such treatment this time around along with the mass of missing primal weapons. Im scared to see what little bit sage and reaper are going to get at this rate... if anything.

First I'll say that I'll shout down anyone who calls the dev team lazy. If there's one thing that's always been clear, it's that everyone who plays even a small role in making this game does so with every ounce of passion and pride they have. From top to bottom we've seen the devs go above and beyond for us time and time again.

That said, there are criticisms to make. First, it's likely they suffer from inefficient workflows and production bottlenecks. For example, thinking back to the live letter where they showed us some production timetables, I was blown away by the number of times "approval from Yoshida" or "check-in with Yoshida" or "test with Yoshida" showed up. I know project management and I can't imagine many other situations in which one individual has so much direct oversight on a team this big, especially when that individual has so many other commitments and demands placed on his time. So much time must be lost waiting for Yoshida to get eyes on everything the team does. He admitted himself that they need to review their workflows. I'm a big YoshiP fan; I love that he is so keen to get stuck in and I'm sure his direct involvement is part of what has made the game so great, but he's only one man with limited time and right now his limits are everyone's limits.

Moreover, "small indie company" might be a meme, but it was born from truth. A company with profits of $250m should not have developers working in their free time to add viera hats, male viera, mahjong or anything else we're told was delivered under unhealthy working practices. We need to ask why the team is stretched so thin that this can occur.

Then there's the pandemic. Clearly it affected productivity and rightly so; I'm happy to wait as long as necessary for content if it means the team can keep themselves safe. Unfortunately it has been used rather naively by some people to dismiss discussion of the other issues I've mentioned.

Finally, some content fell victim to a shift in design direction, like the deep dungeon giving way to Bozja as a levelling tool. I think the new focus on large scale content is a big mistake but that's one for another thread.

Ultimately it's very difficult to single out any one piece of missing content and say whether it was cut because of inefficient workflows, because of understaffing, because of disruption from the pandemic or because of a shift in priorities. I suspect in most cases the answer is some combination of all those things.

One thing's for sure, though - Endwalker won't have the pandemic as a scapegoat for all those other issues the way that Shadowbringers has. In particular I think the period from the launch of 6.3 up to the end of 6.5 will be very telling about the future of content, because that's when we'll be expecting an ultimate, a new deep dungeon and the bulk of the new Eureka/Bozja equivalent to drop, and most of the work for that content will have been started post-pandemic.

It's gonna be interesting.

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Originally Posted by Kadhe

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Once again i would like to say, a lot of the content i mentioned was before the pandemic being hit. Bozja being the leveling method/deep dungeon alternative wasn’t a good trade. Stormblood gave us eureka with 4 zones AND still gave us a deep dungeon. I don’t think anyone is calling the devs lazy persay, but there is certainly a lack in transparency. Let’s use the housing system as an example shall we. People have complained and complained and complained about the way the placard system works. Yet Yoshi hasn’t addressed it or any plans to fix it once in 6 years. As for the small indie company, yeah it’s a problem. The thing is it most likely won’t change. This community has grown to just accept being spoonfed by anything Yoshi p throws out, no matter how little it is. They literally would never question things. If the playerbase as a whole actually came together to question this? Then maybe we’d see some change. It isn’t going to happen though. Most of the money made for this game is going to fund Flopvengers and its other games. Apparently only mogstation money is “guaranteed” to go towards the game and even that’s questionable. I genuinely think the downfall of this game will be the community who just doesn’t question these things anymore and just blindly praises the dev team over and over without questioning things like the money flow, work time, etc etc. It’s why i’ve just been looking for another mmo and probably will get into one after 6.0 because it doesn’t look like the situation is improving at all.

Older game systems are abandoned because utilization statistics indicate people are not interested.

If that weren't the case, the original (or new and improved, after complaints) version of Diadem would still be a thing.

When Deep Dungeons first came out in Heavensward, it was heavily utilized. Perhaps when Heaven on High came out they saw a distinct drop in the number of players who actually ran through it. Enough of a drop to make its inclusion in the current expansion something to ponder. Since the Bozja front was being designed, it might have been easier to place 'leveling alt jobs' as an option, unlike its predecessor, Eureka. They have statistics on Heaven on High and Deep Dungeons from both SB and ShB, and on Eureka from SB and Bozja from ShB. The number of players who participate is as important as "we do this because we've always done this".

Overall storyline also has a place in what does, or does not, continue to be developed. When we were still in Eorzea, Squadron Missions made sense. Once we take off for ShB, we aren't really in Eorzea from a story perspective, and continuing General Company duties didn't make sense. That, and the number of players who've reached the rank of "Captain" may be an indicator of its [lack of] popularity.

Similarly to the Centurio Hunts not being a thing on the ShB, so they got replaced with a ShB-specific set of Hunts instead. (People apparently enjoy doing the hunts for loot and gear for alts, so it continued from HW through ShB).

For the argument "number of Dungeons dropped", I found this Reddit posting to be illuminating, when you consider the number of Dungeon and Raid Bosses from a "there's more than just dungeons" perspective: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...tory_timeline/ . The ARR timeline at the top has a typo, which is corrected later; the relevant charts I'm referring to are further down.

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Originally Posted by Kadhe

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Okay to answer your first question. Japan does not work like America 7 day a week deathmarches where you wind up sleeping at your cubicle are quite a common occurrence in programming life for Japan..

Furthermore while I agree there was alot cut due to reasons ShB has still been a stellar expansion. Are there things I miss? Hell yes Hildibrand being my number one. is there something I'd change? Yes I'd have made Bozja alot more accessible to make it more palatable to the American mindset.

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Originally Posted by DPZ2

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The thing is both Hildibrand and Allied beast tribes were cut but both are very popular. So i don’t think it’s them indicating people aren’t interested. HoH was also extremely popular. Especially because of the mounts and hairstyles locked behind it. Eureka had very negative reactions and results(as much as i personally love it) and the relic weapons had a very low completion rate amongst the playerbase yet they thought the best thing to do was repeat that same style again? But this time made it worse where the relics are locked behind raids? Lol. As for the squadrons thing, i don’t think the story is a very good excuse. If they wanted to they easily could’ve transferred squadrons over to the First with minimal issue. I think a lot of people’s problems with Squadrons vs Trusts, which again is a trend in this expansion, is just how much of a downgrade trusts are. They somehow managed to take Squadrons overall system and trash it in the form of trusts. Squadrons you can at least control so it makes things a minimal issue, whereas trusts have wonky AI amongst other things, and now instead of building on Squadrons, they just dropped it completely. They did the same with Chocobo Racing. They did the same with Verminion. They did the same with the housing placard system. They just seem to bandaid fix things instead of outright addressing them.