The Current Status of FFXIV Patch 3.1 and How to Address it Moving Forward

[Velhart]

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We can argue on how challenging the relic quest should be. However, I have a hard time believing that people don't want something fun in the quest line. Even if it something as simple as story fights that can be solo'ed something similar to main scenario quests. Or something like Hildibrand quests with Gilgamesh and Ultros that are more fun than challenging. Or something puzzling you need to figure out. Something needs to give you breathing room between grinds. Something needs to be in between besides small cut scenes. No matter how you look at it. You can't and shouldn't make excuses for SE's absolutely lazy approach to the relic quests, especially since they have shown they can do so much out of it. Don't let them believe this approach is okay or convince you that it is.

[Alahra]

We can argue on how challenging the relic quest should be. However, I have a hard time believing that people don't want something fun in the quest line.

I'm sure people do. However, the more unique elements we get in the Relic quest, the less unique elements we'll get elsewhere. Their resources are unfortunately not finite, and personally, I can't think of much I'd like to give up for them to develop new stuff for the questline. About the only thing I'd personally like to see shuttered is the new Normal/Story mode of raid content, and I'm not sure exactly how much that would actually let them do since they'd still need to develop the standard raid difficulty in the first place.

[Velhart]

I'm sure people do. However, the more unique elements we get in the Relic quest, the less unique elements we'll get elsewhere. Their resources are unfortunately not finite, and personally, I can't think of much I'd like to give up for them to develop new stuff for the questline. About the only thing I'd personally like to see shuttered is the new Normal/Story mode of raid content, and I'm not sure exactly how much that would actually let them do since they'd still need to develop the standard raid difficulty in the first place.

Maybe its wrong of me to believe SE, one of the biggest AAA developers out there to have a standard of quality whenever they release new content. Not release one piece of content, then downgrade the other to make it fit in. There shouldn't be sacrificing other content to make something else. They need to stick to making sure what they currently have keeps it's quality and comfort zone, then when resources allow it, make something new. Quality is better than quantity. Diadem has potential, but it definitely feels like something SE threw together later in development and did not take time to flesh it out. Thus what we have currently.

Relic quest in particular. Yoshi-P has complained various times that lack of resources is what has raids in it's current state, but not relic. For relic he straight out says it needs to be only grinding content so a particular audience has something to work on. If resources is in fact a thing, then SE needs to get their priorities straight before the content they release starts dipping in quality over time. Like it is already showing.

[Alahra]

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That the team is already greatly strapped for development resources and time is well known. Trying to ask them to do more than what they are currently doing and maintain the current release schedule without sacrificing something (or getting a bigger team, which, at this point, seems unlikely) is naive. While we all want more, we still have to recognize the limitations of the reality that is the game's development.

Any new type of content they design is going to by necessity mean they don't create or work on some other type of content, unless they move to a longer development cycle (but given that players already disengage toward the end of each 3 month patch cycle, that would go even worse for them). If the team had access to resources beyond what they already have, they could do more, but the fact of the matter is that they don't right now, and they're spread thin trying to meet their relatively aggressive patch cycle as it is.

[Velhart]

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It isn't always about doing more, it is about doing it well. More should only be a factor when you can bring more content in without sacrificing the quality of content that is already well established. The quality of end game content (my opinion) definitely feels lower than it did than in 2.xx, and we have had more content come in since then. Of course people want more variety of content from SE, we all do. The actual reality of the situation is you shouldn't be adding in more if it is going to take a dip in quality elsewhere. Its a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation, but I would take the former over the latter (again, opinion).

[Alahra]

The actual reality of the situation is you shouldn't be adding in more if it is going to take a dip in quality elsewhere. Its a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation, but I would take the former over the latter (again, opinion).

I'm not even sure what you're arguing anymore. My post was in response to you discussing more unique elements in the Relic quest. I agree with you that they shouldn't be doing more content if it's going to cause a drop in quality for other content, which is what I think would happen if they started putting unique story battles or instances of some kind in the Relic questline.

[RiceisNice]

I'm reading your post and you haven't gotten that intention across, at least I'm not seein it either. It's mostly bringing up reasons to why they can't, and honestly its eventually going to get to the point where it's simply not a good excuse anymore. The content we've been getting just goes to show that there's a very big disconnect in their intentions in focusing so many areas that manages to satisfy less players than ever before.

[Alahra]

It's mostly bringing up reasons to why they can't, and honestly its eventually going to get to the point where it's simply not a good excuse anymore.

As I've said in many places on the boards, I think it's important to try to construct feedback in ways that are reasonable given what we know about development constraints, as those things are more likely to be possible. When it came to what I was responding to (the addition of unique battle content for the relic quest), I think that's unrealistic at this point in time because we already know they cut one dungeon per patch in order to expand the types of content we get. Yes, the first batch of content we got in the trade wasn't very good—I won't argue that. My point is just that, adding more new types of content would probably be unrealistic without also giving up something else. I've been replying in between other things so I don't go much beyond that. I do think there are things we could reasonably ask for though.

For instance, it makes more sense to me to ask for more use of current content in the Relic Quest. I don't think the entire thing would ever be current content, as it's one of the easiest ways they can get us back into older stuff. However, why weren't the newest dungeons used in the quest? Couldn't they have been part of the storyline in some way, as Wanderer's Palace and Amdapor Keep were? I think the Vanu Vanu Beast Tribe quests being included was a good move in this vein, and Diadem's inclusion was welcome, too, though in the latter case, I think they didn't do *enough* with Diadem. When I first saw the Unidentified items, my initial assumption was that the bones would come from monsters in there, and I'm still surprised they didn't.

That's the sort of thing I think is more likely to happen than asking for entirely new stuff just for the Relic. The entirely new stuff is going to have to come in the major patches for raid tiers and the like. Asking for more new stuff for the Relic quest is probably not going to result in a lot (I can imagine at best, getting perhaps one or two unique trials throughout the whole expansion for it, but even those might come at the expense of unique trials for the Side Stories like Hildy's three trial battles, which is still a sacrifice that some may not want to make).

[RiceisNice]

You already know my stance on the 3.0 relic so Ill cut it for post limit.

However my reply was more directed to how you present your side of the argument, and its not clear cut on what you're trying to get across (esp when you try to call out on others for not knowing what theyre arguing for). Your ideas are a bit scattered to the point that your original meaning may have been lost.

I agree its unreasonable to expect new content without taking away from other areas when resources is a concern, but that doesnt mean it should be cold turkey or all in toward one side of it. I mean as far as relic is concerned, the entirety of it has No tangible content thats exclusive, and it feels more of a regression in some aspects (namely inventory space and reintroducing fundamental problems of FATEs, except now were killing them at level 53) than progression (being able to do atma as any job). It feels that it's short sighted despite how long it was put off for and in relation with 3.15

[Alahra]

However my reply was more directed to how you present your side of the argument, and its not clear cut on what you're trying to get across (esp when you try to call out on others for not knowing what theyre arguing for). Your ideas are a bit scattered to the point that your original meaning may have been lost.

I'll reconstruct it the way I understood it.

1) Velhart made a post mentioning that people wanted to see more unique stuff for the relic.
2) I responded to say that I was afraid we'd have to give up content for that because of development constraints.
3) From this point, I'm actually not entirely sure what Velhart was getting at—he seemed to be saying that I was trying to excuse poor content quality (like Diadem), which I wasn't—I've talked in numerous places about how I felt Diadem was a big disappointment.
4) That ultimately wasn't what I was talking about though—the quality of the new content doesn't have much to do with whether or not they have the resources to create other new content, which is why I reiterated my original statement about development concerns probably being part of the reason we don't get new content for the Relic.
5) Velhart's next post goes on to say (I think) that the development team should be doing less than they currently are because of the drop in content quality, which is honestly something I could get behind—I think quality is better than quantity, for sure.
6) But at this point, we still weren't talking about what I was talking about, which was that they can't add new stuff to the Relic quest without most likely cutting out other things—so I just gave up and admitted I wasn't sure what he was trying to discuss with me at that point, as he seemed to take my train of thought and go off to talk about something different. It didn't help that he went from asking for more content (for Relic) to seemingly saying they should be designing less (which is closer to agreeing with my thoughts on the matter than not, since it speaks to the the problem of the developers perhaps having too much on their plate).

On the subject Velhart was seemed to be talking about that I wasn't talking about, I actually haven't really noticed a significant drop off in content quality for most stuff in Heavensward so far. I think class balance has largely been worse, but the dungeon quality is roughly the same (and in my view, somewhat improved). Diadem is a mess, but so were Hunts, so it's not necessarily indicative of a drop in quality when they were already releasing content that was a mess due to bad assumptions regarding player behavior.

About the only place I see a significant drop off in content quality is with regard to Alexander versus Binding Coil of Bahamut, with the latter feeling a lot more haphazard in design in a number of ways, both in regard to the battle content as well as balancing and story construction.