Shadowbringers starting to feel like a budget expansion

[Melichoir]

What exists now is the first YEAR's worth of content.

If you dont have a solid, defensible position of your feelings towards it, I dunno what to say, but you've had plenty of time.

Yeah, 1 year of content with them saying "Hey were cutting back on stuff" and havent exactly told us the reasoning behind this at this time, leaving lots of room for speculation. Speculation is fine and dandy, but it's not a good way to decide the merit of something.

This is like saying "You know, Ive only watched half this movie, therefore I can judge how complete or worthwhile it is by only watching half." Which is a stupid position to take considering that the ending of a movie can really make or break things. There are plenty of movies in which the movie is going fine, get to the end and it ruins the movie, and conversely, the catch at the end of hte movie makes the entire thing so much better.

The point Im making is that it's fine to have thoughts on what we've been given currently. But there's a pernicious thought process that were somehow being jipped content unfairly because no deep dungeon and 1 less dungeon per major patch, with the complete disregard for quality of content or potential reasons for certain content being scaled back. I dunno, but it seems to make more sense for me to be like "Hmm Ill judge whether this xpac is ultimately bad or good when I can see the whole picture, and not before."

You can also compare it directly to 3.26 and 4.25 content.

You could, but how many people are doing this? This is not a reasoning or comparison people are putting forward, or if they have, theyre typically not evaluating quality but jsut raw goodies and even then don't get that right.

Its not in a good place compared to those outside its original MSQ quality, and unless theyve had a team working on some massive groundbreaking 5.35 or 5.4 release they havent even hinted at, we more or less know whats coming in the next year, and whats not .

Not in a good place? How so? By what metric are you measuring? Cause here's what Ive been seeing:

No deep dungeon - (Past complaints about deep dungeons: theyre too same-y, grindy, and uninteresting filler content. Or that theyll kill other content like fates and regular dungeon queues cause no one will queue for content and just do deep dungeons. BTW, how many people actually completed F200 of POTD or have the Horse Mount from HoH?)
Were only getting 1 dungeon instead of 2 - (Having 2 of something doesnt mean better. Two piles of dirt isnt worth as much as 1 pile of gold. Quality of Dungeons as a whole needs to be measured)
HrothGar/Viera are a mess customization wise. Only thing I can agree with and this was a failure on the devs part. And hey, it's possible theyre cutting back other content to fix this fiasco.
No Diadem/Eureka - Good god. Does no one remember how much people complained about Anemos before the train become a thing? Or how bad Pagos was? How Eureka, like Diadem, was trash content no one liked and time wouldve been better spent on other content? How grindy and brain dead it was? How some people compared Eureka to Diadem and said Diadem was better?

What else are we saying is not in a good place? An EX mode that has no normal because we did the normal in a quest? Really huge problem when that EX mode is for an artifact weapon and is not as hard as people play it out to be. But fine, maybe they should spend a day or two just to implement that fight so you can play it and get....I dunno, 5 allegory from it. In any case, That fight is really about memorization of what skills do what. Know the 3 Gunshields, what the red and Green X do, and dodge AoEs. Thats about the gist of it mechanically outside of repeat mechanics people should be well familiar with (stack markers).

I dont see any huge complaints with the Nier raid. Heck, giving us dyable raid gear out the gate has had people being happy.

Savage? It's harder than last tier, but not in a foolishly bad way. It punishes you for mistakes that are more mechanically driven.

Crafting Gathering? We've been given more content for that than previously with them reworking things a bit. Dont see to much in the way of complaining about that.

So...where we lacking? What has been lacking that you have big issue with outside the 3 main ones that get brought up? I mean Ill help you out. I think class play isnt as good. I prefer how DRK played in SB and HW. It's very boring to play now. But thats my personal opinion and is highly subjective as many have stated their preference for it's current iteration compared to older iterations.

How can you, or anyone, know if were ultimately being jipped content when we havent seen the entirety of the xpac? As I said, I wouldnt be one bit upset if we didnt get a DD or a few less dungeons overall if they were to give us off sexes of hrothgar/viera, or atleast completely fix those two races. So why should I pass judgement (and damning judgement no less) and start raising hell when I dont have a full picture? And tell you what. If it turns out they cut content and we didnt see any tangible reasoning why, Ill jump right on board with the opinion were being shafted.