New patch cycles? Fun? [community question]

[Vahlnir]

DNC and GNB aren't incomplete jobs. They might not have 129430410401 glamour options but that doesn't make them incomplete on a fundamental level. They function just fine. Other than that yeah, I find myself agreeing with you on some things. One thing you have to consider though is that 2020 is not like other years. They have had their development cycle interrupted so much that they are at least 2 months behind where they want to be. So yeah, things aren't going to be released on time. But I do believe that they would benefit from releasing relic content much earlier as they did in ARR or HW to help with player retention. I think that waiting till the first major patch to release the relic grind would be reasonable enough.

[Saix027]

DNC and GNB aren't incomplete jobs. They might not have 129430410401 glamour options but that doesn't make them incomplete on a fundamental level. They function just fine. Other than that yeah, I find myself agreeing with you on some things. One thing you have to consider though is that 2020 is not like other years. They have had their development cycle interrupted so much that they are at least 2 months behind where they want to be. So yeah, things aren't going to be released on time. But I do believe that they would benefit from releasing relic content much earlier as they did in ARR or HW to help with player retention. I think that waiting till the first major patch to release the relic grind would be reasonable enough.

I would rather call them patchwork funcitonal classes, considering they goten everything that made old classes and got shoved into the new ones to make them more special, Tank CD'S? All in GNB now, leaving most other tanks withg like 2-3 at best, even PLD that had the most normally. DNC goten the procs and good AoE BRD and MCH usually provided, MCH gladly changed heavily.

If anything with cycles it is new classes shinign with old powers other classes had, GNB again has a long DoT and a AoE Dot, Tanks used to have a dot to or every other class, older example here with SAM gettign a 1 minute Dot all of sudden after every other class got theres removed.

It ruins alot of jobs in my eyes, especially healers now, AST and SCH lost there identity while WHM you have to watch not accidently revive the dungeon or the fallen NPC's like Haurchefant or so.

[xxmiamorecadenza]

It ruins alot of jobs in my eyes, especially healers now, AST and SCH lost there identity while WHM you have to watch not accidently revive the dungeon or the fallen NPC's like Haurchefant or so.

I, admittedly, almost choked on my coffee reading that part.

[Nyka_Niphilim]

I really wanna know what we get for the dungeon they took away. But Not only the dungeon. They also said there will be no deep dungeon this xpac most likely..
So what are we getting instead?

I know I may be in the minority regarding the loss of the dungeon (and maybe even the deep dungeon Thing)...
But I miss this content because it something I liked to do from time to time.

I also think its really really sad we havent gotten the majority of primal weapons for GNB and DNC.
This just doesnt feel right for me and its something that kinda disappoints me.

[tdb]

Yes, I like side content being released in stages. It prevents me from getting burned out on a single thing. It's no different from the MSQ or raids being released in stages. Though I do have different complaints or counterarguments about some things.

Ishgard restoration
I dislike how it was implemented as a world event. If you want to participate in the fates you have to check on the progress multiple times per day and try to predict when it will complete. If you're lucky one of your checks will fall on the period between shifts when there's an exact and fairly long timer visible. I would have much preferred a style similar to the Doman Enclave reconstruction where each player is able to complete it at their own pace. They could still have released it in stages. I guess tying progress to the player would have made the tie-in with the Ishgardian housing area harder though.

New jobs
They may be missing a handful of class-specific glamour items compared to other jobs, but still have access to the thousands of role-specific and non-specific items. Personally I never found the primal weapons to be particularly attractive anyway. New jobs have always started partway through the leveling climb. I expect the next expansion to introduce jobs that start from Lv70. Learning the ropes when you already have a bunch of skills to begin with can be a handful, but it's pretty clear what the basic rotations are.

[gumas]

as someone who play this game purely for the storyline, iam glad they still putting story as their main objective (at least from my view)

granted the new relic quest is getting "been there done that" feel after several times, its kinda ridiculous now with all these relic weapon is very strong and have amazing power and such but a few patch later... tadaa another "amazing" weapon. these so called "ancient/relic/omega" weapon suppose to be one of it kind but every big patch we just uncover a new one, for an ancient weapon it sure is easy to get lol

i wish they just continue the progress of existing ancient weapon and further make it stronger instead of "discovering" a new one.

[tdb]

You just pretty much have to ignore player power progression or the game makes no sense at all. I mean, if we take it literally, the Garlean Empire has Lv70 soldiers in a few endgame dungeons of Stormblood. I expect we'll encounter Lv80 Garleans in the new relic playfield, and possibly in the MSQ before next patch. Meanwhile the three original ARR cities continue to be defended by Lv35 troops. Presuming the Garleans are still intent on conquering all of Eorzea, they could dispatch a small task force which wouldn't even make a dent to their troops on the Lv80 front, and it would make short work of the defenders in the ARR areas. Because it makes no sense for the NPCs to remain sequestered to their level-appropriate areas, we must assume that player levels also work on a meta level and have no meaning inside the game world itself. So in-world these relic weapons are probably just different ancient weapons the protagonist collects and none of them are significantly stronger or weaker than the other.

[OvernightSiren]

Gunbreaker and Dancer:
Are literally incomplete jobs. They do not have access to glamour items, available to 100% of existing jobs. These jobs also were not released at level 1, so you cannot even level them, the only things compariable to other jobs, is GNB's tank achievements and rewards. Outside of level 60 and above, these jobs fall flat and hard.

I'm not sure you know what "literally" means. They're complete--they're just not complete to your likings. It is not new whatsoever for MMOs to release jobs that don't start at level 1--fact is, the vast majority of players would not want to start these jobs at level 1. If you're excited for the next expansion but want to play a new job you wouldn't want to have to grind it all the way to 70 before you get to play new content. DKs in WoW started at level 50 in WotLK IIRC.

As far as glamour, yes I'd like if they had more glamour items and yes I think the reasoning for them not having Ifrit/Garuda/Shiva/Titan items is dumb reasoning, but them not not having those glam items doesn't make them incomplete. Do I think it's lazy? Absolutely. But that doesn't make the job incomplete.

[StriderShinryu]

Gunbreaker and Dancer:
Are literally incomplete jobs. They do not have access to glamour items, available to 100% of existing jobs. These jobs also were not released at level 1, so you cannot even level them, the only things compariable to other jobs, is GNB's tank achievements and rewards. Outside of level 60 and above, these jobs fall flat and hard.

I'm not sure you know what "literally" means. They're complete--they're just not complete to your likings. It is not new whatsoever for MMOs to release jobs that don't start at level 1--fact is, the vast majority of players would not want to start these jobs at level 1. If you're excited for the next expansion but want to play a new job you wouldn't want to have to grind it all the way to 70 before you get to play new content. DKs in WoW started at level 50 in WotLK IIRC.

An interesting addition to this point is that the jobs literally are playable all the way from level 1 if you really want to play them that way. Unless things are different with GNB and DNC than with other "advanced start" classes, you can take them into Palace of the Dead and start from level one, seeing how they progress and build as they level up. In fact, that's something I often recommend players do for the "advanced start" classes or for classes they haven't played for a long time. All of the classes in the game are properly built to be functional from 1 to current cap even if you don't see it. The advanced starting level is just a specific choice to get players to be able to pick them up at a later point without having to go through the whole levelling process again given that they'd already done it at least once before then.

[MikkoAkure]

Personal Note:
I do not feel we should defend Square-Enix on this topic, considering Final Fantasy XI not only releases full and complete content, without limitations, but is also on a literal skeleton crew, and skeleton budget, but is not only not failing to release content on schedule, but is now in fact releasing brand new story content. I do not feel the FFXIV team is really justified when such things are happening in that MMO, which is "considered dead."

Excuse me? Have you been living under a rock?

Your original post is a lot of things that has already been discussed at length on this forum and beaten into thoroughly ground horse hamburger, but that is the hottest take I've seen in awhile. I'm pretty sure "global pandemic" is justification enough for a schedule slip, especially considering most of the team didn't have the hardware or an existing workspace at home beforehand. It's especially odd that you used FFXI as an example, when they haven't had brand new story content in 5 years. What even is your train of thought here? How did you get from "new story coming to FFXI" and come up with "FFXIV developers are bad"? The story's not even coming out all at once and besides that, nothing else of consequence is coming out in the FFXI patch other than adjustments.


But discussing something that hasn't been covered in this thread at least,

Relic Quests.
If we're comparing 5.0 relics to any previous relic, they keep pushing the relic further and further back into the expansion. 2.0 relics were same item level as raid relics, and released at the same time. With 3.0 they have been pushed back. With 4.0 they have been integrated into other content which has been pushing them even further back. Now with 5.0, they have become not only pushed back simlarly to 4.0 but the content and steps have been drastically reduced. At the release of 4.3 we had Anemos and then Pagos. With 5.3 we're only just now getting Bojza.
Personal note, that is a stark difference.

I don't know about anyone else, but I'd rather gamble and wait for something that promises to be better than what we've had before than have to light farm for a 3rd time or redo all of Eureka.