Reminder that SE lied about 4 month (16 week) patch cycles.

Week 17 begins today. We were promised 4 month patch cycles instead of 14 week cycles. Today begins week 17 and the launch date for 7.3 still hasn't been announced. It likely out 16 week patch cycle will be closer to 20 weeks (5 months) this time.

Edit: Acknowledgement that a month isnt 4 weeks. I phrased it like this because developers typically have 2 or 4 week "sprints" and based it off of an interpretation that I had of what a month meant as a software developer myself. REGARDLESS if you assume a month is 4.3 weeks and a patch should be released at 17 weeks (rounding down) it would still be consistently later than 4 months.

There's an exact thread about this made 2 years ago :D
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/487176


To add to the data:
7.0 - 2 July 2024 (T0)
7.1 - 12 November 2024 (133 days / 19 weeks since 7.0)
7.2 - 25 March 2025 (133 days / 19 weeks since 7.1)


At this point 4-week patch cycles are just wishful thinking :(

The patch cycle has been 19-20 weeks for a very, very long time now. It was throughout Endwalker, and still is. You can generally just count 19 weeks from the last patch to get the release date always.

The patch cycle was previously about 3.5 months. They did say it would become 4 months, but it's more like 4.5 months in practice.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...7&d=1646266438

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...8&d=1646266452

So based on that, 18 weeks would make sense: 4 x 4 = 16. 16 + 1 (for testing) = 17. 1 week to account for months with 30-31 days = 18. I suppose it just ends up as 19 in a lot of cases though.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...9&d=1646266468

It’s going to be 20 weeks by 7.3

That’s not just an “oops rounding because some months have 30 days” that’s an entire extra month being slapped onto an extended patch cycle

AND ITS STILL DEBATABLE IF WE ARE EVEN GETTING MORE CONTENT THAN SB

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

It’s going to be 20 weeks by 7.3

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It already is 20 weeks sometimes. It switches between 19 and 20 whenever I've calculated it through Endwalker and Dawntrail. They mention in the slide that there is an extra week holiday in summer and at the New Year, and it is summer.

I have no content and I must scream.

2.0-2.1: 16 weeks
2.1-2.2: 15 weeks
2.2-2.3: 15 weeks
2.3-2.4: 16 weeks
2.4-2.5: 12 weeks
2.5-3.0: 22 weeks (expansion release)
3.0-3.1: 20 weeks (apology given I recall)
3.1-3.2: 15 weeks
3.2-3.3: 15 weeks
3.3-3.4: 16 weeks
3.4-3.5: 16 weeks
3.5-4.0: 21 weeks (expansion release)
4.0-4.1: 16 weeks
4.1-4.2: 16 weeks
4.2-4.3: 16 weeks
4.3-4.4: 17 weeks
4.4-4.5: 16 weeks
4.5-5.0: 24 weeks (expansion release)
5.0-5.1: 17 weeks
5.1-5.2: 16 weeks
5.2-5.3: 26 weeks (covid delay)
5.3-5.4: 16 weeks
5.4-5.5: 18 weeks
5.5-6.0: 34 weeks (expansion release)
6.0-6.1: 18 weeks
6.1-6.2: 19 weeks
6.2-6.3: 20 weeks
6.3-6.4: 19 weeks
6.4-6.5: 20 weeks
6.5-7.0: 39 weeks (expansion release)
7.0-7.1: 19 weeks
7.1-7.2: 19 weeks
7.2-7.3: 19 weeks?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

...

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22 weeks for an expansion launch and 15-16 weeks for a patch is a dream.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

It already is 20 weeks sometimes. It switches between 19 and 20 whenever I've calculated it through Endwalker and Dawntrail. They mention in the slide that there is an extra week holiday in summer and at the New Year, and it is summer.

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Yes should be Tuesday 5th August for 7.3 yes?

133 days is 4 months and 13 days, so exceeding with roughly 13 days

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

2.0-2.1: 16 weeks
2.1-2.2: 15 weeks
2.2-2.3: 15 weeks
2.3-2.4: 16 weeks
2.4-2.5: 12 weeks
2.5-3.0: 22 weeks (expansion release)
3.0-3.1: 20 weeks (apology given I recall)
3.1-3.2: 15 weeks
3.2-3.3: 15 weeks
3.3-3.4: 16 weeks
3.4-3.5: 16 weeks
3.5-4.0: 21 weeks (expansion release)
4.0-4.1: 16 weeks
4.1-4.2: 16 weeks
4.2-4.3: 16 weeks
4.3-4.4: 17 weeks
4.4-4.5: 16 weeks
4.5-5.0: 24 weeks (expansion release)
5.0-5.1: 17 weeks
5.1-5.2: 16 weeks
5.2-5.3: 26 weeks (covid delay)
5.3-5.4: 16 weeks
5.4-5.5: 18 weeks
5.5-6.0: 34 weeks (expansion release)
6.0-6.1: 18 weeks
6.1-6.2: 19 weeks
6.2-6.3: 20 weeks
6.3-6.4: 19 weeks
6.4-6.5: 20 weeks
6.5-7.0: 39 weeks (expansion release)
7.0-7.1: 19 weeks
7.1-7.2: 19 weeks
7.2-7.3: 19 weeks?

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Wow, didn't realize the pre-expansion wait times skyrocketed through the years.

What's going to be for 8.0... 45 weeks? :(

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Originally Posted by Raikai

Wow, didn't realize the pre-expansion wait times skyrocketed through the years.

What's going to be for 8.0... 45 weeks? :(

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Highley likely to be early summer next year so 45 weeks makes sense

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Raikai

Wow, didn't realize the pre-expansion wait times skyrocketed through the years.

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It started with the release of Endwalker, which was delayed due to covid. After Endwalker release, they announced the patch cycle increase, and silently kept the delay that Endwalker had for the expansion release.

It used to be about a 5 month wait for an expansion, but the last two have been about 8 months or so.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Raikai

Wow, didn't realize the pre-expansion wait times skyrocketed through the years.

What's going to be for 8.0... 45 weeks? :(

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Yoshida said that Dawntrail was a return to expansions always releasing in summer, so clearly it'll be a ~12 month gap between 7.55 and 8.0. :)

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Originally Posted by Daralii

Yoshida said that Dawntrail was a return to expansions always releasing in summer, so clearly it'll be a ~12 month gap between 7.55 and 8.0. :)

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I don't remember him saying that, could you provide a source? I remember him saying something at some point like he didn't like winter releases (in reference to EW) but I don't recall him saying expansions will be summer releases.

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Originally Posted by Masekase_Hurricane

Highley likely to be early summer next year so 45 weeks makes sense

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That sounds extremely optimistic when we're getting 7.3 in August 2025, 5 months to 7.4, 5 more to 7.5 and then the presumable 45 weeks :(

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Originally Posted by XtremePrime

That sounds extremely optimistic when we're getting 7.3 in August 2025, 5 months to 7.4, 5 more to 7.5 and then the presumable 45 weeks :(

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This is correct. Despite their distaste for holiday releases, i imagine we will be seeing this update sometime in Q1 or early Q2 of 2027. That said, we should have had a fanfest announcement months ago so I'm not sure how to interpret that.

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Originally Posted by Daralii

Yoshida said that Dawntrail was a return to expansions always releasing in summer, so clearly it'll be a ~12 month gap between 7.55 and 8.0. :)

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It's not really possible with how the patch cycle is now. The patch cycle used to be exactly 2 years, allowing for them to consistently release in Summer. But when it's 2.5 years, they will forever alternate between early in the year and late in the year, unless they reduce the gap before expansion release to 5 months, in which case it'll get pushed by 3 months each expansion release.

I just can't see XIV doing well after 7.5.5 if we have to wait almost a year for new stuff.

Unless the content we get for this second half of Dawntrail: 7.3/4/5 have such a longevity and replayability that can carry subs through most of that drought.

SE lying about something? SURELY NOT? lol

What we've seen more recently is 4 month and a couple extra weeks cycles based on month-to-month and not weeks

Just in the last couple, 7.1 was November 12th. 7.2 was March 25th. 7.3 will most likely be August 5th. That's 4 months and a couple extra weeks in both cases.

If every month had 4 weeks then that could be used as a measurement, but we've already had 3 months this year that had 5 (not counting very small partials like February 1st being on a Saturday). So when you look at it on the month cycle, it's much more regular minus an extra week or two here and there.

Also I work as a software developer and sprints are governed usually by when we need to release something but I wouldn't use those as gospel in regards to actual release dates. That's usually Marketing's territory.

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

If every month had 4 weeks then that could be used as a measurement, but we've already had 3 months this year that had 5

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One thing I know all too well is that if you divide 52 weeks by 4, you get 13 months. Obviously, there are not 13 months. That's because the extra 3 days of some months accumulate to create an extra "28 day month" and that's something worth considering.

They also mentioned an extra week for testing purposes which I think gets overlooked due to the "4 month" headline they created. It would have probably worked better if they put 4.2 months in their slide at least.

I think the over-extended patch cycles is a valid complaint. Patch 7.2 was March 25th, so 4 months on from that we should be getting 7.3 on July 25th, except it's not going to release then (unless they give us a nice surprise during the live letter and say "surprise! you can download it now!"). It'll be 1-2 weeks later in August. That wouldn't matter if the DT story had been fantastic and everyone was excited for the game, but the writing was poor, player numbers have dropped rapidly, and the recent content has had a fairly lukewarm response. Even Yoshi has said they need to earn back players' trust, and the CEO has acknowledged a drop in quality. So now's not the time to keep everyone waiting even longer between patch cycles. And a year's wait from 7.55 to 8.0 with player numbers possibly dropping to ARR levels would be abysmal! Surely they won't let that happen. I don't know what's going on behind the scenes but they've fallen into a hole and unfortunately it's going to take a lot of work for them to get out of it. I am cheering for them though. I'd love for ffxiv's star to rise again and I hope the people running Square Enix do too.

If I had any suggestions it would be to do fewer things but do them very well, and get someone like George RR Martin to consult on the next story like they did for Elden Ring (or someone else who knows how to write and can give an external perspective). Somehow I feel like they left the writing of DT entirely to chance which was a big mistake. And there's no need to add any more jobs or races. Honestly I think there's plenty. I guess they might make the jobs more distinctive although that would be a low priority for me. Instead they could revisit old content but add scaling difficulty - faster cast times, larger health pools, more damage, more debuffs, an extra mechanic or two. Heck they could even go the other way and make baby ultimates with a tenth of the mechanics and let you scale up to full in 10 steps (assuming they could come up with some sort of modular fight design). I think I'd be okay with less stuff but better, with a shorter patch cycle.

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Originally Posted by OlafQuintessa

Somehow I feel like they left the writing of DT entirely to chance which was a big mistake.

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The writing in Dawntrail feels like it was outsourced entirely to people on Twitter/Bluesky.

So coming from this from a software developer perspective:

For every one change made, you have to do two tests: what you changed, and anything that the thing that was changed interacts with. Thus, the more stuff they add to the system, the more testing they have to do with each patch cycle.

In practicality, this means a QA team member has to go through and recheck the OLD stuff too, not just the new stuff.

A lot of this can be done through automated testing - oh except every automated test still has to be manually coded for the new software development. (AI can't do it. It can help to some extent, but you still need someone trained in Selenium or Katalon or whatever automated test solution they are using to write out the test cases prior to the final QA check for go-live. (It fucking sucks and I hate it. So painful.)

When they only had ARR they could speed run through the MSQ as a functional test, and have their automated tests check every quest, every piece of gear, every NPC, etc, and probably knock out the automated tests in a few hours while the functional tests could be done in 1-2 days.

Today, with all the expansions, it probably takes four or five times as long for the automated tests, and a full friggin week for the functional tests. And that's for all the OLD things in the system!

You know what happens when they start skimping on functional testing with a dedicated QA department? Forked Tower happens. (Although their big failure on that was not from QA, but from the systems thinking people who failed to extrapolate that not all 48 people who wanted to do the content would be in the same instance together.)

ANYWAY, the solution to this is to either increase the amount of time QA takes (what they're doing now) - or to beg SE to let them expand the QA department, which it's pretty obvious to me needs to happen at this point.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Raikai

Wow, didn't realize the pre-expansion wait times skyrocketed through the years.

What's going to be for 8.0... 45 weeks? :(

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I was going to comment something similar. 39 week wait, and what we got was DawnTrail (ROFL!)

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Originally Posted by CapaxInfiniti

The writing in Dawntrail feels like it was outsourced entirely to people on Twitter/Bluesky.

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It was just bad writers, following modern trends of "Everyone needs to be at peace and peaceful, together and happy" Same happened to World of WARCRAFT.

The patch cycle isn't the problem.

You only notice the patch cycle length because you are bored. It doesn't even take a month after patchday to feel like "Okay, what now?"

Three months would feel better with the content they provide at the moment, but it would still be too long. People are bored, that is the problem.

Besides, Dawntrail was just not that good, so most of us can't wait to move on. They really baked a recipe for disaster here.

Dawntrail patches these days honestly have less of a shelf life than a fresh-caught fish lol. After just a few hours the lustre is gone, and all you’re left with is something dry and decayed.

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Originally Posted by Hallarem

It was just bad writers, following modern trends of "Everyone needs to be at peace and peaceful, together and happy" Same happened to World of WARCRAFT.

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Did they ever end up fixing that or is WoW story still like that? Maybe FF14 is going through its WoW era

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Originally Posted by All_Nonsense

Did they ever end up fixing that or is WoW story still like that? Maybe FF14 is going through its WoW era

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WoW's story is in the peak of that soft era, yes

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Connor

Dawntrail patches these days honestly have less of a shelf life than a fresh-caught fish lol. After just a few hours the lustre is gone, and all you’re left with is something dry and decayed.

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Shelf life is probably the concept they really need to workshop on.

To note, they do have enough planned features, but sadly most of them have very little have good replayability. I'd say the stuff that lasts the longer are probably Savage prog with Party Finder (at the risk of being burned out by repeating the same encounter so much) and maybe Deep Dungeons.

Occult Crescent could be it, but it's not. Even with the fix to the entry mode, Forked Tower still requires a lot of outsourced preparation (e.g. Discord), so people are either intimidated by that or (like myself) don't feel the trouble is worth.

Actually, let's comparing to the Bozja Southern Front, there's very little reason to be in the Occult Crescent if you don't do the FT for some reason or another. Castrum Lacus Litore, Delubrum normal and Dalriada were really well served in replayability. Both for the rare field notes, but also because it was very lucrative to farm stuff there.

Ah, and not only grasping better the concept of good shelf life, but also spacing better their planned features. Why we need to wait until x.2 to have a semblance of long-term content with meat on its bones? (assuming that the Field Operation is successful)

Lies from the devteam peppered with gaslighting from part of the community that the game is "actually amazing right now"

Truly a full course meal

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Raikai

Shelf life is probably the concept they really need to workshop on.

To note, they do have enough planned features, but sadly most of them have very little have good replayability. I'd say the stuff that lasts the longer are probably Savage prog with Party Finder (at the risk of being burned out by repeating the same encounter so much) and maybe Deep Dungeons.

Occult Crescent could be it, but it's not. Even with the fix to the entry mode, Forked Tower still requires a lot of outsourced preparation (e.g. Discord), so people are either intimidated by that or (like myself) don't feel the trouble is worth.

Actually, let's comparing to the Bozja Southern Front, there's very little reason to be in the Occult Crescent if you don't do the FT for some reason or another. Castrum Lacus Litore, Delubrum normal and Dalriada were really well served in replayability. Both for the rare field notes, but also because it was very lucrative to farm stuff there.

Ah, and not only grasping better the concept of good shelf life, but also spacing better their planned features. Why we need to wait until x.2 to have a semblance of long-term content with meat on its bones? (assuming that the Field Operation is successful)

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Shelf life is also heavily tied to job design

It’s hard to enjoy endless battle content when by and large you aren’t enjoying your core job

Like the only thing I still like doing in OC is blowing myself up with oracle because at least oracle makes you consider the content in a slightly different way

Gave em that extra time and they still can't have a story mode in tower cause of time\costs SMH

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Originally Posted by Doki

Gave em that extra time and they still can't have a story mode in tower cause of time\costs SMH

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They've got like 1 dude locked in a closet chained to an old-timey type writer. His name is John WritingTeam

"Did you make sure you wrote how much the Pelupelu like to trade in the dialogue?"
"Yes.....can I have a smoke break?"
"No"

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Shelf life is also heavily tied to job design

It’s hard to enjoy endless battle content when by and large you aren’t enjoying your core job

Like the only thing I still like doing in OC is blowing myself up with oracle because at least oracle makes you consider the content in a slightly different way

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Yeah, that's absolutely right.

For the content we've been presented ever since the expansion launch, jobs needed to be at their best shape. Even if you're into a boring reclear phase of a Savage fight, you can still have enjoyment by playing your job and trying to go for a good skill ceiling.

Which points out that it makes no sense to me that they decide to not focus on jobs first - they'll already go into that task for 8.0 full of limitations by the so-called encounter design improvements in Dawntrail.