COVID showed why the Developers need to release Relic content sooner.

[Euphares]

-snip-

While this sentiment does have merit, and is refreshing in the age of companies exploiting every ounce of money from its players.

There is still a content threshold not being met in this game (imo), especially when you consider the X.Y patches aren't even the full package and major features are gated behind X.YZ patches which are also staggered.

And some people might not like this, but when you compare an entire patch in this game to other MMO's, its basically peanuts; and yet this game costs effectively the same as other games on top of having micro-transactions. I don't think that this is sustainable, and if everyone just quit after consuming this sparse content we're given the game would quickly lose lots of revenue. For even when I was a casual player (2 hrs of playtime a day, sometimes 2 days), I completed patches in less than a month. FF14 is really lucky in that its gotten a lot of (deserved) attention and traction, and has avoided a lot of traps other MMO's have fallen into because its a newer game, but I also feel like the devs are creating pitfalls for themselves that will ultimately hurt this game's lifespan.

My solution: Stop spreading patches out and just front-load them at launch. Things that we get teasers for should just drop with the X.Y patch, it would feel a lot better to stay subbed for two consecutive months and quit instead of unsubbing, resubbing, then unsubbing again, to consume every mini-patch. Redo the code to allow in hot-fixes, and release mini-content updates that way and much quicker, and if the current code doesn't allow it then stop putting out stuff until it does, I would've had no problem waiting six-months to allow the devs to update a lot of the subpar coding that restricts them and this game a lot. Because I at least would know that this would affect the game positively in the future.

As far as what new content they could put in to bridge the gaps, I would suggest adding in incentives to visit older zones and ways to keep old content evergreen, roulette's do a good job of this, but they are once a day. FATES, Side-Quests and more broadly the entire over-world in this game needs an overhaul to be worth traveling to instead of players just naturally afking in cities in between duities. Because the first thing I thought when seeing that ARR zones have flying is "who cares?" Due to the fact that travel in this game is already quick enough due to a well-made teleport system, and the fact that after you outlevel the zones there's nothing that warrants a revisit. Even something as simple as 'go complete a hunt-log in an old zone for progress on an end-game system' would be very good. XIV has a giant, beautiful world with tons of nifty nooks-and-crannies, but its wasted because virtually all things worth doing are instanced.

[Maleficent]

My solution: Stop spreading patches out and just front-load them at launch. Things that we get teasers for should just drop with the X.Y patch, it would feel a lot better to stay subbed for two consecutive months and quit instead of unsubbing, resubbing, then unsubbing again, to consume every mini-patch.

I suspect this solution was the problem to which its solution was to "spread patches out" instead of "front-loading them at launch".

I also suspect you may have unintentionally stated a more achievable solution to the problem of "unsubbing, resubbing, then unsubbing again, to consume every mini-patch" :

For the tail end of each major patch just "stay subbed for two consecutive months and quit". It should feel a lot better.


Jokes aside, stay safe everyone and be well.

[kaynide]

My solution:...:

It’s not a bad idea to have a ton of extra content frontloaded, but it causes problems:
Certain players blaze through the content very fast, so unless it was hella-grindy, they will still run out of things to do. Moreover, it will make it hard for everyone else to catch up (which isn’t a bad thing necessarily).

I think being upfront about having a very time consuming grind to get BiS, but being very transparent along the lines of making the grind super easy when it’s no longer current. Like how easy older tomestone gear is to get.

It would mean people who absolutely want BiS will work hard for it/have something to do, but when it’s no longer BiS that particular step becomes es easy to catch up on.