Face it, this game is in maintenance mode now, i.e. managed decline

[AlucaDragonheart]

I can't help but find this response laughable; it basically amounts to "We're aware of this problem but the experience that our overworked FFXIV producer is gaining through working on games that are not FFXIV will make everything better for FFXIV".
Completely tone-deaf.

The funny thing is, that he actually brought his experience with FF14 over to other games too (FF16), because that game suffers from the same thing this one does, terrible pacing, samey combat, and a huge but barren world with not much to do or interact with.

[CapaxInfiniti]

The funny thing is, that he actually brought his experience with FF14 over to other games too (FF16), because that game suffers from the same thing this one does, terrible pacing, samey combat, and a huge but barren world with not much to do or interact with.

I like how so many people ignore this.
The problem with this game is very clear to see when you look at the other game also made by the same person and it suffers the same problems.

Almost like both of them have something in common....

[brinn12]

You're ignoring some important context here. They increased the timeframe of each of the major patches. So to release it after 24 months would require releasing it a lot sooner after 7.5 than they normally release a major patch even. The timeframe between final patch and expansion has generally always been longer than the timeframe between major patches, about 5 months until they increased it for Endwalker release.

I think you may underestimate how much they were actually pushing themselves to meet the 24 month timeframe as well, and the intent of it taking longer is to increase breaks, reduce burnout, and increase producitvity and consider the health of employees. This was likely also the case for major patches due to them having a wider variety of content types than they used to.

I remember they said how meeting one of the deadlines was going to be really tough and I think it must have been prior to Shadowbringers they said that, but they were going to do it anyway and crunch hard to keep it in summer. Then they flat out couldn't with Endwalker due to delayed contracts, remote working issues, etc. No doubt it was comfortable having more time so they seemed to stick with it.

So if they released it in November, that would be about 6 months after 7.5, similar to their previous timeframe of 5 months afer the .5 patch.

Huh? I'm not ignoring anything, the first part on bold is exactly what I am criticizing. They shouldn't have done that. The second part on bold is also very hard to believe, but we all choose what to believe in, I guess. It's not like SHB, EW and DT were much more profitable than the previous expansions and had longer patches, right?