Instead of cutting Ultimate from 5.5 why not cut bozja?

[Steviejd]

How casual or un-casual a group is, is ultimately irrelevant to the point Forte was making. Their point was that Savage gear is useless without Ultimate. There is no need to have it. Ultimate was the only thing that gave it an actual purpose, since it’s overkill for everything else in the game but Ultimate. The benefit to getting Savage gear now is basically chasing leaderboards. Because you can’t put it to use for much else.

Then what are Ultimate weapons for?

[HyoMinPark]

People that blow through content in a week are never going to be satisfied so the hardcore crowd will always have droughts unless the devs start making savage and ultimate ridiculously difficult again to the point of being static breakers. If you want that kind of thing, WoW is over there ----> and even then people are complaining there is nothing to do in WoW now either and they just had an expac.

Ignoring the irrelevant WoW inserts (What is this? Godwin’s Law except with WoW? Why is this argument always made?), most statics are not “blowing through” Savage or Ultimate in a week. Even Week 1 groups take longer than that to actually gear up and achieve the BiS needed for ultimate, and not all Week 1 Savage groups can even clear an Ultimate in a week. This is very little to do with the content drought, and more to do with the raiders once again losing their content. Despite the game being majorly casual, raiders are still a group that get shafted more often than we get any kind of bone thrown our way (and when we do get that rare bone, people complain from now until Sunday about how the game is “constantly catering to the raiders” and “shafting casuals”). Even our own content (Savage) is continuously made easier to cater to more players. Ultimate was our challenge we wanted back.

Literally no one is asking for static breakers. We were merely expressing our disappointment at losing a piece of content a lot of us were looking forward to. And now we will have been waiting over 2 years for another one. I also highly doubt that 6.0 will be be adding 3 Ultimates, simply because the one that was planned for 5.51 will have to be adjusted and likely retuned for Level 90 and 6.0 job changes (I doubt they’d release it as level 80). There is a very small team that can actually design an Ultimate fight, and it will likely still take time to design a new one—so I’m speculating the 6.0 Ultimates will be 6.11 and 6.51. I don’t think they will add one in 6.31. So we do effectively lose one.

Then what are Ultimate weapons for?

Ultimate weapons have always been bragging rights—Ultimate raiders have never marketed them as anything more than that. They can fit into an Ultimate BiS, but they are only one materia meld better than the corresponding tier’s Savage weapon. Same stats on the weapon, you just get one more slot. Minuscule in the grand scheme of things.

[ForteNightshade]

People that blow through content in a week are never going to be satisfied so the hardcore crowd will always have droughts unless the devs start making savage and ultimate ridiculously difficult again to the point of being static breakers. If you want that kind of thing, WoW is over there ----> and even then people are complaining there is nothing to do in WoW now either and they just had an expac.

Except Ultimate didn't just appeal to the World First caliber players "blowing through it in a week." UCoB and UwU remain the only piece of content that have remained relevant several years after their initial release. No other content can boast such a claim. Furthermore, while yes, hardcore players will inevitably run out of things to do. That neither means they should be deprived of content nor that they aren't satisfied. Plenty were quite content with Ultimate... until it went from supposedly three, to two and now to one. Because we all know they won't be releasing three in Endwalker.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

That just comes down to a difference in view then. I don't view bis as a means to an end. I don't see it only as a stepping stone for ultimate. It's simply a goal for personal reasons. Though, this may also have something to do with when I started raiding in this game.

[Steviejd]

Except Ultimate didn't just appeal to the World First caliber players "blowing through it in a week." UCoB and UwU remain the only piece of content that have remained relevant several years after their initial release. No other content boast such a claim. Furthermore, while yes, hardcore players will inevitably run out of things to do. That neither means they should be deprived of content nor that they aren't satisfied. Plenty were quite content with Ultimate... until it went from supposedly three, to two and now to one. Because we all know they won't be releasing three in Endwalker.

Ultimate still only caters towards a very small minority of players. I even see some people here complaining about no Ulitmate and they haven't even done the first one according to fflogs.
Also hardcore players have a 48-man raid to complete right now if they haven't already.

It's also not a case of being deprived content, it is just a fact that the content has been delayed. It's an expansion year unfortunately and the majority will get the priority.

[lulunami]

Bozja was not cut because it was likely easier to create compared to Ultimate raids. Also, even though Bozja is disliked, it is content more players can enjoy. It takes a lot more time to create fair and difficult designed game content. If they rush design and testing, we will get Alexander 4 Savage (Manipulator) once again, which is probably not what the raiders want.

The bus factor on the designers required to create Ultimate raids is likely very low. You cannot really transition many employees into this difficult project because the knowledge level and expertise is just not readily available.

[Goji1639]

Cutting something they've already put so much into would be pointless. Just get rid of the mettle punishment, improve the rewards and make it into the casual playground it was supposed to be. SE messed up by listening to the people who say they want challenging/punishing content. Those people aren't just the minority, most of them are flat out lying to try to "impress" people on the forums.

Hopefully the fact that the "challenging" content died immediately, while the FATES and CE's had consistent participation, opened their eyes. Challenge and punishment is not what this community wants, no matter how much the opposite is said on the forums.

[Shinklet]

To hear a small fraction of the playerbase so mad, you would've thought it was the PvPers again!

[HyperiusUltima]

In case people have forgotten there's a literal pandemic called COVID-19 that popped up that grinded development to a halt for 2-3 months. They stated this in the Announcement Segment if you were there at the start of the stream.

Of course development is going to be behind for a while longer - especially when they're tweaking the numbers for universal downscaling. In general the pandemic rocked the gaming industry for a while because they needed to find a way to safely work using social distancing and masks. I believe in a Live Letter Yoshida mentioned how they had to do things remotely from their homes with a more secure network to prevent people accidentally logging into a test server who have subbed to FFXIV.

If anything, be patient since they're playing catch-up(while not inducing crunch) and trying to apply things as according to their template that they mentioned back in Stormblood with how they release patches.

[ForteNightshade]

Ultimate still only caters towards a very small minority of players. I even see some people here complaining about no Ulitmate and they haven't even done the first one according to fflogs.
Also hardcore players have a 48-man raid to complete right now if they haven't already.

It's also not a case of being deprived content, it is just a fact that the content has been delayed. It's an expansion year unfortunately and the majority will get the priority.

To be fair, they could be posting on an alt character or account. I am.

Content which is significantly harder to organize, has no incentive beyond the initial clear and won't last until this expansion's conclusions for that precise reason. And no, this Ultimate is delayed. However, we're losing another since two were originally expected for Endwalker. Unless they release three Ultimates, we're losing content.