4.35 vs 6.35

[Renathras]

What i hate teh most is that all the grindy stuff that would kill time perfectly comes so late, its almost poinltess... like im on 15/18 ilv 625 weapons... why i again should i bother the most likely 625 relic, even if it has max stats, if its just for literally 3-4 weeks at most...

This is honestly my issue.

I don't do Ultimates and barely do Savages. So when a big new patch releases...there's very little there sometimes. Sometimes there's more than others, but a lot of times it's just "I guess you can do the story then...grind the Extreme over and over, I guess?"

Then, they release all the grindy stuff later.

To me, you should release the grindy stuff first, then the "one time" (or few times) content. This way, people have the grindy stuff to fall back on when they get bored or run out of content to do. By doing the one-time/few-time clear stuff first, sure, people run headlong into it, but after a few weeks, they're done with it and...then what? They wait over a month before the grindy stuff comes out (like Relics, Deep Dungeon, or Expedition zones). But if the latter were released first, people could grind on it, about the time they start getting bored (since it's a longer time horizon kind of content), you drop the raid tiers and Ultimates and stuff, people plow into that for a few weeks, then when they finish, the grindy content is there on pause for them to roll right back into.

And for the people that don't do the raid game, they have the grindy stuff to work on the entire time (for many people, Relic farming and the like IS their end-game), as opposed to the present cadence, where those people do the new story stuff, some do Extremes for a week or two, then they have nothing to do for months. Or worse, the people that don't even do Extremes, as they have literally no new content to do for months. While the game does have an expansive backlog/catalogue of stuff to do, people do like new stuff.

I dunno, I just feel they should reverse the order. When 6.3 hit, they probably already have all the Deep Dungeon stuff ready to go. Holding it for 6.35 is entirely a decision, not a mechanical requirement. And even if it WAS, they could simply bump that content in priority over Ultimates so it'd be done first then drop the Ultimate in 6.35 instead. Savage patches it's a little more of a fight (though casual players have 8 man normals to run there, at least, which have at least slightly more replay value to most people than 24 mans), the non-Savage patches should honestly reverse the order they release stuff. We could have Deep Dungeon to play for 4 months and 2 months in get the 24 man. Instead we got the 24 man first and run it for ~1 hour one day a week and then...twiddle our thumbs for two months...

EDIT:

Note that this is LESS of an issue if you have something big like an Expedition zone from a previous patch. For example, in 4.25, we got Anemos, so Pagos not being until 4.35 wasn't AS big a problem as people still had Anemos to work on. Likewise, when we got Southern Front in Bozja, we had something to grind on, at least until we maxed out everything there we wanted. But there was stuff to do.

In 6.35, we don't have a 6.25 big grindy content thing to do unless you could Island Sanctuary...which I don't since it has no connection to anything outside of itself (by design) and isn't some fun grand adventure like Eureka was that led to something. I honestly wish they'd never added it because of how much we've lost out because of it existing. I'm happy it's there for the people that like...Animal Crossing, I guess?...but it's robbed us of all the stuff I normally find myself doing.

I'm bullish on FFXIV and constantly white knighting this game, but even I do feel things are a little slow compared to normal expansions. There are a lot of factors that go into that, but not having an Exploration zone at this point in the expansion's patch cycle is something I'm really feeling...