Can someone from devopment explain why Eureka was delayed for so long?

[Vhailor]

Some people can sorely underestimate game programming... For one thing, compared to other MMOs SE does release new content with very few issues, and said issues tend to be minor. Maybe one big issue pops up they quickly hotfix... Furthermore, the elemental system used in Eureka is not only new to this game but also a seperate leveling system in and of itself. In other words, it's more than just another instance.

I agree in general, though there are two points I'd like to add.

(1) Issues that crop up often aren't minor, unless you define 'issues' as purely unintended bugs. From a broader user experience standpoint, SE has an absolutely atrocious record. They've ignored class balance issues for entire expansion cycles; they still haven't fully fixed housing; they still haven't fully fixed Glamours. They haven't properly resolved the MSQ missions at the end of ARR, and arguably made matters worse with this latest change. These issues shouldn't be properly classified as bugs, but they are absolutely 'issues' in the broader sense of the word - major ones, and ones that often go unresolved for months or years.

(2) I don't know that the player base is wanting SE to prioritize steady and rapidly-paced update cycles at the expense of creative and ambitious content anymore. It made perfect sense early in ARR's lifespan, when there were only a handful of level-cap dungeons, one 24-person Raid, and one end-game Raid. Fine. Now, I'm not so sure. SE's job is to support FFXIV in the best way possible; that doesn't just mean releasing new content without bugs.

My guess is that the system-level changes they made (elemental affinity, dynamic affinity changing, chaining changes, new XP tables and splitting calculations, leveling system changes incl. level down, etc.) were a lot more complicated to get working in FFXIV's codebase than people would believe. I highly doubt it's like they had an entire team of dozens of developers working on nothing but this nonstop for years, but probably the amount of staff they have who can make those kinds of system level changes to the server code are very few, and it probably had all sorts of bugs and complications with many iterations just to get to this point.

(This is also why I'm guessing that making the types of changes people are requesting now (adding things on top to make it more interesting) will probably be much smaller in comparison, having built this foundation.)

Of course none of this changes the "that's it?" feeling you're alluding to at all, and that's still a pretty major misfire. But I suspect this will be one of those cases where the work involved will mean a lot more to the people inside the team (who know what was really involved) than to anyone on the outside (who, rightfully, only judge the final result).

This is a good possibility. That said, I'd be very interested in a more formal explanation. Diadem (both iterations) and Eureka have been such disappointing flops for so many players, SE would be well-advised to open up the floodgates and actually communicate with players. Distribute a survey, share the overall results, discuss it in a Live Letter. I happen to think FFXIV has one of the most forgiving fan bases on the planet. Many of us already stuck with the game throughout the debacle that was XIV 1.0. That said, speaking personally, I need to be thrown a bone. I need to feel like the development team is aware of the concerns I have, concerns that appear to be shared by a not-insignificant portion of the player base. The deafening silence from the development team is going to become a problem very quickly, as it always does, and SE would be well-advised to get out in front of it and be proactive.