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

[Novae]

6.1 will make or break the game for me. I'm tired of running old content, tired of paying a sub for that stupid CT roulette. I bough EW to play my jobs at 90, do level 90 content. Not doing low level dungeons with trusts, or to play a more solo focused MMO. After 3,5 years, I've come to the point where I'm ready to let go my house and unsub for a long while.

[Themarvin]

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.

AAA titles deliver less these days and has done so for at least last 10-15 years... it is often more eye candy than content in those, for FFXIV, you got alot of things to do, it is an RPG afterall... and it is an MMO as well.. which means it is a Massive Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game.... keep an eye on MULTIPLAYER and ROLEPLAYING... which is the key factor of the game.

Try and dodge the massive player hubs here and there some more and quit idling... speak with people or whatever or interact with them... or do content with.

[DPZ2]

You would think they want to speed up content to keep player subs to pay for the new content to come. Not give them nothing to do for months and lose all those subs.

Budgets are built on projections of current behaviour, and are decided, generally, on an annual basis. SE has already built this year's budget, and the new content projected in the last several live letters is the result. They don't appear to be afraid of losing subscriptions, because they built that into their projections already.

Speeding up content to retain subscriptions is a losing battle, one that SE chooses not to engage in.

[SnowVix]

I'm ok with an extra 2 weeks because crunch makes bad games. OP just thinks programmers shouldn't get to work normal hours and should literally burn themselves out for his own entertainment.

[Illmaeran]

6.1 will make or break the game for me. I'm tired of running old content, tired of paying a sub for that stupid CT roulette. I bough EW to play my jobs at 90, do level 90 content. Not doing low level dungeons with trusts, or to play a more solo focused MMO. After 3,5 years, I've come to the point where I'm ready to let go my house and unsub for a long while.

This is a fair point of view. There were things in Heavensward post-MSQ that I couldn't get behind and decided to take a break for a year and try other games. I hit a point in Stormblood that I simply couldn't get past due to medical issues, so I stopped playing for a year or so. Since returning a couple months before Shadowbringers' release I've been playing every day. As much as I adored ARR; it's still the best time I've had in the game, the changes to classes and systems in EW has hit my sweet spot and I've played the game nearly every day since near the end of 2019.

I think part of what's kept me going is the extended breaks I did take let various things like Beast Tribes and other Take-it-Easy content build up. Now I've got a ton of things to do when I feel like doing them. One of the things that contributed to burn out in this, and previous MMOs I played, was thinking I always needed to be working toward a goal every day, to the exclusion of other things. Once I gave myself permission to be a butterfly and do whatever I felt like at any given time, my satisfaction with the game improved and my enjoyment of the time I spent in game increased quite a bit.

I'm not telling you that you need to play the way I do; this is our individual hobby and everyone needs to partake of it how they want. Please know that taking a break, whether it's long-term or a couple months between content patches, may be a net positive for you in the long run. Losing your house may suck; it's happened to me twice, but in the end I'm glad I did as I no longer had the pressure to stay subbed and therefore participating in something I was paying for to get something out of my money. I recently started an alt to play through ARR and HW again and found it to be quite refreshing and a lot of fun. Once I finish Shadowbringers I'll likely put her in stasis and get back to focusing on my main. The best thing is, she's an alt, so there's no pressure to continually advance her. If I feel like putting her aside for months or years, it won't impact my overall progression through the game. Perhaps this might be an option for you, too?

Giving yourself permission to simply derp around doing random things at times rather than being laser-focused on one or two aspects may improve your experience. It may not, and that's ok too. If you do choose to suspend your sub, I hope you come back in the future and enjoy what's available at that time.

All I'm asking for is a fun time waster in the current, relevant patch. Why did they stop implementing relic grinds in x.1 patches?
It's really hard to stay subbed when we're always given the bare minimum and it pains me to unsub for a long period of time because I risk losing FC friends. (And my in-game house but I could live without that.)

Honest question, are there other activities you enjoy that you can do for hours upon hours for $15 or less for a whole month? I can go to a night of karaoke and have a blast for a few hours, but two beers with tip will run at least $20. I've been in financial situations where I had to be extremely thrifty with my money so the MMO I played was the only leisure activity I had outside of 100% free things. If you're also in that situation, I can fully understand how it could pain you to feel the need to unsubscribe. If that's not the case, perhaps playing a different game and XIV would help? In relative, real world terms, even if you played only three to five hours per month, you would still be getting more enjoyment-time per dollar than many other possible activities.

Why not give this a try? Keep your sub going, pop in for a few hours here and there to see your FC friends and maintain your house but spend the majority of your leisure time on something else. As I mentioned in the reply above yours, this may be all you need to increase your enjoyment of the time you spend in the game rather than forcing yourself to log in every day or two.


Regards,
IQ

[redheadturk]

What is it offering that ShB didn’t give us? ShB gave us an Ultimate. ShB gave us an ex trial. We were losing content in ShB long before the pandemic and please for the love of god, stop grasping at the pandemic excuse. They specifically delayed the expansion half a year to account for it and they themselves stated they were working at 90-95% efficiency before said delays. It’s not just about the gear sets lmao. It’s the fact that since ShB, the expansion that made the most money and before covid, we’ve been seeing downgrades. Whether it be them cutting dungeons,cutting deep dungeon,hildibrand, primal weapons etc. We are 4 expansions in the game and like i said before and you didn’t address, they are still reusing gear whilst not even making it dyable. Look at the level 87 dungeon set. As for the artifact gear comment, we only used it with one extra dungeon than we did in ShB. We had the artifact gear before the final ShB dungeon lol.

Also, it is extremely disingenuous to try to use Soken and his cancer as some kind of argument. He isn’t the only composer or music person lmao. You do know that don’t you?EW being amazing is entirely subjective and there are many who disagree with that statement.

Dude, we're getting two ultimates during this patch cycle, a new type of dungeon, and a new deep dungeon. Alliance raid tier is coming out in 6.1 There is plenty of new content coming.

[Skiros]

AAA titles deliver less these days and has done so for at least last 10-15 years... it is often more eye candy than content in those, for FFXIV, you got alot of things to do, it is an RPG afterall... and it is an MMO as well.. which means it is a Massive Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game.... keep an eye on MULTIPLAYER and ROLEPLAYING... which is the key factor of the game.

Try and dodge the massive player hubs here and there some more and quit idling... speak with people or whatever or interact with them... or do content with.

Wow, where did you learn to use so many words to say absolutely nothing?

[Poporito_Popoto]

Wow, where did you learn to use so many words to say absolutely nothing?

You, alright. I learned it by watching you.

[TaleraRistain]

You, alright. I learned it by watching you.

Wow that's a blast from the past reference

[Ransu]

No other MMO releases the amount of content this game does in such a consistent schedule. Yoshi-P is also very clear that he doesn't expect people to constantly be subbed either. Go play something else between content patches, its not that big of a deal. Or would you rather they go the swtor route and drop content only once every 2-3 years with 30 minutes of story cutscenes?