Quote Originally Posted by Quuoooote View Post
I don't want to come off as completely doomer about it, but it seems clear to me that XIV is effectively entering its maintenance mode.
FF11 has long been in a maintenance mode where the only thing they do is bonus exp events and it's nothing like FF11. If you actually think it is then you're not looking at all the work that goes into the new content and rewards - the models, the textures, the voice acting, the dialogue, the localization, the animations, the mechanics, etc. It's fine to not be happy with the content and rewards we are getting and to want it to be different, but there not being content that "you like" is not the same as maintenance mode.
A forward-thinking development team wouldn't be going back to ARR to future-proof their game with Duty Support, so that players looking to experience the story can still progress through the game even when queues are dead.
Yes they would. Forward-thinking companies want to improve the onboarding experience, which this achieves. They explained they are doing it because their surveys say a lot of people play single-player FFs but then avoid the MMORPGs. By doing this, they can sell the single player option to them and they will probably end up socializing anyway. It's a tactic that draws in anxious people or those who don't want to be social, into the social environment, expanding the market potential. This is pretty obvious, but Yoshi-P has also mentioned it recently and how it's drawn single player FF players into the social environment.

It's worth pointing out, they did ignore a lot of this for years before even revisiting ARR. And that's because they didn't have a wide backlog of content for existing players. But given you can queue for a roulette and get any of the around 100 dungeons now, it was time to revisit the new player experience a bit.
Or expending so many resources to freshen up all the old visuals for new players
Again, to improve the onboarding experience. I manage and have managed numerous things and every single time, I constantly try to improve the onboarding experience for new users and visitors. This is basic.
It's much easier to keep the new players invested when they have zero pain points in their gameplay; the older players will just suck it up and take it. Not to mention the fact that simplified rotations make it much easier to maintain jobs/balance with minimal effort on the development team's part.
That is all an issue, I agree, and giving older players things with more depth as an option does seem like something they need to look at.