There has not been a single major patch without a critical issue since Endwalker.

Housing glitch. EW queue bugs (which had to be resolved by a Redditor and not their own engineers). And now... DC visit shenanigans.

This has never happened at this alarming frequency in HW, SB, and even ShB.

What is going on?

What's crazy to me is they also are extending the time between patches...I mean with 6.2 being LATE August and still not bringing all of the promised features until 6.25...I have to wonder what is going on over there. I get they encourage us to take breaks but the longer periods between patches that result in more tech issues is odd to me.

Nothing is going on. It's the result of new things being added to an already huge game. Things are going to inevitably pop up. Also, we have only had one major patch since the expansion launched, the rest have been half patches.

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Originally Posted by DynnDiablos

What's crazy to me is they also are extending the time between patches...I mean with 6.2 being LATE August and still not bringing all of the promised features until 6.25...I have to wonder what is going on over there. I get they encourage us to take breaks but the longer periods between patches that result in more tech issues is odd to me.

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Frankly I think the team has completely lost interest in FF14 and we're now officially in managed decline mode. When there is no passion, just like with World of Warcraft, the quality will also slowly erode. This is just the beginning of the WoW-like decline. This exact trend has happened in WoW. Sadly FF14 is now heading the same path.

First of all the systems they are developing as of late aren’t exactly incredibly simplistic, especially depending on data structures. Implementation and testing for a housing lottery and DC visit are infinitely more complex than, say, implementing GATEs at the Gold Saucer or making adjustments to raids.

This is just what happens when you get a little more ambitious than usual with the projects they undertake. Secondly, to my understanding they only identified the issues, not resolved them.

EW queue wasn't a bug. They just made improvements and optimizations to something that had worked for years. A development server was repurposed as a login server to increase the amount of processing power.

DC travel is not part of a major patch. It's 6.18 and it's just congestion from people using it a lot.

I’ve loved this game and played it since 1.0 alpha days, been through all the ups and downs but I’ve found myself more and more increasingly saddened at the direction lately I feel the game is heading, but the worst part lately is I’m actually nervous at the reaction if I dare show even the thought of disappointment or criticism in any form when I see how others seem to get met with this behavior of “go play something else” or “you don’t understand infrastructure this is all the players fault for using said system right away.” I really enjoy most of what the game offers and I do play other MMOs but I’ve really lately had to feel like I’m making myself log on just because and I actually truly hate that feeling.

I've never been so bored in an MMORPG patch as 6.1.

"Oh, but you don't want the game to force you to play... blah blah blah"

Yes, I don't want the game to force me to play, I don't want to have to farm something endlessly. But damn it, is it hard to have interesting content? Something that is not necessary, but that I can distract myself? Or is that asking too much of Square Memex?

Welcome to massive online games, are you new?

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Originally Posted by Blossoming

I’ve loved this game and played it since 1.0 alpha days, been through all the ups and downs but I’ve found myself more and more increasingly saddened at the direction lately I feel the game is heading, but the worst part lately is I’m actually nervous at the reaction if I dare show even the thought of disappointment or criticism in any form when I see how others seem to get met with this behavior of “go play something else” or “you don’t understand infrastructure this is all the players fault for using said system right away.” I really enjoy most of what the game offers and I do play other MMOs but I’ve really lately had to feel like I’m making myself log on just because and I actually truly hate that feeling.

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No one is going to be upset over well thought out critical feedback. The problem is, most of the feedback on the forums isn't that. It's people calling the devs names and taking a "sky is falling" approach where they act like the game is dying. That's where most people take issue and tend to say things like "play something else". Because the posts make them seem like they hate the game itself and makes people wonder why they're playing if everything about the game is negative. Overwhelmingly negative to the point that is just gets exhausting.

I am well aware the game isn't perfect. I still enjoy playing it. I still look forward to every patch.

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Originally Posted by Adamantini

Yes, I don't want the game to force me to play, I don't want to have to farm something endlessly. But damn it, is it hard to have interesting content? Something that is not necessary, but that I can distract myself? Or is that asking too much of Square Memex?

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I haven't had this problem. We had Crystalline Conflict to farm a whole series for, a Beast Tribe, lots of side stories, an extreme to farm and a fun alliance raid to do each week that was praised by the internet in all areas. If these things are not fun there is almost 10 years worth of content to do instead.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

I haven't had this problem. We had Crystalline Conflict to farm a whole series for, a Beast Tribe, lots of side stories, an extreme to farm and a fun alliance raid to do each week that was praised by the internet in all areas. If these things are not fun there is almost 10 years worth of content to do instead.

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Some people only want to do one thing. All the other stuff means nothing to them, so it doesn't count as content for them. This is what is leading to WoW's failure. They listened to one small part of the player base- the top end raiders, and focused their game design 100% around raids and mythic dungeons and getting more player power. This led to a huge lack of other content for other types of players that didn't care about gear and wanted other ways to have fun in the world.

I personally would prefer to have a wide plethora of different content, even if someone if it is stuff I personally wouldn't ever do, than have the game hyperfocused on one thing. It's better for the overall health of the game.

Yeaaah. This has been kinda brutal in both content drought and quality.

They're slipping.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

I haven't had this problem. We had Crystalline Conflict to farm a whole series for, a Beast Tribe, lots of side stories, an extreme to farm and a fun alliance raid to do each week that was praised by the internet in all areas. If these things are not fun there is almost 10 years worth of content to do instead.

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Crystalline Conflict was cool, I did so much that I got sick of it, mainly due to bugs and imbalances.

Beast tribe? 3 minutes of quests per day, and that's it

Side history: like, 2h of gameplay and it's over too

extreme: do it, get your weapon and that's it. Or repeat this 99x to get a mount.

alliance raid: Do it 1x a day to get the coin, and that's it too.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

I haven't had this problem. We had Crystalline Conflict to farm a whole series for, a Beast Tribe, lots of side stories, an extreme to farm and a fun alliance raid to do each week that was praised by the internet in all areas. If these things are not fun there is almost 10 years worth of content to do instead.

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There's also an Ultimate Raid, which from all I've heard is the most interesting Ultimate to prog to date.

The tragedy of developing games is that players are always going to be able to finish content faster than a developer can churn it out. Unless you want to be like Blizzard, and arbitrarily time-gate content behind long, mandatory grinds and scaling bosses to the point where they're mathematically unbeatable for the first week, your players are going to finish the content they're interested in and then want new stuff pretty fast.

But hey, there's other games to play.

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Originally Posted by Denji

Yeaaah. This has been kinda brutal in both content drought and quality.

They're slipping.

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I disagree. PvP overhaul was great and very well received. It revived what was basically a dead mode. The raid series has been a blast so far. Aglaia has been well regarded as one of the best Alliance Raid tiers. DSR Ultimate was loved and is one of the hardest fights ever designed in the game. We've got a ton of new content coming in 6.2 with 4 man dedicated content, Island Sanctuaries, relic grind, etc.

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Originally Posted by hunkygladiator

Frankly I think the team has completely lost interest in FF14 and we're now officially in managed decline mode. When there is no passion, just like with World of Warcraft, the quality will also slowly erode. This is just the beginning of the WoW-like decline. This exact trend has happened in WoW. Sadly FF14 is now heading the same path.

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This may win the award of the day for post most divorced from reality. With criterion dungeons, island sanctuaries, etc. all about to come down the pipeline, FFXIV is currently the complete and polar opposite of "managed" mode. Are we just throwing terms around now without a clue or something? By the way, there have been bugs with practically every patch; it's called the nature of MMO's. Talk about a nothing-burger, sheesh...

We get it. You bore easily. That's why you people come and post here in the first place. :rolleyes:

Fun fact: no amount of testing can help prepare for what happens when actual thousands of people try to use something at once.

housing boiled down to a simple error in communication. shit happens. we move on.

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Originally Posted by Ryaz

Some people only want to do one thing. All the other stuff means nothing to them, so it doesn't count as content for them. This is what is leading to WoW's failure. They listened to one small part of the player base- the top end raiders, and focused their game design 100% around raids and mythic dungeons and getting more player power. This led to a huge lack of other content for other types of players that didn't care about gear and wanted other ways to have fun in the world.

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Not that I disagree (or agree with the other poster for that matter), but over the course of time they have removed some nuances from the game that had potentially low development overhead, yet acted as a great incentivization factor for people to do content more than they otherwise would. To take raids for example, to my knowledge we currently have no equivalent of ADS Plating, Burning Auracite, Faust Plating, and Large Gordian Gear, all of which not only were used as crafting materials but equally act as an incentive for people to do the raids under sync'd conditions - and to top it off were not guaranteed drops. Heck, I still see parties for T1 occasionally to farm the Plating.

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Originally Posted by Ryaz

I disagree. PvP overhaul was great and very well received. It revived what was basically a dead mode. The raid series has been a blast so far. Aglaia has been well regarded as one of the best Alliance Raid tiers. DSR Ultimate was loved and is one of the hardest fights ever designed in the game. We've got a ton of new content coming in 6.2.

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Don't count your chickens before they hatch. You shouldn't rely on what -might- happen next patch.

DC travel is one of the biggest feature they ever done, if you asked players 2 years ago, everyone will say no way they will do it, impossible, etc. Yet here we are.

Also I don't think the DC travel is faulty, NA is just overcrowded. JP and EU seems working as intended. Took me 3m to jump between DC, neat.

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Originally Posted by Striker44

This may win the award of the day for post most divorced from reality. With criterion dungeons, island sanctuaries, etc. all about to come down the pipeline, FFXIV is currently the complete and polar opposite of "managed" mode. Are we just throwing terms around now without a clue or something? By the way, there have been bugs with practically every patch; it's called the nature of MMO's. Talk about a nothing-burger, sheesh...

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He's a troll. Probably another Titanmen alt. Dude is famous for saying stupid shit.

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Originally Posted by Dionysius

DC travel is one of the biggest feature they ever done, if you asked players 2 years ago, everyone will say no way they will do it, impossible, etc. Yet here we are.

Also I don't think the DC travel is faulty, NA is just overcrowded. JP and EU seems working as intended. Took me 3m to jump between DC, neat.

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NA really is like that because it's also SA, some EU and Oceania.

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Originally Posted by Ryaz

I disagree. PvP overhaul was great and very well received. It revived what was basically a dead mode. The raid series has been a blast so far. Aglaia has been well regarded as one of the best Alliance Raid tiers. DSR Ultimate was loved and is one of the hardest fights ever designed in the game. We've got a ton of new content coming in 6.2.

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They've had some hits, but also some major misses. CC and Aglaia were great. DSR is something I can't really speak on, but it's apparently doing okay. Meanwhile, they've been cutting corners in some places, like with Hrothgar and their apparent need to re-use job gear for CC rewards when, in my opinion, there should have been more unique sets given by those vendors. They've also messed up their housing lottery system is a really bad way. It shouldn't have taken them a month to get it working properly. And data center travel is apparently not doing so hot right now. Could just be the traffic or a bug, but either way I don't think they tested it properly, or at least not enough. I haven't seen them fumble content design back-to-back like this for a while. Think the last time this happened (for me at least) was back at the beginning of HW when they released Diadem and Verminion and they both died shortly after.

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Originally Posted by Adamantini

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crystalline conflict was new (and not just "a new pvp mode" but pretty much a total pvp rework), we (assuming they get it fixed in due time) now have data center travel which while not gameplay is huge from a community perspective, for the 6.2x series we have criterion dungeons and island sanctuaries in the making.

if its not endless grinds you are after and things like dungeons or an ex trial don't count because "you do them once or twice and than they are the same as everything else" than only count those things i mentioned in the first paragraph and be honest here, how many NEW things do you think square should be able to design and get up and running in the span of a few months while being required to offer at least some more of the basic "old systems" simply do to the nature of being an mmo?

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

They've had some hits, but also some major misses. CC and Aglaia were great. DSR is something I can't really speak on, but it's apparently doing okay. Meanwhile, they've been cutting corners in some places, like with Hrothgar and their apparent need to re-use job gear for CC rewards. They've also messed up their housing lottery system is a really bad way. It shouldn't have taken them a month to get it working properly. And data center travel is apparently not doing so hot right now. Could just be the traffic or a bug, but either way I don't think they tested it properly, or at least not enough.

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I'm not saying things have been going perfect. There are definite problems. But I also know the dev team is human, makes mistakes and I have enough trust in them that they'll get things fixed. The DC Travel thing seems to be an NA only problem right now. EU and Japan seem to be working well.

I just don't see the whole "we're getting less content" thing because I see plenty of content. It's not all for me, but it is content that appeals to a lot of people and I'm fine with that. I have no problems playing what I enjoy and then going to play some Destiny 2 or Fallout or something in between.

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Originally Posted by Ryaz

I have enough trust in them that they'll get things fixed.

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They eroded that trust for me over the course of a single patch, which says a lot given that I was a stalwart defender of them prior.

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

They eroded that trust for me over the course of a single patch.

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Likewise. There's room for them to renew that trust, though the 'usual suspects' who make a career out of defending absolutely everything that a billion dollar company does only serves to push yet more people into sceptical territory.

We're not 'hAtErS' for having genuine concerns about the very same pattern emerging that caused World of Warcraft to go from the most popular MMO in existence to a complete laughing stock and constant string of scandals.

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Originally Posted by Akiudo

crystalline conflict was new (and not just "a new pvp mode" but pretty much a total pvp rework), we (assuming they get it fixed in due time) now have data center travel which while not gameplay is huge from a community perspective, for the 6.2x series we have criterion dungeons and island sanctuaries in the making.

if its not endless grinds you are after and things like dungeons or an ex trial don't count because "you do them once or twice and than they are the same as everything else" than only count those things i mentioned in the first paragraph and be honest here, how many NEW things do you think square should be able to design and get up and running in the span of a few months while being required to offer at least some more of the basic "old systems" simply do to the nature of being an mmo?

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I think you misunderstood me here: I said I liked CC, but I got sick of doing it so much / the imbalances helped with that.

A new, persistent and distracting content until the new """"big"""" patch is enough. Some examples?

WoW had pet combat. Stupidly casual content, where I was distracted for months.

Something involving FFXIV?

Throw some shit for the bluemage to do alone. A deep dungeon, revives this class they made with some content which gives reason for this class to exist. Here's a huge tip. I'm the retard who went to make carnival titles, like "perfect blue".

Moogle Troove. Since we don't have anything better to do, it gives me an event where I can farm some things in the game.

Make achievements more interesting to farm. I collect any kind of crap in games, unless it asks me to do 10,000x the same thing.

Ishgard restoration was excellent, it entertained me for a whole year. More content like this would be great

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Originally Posted by Theodric

Likewise. There's room for them to renew that trust, though the 'usual suspects' who make a career out of defending absolutely everything that a billion dollar company does only serves to push yet more people into sceptical territory.

We're not 'hAtErS' for having genuine concerns about the very same pattern emerging that caused World of Warcraft to go from the most popular MMO in existence to a complete laughing stock and constant string of scandals.

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I don't think it's hate, else you guys won't be here on forum. More like "Beater", that's how you think people working on the game to you right? Let's keep beating them to moveee.... faster.. faster, not fast enough!

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Originally Posted by Adamantini

WoW had pet combat. Stupidly casual content, where I was distracted for months.

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I spent the better part of MoP launch and the first major patch mainly pet battling, and that is no exaggeration. I loved how it worked through MoP.

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Originally Posted by Dionysius

I don't think it's hate, else you guys won't be here on forum. More like "Beater", that's how you think people working on the game to you right? Let's keep beating them to moveee.... faster.. faster, not fast enough!

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It's less slave driving and more "we pay for a product and we want our money's worth" which I don't think is unreasonable. We also know that they can do better.

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

I spent the better part of MoP launch and the first major patch mainly pet battling, and that is no exaggeration. I loved how it worked through MoP.

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that's what i'm talking about.

If you say the patch is boring, the kids of SE start saying they don't want the game to force them to play.

A simple casual and distracting system isn't much to ask for, and you won't be forced to play

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

It's less slave driving and more "we pay for a product and we want our money's worth" which I don't think is unreasonable. We also know that they can do better.

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How much for Endwalker when it's first launch? $35? $40? If you think EW not worth that amount, then we have to disagree. I think it's worth $60.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

EW queue wasn't a bug. They just made improvements and optimizations to something that had worked for years. A development server was repurposed as a login server to increase the amount of processing power.

DC travel is not part of a major patch. It's 6.18 and it's just congestion from people using it a lot.

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Did we all just memory hole the whole error 2002 part where SE had somehow managed to basically "cap" queues per datacenter (yes datacenter not individual servers) at 17k and would randomly kick people anywhere in the queue out if there were more people queueing? If they just prevented additional people from queueing past 17k it'd be a bad look but one could at least reason it was for server stability, but who would consider randomly kicking people anywhere in the queue an intended feature and not a bug?

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Originally Posted by Dionysius

How much for Endwalker when it's first launch? $35? $40? If you think EW not worth that amount, then we have to disagree. I think it's worth $60.

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We pay a monthly sub for content every few months or so. Our money doesn't start or stop with expansion purchases. Was EW worth $40? Absolutely. I enjoyed most everything I got at EW launch, warts and all. But that isn't what I'm talking about and surely you know that.

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Originally Posted by Tyrn

Did we all just memory hole the whole error 2002 part where SE had somehow managed to basically "cap" queues per datacenter (yes datacenter not servers) at 17k and would randomly start kicking people anywhere in the queue out if there were more people queueing? If they just prevented additional people from queueing past 17k it'd be a bad look but one could at least reason it was for server stability, but who would consider randomly kicking people anywhere in the queue an intended feature and not a bug?

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it's a design limitation, not a bug.

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Originally Posted by Adamantini

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okay but CC is "one big thing" , yea you got sick of it, that is fair and it surely isn't perfect, but that alone clearly took some development time and sad as it is, you can't allways make everyone happy. the 6.2x series will have criterion dungeons and island sanctuary, if nothing else lets hope that those live up to expectations.

where i'm 100% with you is on making achievements more interesting, more in between steps for the grindy ones (having grindy ones isn't bad, just shouldn't be all of them) and more gimicky and fun ones in other places instead of "kill 1000 s-ranks" would be great.

Small indie company please forgive

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Originally Posted by Mosha

it's a design limitation, not a bug.

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Still a bug, even if it is a bug in the design rather than a bug in the code.

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Originally Posted by Akiudo

okay but CC is "one big thing" , yea you got sick of it, that is fair and it surely isn't perfect, but that alone clearly took some development time and sad as it is, you can't allways make everyone happy. the 6.2x series will have criterion dungeons and island sanctuary, if nothing else lets hope that those live up to expectations.

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If they improve CC it will be perfect. Finally some interesting PvP content in this game.

I'm looking forward to 6.25 (since apparently most things won't came for 6.2), but until then, it would be great to have at least 1 piece of content that everyone can enjoy doing.