Instead of cutting Ultimate from 5.5 why not cut bozja?

[ForteNightshade]

What I would like SE to remember is that combat will always be the meat to the potatoes that is this game's story, both are nice but really they complement each other. Cultivating a robust baseline lets you hedge against unexpected events, because what has happened is they've pared things down to the bare essentials and covid came along and kicked out the last pillar that was holding things up. So speaking for my demographic, I hope this is taken to heart going forward.

A prime example of this would be the relic. Had they released it far earlier, like 5.08 or 5.1, we'd have arguably the most grind oriented content right in the midst of the covid delay. Instead, the content cycle collapsed because the game already stretches itself extremely thin to begin with in terms of the amount of new stuff to tackle per patch.

I've been playing since 1.0,and have never really taken an extended break. I still find things to do I haven't done before.


I guess I just see the game differently than others. Oh well. Blanket statements like "longterm players have nothing to do" is rather silly.

Certain groups of them sure. Others no.

Unless you do literally everything in the game or play for only a short amount of time, you'll inevitably run out of content. Granted, if you just enjoy spamming the same dungeons with friends or gposing, I suppose you have something to do from a technical definition but I wouldn't consider that "content," personally. At least not in the same vein.

Or, and hear me out here, given that they said they were at 70% completion when they made the decision to delay, they were doing fine for getting it done for 5.5 without affecting Endwalker production until Japan had a severe second wave in January that set them back further.

This is only speculation as they never said the second wave impacted development but rather covid itself. Even if that were the case, they likely knew it wouldn't be finalized long before the LL announcement. Hence why I said this should have been conveyed much earlier than literally the last minute. Furthermore, it goes back to my earlier put that shifting Ultimate to 5.51 was already a poor decision to begin with. The whole reason they reneged on three Ultimates is it put too much strain on their development being so close towards the expansion. Prior to covid, they outright admitted to rushing Dragonsong ASAP to focus on new content and work on the expansion. So Ultimate's development was already bogging them down before the pandemic.

Hopefully, lessons have been learned here because it isn't only Ultimate that suffered. Like I mentioned above, the relic taking so long to release put considerably more strain on the content cycle than was necessary.