What would be your ideal patch cycle? What would your ideal patch cycle include?

I made a similar topic on the discussion sub but I wanted to ask around here for a wider range of opinions I suppose:

So taking the current cycle of patches in mind, and what they typically contain, what would be your ideal patch cycle? What would be in it? 6 raids in the even patches? 5? Current 4? 3 dungeons a patch? How much to alternate content types (Crafting, Gathering, Hunts, Exploration, Misc.)? Do you think certain patches like .5 should continue splitting between two parts?

An Addendum: Consider the 3.5 month schedule for patches, assuming that that isn't changing with your patch cycles.

I like how it is now. Kinda sad that we are only getting one dungeon per patch, but it feels like we are getting to visit more locations (Terncliff, Gangos, Bozja, etc). Well, I guess we were already visiting that many locations in the dungeons, but I prefer being able to visit places in a non-combat capacity, ie actually get to explore the place, talk to NPCs, etc. Make the world feel larger.

Otherwise I'd like to see more minigames added. I really like the Easter 2019 riddles and the Rising 2020 puzzle, it's a shame that they're relegated to limited time side content.

More content than we had this expansion the dungeon cutting was pretty brutal this go around and honestly I like to see them finally fix the 24 man raid and savage release times as it was always suppose to be 24 man first then savage as the 24 man gear is kinda a waste where it falls right now and generally just ends up as it be nice to have as a glam but would never use since there is always better options.

In general I think the pacing is good now, I don't mind them trying new things but of course hope it's to my bias lol. If they tried a bunch of ultimate content I'd be like 'koool content I'll never ever get to enjoy' lol. (Not an argument against diversity, just too much of certain diversities would be a bit 'meh').


I miss the milestone roadmap thing they used to do looooong ago. I don't mind one less dungeon if they are going to use those resources for this game. I would also like to see SE utilize in game polls. Which they can choose to share or not, to help inform some direction. For example sometimes I imagine content is popular not because of the content but because of the reward, but you can't know this well unless you had a means to let players do the content and also say why they did it (like I did FATEs in 2.0 era to level- it wasn't out of deep love for 2.0 FATEs though lol).


With greater communication with the community leaders and devs (where reasonable) I would think all the above would be an interesting shift in and of itself.


On a personal note, a selfish note, I'd like to see more incremental casual friendly progression systems. Like beast tribes but you might for example now have an in-depth doma reconstruction (build a hamlet experience), personal airships, long term chocobo value and progression, job fantasy roleplay merit system (adds things that won't damage end game balance but make you feel more like your job, cheap example being why in the world does dragoon take fall damage), codex / museum / adventurer's guild, Ishgard concept built into MSQ / side content, etc. Long-term not meaning 'hyper grind', at least in general, more in the sense that say if I worked a while on something it would also be valuable for a while if not longer. So like for chocobos I feel the non-blue exp could be buffed but the birb could do with a new job system which adds to it's long and varied potential interactions and values.


Using less dungeons for that for example would be neat to me. Less gear treadmill and allowing each dungeon more time for itself to shine is also not a terrible deal in and of itself (assuming money spent on less dungeon content is shifted to other new content).

More dungeons. I hope the next expansion has less focus on crafting content. Tired of seeing it always in the ShB patch notes

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Originally Posted by Shougun

I would also like to see SE utilize in game polls. Which they can choose to share or not) to help inform some direction (like sometimes I imagine content is popular not because of the content but because of the reward, but you can't know this well unless you had a means to let players do the content and also say why they did it (like I did FATEs in 2.0 era to level- it wasn't out of deep love for 2.0 FATEs though lol).


With greater communication with the community leaders and devs (where reasonable) I would think all the above would be an interesting shift in and of itself.

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OSRS tried this. They had ingame polls where the players could vote on what features they wanted added to the game. Unfortunately 99% of the time the players just vote "yes" to everything. They don't go to the forums to read up on the explanations of the feature or threads discussing how these features would impact the game. So the game stopped being OSRS and became extremely casual, which isn't a problem for casuals but it went against what people originally wanted out of OSRS.

FFXIV is a casual game so I am for convenience features but again, I would be wary of the concept of polls that dictate the direction of the game.

I like the cycle in principle, 3,5 months is alright. I'm also fine with the "even: iLvl bump, odd: catch up" system. I just wish for more content. Less dungeons is ok with me as I don't think they are valuable content, but I don't see why we got less in the first place.
Ishgard, Trusts, Unreal and Blue mage (the biggest things from 5.X) are just pre existing content with a twist, and they wear out really fast
Bozja has one zone less than Eureka as of .3, and the first step was bad.
Solo instances (Bozja and Saphire weapon) have no replay value while I imagine they have significant ressources costs.
No Deep Dungeon in 5.3
No Ultimate in 5.3
(I dont know about PvP, but people who play PvP could add their opinion there).
We did get one more Trial and Ocean Fishing. Not sure it's worth the trade off

TLDR, We are getting less content, which directly impacts the cycle as everything wears out faster. And the repeating nature of the cycle is s bit stale. Knowing that X.3 trial will always be MSQ, wrapping up MSQ in X.3 makes .4 and .5 MSQ usually a bit boring etc. Shaking things up a bit would not hurt.

My main issue is that long-term grind content (relics, deep dungeons, and the like) should be introduced sooner. I understand that they don't want them at launch because they don't want people to feel pressured to rush through the story to get to it, but x.1 or x.15 at the latest should be more than enough time. Things that keep more people subscribed and engaged, over things like Ultimates that only a small fraction of the player base will attempt.

I prefer a wider range of content types, or a more even spread.
The reductions to one dungeon per patch is absolutely fine by me, if it means we get more in the way of other content.
We have had that this expansion to a degree, with an additional different type of Trial (Memoria Misery) and Bozja's Castrum (pretty much a fourth Ivalice raid) however Varis wasn't a great implementation of that in my opinion, and while I think Castrum is great, Bozja as a whole isn't really a net gain seeing as we lost a deep dungeon for it.
But it seems to me that the 'extra content' is probably always going to be a bit experimental and therefore hit or miss for many people.

I'd settle for a longer wait between content patches if it meant receiving more content with staying power.

3 dungeons with new unique bosses and mechanics. A big ass brutal dungeon as I've described in the past with 6 bosses but still for Light Party. A ton of Roegadyn NPCs in swimsuits with 2-B mimicked bottoms with some jazzed up event for a dance emote of some sort. Perhaps the Puff-Puff Massage emote. Yeehaw!

A fully feasible and complete plan would take more thought and time than I want to spend on this, but I will spitball some ideas in a direction I'd like to see things go.

X.0
> Deep dungeon is available from the start of the expansion
> 'Relic' type grindable weapons and armor too
> Number of normal dungeons is vastly reduced to free resources
> New PvP mode is added, can be used to grind pve gear strength
> Raid format changes each expansion, doesn't need to adhere to 4 boss rooms
> Field zone size and number is also flexible, doesn't need to be 6
> 1 new type of battle content, may replace Trials, may include mounted combat

X.1-5
> 1 new field zone per major patch, MSQ mainly takes place at new location
> X.3 mid expansion adds 1 new type of pve battle content (eg. endless/survival)
> Raids can be individual and unique, not locked into a longer series
> Re-tuned Unreal content each patch, not limited to Trials, to boost patch volume
> PvP content and rewards each X.2 and X.4 patch maybe
> Ultimate raid can continue as is, each X.1 and X.5

Ok so far what I got there is long term grind content arriving earlier, with world building content coming later and steadily through patches.
If I say more I'd have to explain changes to currencies, tokens, equipment, item level. In short I'd like to shake up the way rewards are earned from content and the involvement of crafting classes but that's another discussion.
btw Unreal World of Darkness and other old raids at current level cap, higher difficulty would be a fun way to give players more things to do without spending much dev time.

I'd like to see the dungeons go back to 3 a patch, 2 at the least.

.1 I'd like to see relic weapon start
.2 I'd like to see the limited job content
.3 I'd like to see deep dungeon
.4 and .5 there new stuff they like to try, but I'd welcome this anytime


Among lots of other stuff but this being a general basic look at it.

More dungeons (or similar quests that deliver all their story immediately) and less "grind for ten hours to get to the interesting bit" content.

Before playing this, my understanding of MMOs was that it was all grind and instead I discovered FFXIV's story-and-dungeon-based gameplay and liked it. Now "new and innovative content" is edging back towards the tedious grinding that I didn't want, and it's not what I signed up for.

I also particularly liked that the extra side dungeons are often going back to older locations for "hard mode" and continuing those stories. It keeps past zones progressing instead of leaving them entirely by the wayside. It's a disappointing thought that we might not get any more of those if they're sticking to one dungeon per patch now.