Solutions for Content Drought during between Patches & other solutions for Gameplay

[ForteNightshade]

The drought is purely the result of one's own choices and one can make the choice to adjust their time rather than expecting other people to move mountains to accommodate them.

This isn't even a disingenuous take. It's flat out wrong—to a comical degree even.

If you keep up to date on content, you will run out long before the next patch unless you barely play the game. Case in point, 6.3's entire content drop can be easily consumed over a weekend even playing at a slower pace. There is virtually nothing with any form of longevity save farming Rubicante 50 times. If it happens to take you nearly six weeks to finish the MSQ or Alliance storyline that isn't because there's oh so much content but because you've simply not been playing the game. Neither one of these things is more than a few hours. While I appreciate some people can only manage to play a few hours a week, content shouldn't be balanced around that sort of schedule for the precise same reason you shouldn't cater towards people with 10+ hours a day of free time. It's two different extremes when most people live in the middle where they do have time to play far more reasonable hours yet are still running out of things to do—particularly if they are long time players who have been caught up for years.

It shouldn't take what's looking to be two months for any form of content with longevity to release outside of Ultimate.

[Deveryn]

This isn't even a disingenuous take. It's flat out wrong—to a comical degree even.

If you keep up to date on content, you will run out long before the next patch unless you barely play the game. Case in point, 6.3's entire content drop can be easily consumed over a weekend even playing at a slower pace. There is virtually nothing with any form of longevity save farming Rubicante 50 times. If it happens to take you nearly six weeks to finish the MSQ or Alliance storyline that isn't because there's oh so much content but because you've simply not been playing the game. Neither one of these things is more than a few hours. While I appreciate some people can only manage to play a few hours a week, content shouldn't be balanced around that sort of schedule for the precise same reason you shouldn't cater towards people with 10+ hours a day of free time. It's two different extremes when most people live in the middle where they do have time to play far more reasonable hours yet are still running out of things to do—particularly if they are long time players who have been caught up for years.

It shouldn't take what's looking to be two months for any form of content with longevity to release outside of Ultimate.

You're the one that's comically wrong. You have no idea of what's going on behind the scenes or any clue as to how long it takes to make content, even though the proof has been out there for whole decades. How fast people get through it is purely up to the individual. They've been very open and honest about things and said they fully expect people to stop and do other things. MMOs are a long term investment, but they're never meant to occupy 100% of your free time. The grinds people look back on longingly were just lazy design meant to try and keep people around while they spent a year working on the next batch of content. You can't prove me wrong and you can't point to a game that successfully and legitimately puts out more than XIV does.

SE has been pretty consistent on content delivery and that is what keeps people coming back time and again. It's more than most other developers have considered doing. Just because they don't have everything you want in a patch doesn't mean you can magically deny its existence.

LL part one comes out: "hey, we're two months away"
LL part 2: only 10 more days
Patch x.x0 - new story, new trial
Odd patches - alliance
Even patches - raids
x.x5 not-main-story add-ons

What's truly comical is the inability to come up with actual feedback that the devs can work with. You only ever say you're bored or this sucks. Things don't change for the supposed better way you may have had in mind, but never spoke. "Outrage! That's just them ignoring us and favoring JP."

[ForteNightshade]

You're the one that's comically wrong. You have no idea of what's going on behind the scenes or any clue as to how long it takes to make content, even though the proof has been out there for whole decades. How fast people get through it is purely up to the individual. They've been very open and honest about things and said they fully expect people to stop and do other things. MMOs are a long term investment, but they're never meant to occupy 100% of your free time. The grinds people look back on longingly were just lazy design meant to try and keep people around while they spent a year working on the next batch of content. You can't prove me wrong and you can't point to a game that successfully and legitimately puts out more than XIV does.

You say all this despite it never being what prompted my response nor was it my argument. I specifically quoted you claiming that content drought is "purely the result of one's own choices" which is objectively false. Likewise, I never even insinuated how quickly people progressed through content wasn't up to the individual. Once again you have continued to put words my mouth. What I actually said is the length someone takes does not artificially make the content longer. A three hour MSQ quest chain remains three hours regardless of whether or not it takes you a day, two or several weeks to complete it. This seems to be a very common and disingenuous attempt to argue content longevity. "Well, I still haven't done the new Alliance raid. Therefore, 6.3 still has lots of content!" For you, specifically? Yes. In general, however. Someone opting to take five weeks to finish Euphrosyne does not mean it has five weeks of content.

As for occupying our time. Once again, I never said it needed to be 100%. Please stop erecting strawmans and actually respond to what I'm saying if you're going to quote me. It's getting quite tiresome you have to make up arguments because yours is lacking.

With that said, I am under no benefit this game should occupy my time fully nor are any players frustrated with the drip feed of content. We're all aware that is an impossible endeavour. Our criticism is newly released content more often than not doesn't even last a week despite being meant to last months. For the sake of argument, let's review 6.3 proper and the supposed "wealth" of content.

- MSQ (3-ish hours)
- Chronicles of a New Era (2-ish hours)
- Tataru's Grand Endeavor (An hour, tops)
- Custom Deliveries (A handful of quests and some weekly crafting requirements that takes less than an hour if not time-gated)
- Ophiotauroskin Treasure Maps (A decent enough investment)
- Island Sanctuary (Even at a slow pace, it remains a 10 minute a day glorified "retainer venture" to rank up.)
- Lapis Manalis (Standard paint-by-numbers dungeon. Over in less than twenty minutes and accounted for in the MSQ estimation)
- Mount Ordeals (Quite possibly one of the easiest EXs ever released but nevertheless there's some longevity here if you opt to farm it 50 times for the eventual mount exchange)
- Containment Bay P1T6 (Unreal) (A quick two kills a week. Decent enough investment)

Then you have some extra side activities like the updated GATEs and etc. At a glance that may seem like a lot except almost all of it is over within minutes—an hour at most—on a per day basis or is a one and done affair. In all previous patches we usually have a Beast Tribe and the expected wait for the subsequent .5 patch was roughly five weeks. 6.3 has seen the Beast Tribe pushed aside and nearly into week six we still don't even have the Live Letter update giving us any indication of the next patch release. In other words, less content than in previous patch cycles is meant to last what may end up being double the length of time.

Now I do want to stress none of this speaks to the quality of the content. While there is some debate in its regard such as the boss scaling of Euphrosyne and Rubicante or Island Sanctuary on the whole, I genuinely believe the content has been relatively solid. There simply isn't enough. Or more specifically, what is made has very little (or downright zero) longevity.

Take the aforementioned Island Sanctuary. Unless you deliberately ignore progressing it for several weeks, simply doing the absolute minimum requirements without any sort of grinding whatsoever will see its completion in less than two weeks. At which time it becomes little more than glorified retainer ventures. There is zero longevity to the content unless you consider setting up a spreadsheet that takes all of five minutes because Reddit figured out a system that is routinely updated not unlike Kiyoko's Fashion Report.

While people absolutely overhyped Island Sanctuary, the general belief is you'd have some sort of farm stimulator to play around in. Nothing to the depth or expansiveness of an Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley but something meaningful and engaging. What we got is an absolute barebones equivalent where even basic features like feeding animals different foods having an impact or proper gardening that amounted to more than "click to plant seed" were absent.

There's a reason they kept almost pleading with players to "not rush" through Island Sanctuary. It has no longevity and they knew it simply wouldn't be able to last even if someone took weeks to progress.

And no, you (general) still having not started Island Sanctuary doesn't mean it has longevity. You simply aren't doing the content. FFVII: Remake doesn't last a month because I only opt to play it on weekends.

By the way, all of this and the criticism people have posted is feedback. You may not like. You may even fundamentally disagree with essentially everything stated. And that would be entirely your prerogative. After all, you are entitled to your opinion. As am I, and everyone else. You don't get to decide what isn't feedback because it doesn't meet your approval.

For my specific post, I've made it quite clear the issues I have which center around the lacking longevity of content. That's a far cry from "I'm bored and it sucks" Not that I expect you to acknowledge that.

[Raoabolic]

By the way, all of this and the criticism people have posted is feedback. You may not like. You may even fundamentally disagree with essentially everything stated. And that would be entirely your prerogative. After all, you are entitled to your opinion. As am I, and everyone else. You don't get to decide what isn't feedback because it doesn't mean your approval.

For my specific post, I've made it quite clear the issues I have which center around the lacking longevity of content. That's a far cry from "I'm bored and it sucks" Not that I expect you to acknowledge that.

For your sanity, don't engage with zealots. They will see any form of criticism as whining and are quick to tell you that. Sure, patches are becoming leaner with the devs backloading many features to .x5 patch and the mogstation is becoming a mainstay but the game is... there? I don't know, I really can't put myself into the mindset of those types, lmao.