FFXIV outdated patch cycle is one of the biggest issues in terms of content cadence.

Wasting dev time on older trust dungeons was by far the dumbest thing ever put into this game. You will have new players going through ARR and then get slammed with either crystal tower or 8 man trails. They have zero clue what the playerbase is actually like in instanced content, incredibly stupid design decisions I said when it came out.

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Originally Posted by Swad

Wasting dev time on older trust dungeons was by far the dumbest thing ever put into this game. You will have new players going through ARR and then get slammed with either crystal tower or 8 man trails. They have zero clue what the playerbase is actually like in instanced content, incredibly stupid design decisions I said when it came out.

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This is all apart of their 10 year plan, to make sure that people can play the game when little to no one is around. All group content will eventually be trusts save for the raids.

Not sure how accurate mmo-population.com stats are but for MMO to have so many people not playing because they are done with the content looks bad:

https://i.imgur.com/4Vmnbs9.png

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Originally Posted by Somnolence

Not sure how accurate mmo-population.com stats are but for MMO to have so many people not playing because they are done with the content looks bad:

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They base their estimation solely on reddit subscribers and daily active reddit accounts in any given subreddit for a game, multiplied by a "magic number" and add in some more bologna. Which is the silliest metric I've ever heard of. That website is notorious for having ridiculous numbers. At one point they had an estimation of something like 40k current players for Wildstar, years AFTER the servers were shut down.

It was a huge mistake not having the foray, V&C, DD or Cosmic Exploration ready for 7.1. The content in expansions have been too backloaded with nothing to do in the early patches unless you savage/ultimate raid which isn't most of the population. Starting with 8.0 they need to dedicate all their efforts into frontloading repeatable content like those above and relics.

Oddly enough while folk keep saying were losing content, its far from it, we are looking at more content than ever before planned for DT but a majority of what is considered the "grindy" isnt released till about halfway through the major patch cycle... Ideally they need to start looking into shifting long term content much much earlier, at least by x.05 something major needs to be dropped...

Why does XIV have to be just like other games? The reason I moved from my lastt MMO WoW back in 2014 was that XIV offered a different experience. I didn't have to worry about making sure I got on for my dailies for boring faction grinds. We can do roulettes here daily and weekly, but I don't always have to on a given day and can just catch them up the next day. I like that. And I think there are a fair number of people who came to this game to get away from feeling like they *had* to play all the time. It's always been a much more laid back experience here in comparison to other MMOs.

It's fair if someone doesn't think it's worth the price. That's a choice everyone will need to make for themselves. If someone does need dailies and drips of content like so many live service games these days, there are already a lot of options. It's okay if one tries to be a little different.

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

Why does XIV have to be just like other games? The reason I moved from my lastt MMO WoW back in 2014 was that XIV offered a different experience. I didn't have to worry about making sure I got on for my dailies for boring faction grinds. We can do roulettes here daily and weekly, but I don't always have to on a given day and can just catch them up the next day. I like that. And I think there are a fair number of people who came to this game to get away from feeling like they *had* to play all the time. It's always been a much more laid back experience here in comparison to other MMOs.

It's fair if someone doesn't think it's worth the price. That's a choice everyone will need to make for themselves. If someone does need dailies and drips of content like so many live service games these days, there are already a lot of options. It's okay if one tries to be a little different.

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Why does the existence of a grind make you feel like you are obligated to do it? Unless you're into savage or ultimate raiding, you're not compelled to grind at all in this game even if they did add some more grinds. And even then people would like more cosmetic grinds. I think they need to make a PvE season pass every patch similar to the PvP one, for example.

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Originally Posted by DynnDiablos

I think one of the biggest problems with FFXIV at this point is its patch cycle and content cadence. It is nowhere on the same pace as other MMO's and live service games which consistently deliver content monthly and sometimes weekly.

While many games have adopted an 8-week season model, so content is dripped to keep players consistently engaged, XIV continues with its content drop every 4.5 months. The problem is, most of this content is cleared within a few days to a week and there is no incentive to be engaged daily. Nothing they create can fill a 4.5 month period.

Allied Tribe Quests, dailies and weekly raid runs are simply not enough. What does XIV lack compared to other games doing content better? Weekly Bonuses, Monthly Bonuses, Daily Tasks that come with some award or bonus.

MSQ is dropped with an hour-long new story bit, but then we are expected to wait another 4.5 months until the next arc. The entire patch cycle just feels outdated and not something that can be sustained when other online games are able to deliver fresh content quicker.

There is the state of mind (from the devs, too) that the game is meant for folks to unsub for periods of time. But then that just creates a huge downtime in between every patch and you aren't guaranteed players will return.

Yoshi P is determined to keep the game running for the next 10 years, but if he is to do that something needs to change.

Even SE's online store structure is outdated. Most games and MMOs you can access the store and buy right from the game. Everything is just so outdated and archaic and I think that will be XIV's downfall and where it will eventually get left behind in the dust.

Why couldn't they add a Season/Battle Pass with rewards to unlock from glams to XP boosts to fantasia and housing items, etc? Why could we have more engaging daily and weekly challenges?

I just feel we are in a time where XIV is no longer the pinnacle/star of the show in terms of MMOs and other games in the online space and I feel Yoshi P and the devs are so stuck in their ways they probably can't change it.

As a veteran player since the ARR beta in 2013, even I am reaching my limit. And the 7.0 story did nothing to make me even give a crap about what comes next. Maybe it truly is time for me to hang my hat up and move on. Yet, I keep holding out hope someone can come in and shake up leadership and the development of XIV. I just don't see it getting to 10.0 in its current state and how they choose to release content.

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I dont believe it is impossible to create content that lasts that long... a lot of online games stay alive with less I think its definitely just badly designed to be both rewarding and replayable.

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Originally Posted by Somnolence

Not sure how accurate mmo-population.com stats are

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MMO population is not accurate because it was found to just be using the reddit stat.

I suggest referring to my post here which uses a number of sources (and cites them) https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...Estimate-Chart

At this point I keep my sub for my house and my FC house for my airship and subs. That's it. I will login in tomorrow for the one-hour 7.1 MSQ, dungeon and alliance raid, then go away again until 7.2 all while paying monthly for nothing.

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Originally Posted by Hyperia

This is all apart of their 10 year plan, to make sure that people can play the game when little to no one is around. All group content will eventually be trusts save for the raids.

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I think this is why we see people talking about sunsetting the game and maintenance mode. Realistically, this game has 3 expansions left before it enters FFXI state at best. The problem is the patch cadence and MSQ are both really emphasizing that SE has/is dwindling the budget down as the game is also entering the latter stage of its prime time.

I think in general the vibes sort of feel like they're conditioning the game to be single player and kinda doing whatever they can with their budget to appease whoever is left actively playing.

*Instead of* feeling like WoW, Genshin, or virtually any other ongoing game that shows the publishers and devs really are sparing no expense to keep things fresh. XIV's team quite literally doesn't care if you're playing the game lol...it's an interesting marketing strategy...

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

They have been trying to hire.

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Evidently, they need to loosen their restrictions instead of throwing their hands up and saying, "whelp, we tried!" There's no need for every developer to be fluent in Japanese. Simply make that a requirement for the team leader, management or whatever so they can translate when necessary. Other foreign companies have figured it out but as per usual Square is woefully behind.

Although, I'd argue it isn't just a personal issue. They've simply made very poor design decisions, especially more recently. No amount of developers was going to fix Island Sanctuary, for example, because the foundation itself wasn't good to begin with. Likewise, half the problem with housing is their stubborn refusal to accept the neighborhood concept doesn't work.

I'd think the same thing, but the JP playerbase and the cash shop is going to keep this title earning for quite a while.

The reason the game is becoming worse is because they can spend less effort and still earn the same (or better) profit.

There is no incentive for SE to change the game into something western audiences are craving.

There's no getting around it in MMOs anymore: cash shops kill. It might be slow, it might be fast, but at some point the company will ask itself why bother with heavy dev if you can put another chibi mount in the cash shop and make as much as you do when selling an expansion.

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Originally Posted by VerdeLuck

It's getting pretty bad, it's a death by attrition at this point. They cut content, give us slightly less, recycle more every time we go through this, the time period gets a little longer. I'm reminded of the Trust Thermocline concept that was floating around a few months ago.
It describes situations where companies give a little bit less, charge a little more, or deliver a little slower, but over time these small thigns add up until it's no longer worth it for people and they face a large backlash of consumers wanting better value.

That's where we're at, things have been going this way for a long time with fewer dungeons, worse gear designs, recycled content, and so on and now we've hit the point where it's becoming unacceptable.
And most people don't want to hear the excuse that it will get better in 6-12 months, they want to know what SE is going to do about it NOW. The LL on the 1st will probably make or break it for the rest of the expansion for a lot of people. If Yoshida dismisses people's concerns again like he usually has then they're not coming back for a while and they're taking their money to another game with them.

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If only a renegade former FFXIV Developer would give us insight on what is actually happening.

You know what they could do? Give us 1 server with all the classic content through the eras, let up re-live the joys of the content we loved, with the job-play styles we loved, and use THAT as a way to help deduce what actually worked, and what didn't work as a compare and contrast. It's been a long set of years since the original ARR iteration released, HW, so on and so forth... and to be honest, some of us liked other eras of gameplay better than others...

At the very least, it would allow us to do something while awaiting other content to drop... I hardly think people would be upset if we had an ARR server, or a HW server to play on, as so many people compare the old jobs to the new jobs and pinpoint what about that era they liked...

I do realize it will mean more work, but any solution will mean more work, and as it stands the fact of the matter is SE needs the workers, or they need to put in the elbow grease... One way or the other, we need something... just something...