Shadowbringers starting to feel like a budget expansion

[yukiiyuki]

Thats your attempt at Irony? Yikes...Need to work on it a little.
Nah, Id rather do 1 better if not Slightly better "Simplistic Dungeon" instead of 2 Mediocre Dungeons that get pushed out because people think we need 2 and cant be happy with 1. If dungeon running is all you care about, then thats you man, run them till your hearts content.

So basically you're saying that you would rather play less than more, because nothing changed in dungeon design and we just get one instead of two.
Well, you can't argue with someone who dont want to play PVE content, back to square one.
Yikes indeed, red nosed fella.

[Lauront]

At this point I am just waiting for their next MMO, in all honesty. Yes, XIV is still fun, but there's so many things they can't do due to legacy system limitations that it's become depressing, and the game is starting to feel and look dated. I mostly just play for the story these days and even that can be vexing in how you have no real ability to make meaningful choices in the story and are just following a script, which in turn also limits what jobs they're able to implement, because some, like Necromancer, would not be "compatible" with the lore for the protagonist.

I can understand why people complain about the amount of combat content, because between 5.2 and 5.4, i.e. the next patch with raids, there will potentially be more than 8 months. That's a long content drought, particularly if your interest in the relic is very limited. The alliance raids and ex modes are also very quick to clear, so they're not lasting content by any stretch of the imagination.

[Melichoir]

Players need to stop forgiving everything, no FFXIV is not a bad game, but a lot of things done by SE is simply put ... not up to what we expect or hope for.

Stop being a "everything is perfect, the game was never better then this" person and at least have a legit view on the current situation. No one here is saying the game is bad or dieing, but we are on a path of getting less, its the first bit of the path but we are defiantly on it.

Most people do have 'legit views' on the current situation. The general consensus is "This xpac is great and they did a lot of things right." This doesnt mean it's perfect, or SE has done no wrong, or that there isnt room for improvement. It means that people are satisfied with it. Very few people are saying "It's Perfect, change nothing". I have to ask why you think that this is not a 'legit view'. Hell, even if people think its perfect, how is that not a 'legit view'. Just because you dont like their perspective regarding the content doesnt make it any less valid a point of view.

Everything story related it great and thats what most players see, but the game is more ... also keep in mind there is more then just a few types of players that all have a right to their content.

Grinders: Who just want to be busy doing something to progress towards a big goal. Like Relics, commendations, Mentor points
Crafters: Who want to be challenged and not hit a macro, who want to be proud and say "i made that"
Gatherers: Who want to farm some items and provide for crafters, or even themselves.
Story players: Who want SE to build more lore and interact with the main gang
Raiders: Who need constant high challenge and interact with their statics
No Stress players: Who do their Dungeons but stay away from raids (even normal ones) and extremes.

And theres so many more, and while we currently get a decent amount of gathering and crafting stuff, the players who have only combat classes are kind of shafted.

Where was this sentiment when crafters/gatherers were getting shafted in previous xpacs? Is it now a problem cause there's more focus on crafting/gathering and less on the combat role side of it? Bringing this up as a problem when to the best of my knowledge the DoH/DoL didnt get nearly as much content as combat roles in previous xpacs but now theyre getting more seems kind of one sided.

Im not sure they realise how important the Deep Dungeon is for the game by now, a lot of ppl use it for leveling or go with statics ... or solo it to push their own skill to the limit. Kicking that out the door is a massive hit.

How many people have reached floor 200 on PotD, let alone 100 of HoH? If you are lvling, PotD is still there, so is HoH. If you havent done floor 200, plenty of challenge left in that. Would I like a new one? Sure. Would love it. But Im not dying if I dont get one.

The new Trial doesn't have a HM ... does it need one? Well i don't need it since i farm it on Ex ... but theres loads of players who will not face the stress of Ex trials. So their kinda locked out.

This has been discussed a bit in another thread so Ill be brief - If you dont want to engage with content, then dont expect the rewards from that content. EX isnt nearly as bad as people think. The trouble with dropping the skill floor over the last xpac has resulted in this situation where people think that EX is top tier content when its not. Particularly this ex. It's no where near as punishing as people make it out to be, and it requires you to recognize only a small handful of mechanics with some filler variations. Anyone can do this content - that's somethign I firmly believe. If you can beat e8, you can beat this EX.

Also why did we use the Dungeon boss Theme for the Boss? This game has some of the most bad ass tracks, but this is so out of place.

I just chalked this up as a subtle tell to players that this EX isnt some unique great fight like other EX modes. Pretty sure it doesnt have a mount either. It's a mid tier fight.

We have to question SE because if we don't ... nothing will change. Also the "well then quit" players ... please look at the facts ... players that "complain" here want the game to continue and not crash, if we did not care or would not want to play ... we would not bother writing here.

There is nothing with questioning things, but typically that's not what were seeing. It's been a lot more of observation, followed by extreme negative Point of view and the complete rejection of any counter point.

Example: We've been getting less content than ever before, therefore its because SE is just pocketing the money and fleecing us! It must be this!

The problem with the "less content" position is that it is fairly subjective and open to some level of interpretation. At its most 'factual' core, teh only two bits we've lost thus far are Deep Dungeon and 1 Less regular dungeon per patch, but weve gotten a heavier load on content in regards to DoH and DoL, and the quality of fights and story has been better/more engaging than previous xpacs. It's also hard to 100% judge since were only half way through hte xpac, so there's room for more which we havent been made privy too. Then theres a final consideration. They cut back content because they might be addressing issues that have already been voiced. Such as how terrible customization is for Hrothgar or Viera, and MAYBE (and its a big maybe so dont hold your breath at all) a Female/Male varient of the aforementioned races.

Going back to the bigger point, it all boils down to that judging whether were getting less content or not is only gonna be fully measurable when we're sitting on patch 5.45 and FFXIV:Were going to the Moon is gonna be released within a few months. Saying you want more or particular content is fine, just dont resort to the very easy position of "Were getting shafted." which I am seeing a lot of when talking about 'less content' and the 'problems with SE.' Cause frankly, if we dont get a Deepdungeon and 1 less dungeon per major patch but we get newer more interesting content, or they fix Hrothgar and viera by making them fully realized races and (Im crossing fingers, but not gonna hold my breath) we get the off sexes, Ill be plenty personally fine with the trade. Ill start opening my criticisms about how good or bad this xpac has been once weve been given the complete picture. Until then, It seems a bit pointless to get worked up about 'missing content' when we dont have half the xpac currently.

[Enla]

I wonder, has anyone ever completed high end content via duty finder? The High End section on Duty Finder is nicely done imo but it's useless right now cause no way you make meaningful progression with current difficulty of those instances.

Would be really nice if they released actual moderately challenging content that could make good use of that High End Duty Finder section.

(Btw talking about section that allows you to choose if you want to train or complete the instance and which phase or queue with who completed before)

High-end duty finder is used primarily in Japan as opposed to Party Finder. But there's an expected level of play on that side of the community that isn't present in the rest of it. (And also many, many silent blacklists to enforce it.) It's not an example of a useless feature so much as an example of a design disconnect between the needs of the Japanese player population and the rest of us.

[Barraind]

Ill start opening my criticisms about how good or bad this xpac has been once weve been given the complete picture.

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.

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

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 .

[xxvaynxx]

And when hardcore players get their challenging EX and Ultimate content, the new/casual and midcore players tend to feel left out.

There needs to be a middle ground for midcore players to enjoy and for something both new/casual and hardcore players to also enjoy with each other without butting heads with one another because the content is either too easy or too hard.

This is why I feel nobody actually knows what midcore is. EX primals are no where near hardcore.
When it comes to midcore, people just like to think the content they can do without dying a bunch of times is midcore. But the problem is, some people would call THAT said content too easy/casual and some would call it hardcore if they suck at it.

Like I think ex primals are kinda easy but not to the point its hardcore content. I would consider EX primals midcore, but some would call it hardcore because they can't do it. Some people even call savage midcore but a large part of the NA and EU player base don't bother with it because its too hard.

Nobody can agree what's midcore because if something is too hard and out of their reach they automatically call it hardcore.

[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.

[Zarkovitch]

People should wait at the end of ShB before judging the game. We are like in 5.25. There still like 3 patches to go. Then after that you can say it budget expansion or not.

[dinnertime]

People should wait at the end of ShB before judging the game. We are like in 5.25. There still like 3 patches to go. Then after that you can say it budget expansion or not.

I'm pretty much in the same boat here. I always knew the game was gradually getting less content ever since Heavensward and hoped they made up for it for some other way in the future. Somehow they've kept me staying so far. Shadowbringers on the other hand it is honestly becoming too apparent.

I'm honestly just hoping it's the ARR rework that is eating up a lot of their resources right now because reworking an entire base game's MSQ and content wouldn't be easy and cheap, and after 5.3 I just hope they just impress us.

Other than the MSQ, other story quest and the DoL/DoH focused content, this expansion was underwhelming in a lot of areas.

I think you're overestimating the "power level" of the forum. Having an official forum for fans to gather and discuss the game isn't necessarily an invitation for those fans to be the only ones whose opinions will be listened to - or that SE will have to do whatever the forum posters want if they repeat it enough.

Okay, I'm not even saying this is the only place they'd get feedback from, but it would be the most reliable and most convenient for being all in one place they monitor. They can look through places like Reddit or from reviews etc. for feedback which I don't doubt, but I suspect a large part of what they listen to is from the forums, or at least one of them.

Who else would they check for feedback? The apparently silent majority of the playerbase? There's literally no point in that if they won't say anything.

[Deceptus]

Players need to stop forgiving everything, no FFXIV is not a bad game, but a lot of things done by SE is simply put ... not up to what we expect or hope for.

Stop being a "everything is perfect, the game was never better then this" person and at least have a legit view on the current situation. No one here is saying the game is bad or dieing, but we are on a path of getting less, its the first bit of the path but we are defiantly on it.

And for the love of Hydaelyn: If players aren't happy with the way they game is currently, it's not on them to come up with solutions.

It's perfectly fine and rational to say "I don't like X part of the game". I may or may not be able to explain why, but I'm not a game designer and I don't have to come up with a solution to fix it.

Why? Because even if I did, SE has their own processes and very rarely listen to the player base unless backed into a corner.