How is anyone fine with the 4-month patch delivery schedule?

[Skiros]

What are players who aren't going to do Ultimate do for four months in 6.1?

1. Do the alliance raid, which probably takes 1-2 hours to complete on day 1.

2. Do the Tataru and Hildebrand quests which take 2 hours judging by previous instances.

3. Do the new extreme trial which takes like 2-4 hours to clear.

4. Waste 5 mins every day on beast tribes, and waste 3 mins every week on custom delivery.

Congratulations that's all you have for 4 months. $60 in subscription fees. That's even less than what you get from the typical AAA single player title.

With this little content they should be accelerating patch delivery, not slowing it down.

[TaleraRistain]

Because it's 2 extra weeks and that's not a big deal?

[RicaRuin]

It's just 2 more weeks than usual. If you don't have anything to do in the game, unsub for a while, save the money, go outside and touch grass or something.

If you want to do something in the game, you find stuff to do, like collecting things, Triple Triad, Screenshots... a lot of casual stuff.

Edit: Oh, didn't realise who made this topic. Eh, my point stands.

[Veranolth]

From 3.5 months to 4 months for new patch content isn't that dramatic. That's just 2 more weeks of waiting and they'll be adding quite a lot of content with these patches. At least we're not getting 1 patch after a year...

[Skiros]

From 3.5 months to 4 months for new patch content isn't that dramatic. That's just 2 more weeks of waiting and they'll be adding quite a lot of content with these patches. At least we're not getting 1 patch after a year...

That's how they get you. 2 weeks at a time. 3 months. Then 3.5. Now 4. One day people will ask "why are we getting a patch every 6 months"? And people won't be able to pinpoint the turning point because it comes so gradually people are numb to it.

It's just 2 more weeks than usual. If you don't have anything to do in the game, unsub for a while, save the money, go outside and touch grass or something.

If you want to do something in the game, you find stuff to do, like collecting things, Triple Triad, Screenshots... a lot of casual stuff.

Edit: Oh, didn't realise who made this topic. Eh, my point stands.

I mean the fact that you have to go out of your way to find stuff to do to enjoy FF14 says it all really.

The unsub argument is ridiculous considering all the ways the game keeps you hooked: housing, tome caps, Savage loot gates, seasonal events, etc.

I would be fine with the unsub argument if the game actually lets you unsub after a month and still allow you to be ready for Ultimates. As it stands, I have to play this game for three months to get BiS for two to three different roles in time for Ultimate. Even if I only cared about a single role that is still two months, which is 6-7 weeks more than necessary. Despite what Yoshi P says, this game is not unsub-friendly.

Not to mention that they intentionally stagger releases so that it covers 2 months of sub time: .x0, .x1, and .x5 always come out in waves to get maximum sub time out of people.

[TaleraRistain]

If you want to do something in the game, you find stuff to do, like collecting things, Triple Triad, Screenshots... a lot of casual stuff.

This. I don't do Savage or Ultimate but right now I'm leveling my classes to 90 so there are roulettes, hunts, and beast tribes every day, going back and finishing old animas, working on shared fate ranks in EW zones, doing my weekly raids and custom deliveries, doing my WT, and here and there working on filling out my fishing log for EW. There is plenty to keep us busy in the game.

[CaptainLagbeard]

Because you're not required to play the entire time.

Most people could probably finish what they want to do for the patch in like a month or so, then they can just let the sub drop and not be punished in any way. Then come back for the next patch.

[Veranolth]

That's how they get you. 2 weeks at a time. 3 months. Then 3.5. Now 4. One day people will ask "why are we getting a patch every 6 months"? And people won't be able to pinpoint the turning point because it comes so gradually people are numb to it.

Hyperbole.

[Johners]

Content delivery in an MMO is very difficult and generally speaking, players will consume content faster than a developer can make it. Single player games might spend 3-5 years in development but you’ll then complete it, or at least the parts you’re interested in, with a month of the game releasing. Horizon Forbidden West, the recently released PlayStation exclusive, spent years in development and I got the platinum trophy in 40 hours of gameplay.

Back on the topic of MMORPGs though, I think Final Fantasy has better content pacing than other games and especially to World of Warcraft in particular. WoW expansions are typically frontloaded with the full content cycle in the initial 12 or so months and then you spend a year playing the last patch. I’d rather okay an even spread of content every four months instead of the game consuming my time for a year and then leaving me hanging for another.

The longest gap between a patch and an expansion releasing was the end of Mists of Pandaria into Warlords of Draenor at 14 months. The big expansion releases are important in these games so you can’t do those faster (Blizzard tried and it failed before they even released anything) so the question then becomes how do you pace content between expansion drops.

I’d happily play FFXIV with patches every four months so I get good hoses of content but then periods of “raid logging” to clear and gear before going offline to play a story game. Today is reset day so I’ll do my reset activities and then not play until Saturday to collect weekly cactpot. Rather than being given a reason to log in that’s fairly arbitrary, I’m free to do other things such as play Gran Turismo 7 when it releases on Friday.

[Mandudez]

Hyperbole.

But they already have a proven track record in this game to back that up. The list that comes to mind instantly:

#1 Housing - The demolition timer added post-release was a classic gotcha trap.

#2 Cash Shop - Originally only had plans to add a few items every so often. Now it is 5-10 items every month or more.

#3 Event items - The first events gave items that you could trade / buy / sell at any time. Now every item is untradable and the only way to get it is a year after the event for $.

The dev team is great but there is no denying SE will do anything that they can to milk this game forever.