Make garden plots available on islands.

[Gserpent]

My guess is they're not updating gardening more than the occasional new seed because they're focused on trying to make more houses available for players. Players complain when they feel locked out of new content. It's just a guess though.

As for the GATEs, they already announced they will be adding a new one sometime this expansion. Yes, it's been a while since they added a new one (The Slice is Right in patch 5.1) but not adding a new one every patch doesn't mean that content has been abandoned.

I don't see how adding more wards, which is mostly an issue of physical logistics, is mutually exclusive with making a housing system less absolutely awful. I dunno, man. Square-Enix has a serious problem with basically abandoning "side content" for years at a time. PvP has been the best example of this, traditionally - maybe a few minor adjustments here or there, or maybe an occasional new item for purchase from vendors, but otherwise zero significant work done on it for years at a time.

It seems very inefficient, to me. Why even bother putting in so much initial effort if you're not going to continue to dedicate resources to keeping it updated and maintained?

[Nepentha]

I don't see how adding more wards, which is mostly an issue of physical logistics, is mutually exclusive with making a housing system less absolutely awful. I dunno, man. Square-Enix has a serious problem with basically abandoning "side content" for years at a time. PvP has been the best example of this, traditionally - maybe a few minor adjustments here or there, or maybe an occasional new item for purchase from vendors, but otherwise zero significant work done on it for years at a time.

It seems very inefficient, to me. Why even bother putting in so much initial effort if you're not going to continue to dedicate resources to keeping it updated and maintained?

They just did a bunch of work on PvP. Look, things aren't abandoned completely in this game. They do come back when they can to look for improvements and add features. Just because they aren't doing something to every little thing in every patch (there's a lot to do in this game) doesn't mean it's abandoned. It's just working as intended and nothing about it needs to be changed right now, or ideas are already being worked on in the background to be added later.

[Jojoya]

I don't see how adding more wards, which is mostly an issue of physical logistics, is mutually exclusive with making a housing system less absolutely awful. I dunno, man. Square-Enix has a serious problem with basically abandoning "side content" for years at a time. PvP has been the best example of this, traditionally - maybe a few minor adjustments here or there, or maybe an occasional new item for purchase from vendors, but otherwise zero significant work done on it for years at a time.

It seems very inefficient, to me. Why even bother putting in so much initial effort if you're not going to continue to dedicate resources to keeping it updated and maintained?

Gserpent claims SE has been and continues to ignore PvP for years.

SE adds Crystalline Conflict as a new PvP mode in 2022 and it's generally considered a major success by the player base. They've also been reworking how jobs function in PvP on an ongoing basis.

Or are we just imagining that they have been?

SE is like any game developer. They can't be constantly working on every thing they would like to add/change. They have to prioritize. When it comes to housing, they're currently focused in improving things for the have nots instead of the haves. Personally, I'm fine with that. I want to see more players getting the opportunity to enjoy house ownership rather than have them spend the time introducing a new seed for gardening, watch everyone switch to growing it so the market crashes then go back to growing whatever we had been growing before..

[Gserpent]

Gserpent claims SE has been and continues to ignore PvP for years.

SE adds Crystalline Conflict as a new PvP mode in 2022 and it's generally considered a major success by the player base. They've also been reworking how jobs function in PvP on an ongoing basis.

Or are we just imagining that they have been?

SE is like any game developer. They can't be constantly working on every thing they would like to add/change. They have to prioritize. When it comes to housing, they're currently focused in improving things for the have nots instead of the haves. Personally, I'm fine with that. I want to see more players getting the opportunity to enjoy house ownership rather than have them spend the time introducing a new seed for gardening, watch everyone switch to growing it so the market crashes then go back to growing whatever we had been growing before..

I mean, what have they done? They made BLM absurdly overpowered due to what was later explained as a very amateur mistake and then most changes since that point have been remedying the problem they created. Frontlines has just been a very slapdash band-aid fix that trades one set of problems for a different set without really addressing the core issues. And we still have no real fixes planned or talked about for the very numerous issues with ranked mode, nor have we heard anything about new rewards (literally the only reason a majority of people participate in PvP) being added outside of the series. It's also likely that they're going to exacerbate existing issues with the system, as every time they mess with PvP, they mostly increase potency of actions while not increasing defenses or base HP values. Maybe that will come in a future patch? But if they were doing their jobs properly, they wouldn't need to - hence, "do it well, or don't do it at all."

I guess you can make the claim that it's not "abandoned," but it's surely not supported as well as it could be. Or should be.

Which is why I'm saying their method of development comes across to me as wasteful and inefficient. If you're going to do something, do it well. Otherwise don't do it. I don't believe in half measures or spreading yourself too thin to provide a sub-par experience in as many areas as possible. Focus your efforts and excel at a few things, rather than doing many things with mediocrity. It's the reason most restaurants, and almost all *good* restaurants, have a very small menu.