Instead of cutting Ultimate from 5.5 why not cut bozja?

[Infindox]

I'm still not understanding the outrage from some raiders here. I do understand disappointment. That's fine to be. I get it. Some of ShB even before COVID was lacking to me in the patches. But I'm over on Twitter and some people are going ballistic, going so far as to call anyone a combined f-word slur for mentally challenged people and using the "covid is not an excuse anymore" line (it is, Japan had a second wave afaik).
This game, personally, works better when it tries to cater towards most people as it can. If a patch comes up and it doesn't interest me but a good chunk of people enjoyed it, that's okay to me. The casuals and the "miduals" who do Savage and Extremes on their own time and the people who just like helping others and doing content are the ones who stay and keep the subs going anyways.

[Infindox]

And it's not like a lot of you guys clear the casual content you are given, must be difficult leaving Limsa and Uldah I guess.

The problem with Firmiment is for a lot of Omnicrafters there's no reason to do it after the compatition is up; I'm max level on everything, I got all the rewards, and most rewards that I could grind to sell for gil aren't really worth it for the gil you get.

[Missbone]

blegh.. casuals...

Yep I'm a Causal and I'm proud of it, i avoid Savage and Ultima Stuff whenever I can and I still never get bored because this game has so much more to offer.

[ForteNightshade]

Did the previous expansions have literal world-changing pandemics that halted development?

I'm assuming that's what's causing them to have to cut this content.

And nothing else was cut.

Look, no one—at least on the reasonable side—is blaming the dev team for Covid. That's absurd. We are, however, allowed to be disappointed and express criticism with perceived poor planning. Something to keep in mind, they moved the Ultimate 5.5 and Yoshida openly acknowledged they needed to rush Ultimate ASAP to focus on something new and the expansion all pre-Covid. So their original timeline was extremely tight to begin with. And that's entirely on them. Another issue people have is they didn't announce anything prior to the very date we were all expecting its release. In fact, they said everything was back on track. Maybe they thought they could manage, however even side remark saying Ultimate may be pushed back would soften the blow.

Ultimately, we're allowed to voice our frustration over this in the same manner how many people still complain we're only getting one dungeon, they didn't add male Viera, no deep dungeon and etc. It's easy to point at Ultimate and dismissively say "it's niche. so it doesn't matter." Yes, and players willing to fantasia to male Viera will also be niche. Hrothgar, for example, is quite low in population. People can still be upset about it. Just like raiders can vent their frustration while still acknowledging Covid.

If it's so predictable where were the Ultimates for Heavensward? It still is second guessing because they have changed content structures before, just not in a wildly different way. Maybe they try some new things with 6.x due to it starting a new arc of the story, maybe they don't even release the Ultimate that they were designing and they do something else with it and people get even more angry, who knows?

"Ultimate" in Heavensward was Gordias and Midas as both tier were leagues harder than any Savage tier thereafter. Which is what prompted Ultimate going forward. They brought down Savage's difficulty and made a third tier for those who enjoyed a more difficult challenge. Suggesting they'll suddenly change course, scrap Ultimate entirely and do something else is no different than me claiming they'll scrap the relic or any other established piece of content. It's baseless speculation with no substance, and thus, isn't an argument.

[Nayout]

Yep I'm a Causal and I'm proud of it, i avoid Savage and Ultima Stuff whenever I can and I still never get bored because this game has so much more to offer.

If it is for "casual" activities, the game is still with few things if I compare them to those that can offer Wow

[ForteNightshade]

Like raiders respected AST and their old cards? lol No.

Raiders make the game more boring for all, one meta at a time. And the majority is not allowed to have anything interesting 'cause meta and parsing.

You said this same nonsense over on the healer forums and I called it out there too. Raiders didn't complain jobs were too difficult; that buffs like Straight Shot and Heavy Thrust were too difficult to manage; that HW Dark Knight was too complex; that SB Bard was too confusing. Practically every simplification made was due to casual players being unable or unwilling to learn how their job of choice functioned. Few if any raiders wanted changes like this. Our demographic is often bringing up how healers are Glare bots because even Savage isn't hitting hard enough.

Speaking on Astro, specifically. While I have my issues with the current system. The old cards simply wouldn't work nowadays. Let's review!

Balance - Best card without question
Spear - Weak Balance
Arrow - Will cause a DPS loss to several jobs due to them wanting no increased speed. Ninja, Machinist, Monk, Samurai, Dancer, Gunbreaker and Paladin are all jobs that would want to slap you if they ever saw this card on their bar.

Bole - Inconsistent mitigation is useless since you can't plan around it. Furthermore, with the sheer amount of mitigation tools we have. Bole just... doesn't have a purpose anymore.
Ewer - The last thing healers need nowadays is more MP
Spire - TP died

Regardless of "meta," Astro's cards required a complete rework due to the direction Shadowbringers went in. None that had anything to do with raiders.

[Missbone]

If it is for "casual" activities, the game is still with few things if I compare them to those that can offer Wow

Well everyone has a different taste and i admit there are some things that WoW does better no doubt and i admit i really like the combat there (it doesn't feels so slow), but in my eyes the overall package from FFXIV still wins. Except for the raiding i do nearly everything else this game has to offer and there is a lot of stuff that this game does better (at least for my taste) and some things you don't even find in WoW like housing or the Gold Saucer activities. Also i enjoy the DoH/DoL jobs way more in this game than in WoW, sure the new DeepDungeon in WoW is not bad but i still prefer this version.

Sure there is no real faction farming like in WoW, but i never was a fan of it since WoW has simply way to many factions and a lot of stuff is time locked which i don't like (for example you can get only 2 levels with the new factions each week, if you want to grind them at a weekend its not possible). Last but not least this game looks way better than WoW and a lot of other MMOs (if you use Reshade).

[Payadopa]

Most raiders I know actually misses the utility of the old cards. It's usually the casual/midtier that complained about "only aoe balance matters" and "it's too complex"

You're throwing a lot of accusations around without a lot of history to back up. Especially since the history of job changes has been to make jobs more accessible to casual players. (Not a bad thing, imho. I just have a lot of issue with how they go about it.)

Your anecdotal evidence is as good as my anecdotal evidence since we both don't have access to player statistics like SE does, so don't pretend yours is more correct.

All I'm saying is I remember very vividly how raiders complained about RNG in AST and that [everyone] was fishing for Balance anyway, which was simply not true. And now that it's gone people bemoan the loss of complexity. Can't fault SE for that one. Typical doomed if you do, doomed if you don't.

And let me throw out another unpopular opinion. We really need to go back from this DPS or bust mindset. I don't care if an attack does 1.000 or 100 DMG if it's boring.

[LyraleiManagem]

I'm still not understanding the outrage from some raiders here.
This game, personally, works better when it tries to cater towards most people as it can.

If you really want to understand the outrage:
We were promised there would be two ultimates;
We already waited — from the whole 5.3 delay to the ultimate being pushed to 5.5;
We were told the game development is back on track;
We were told there wouldnt be another ultimate in literally the last minute — many won’t be grinding savage and getting prepared if they announce or even hint the delay earlier.
For a lot of us suddenly a good chunk of reason to play the game in next few months is gone.

We all know that there’s a pandemic out there, but this series of poor communication/management/decision making is on SE. They deserve the criticism.

Also i believe this game works better when it tries to have a variety content to cater DIFFERENT groups of players.
Honestly i’m tired of casual players being like “hey i ‘understand’ why you are upset but i dont care about your feeling hell i dont like your kind anyway so can you keep your complain to yourself? I mean of course i UNDERSTAND you’re upset, just dont show it.”

[Payadopa]

Most of the homogenization and otherwise dumbing down of jobs has actually been in an effort to make the game more accessible and require less effort from casual players.

See the remove of tank stance, removal of cleric stance, simplification of healer dps kits, dumbing down of most jobs rotations etc.

The "ooga booga raider bad" mentality gets really old.

You even said [most] of the changes and I was talking about AST cards. Like casual players who enjoy a dungeon said 'omg, I didn't get a balance so this boss takes 5 seconds longer'. And casual don't use parsers as well, I'm sorry to say.

I'm not saying raiding (like serious raiding) doesn't have a place but it's either raiding or really casual content. There is seldomly an in between in this game and I would like more complexity without having to look up a guide for Ultimate. It's about options.