Thoughts about the LL?

[DiaDeem]

Really excited about DD, love Sphene but so ready to just be done with the DT story, and the 4 month patch cycle is crushing me.

[CidHeiral]

I admit I did not spend a lot of time in CE, but when I was there I saw no community interaction outside of brief shout conversations. The most of *that* I saw was during a progress fate (I forget the correct name for them) where everyone was voicing exasperation over how terrible it was. Gatherers and crafters simply do not interact with one another there outside of being bodies in a FATE.

It must vary per server then because Hyperion chat was popping off all the time in CE. That's most of why I enjoyed it so much despite not caring much about crafting/gathering.

[Themarvin]

Postponing housing again, much higher item limits and possible ways to decorate proper so you get a free Z axis and more.... feels so neglected...

It has been a thing since Dawntrail was promoted for the first time before 7.0.... I don't get the delays, unless they are really FOR ONCE going to sweaten the deal, but it is long time to keep people hostage like that.

[OlafQuintessa]

Bit late to the party but there were we a few things in the LL that made me feel a bit more optimistic about the game:

Number one is the new design philosophy of designing content so it can be enjoyed by everyone. It does seem like a wasted opportunity to come up with new content that's going to be ignored by the majority of the playerbase, so I'm glad they're going to come up with ways for more people to enjoy things. I guess that has to be baked in from the beginning of the design process, so I'm not expecting big changes soon, but I'm really interested to see what they do with it.

The quantum difficulty fight at the end of the DD is a really nice innovation. My big fear in future is that by scaling difficulty they only ever mean a scale from EX to Ultimate, which would be really stupid and pointless (like having criterion and criterion savage both savage level, which was a ridiculous decision). They should really be looking at ways to bridge the gap between between normal and EX if they want to make content for everyone to enjoy. If you want to work your way up to ultimate you can already go from EX through the 12 savage floors, so there's already a progression in place from EX to the top. However, there's a massive, yawning gulf from normal to EX. I just hope that their promise to make "content for everyone" coupled with "quantum" fights with adjustable difficulty means they'll finally acknowledge that gulf (yeah I've tried some EX and I would love to do more but it's so miserable to sit around in PF for hours because you're not good enough to clear in week 1 that I gave up. Give people a better chance to clear with half the mechanics, less boss health, and a longer enrage then more people would buy in to it).

Lastly, the DD just looked really pretty and I like how accessible it is for either solo players or people who want to go in as a party.

[TeresaFortell]

Really excited about DD, love Sphene but so ready to just be done with the DT story, and the 4 month patch cycle is crushing me.

I think this is a fundamental issue that came along with DT. When one is not even looking forward to the next patch because they are fatigued with how the story has progressed and will continue to progress, the entire game would feel unappealing, regardless of the long patch cycle. Granted, each patch also offers many things to do, but it is not sufficient to fill the initial gap left by the mediocrity and seemingly slight improvement of the writing.

[Atma]

Here is the bottom line -

When they extended the time between each patch, the justification for that was that we were in the midst of COVID and they needed more time to work. At that time the community was understanding, because many of us were honestly going through the same stuff. Learning how to function in a remote work world (or in my case, for others to learn to function in it), lack of general social contact, overall feelings of isolation leading to depression leading to reduced work output.

The world has returned to normal. The patch timeline has not. And it's time for it to go back to what it used to be - and with more content per patch. If they have to hire people to make that happen, then so be it.

[Exmo]

The world has returned to normal.

Unsubstantiated rumour.

Edit:

If they have to hire people to make that happen, then so be it.

In all likelihood this is why patch cycles are longer now. They hired a bunch of new developers and did some internal reorganizing. It takes years for new developers to produce as efficiently as developers who've been on a project for 7+ years.

[RedLolly]

The thing I took away from it was the extremely relieving change in direction from hardcore and casual being prioritized every other patch to designing content for both every patch. Especially if the patch timelines are staying. I'm hoping it's to cut down on crunching.

Having an optional superboss attached to content built for everyone is a good start.

[TaleraRistain]

So, are we going to get to play the new DD in August, or are we going to have to wait until some time like October..?

The x.35 patch is usually about 2 months after the patch so probably early October.

[Striker44]

The world has returned to normal. The patch timeline has not. And it's time for it to go back to what it used to be - and with more content per patch. If they have to hire people to make that happen, then so be it.

Covid itself is not impacting the world the way it did, but the world itself has fundamentally changed and is most certainly not "back to normal". The myriad sporadic efforts to get people to "return to the office" and the fierce pushback it gets are a testament to that.

Also, someone on here went through the details and pointed out that between its initial release and patches, DT will have the most content we have ever had in an expansion. Each of us individually doesn't have to find all of that content personally interesting or engaging, but we're already getting significantly more content than in past expansions.