This game is on a terrible state right now.

[Carin-Eri]

This guy's not entirely wrong, which is the saddest part. Several years ago back in heavensward, I had friends telling me to quit tera and come play XIV with them. I didn't, because I was hooked on that kMMO crackpipe, but eventually they all quit before stormblood came out, citing the content dripfeed model as their reason. They hated getting a small amount of content every 3 months. Now the shoe's on the other foot, and I'm playing XIV while they're playing other games, and none of them will return to XIV because in their mind the game's had slow content rollouts since at least hw. Hell, the famous "please quit my game" quote from Yoshi P was from years ago. It's not like Endwalker invented the dripfeed model. It just feels worse this time because they extended the waiting period from 3 months to 4. Maybe in 7.0, we'll have to wait 6 months for 6 hours of content.

That said, just saying "it's always been bad" doesn't excuse the fact that it's bad or preclude us from demanding better. But yeah, no, that precedent's been set for a while. And it's pathetic really, when you consider that there are free to play games with content or events to do every month. And it's particularly egregious when you compare expansions that gave us deep dungeons and exploratory zones while also rolling out the usual dungeon/alliance/8man/relicgrind setup all on a 3 month schedule (stormblood) to today's situation where the content we've gotten instead of exploratory zones (islands, variants) was kinda lacking in longterm replayability and it's left a lot of people bored or quitting until 6.4. In the end it won't matter though. 7.0 will see a resurgence in players; we probably won't even be able to log in when 7.0 launches, because all the tourists will be returning in droves. And that's the only metric anyone in charge will care about. When the number drops by literally 30% after a month, no one will even notice or care except the people whose friends lists have evaporated seemingly overnight, but to hell with those people. We already got their money.

There are also F2P games which don't produce content with anything like that sort of frequency. I came from one which managed to put out all of one new episode (worth about 45 minutes of play time) every five or so months. The remainder of the time they run wall-to-wall recycled 'events' with a FOMO carrot on a stick reward to pad their login metrics. And they put the items their players want most in gambleboxes or £250 bundles, which contain a stack of additional fluff to justify inflating the price.

Focusing most of their resources on cash shop items is exactly why they produce so little playable content.

[R041]

There are also F2P games which don't produce content with anything like that sort of frequency. I came from one which managed to put out all of one new episode (worth about 45 minutes of play time) every five or so months. The remainder of the time they run wall-to-wall recycled 'events' with a FOMO carrot on a stick reward to pad their login metrics. And they put the items their players want most in gambleboxes or £250 bundles, which contain a stack of additional fluff to justify inflating the price.

Focusing most of their resources on cash shop items is exactly why they produce so little playable content.

Were they critically acclaimed tho?

[Moonlite]

There are also F2P games which don't produce content with anything like that sort of frequency. I came from one which managed to put out all of one new episode (worth about 45 minutes of play time) every five or so months. The remainder of the time they run wall-to-wall recycled 'events' with a FOMO carrot on a stick reward to pad their login metrics. And they put the items their players want most in gambleboxes or £250 bundles, which contain a stack of additional fluff to justify inflating the price.

Focusing most of their resources on cash shop items is exactly why they produce so little playable content.

The game could use some better fomo login events. Or just decent login events. The Moogle event is at least 2 closer to 4 weeks late. The items from the vendor aren't really that spectacular. I am not saying the patches can't be longer apart. The login event should have one emote, one mount, and gear set that is original to the event. have the items available for next login as well. Then they can move to cash shop like seasonal items.

[R041]

The game could use some better fomo login events. Or just decent login events. The Moogle event is at least 2 closer to 4 weeks late. The items from the vendor aren't really that spectacular. I am not saying the patches can't be longer apart. The login event should have one emote, one mount, and gear set that is original to the event. have the items available for next login as well. Then they can move to cash shop like seasonal items.

XIV is literally incapable of doing the bare minimum. Doesn't even try to compete, it doesn't have to.

People are happy to AFK, they're overjoyed with the idea that they can AFK for weeks or months at a time. These are the happiest group of people, to be excited not to play the game they're paying a monthly sub for.