5 floors each raid tier in 5.0?

[Vaer]

4.3x is unusually large? Let's compare it to the entirety of 3.3:

• MSQ
• Two expert dungeons (Sohr Khai, Hullbreaker Isle HM)
• One normal and one EX trial (Final Steps of Faith)
• Palace of the Dead (First part, to gauge its popularity)
• Fields of Glory (Shatter) frontline map
• Alliance Raid (Weeping City of Mhach)
• The Aquapolis
• Warring Triad sidequests
• Hildibrand sidequests
• Anima sidequests, and its next step
• Beast tribe quests (Moogles)
• Raid Finder dyea
• Other updates (Gnath/Vanu gear added to the respective beast tribes, Flowerpots/Flower vases, more housing wards, new DoH/L gear, dyeable Dreadwyrm gear, etc.)

If 4.3 is the unusually large patch, than what do you make of a patch that's pretty much equal in size (or larger, since I don't really agree with throwing a crossover event as being part of the actual patrch)?

The difference being that 3.3 wasn't nearly as spread out as 4.3x will be.

TBH the only thing pulled out was one dungeon, aquapolis (there's already two of these areas anyway in SB and it's being updated next patch) in exchange for the 2nd area of eureka and an ultimate trial. Honestly I think they put more effort into the Namazu tribe than moogles. (You can do them as a gatherer in addition this time) The story this time for HoH is lame, and PoTD actually had a somewhat functioning one but wasn't that great either. The hard floors for PoTD didn't release until 3.35 so they spread that patch out, too. They also added a ton of housing wards in the previous 4.2 patch. For PvP, they already added Rival Wings, a new map and spending most of their time making the pvp team thing/tournament. If we aren't counting MHW collab, it's a wash to me. It's mostly the same stuff, just spread around. Depends on how much you value that extra dungeon I guess.

[Jeykama]

If they could make something with the grandeur of the 24Ms with its contiguous location and scenery, but bump it to Savage level for the proper raid, that would be A-OK.

More than 4 actual encounters would be icing on the cake, but I always felt the instancing of the raids lacked feeling that you're fighting in an actual place. The Coils and Alexander somewhat made up for it by having parts you travel through and see the sights, but Omega was nothing but arenas. Sure there was the solo sections, but there nothing to gawk at there.

[Ameela]

They'll never do "proper raids" with Savage difficulty as that would mean having to do fights you've already beaten every time you want to prog.
People already complain a lot about having to do Kefka before being able to go into God Kefka, imagine if they also had to do Phantom Train, Chadarnook and Guardian.
And you can say that it's already how it works but at least with how it is now you can beat the early fights and then save the one you're progging on for the next day or something, so it's not as draining as doing them all in a row.

[Jeykama]

They'll never do "proper raids" with Savage difficulty as that would mean having to do fights you've already beaten every time you want to prog.

Of course it couldn't be the same exact system as 24Ms where you always start from the beginning. 24Ms work on a completely different lockout premise.
Programmers are able to set up checkpoints where if you progress in a raid to a certain point, you can re-enter from that point later. Not going to say it's not hard to set up, but WoW large-scale dungeon raids are like that and those actually feel like a huge place. That's the feeling I miss (though not WoW)

[Nezerius]

TBH the only thing pulled out was one dungeon, aquapolis (there's already two of these areas anyway in SB and it's being updated next patch) in exchange for the 2nd area of eureka and an ultimate trial.

I was pointing out that calling 4.3x "unusually large" was odd, and compared it to a HW patch with the same number.

Honestly I think they put more effort into the Namazu tribe than moogles. (You can do them as a gatherer in addition this time)

I dunno, I felt like the gathering part of the dailies was pretty basic, similar to how the Ixali dailies sometimes had players gathering stuff before the crafting part.

The story this time for HoH is lame, and PoTD actually had a somewhat functioning one but wasn't that great either. The hard floors for PoTD didn't release until 3.35 so they spread that patch out, too.

I forgot that floor 51-200 was actually added in 3.35, so I can add that to the list. I also never said that SE didn't spread out content in 3.3x, just that it wasn't nearly as spread out as 4.3x. I'm also including content after the initial 3.3 patch (3.35/3.38), because that's what Rufalus was doing as well.

They also added a ton of housing wards in the previous 4.2 patch. For PvP, they already added Rival Wings, a new map and spending most of their time making the pvp team thing/tournament. If we aren't counting MHW collab, it's a wash to me. It's mostly the same stuff, just spread around. Depends on how much you value that extra dungeon I guess.

They also added a new PvP mode in the 4.2x patch, with the Feast being released in 4.21.

What I'm getting at is that the amount of content isn't shrinking as much as it seems, but the amount of content delivered with each individual patch certainly has shrinked (or in other words, it's been spread out over the initial patch/subsequent 'mini'patches a lot more).

I also agree that the 8-man raids should really feel more like raids, instead of teleporting from fight arena to fight arena. I imagine this is the case for Omega because they spent a lot of resources on developing the Alliance raids.

[Ayer2015]

pretty sure the thread is referring to 8man raids....

[Vaer]

I dunno, I felt like the gathering part of the dailies was pretty basic, similar to how the Ixali dailies sometimes had players gathering stuff before the crafting part.

Ixal was more of a crafter thing with a side gathering option. Namazu you can actually just do it on gatherer completely.

[Rufalus]

What I'm getting at is that the amount of content isn't shrinking as much as it seems, but the amount of content delivered with each individual patch certainly has shrinked (or in other words, it's been spread out over the initial patch/subsequent 'mini'patches a lot more).

The overall amount of content across the patch(es) is more meaningful. Spreading it more evenly doesn't mean there is less overall... yeah day 1 of the major patch has less, but then the follow up minor patches have massively more than they used to, because it was spread out.
4.36 has Eureka Pagos and MHW content. 3.36 has... there wasn't one, they didn't have a x.x6 patch in that cycle, it was more of a gap. You have to compare 3.3x as a whole to 4.3x.

Taken as a whole I think it didn't even shrink or remain the same. It was actually an increase as I already explained. The amount of work put into Eureka Pagos is hugely more than what Anima quest provides because it is new original content rather than farming old existing content. It's a complete new zone (not the same one as anemos) with new mechanics, enemies, music, quests.

That's why I say 4.3x is unusually large for a patch. You have to look at the amount of work put into creating the content, not just the number of bullet points. They won't all be like this one, it's an anomaly, but these large patches still happen so it's disingenuous for people to say content is on a downward spiral. A patch would usually just have one large-scale piece of content that can be farmed for a lot of hours in addition to all the regular updates, but this time we got more than one (deep dungeon and eureka back to back) while also fitting in a collab of larger scale than most (new original Trial battle, not just farming old fates like yo kai was). It's a bigger dev effort to make new things than it is to reincentivise old things.

[Sove92]

Programmers are able to set up checkpoints where if you progress in a raid to a certain point, you can re-enter from that point later.

This is how Coil and Alexander worked before RF was released. The problem is that it isn't friendly to replays. You could not replay a Coil fight in a given week until 2.45, and for that, you needed a player without a weekly clear of that particular fight. When RF released, they got rid of the checkpoints, making replaying easy, but kept the same progress system for the loot lockout and to make you do the fights in order, which is also the reason you lose all rewards from earlier fights, if you skip them, as the game doesn't check the clear status of individual fights.

The people who do these fights more than once a week for various reasons, would not be particularly happy, if the ability to replay the fights was restricted again. Alternatively SE could allow you to start from any checkpoint you have met, but that would likely need a lot of work on DF and might be a horrible list to choose from.

[Nezerius]

The overall amount of content across the patch(es) is more meaningful.

That's your opinion on it. There's plenty of people (me included) who don't share that same opinion.
It's also very clear that spreading content like this is to entice players to subscribe every month between every major content patch.

4.36 has Eureka Pagos and MHW content. 3.36 has... there wasn't one, they didn't have a x.x6 patch in that cycle, it was more of a gap. You have to compare 3.3x as a whole to 4.3x.

Which is exactly what I did? I compared all the content from the entirety of 3.3x to your list of content of 4.3x. 3.36 didn't exist because SE didn't spread content around nearly as much as they do now.
Also, the MHW crossover isn't developed as 4.36 content. It's crossover content that happened to be ready for 4.36.

Taken as a whole I think it didn't even shrink or remain the same. It was actually an increase as I already explained. The amount of work put into Eureka Pagos is hugely more than what Anima quest provides because it is new original content rather than farming old existing content. It's a complete new zone (not the same one as anemos) with new mechanics, enemies, music, quests.

Let's not forget that Diadem (both versions) was SE testing the waters. And while it ultimately wasn't as successful, they definitely learned from it with Eureka. This isn't some magic content that's never been seen before, its groundwork can be traced back to HW.

That's why I say 4.3x is unusually large for a patch. You have to look at the amount of work put into creating the content, not just the number of bullet points. They won't all be like this one, it's an anomaly, but these large patches still happen so it's disingenuous for people to say content is on a downward spiral. A patch would usually just have one large-scale piece of content that can be farmed for a lot of hours in addition to all the regular updates, but this time we got more than one (deep dungeon and eureka back to back) while also fitting in a collab of larger scale than most (new original Trial battle, not just farming old fates like yo kai was). It's a bigger dev effort to make new things than it is to reincentivise old things.

On the other hand, we've also lost 100 floors in the new Deep Dungeon. And while the story of Palace of the Dead wasn't too deep (pun not intended), it was miles better than the 'story' we got with floor 1-30 in HoH.
Also, again, the MHW cross-over isn't specifically developed for 4.36, so it's a bit silly to take that into account. It's not even part of the 4.3 mini-site, which showcases all the content of the entire patch.

Personally, I'd rather have the initial major patch have the majority of the content. I prefer being able to decide on what content I'd want to run, instead of SE telling me "You can do x content now, y content in a month, and z content in two months."
I'll agree that it was obviously different content to the Anima questchain, but Eureka also caused its relic questchain to be delayed by quite a while. The (almost non-existent) Anemos weapon's story also can't really be compared to the Anima one, but we'll have to wait and see if they actually do anything with it in Pagos.