Zepla: Endwalker is the Worst FFXIV Expansion I have played

[Jeeqbit]

there have been questionable decisions that are not related to budget, like dumbing down jobs and making content with no staying power.

I see where he is coming from on these things though. "Dumbing down jobs" is to make them intuitive to all players, especially new and returning players. Content with no staying power seems to be to reflect how people play a game with new DLC for a few days, then move onto the next.

But these things can be done whilst also having some content that has staying power and jobs could have optional ways to make them harder to play for those who want it.

[Renathras]

I'm perfectly fine with nuking us both. Run out the clock, clean out our post limit. If the thread gets locked, then it gets locked.

My goals are usually to meme, so it's not really a stressor for me. Your goals seem pretty aimlessly stressful. lol

You needn't worry on my account. I generally enjoy conversing with people and exchanging thoughts and ideas. The only thing stressful is when people are incessantly immature and snarky/heckling, but that's less stressful and more just mildly annoying. The nice thing is, it's happened enough I'm mostly just bored of it at this point. That is, it doesn't agitate me, it bores me.

I suppose thanks for clearing up that you want to derail and get the thread locked. Though it makes your accusation against me seem completely toothless considering it's your actual goal.

Is part of it content pacing then?

Maybe it's like the WoW Classic thing: Players are just better than they were a decade ago, so they consume stuff faster that might once have taken days or weeks to work out?

It is kinda weird, if you think about it, though. EW doesn't have Bozja like ShB or Eureka like SB, but it has Orthos (ShB didn't have a Deep Dungeon), Criterion, and Island. In terms of overall content, it has the same Raid, Trial, Ultimate, and Alliance Raid schedule, Tibal quests, relic upgrades (patch releasing the next steps), dungeons, etc of ShB and SB. That is, it has the same general level of CONTENT.

It does seem that the big difference is only that it doesn't have a Eureka/Bozja (as Criterion/Island ain't that), and 2 weeks more per patch...which isn't THAT much. It's not nothing, but it's also not a ton more, and while it is 3-4 months over the expansion as a whole, it's not all at once that way. It's the same general design cadence they've been doing since at least SB and really since HW, but "suddenly" it's "stale". I wouldn't even mind people saying it was bad if they don't, in the same breath, praise past expansions for releasing the same amount of content as if it wasn't.

But then you have the people saying it has less content who also didn't like Eureka/Bozja, despite that being the only real difference...

EDIT:

30 pages since we hit 100 of people caring an awful lot about trying to get Jojoya and Rentharis to change their minds.

As I said, it's almost like the negative posters are rather intolerant of the idea that people can disagree with them about matters of opinion/subjective preferences and have a need for the appearance of universal agreement on negativity.

(And the irony is, if anyone would read my first post in this thread - the small one that takes less than 30 seconds to read - that I've linked to or quoted from something like 5 times and people still can't be bothered; they'd realize I didn't actually disagree with them, despite them trying to act like I have for over 100 pages...)

I thought YouTuber/Streamer opinions didn't matter here because "they're in SEs pocket" n such. Now when one comes out and is saying what some agree with its now worth listening to?
Some things don't change ig.

Basically it's the age old concept of "When this person doesn't agree with me, they don't matter; oh, they agree with me now? They're the most important voice on the planet. Obviously."

[Shurrikhan]

It's the same general design cadence they've been doing since at least SB and really since HW, but "suddenly" it's "stale".

So that design cadence should be considered still "fresh" even after being done for 4 expansion in a row (and having slowed over time)?

Those complaints haven't appeared "suddenly". They've increased pretty linearly with the time spent under those repeated roadmaps.

But then you have the people saying it has less content who also didn't like Eureka/Bozja, despite that being the only real difference...

This bit, though, I'll agree can be a bit of a headscratcher... if the opinion is given only per one's own (self-)interests.

It the repeatable content from before wasn't one's cup of tea before, than the content of value to that person hasn't changed by losing it, though they can still miss the friends who now play only per patch release because there's no content for them, either, now.

[Renathras]

So that design cadence should be considered still "fresh" even after being done for 4 expansion in a row (and having slowed over time)?

Those complaints haven't appeared "suddenly". They've increased pretty linearly with the time spent under those repeated roadmaps.

No.

My complaint is more it's suddenly a problem when it hasn't been before AND that people point to the before as bastions of content. EW is effectively ShB 2.0, yet many praised ShB and condemn EW. For having roughly the same amount of content. And highly praise SB. For having roughly the same amount of content.

If they were condemning ShB and SB, that would make more sense.

The more nuanced claims talk about repeatable content...but that's really JUST Eureka/Bozja, and maybe Isghard Restoration (though that wasn't exactly repeatable, it was more just "big event"), and in some cases, by users who have said they don't like Eureka/Bozja content, in which case, what DID ShB have for them that EW does not? A REALLY nuanced claim would note the longer patch cycle, but not many (any? other than me, that is) people seem to mention that.

It seems more like general dissatisfaction, not that the game/Devs are giving them less. People wanting more and being annoyed with being given the same amount and wrongly calling it less when it simply wasn't more.

[Absurdity]

Aye, the more I dig the more those figures I used look bad.

SE announced a 27 million characters created milestone last year with estimates that it'll hit 30 mil at some point this year (Likely with some fanfare when it happens). There's no way 20 mil of those are actively subbing still IMO.

Whoops!

Even Lucky Bancho has some funky numbers. They reported 1,130,000 "active" characters as of the 22nd of August.

Now the question is at which point a character is considered no longer active. Since the previous census was on the 20th of June there has been quite some time between the two, so we actually have no idea if this is monthly active players or daily or simply characters active between those two data points and then you also have to take into account that "active characters" doesn't actually mean "subscribed accounts" since it includes alts as long as they are actively played.

[Supersnow845]

You can’t really just dismiss eureka and Bozja because they are at their core the content that made those expansions repeatable, combine the large content dumps with the shorter patch cycle and it makes sense why these problems have boiled over in EW

it’s very rare to find someone who both refuses to interact with field content and also thinks that EW is terrible on patch content, sure not everyone likes field content but most seem unified on the fact that it’s addition was a new positive

ShB and SB did have more content, and dismissing eureka and Bozja here really isn’t useful

[Lyth]

Now the question is at which point a character is considered no longer active.

To be considered active, your HP, XP, mount count, or minion count has to change between two surveys. So this value will be an underestimate, but that's the point.

[Shurrikhan]

My complaint is more it's suddenly a problem when it hasn't been before AND that people point to the before as bastions of content. EW is effectively ShB 2.0, yet many praised ShB and condemn EW. For having roughly the same amount of content. And highly praise SB. For having roughly the same amount of content.

If they were condemning ShB and SB, that would make more sense.

But it hasn't been treated as a "sudden" problem in terms of being novel in its type, only in its extent. It's more a 'straw that breaks the camel's back' situation, not a complaint over straw itself.

You'll find complaints about "overly safe" or "unambitious" roadmapping as far back as Stormblood.

[Rolder50]

No.

My complaint is more it's suddenly a problem when it hasn't been before AND that people point to the before as bastions of content. EW is effectively ShB 2.0, yet many praised ShB and condemn EW. For having roughly the same amount of content. And highly praise SB. For having roughly the same amount of content.

I have to wonder what world you are living in to say that ShB and EW have "roughly the same amount of content"

They have roughly same amount of end game raid content sure since that formula never changes, but everything below that has suffered immensely. If you try to tell me that deep dungeon and variant is equivalent to Bozja (which had open world zones, a raid with a savage version, and two larger scale raids, mind) I will laugh.

[Zairava]

No.

My complaint is more it's suddenly a problem when it hasn't been before AND that people point to the before as bastions of content. EW is effectively ShB 2.0, yet many praised ShB and condemn EW. For having roughly the same amount of content. And highly praise SB. For having roughly the same amount of content.

If they were condemning ShB and SB, that would make more sense.

The more nuanced claims talk about repeatable content...but that's really JUST Eureka/Bozja, and maybe Isghard Restoration (though that wasn't exactly repeatable, it was more just "big event"), and in some cases, by users who have said they don't like Eureka/Bozja content, in which case, what DID ShB have for them that EW does not? A REALLY nuanced claim would note the longer patch cycle, but not many (any? other than me, that is) people seem to mention that.

It seems more like general dissatisfaction, not that the game/Devs are giving them less. People wanting more and being annoyed with being given the same amount and wrongly calling it less when it simply wasn't more.

This post..baffles me. We have stated on and on, or at least I have, that it isn't the amount, it's that they don't have incentive to keep doing. There isn't any real meat to the content they have released in the patches. It's there, but there's nothing to chew and take in

I actually had a relic grind in Stormblood and Shadowbringers, and they were both tied to field content, relatively midcore and something I can always go back to and get some form of reward with friends to boot. Not having that really killed this expansion for me. If I had to run Criterion (the "EX" one, not Savage) as a way to get my relics, I would have infinitely more mileage to run it than now.

Even for the people who don't like field content like Eureka/Bozja, not having repeatable content is a valid complaint.