Will SE pull a blizzard?

[MerleSirlos]

To many players the fact that raids are released every 6 months but are usually cleared in less than a quarter of the time is already seen as an issue, catch up patches and 24 man content does very little to entice players who are already at the higher ends of the game as by that point many of them are gearing alternate classes through the same raid that they did for their primary.

An extra 2 months for a playerbase that has been bored for 3 is still a long time.

This is then a completly different problem. The focus of the discussion was dry content on a long gap between last patch and first patch of the following extension. Which is not true. If the content added doesn't suit your taste you cannot complain there is no content. (but you can complain you don't like it.)

And now we are moving the discussion to the time lenght between two high end raids. 6 months might be too long for players like you who finish a raid tier in a month or two, farm it for the following month and are left with nothing to do for 3 months. But for players like me who finish it maybe one week or two before the next raid tier arrives, it's totally fine, it suits my pace. (don't take this personally, I don't know how you play, this is just an exemple to illustrate the situation.)

So which kind of player should the game support more? Obviously the majority, or else the game sinks. the game is a mmo with a lot of different kind of players (that the community liikes to categorize in harcore, midcore and casuals but meh). the content might be too much for some, not enough for others, but the game needs to find a balance where the majority is ok with. If you try to move this balance (for exemple by making more hardcore content which will lead to less midcore and/or casual content) then you are pretty much asking for the game to die.

Square Enix decided to go for a 3 months gap between major patches and high end raid tier every two major patch. that's the pace they decided would be balanced for the majority of players they were aiming for. It's up to the players that are on each extreme to adapt their pace to the game's pace. if it's too fast, you either skip some content or stay behind, if it's too slow, do other content or play something else. In the end it's up to each player to decide how they want to manage their time in the game taking patch content pace into consideration.

[Celef]

Well FFXV will finally be realed by then, if the rumors a true, a part of the money FFXIV makes goes to the promotion of it so we might hope that they'll get more funds, resulting in more people and bigger patches ^^

[Ryel]

Blizzard did not lose subscribers because it is 10 years old.

I don't recall saying this.

In fact in the very post you quoted I don't see myself even listing a specific reason for the subscription drops in WoW at all, other posters have alluded to them instead.

What i did say is that WoW can afford to lose massive numbers of subs even if Blizzard as a company would prefer they didn't because the game has had roughly 10 years of growth and as it is 10 years is also a long time for an MMO to survive, especially for a company that is working on other projects.

[Elky]

And? Its not like it was a year or 2 years. Its a full expansion they don't have to give them to us as quickly as they plan too but they are. I think people can handle a couple months without a major update at the end of a cycle.

Not with this kinda game, dailies get old, fast. Amusement park type games need content churned out due to the burn out many players experience. Especially with linear designed content like the dungeons and 24man raids we have. Mechanics is nice, but bee lines in each dungeon I've played so far? Lame.

[Ryel]

This is then a completly different problem. The focus of the discussion was dry content on a long gap between last patch and first patch of the following extension. Which is not true. If the content added doesn't suit your taste you cannot complain there is no content. (but you can complain you don't like it.)

And now we are moving the discussion to the time lenght between two high end raids. 6 months might be too long for players like you who finish a raid tier in a month or two, farm it for the following month and are left with nothing to do for 3 months. But for players like me who finish it maybe one week or two before the next raid tier arrives, it's totally fine, it suits my pace. (don't take this personally, I don't know how you play, this is just an exemple to illustrate the situation.)

Except the question that started the thread was in concern to content gaps leading up to the expansion.

If the same content schedule follows suit up to the next expansion we will go through a very similar content drought to the period between 2.5 - 3.0 because of where it falls on the patch schedule. There was a very large gap in content for any player that remained current in content, there is even a poster saying they were thankful for the break because they were able to play other games the opposite of what a subscription based MMO relies on to make it's revenue.

So which kind of player should the game support more? Obviously the majority, or else the game sinks. the game is a mmo with a lot of different kind of players (that the community liikes to categorize in harcore, midcore and casuals but meh). the content might be too much for some, not enough for others, but the game needs to find a balance where the majority is ok with. If you try to move this balance (for exemple by making more hardcore content which will lead to less midcore and/or casual content) then you are pretty much asking for the game to die.

Square Enix decided to go for a 3 months gap between major patches and high end raid tier every two major patch. that's the pace they decided would be balanced for the majority of players they were aiming for. It's up to the players that are on each extreme to adapt their pace to the game's pace. if it's too fast, you either skip some content or stay behind, if it's too slow, do other content or play something else. In the end it's up to each player to decide how they want to manage their time in the game taking patch content pace into consideration.

This is a debate for another thread, my initial comment was to illustrate the drought timeline and express that It would be against SE's best interest to have a similar content drought as so far unofficial records have shown a drop in player subscriptions after each occurrence. For some reason however players wish to debate this when it has very much been the case regardless of any individual feelings on SE's delivery of content as a whole.

There have been droughts and we have lost players who have not returned during them, therefore in the future it would be best for them to reconsider the types of content they release in the long period leading up to an expansion release.

[MerleSirlos]

But there wasn't any content droughts. There is more than enough content in each patch to last until the next patch and more.

And I understand that you and more people felt that there was a content drough because I did too. But it wasn't because a lack of content, it was because a lack of interesting content for me.
I don't do crafting, it's not interesting for me. Should I ask for all crafting content to be scraped out for the dev team to only do what I like? All the crafters would say no.
This is what I wanted to point out.

[Ryel]

But there wasn't any content droughts. There is more than enough content in each patch to last until the next patch and more.

There are many players that would disagree with this statement, in fact it's currently being debated right now.

Perhaps "drought" is too strong of a word, however the nature of the game's vertical progression does render a large amount of content obsolete by design and in some cases it happens not long after it's released, Bismark Ex, The Diadem, and Lords of Verminion if not most of the Gold Saucer content releases are some of the biggest examples of this, it's especially an issue if a player is staying current with content releases.

The game is designed on a strict ladder. Once you've reached the highest available rung anything added below that even if it's enjoyable doesn't contribute further to the progression of your character and more often than not isn't even needed to be done more than a handful of times before it is rendered near useless for a large number of players, It obviously doesn't feel this way to anyone still progressing from the ground up however as they'll feel they have plenty to do.

Whether you want to refer to the long periods where this happens as a "drought" is up to you, but players are unsubscribing from the game during these periods and the majority of them aren't coming back.

[Ceasaria]

FCoB was released in 2.4 which means from 2.4-3.0 it was roughly 8 months between raid content since my initial post mentioned content of the highest levels.

Seeing as most other content only lasts a few weeks at best when you're already at the cap.

And yet, we had T6S-T9S which have kept us busy.

I remember Yoshida said the period between the end of Heavensward and 4.0 will be shorter than Real Reborn - 3.0 (and i hope it will be true)
I think we will have 4.0 around april, and i don't see 3.5 in three parts but just one part (or two in the worst case) (maybe bigger than a single patch).

[Airget]

And yet, we had T6S-T9S which have kept us busy.

I remember Yoshida said the period between the end of Heavensward and 4.0 will be shorter than Real Reborn - 3.0 (and i hope it will be true)
I think we will have 4.0 around april, and i don't see 3.5 in three parts but just one part (or two in the worst case) (maybe bigger than a single patch).

Yea, if they do Septemeber, then December/January, they could potentially release by March/April since as you mentioned they don't want to make following expansions as big as 3.0 release. Since it was them packing so much into the opening that delayed it to June.

[Yasuhiro]

Personaly, I dont mind the 4 months downtime that got like with 2.55, I used that time to level all my classes and go on a hiatus to enjoy other games. I came back a week before the expansion was released, with a fresh mindset.

Waiting for Heavensward was my favorite part of the game. Wait! I know that sounds weird, but since people were mostly hanging out at the same place in Mor Dhona. I managed to make lots of friends and catch up on coils and such, felt like people were afking less and getting along with players not in their FC or LS was fantastic!

then 3.0 came out and people isolated themselves again, even that one guy who's always afk and never moves vanished! hope to see them again though!