Okay, big changes take time. However.

[Joe_Cool]

This is my conundrum. It's been stated by Square that they have different "divisions" for each of their patches. Different sections of employees that focus on one thing or another. While I can understand that most of them are probably at least loosely involved in this "big battle patch", what I don't understand is why we have had to sit here for three months without anything truly substancial happening in the game.

Because most of the "content" that can be added require the "battle" changes to be made first? And that new armor, gear, etc. may come from battle related content as well.

Let's take those high teir NM's for example. Remember how many party members were initially able to fight against them? And then some of the "battle" changes turned the max party members to 8 instead of 15. Guess what? They had to re-do the stats to the NM's, amount of mobs that pop with Dodore, etc. So my guess is that it'll save alot of time in the long run and we'll get more updates/content faster if they mainly focus on getting battle changes and such done first instead of putting things in before and then having to re-do them all over again when something is changed via battle.

[LateReg]

Because most of the "content" that can be added require the "battle" changes to be made first? And that new armor, gear, etc. may come from battle related content as well.

Let's take those high teir NM's for example. Remember how many party members were initially able to fight against them? And then some of the "battle" changes turned the max party members to 8 instead of 15. Guess what? They had to re-do the stats to the NM's, amount of mobs that pop with Dodore, etc. So my guess is that it'll save alot of time in the long run and we'll get more updates/content faster if they mainly focus on getting battle changes and such done first instead of putting things in before and then having to re-do them all over again when something is changed via battle.

Bad example. They didn't need to touch the difficulty of the NMs at all. It only took about 4~6 people on any of them (without THM solo) before the 15 > 8 max patch, and now you can trio all of them with a tank, DD, and a healer in a reasonable amount of time.

[Joe_Cool]

Bad example. They didn't need to touch the difficulty of the NMs at all. It only took about 4~6 people on any of them (without THM solo) before the 15 > 8 max patch, and now you can trio all of them with a tank, DD, and a healer in a reasonable amount of time.

It may not be the best example but it IS an example of how things are re-done to accomodate changes to "battle" related content.

Keep in mind that there were also groups fighting the NM's that weren't rank 50. Maybe they were 40 are so.
And also, with 15 people, you could kill the NM faster and have much more pops in the giving time frame that they pop in. A group of 3 might would kill it 1 time within the pop window whereas 15 people could kill it 5 times within that same pop window.

[Alcide]

Because most of the "content" that can be added require the "battle" changes to be made first? And that new armor, gear, etc. may come from battle related content as well.

Let's take those high teir NM's for example. Remember how many party members were initially able to fight against them? And then some of the "battle" changes turned the max party members to 8 instead of 15. Guess what? They had to re-do the stats to the NM's, amount of mobs that pop with Dodore, etc. So my guess is that it'll save alot of time in the long run and we'll get more updates/content faster if they mainly focus on getting battle changes and such done first instead of putting things in before and then having to re-do them all over again when something is changed via battle.

Don't start talking about the NM nerf, they didn't have to do that, they chosed to do that, taking away to the players the only challenge they had... but that's a different matter.

I agree with the OP; of course the main update we are waiting for is the one about the battle system, so that we can see some content coming too, indeed i find it weird that we'll have the dungeons before the BS and the job system are perfectly implemented, but well I guess they understood that we need something to do while we are waiting ^^'
On the other hand this game doesn't need only BS and content: what about the UI? You can't say it's perfect, it's the worst UI I've ever seen in any MMO; same goes for the loot system, for the chat logs, for the LS management. Do these things need the BS fixed in order to be redesigned too? I don't think so... still when asking about it the answer is "The BS as a higher priority, so you'll have to wait for that"... ehm... what the f*ck?? o.O is the UI team and the others bringing the BS team coffees an snacks whil they're finishing their work??

I'm ok with waiting for things to be done (even if i'm running out of patience since I'm playing this game for almost a year now) but reading those answers are really making me wander what the hell they're doing.

[Rentahamster]

Because most of the "content" that can be added require the "battle" changes to be made first? And that new armor, gear, etc. may come from battle related content as well.

The OP is talking about stuff that can be improved on that doesn't have to wait for the battle changes.

Why on earth is there not about 25 different new hairstyles for every race, a female highland hyur, "Final Fantasy" looking armor and clothing, new spell art, etc etc etc? None of this has anything to do with their precious battle system. IMO the least they could do is throw us a pretty graphical bone every once in awhile, and I'm not referring to the "99 cent discount stickers" they consider to be aggro markers.

Don't need a new battle system for new haristyles or armor colors or spell effects.

Let's take those high teir NM's for example. Remember how many party members were initially able to fight against them? And then some of the "battle" changes turned the max party members to 8 instead of 15. Guess what? They had to re-do the stats to the NM's, amount of mobs that pop with Dodore, etc.

Actually, the game would be better off if they hadn't nerfed the NMs and just left them alone. 8-man parties pre-patch could take out all the NMs, and some could even be soloed. Now, they're even easier to kill.

[Joe_Cool]

The OP is talking about stuff that can be improved on that doesn't have to wait for the battle changes.

I was referring to the OP's "what I don't understand is why we have had to sit here for three months without anything truly substancial happening in the game." statement.

I understand about the art work and such, but OP said "truly substancial happening in the game" in the above statement so I kind of took that to mean beefy content in the game. My apologies if I just misunderstood.