Something needs to be done about .X5 content cycle

[Reimmi]

Look up the definition of "toxic positivity," and your picture would be right next to it. You certainly have an answer and comeback for ANYTHING and EVERYTHING on here when someone is dissatisfied or complaining. You can't seem to accept folks are unhappy and you love to explain it all away and act like they are some minority and everyone else is shooting rainbows and unicorns out their ass with love for everything Yoshi P poops out on our FFXIV plate. Let people be unhappy my dude. They have every right to not enjoy the certain content cadence, just like you have every right to love it and take whatever is thrown your way.

And as a casual who has played over a decade, no we aren't farming the new extreme trial or farming the new PVP series because most of us casuals don't give a crap about those things.

It's Yoshi p's alt account lmao

[Reimmi]

You're mostly interested in the new Deep Dungeon, that doesn't mean it was their biggest selling point. But I think the coolest thing is that if that's the only thing you're interested in, you can just unsub and resub when it releases.

See that only works if you don't have a house, because square enix will hold it hostage and keep you subbed with it.
If they removed housing demolition and overhauled it like WoW's system is gonna work, that'd be nice

And you could say "why do you care about the house" Because it took years to get, and i still enjoy playing the game, but i would love to be able to unsub between patches.

[brinn12]

I feel like people who consciously decide to not do ex and savage, aren't really in a position to be complaining about the lack of content.
Content was provided. You declined to participate. That's not really their fault.

Also, inb4, you make the na "casuals can't do ex or savage" argument, because that's not true.
choosing not to =/ can't.

Inb4 the EX fight can be cleared in one day of prog regardless of skill
Inb4 the mount you can farm there is just a few pixels different

Savage content will always have low engagement. Relying on similar content to keep people subbed, and then blame the casual community for not doing it, has never worked well for any MMO. It requires following specific strats, watching VODs, having a schedule or worrying about fflogs/tomestone. A combination which most people avoid when playing videogames. Understandably so. This cannot be changed.

[Bryson]

Inb4 the EX fight can be cleared in one day of prog regardless of skill
Inb4 the mount you can farm there is just a few pixels different

Savage content will always have low engagement. Relying on similar content to keep people subbed, and then blame the casual community for not doing it, has never worked well for any MMO. It requires following specific strats, watching VODs, having a schedule or worrying about fflogs/tomestone. A combination which most people avoid when playing videogames. Understandably so. This cannot be changed.

Who said anything about blame?
Consciously deciding to not engage in xyz (in this context ,ex and savage) isn't the same thing as, there's nothing for me to do.

No one disputed "most people" avoid having to put forth effort. I agree. That is what most people on NA do. That doesn't mean you can't do the content though. People have autonomy here.

[brinn12]

Who said anything about blame?
Consciously deciding to not engage in xyz (in this context ,ex and savage) isn't the same thing as, there's nothing for me to do.

No one disputed "most people" avoid having to put forth effort. I agree. That is what most people on NA do. That doesn't mean you can't do the content though. People have autonomy here.

You're saying this group is not in a position to complain about the lack of content. This is clearly shifting the blame to them, as if they were putting themselves there. What put them there is the lack of content that should cater to them.

[Bryson]

You're saying this group is not in a position to complain about the lack of content. This is clearly shifting the blame to them, as if they were putting themselves there. What put them there is the lack of content that should cater to them.

that's not what blame means. blame is assigning fault. I'm saying (having been there as well, for arr - sb), it's about having a different perspective. Even Yoshi-P just recently said something along the lines of "if we have 10 things to do, if people enjoy 7, that's good." It's rare for someone to enjoy everything.

7.3 has content for crafters/gatherers. I don't craft or gather. By your logic, I should be complaining? I'm not though... because I consciously decided to not participate because I don't care about doh/dol. I never have. Not everything is going to be for everyone.

If you know what the patch will provide, and you've already decided (before even trying the content) what's to come "isn't for you", I'm not sure that's on SE that you consciously decide to pass on what they're providing.

I just don't agree with that perspective.. even when I was a casual with a lot of irl time constraints cause of work and college, I never thought to myself "there isn't any content for me to do." It was more akin to "there's a lot to do, some of it isn't for me at this time, because my irl time constraints prevent me from being able to meaningfully engaging with it."

Again, choose not to do, isn't the same thing as can't do.

[brinn12]

that's not what blame means. blame is assigning fault. I'm saying (having been there as well, for arr - sb), it's about having a different perspective. Even Yoshi-P just recently said something along the lines of "if we have 10 things to do, if people enjoy 7, that's good." It's rare for someone to enjoy everything.

7.3 has content for crafters/gatherers. I don't craft or gather. By your logic, I should be complaining? I'm not though... because I consciously decided to not participate because I don't care about doh/dol. I never have. Not everything is going to be for everyone.

If you know what the patch will provide, and you've already decided (before even trying the content) what's to come "isn't for you", I'm not sure that's on SE that you consciously decide to pass on what they're providing.

I just don't agree with that perspective.. even when I was a casual with a lot of irl time constraints cause of work and college, I never thought to myself "there isn't any content for me to do." It was more akin to "there's a lot to do, some of it isn't for me at this time, because my irl time constraints prevent me from being able to meaningfully engaging with it."

Again, choose not to do, isn't the same thing as can't do.

You're still shifting the blame to them. That's your perspective, which is crystal clear. Yoshi-P himself stated that when people don't like Savage, the patches are short lived, which they are looking to change in the future. CBU3 is, in fact, finally taking responsibility for that. The complaints rarely are that the game isn't releasing any content. People obviously want content they are willing to do. They're in a position to complain if they don't get it.

[DynnDiablos]

that's not what blame means. blame is assigning fault. I'm saying (having been there as well, for arr - sb), it's about having a different perspective. Even Yoshi-P just recently said something along the lines of "if we have 10 things to do, if people enjoy 7, that's good." It's rare for someone to enjoy everything.

7.3 has content for crafters/gatherers. I don't craft or gather. By your logic, I should be complaining? I'm not though... because I consciously decided to not participate because I don't care about doh/dol. I never have. Not everything is going to be for everyone.

If you know what the patch will provide, and you've already decided (before even trying the content) what's to come "isn't for you", I'm not sure that's on SE that you consciously decide to pass on what they're providing.

I just don't agree with that perspective.. even when I was a casual with a lot of irl time constraints cause of work and college, I never thought to myself "there isn't any content for me to do." It was more akin to "there's a lot to do, some of it isn't for me at this time, because my irl time constraints prevent me from being able to meaningfully engaging with it."

Again, choose not to do, isn't the same thing as can't do.

The problem is Yoshi P and the dev team are choosing to cater to raiders and more hardcore players, which is a minority, not the majority of the player base. Thus, they are creating way more content for these players than those of us who are so-called casuals and are the reason FFXIV even exists today, because it's our support that keeps it alive.

Let every casual in this game say F-it, quit and leave only the raiders. This game will die faster than a 95-year-old man's libido.

I've played 12 years. I don't raid. I will NEVER raid. And if this game is just going to lean more and more into ex, savage, chaotic, unreal and activities like Forked Tower there truly is less for me to engage in. And yes, you could say that is my choice, but let's not pretend this game wasn't designed around a different type of player and now the team is choosing to swing into a completely different direction because the harder content attracts streamers and provides more engagement online.

[Jeeqbit]

"They aren't doing it for sub retention" >>> I'll believe that when they change the housing system

The housing demolition system exists so that active players have a chance at a house and aren't waiting for people who don't even play. And that is a problem due to SE's inability to design houses properly, such as by disassociating houses from plots or allowing you to own a house on another world/data center, and carry it to a different plot or unassign it from a plot altogether.

My point is, saying SE do it for sub retention is giving them too much credit. Almost nothing SE does is for sub retention, but rather due to competence. The evidence is all around us - websites and software from the early 2000s still in active use (including this forum), FF11 still calling a character subscription a "content_id", not being able to add an FC finder in the game, loading the friends list 10 players at a time, bloated menus, oGCD issues, taking 3 seconds for the server to apply battle effects to a small number of targets, etc.

The one thing FFXIV does that is clearly a determined money grab is developing things solely for the mog station and selling them at ridiculously high prices. And even that hasn't gone right, when they were selling some (uninteresting) virtual clothes for the price of video game.

Ultimates are still restricted to 1 totem/week, when the game is approaching the 30-job mark.

I don't really see the point in the weekly totem for Ultimate when Ultimates are effectively timeless content that people continue doing years after they release. It seems so redundant.

giving Square Enix good faith on their current patch and content schedule has toxic positivity written all over it.

The thing really is that development takes time. Nothing short of AI is going to churn out fresh content on a daily basis.

I think the bigger issue is what they do with the content. For example, they can put months of work into developing a dungeon, but when it has no mechanic variation, no party interplay to create dynamic scenarios, no holy trinity so a tank can solo everything or a healer can turn a DPS into a tank, and no difficulty slider of any kind, then it effectively only entertains people for their first 1-3 runs despite months of work.

This goes for the Extreme trial too, which OP doesn't engage with. If they had a difficulty slider for it, maybe it would be content for more people. Instead it's either "super easy version" or "prog all day version" or for some players neither are hard enough. What they are doing with Pilgrim's Traverse and Variant is a start, but I think a lot of other things need changing if they want all content to work for everyone:

• Party interplay and the holy trinity to matter again, because it makes content more dynamic.
• Perhaps a slider to adjust how random mechanics are? Or just make more random elements in general, like the influence of different weathers or POTD style buffs/debuffs.
• The concept of adjusting difficulty to be simpler than Pilgrim's Traverse or Forked Tower; for example, a party could initiate a vote to adjust difficulty, knowing it will affect rewards (experience gain, totems, gear coffers, obtaining certain titles like BLU has etc).
• Personal difficulty sliders could also be a factor. Each player could individually disable the display of indicators for example and that adjust personal rewards such as experience gain, gil, totems or cards.

There are also just so many simple things they could have done to keep people busy that require no development effort:

• Adding a random old weekly savage tier (all 4 raids) as awarding Faux Hollows for doing it Minimum IL + Silence Echo.
• Award Faux Hollows daily for a random Extreme trial from the past with Minimum IL + Silence Echo.
• Create a roulette that gives the same dungeons but with interesting changes or stipulations.

Just things they can do that wouldn't even require any real development. It's the fact they don't do these simple things to extend the longevity of content when they easily could that makes me see it as a leadership and management issue, rather than a content development issue.

Another issue is the way they design content. Island Sanctuary is a great example of something that involved a lot of development effort, yet it was thoroughly boring for most people. It's not that they are "lazy and don't develop", it's just a management issue in that a person in charge decided to make the most boring sim imaginable, when a more dynamic system of being able to control the environment (weather for example) or build elsewhere and that influence (or even scare or kill) the animals would be a ton of fun. Excessive rain or lack of rain causing problems for the plant growth, presenting obstructions for your animals or letting them roam out of the contained area, introducing a predator and watching it unfold, allowing animals to come across crops and feast on them, maybe some standard reactions for different types of creatures ie. ones with flight, small creatures, big creatures, etc. Workshops, crops and leavings be relevant to crafting things for raiding. Instead, it's so safe and casual that it's boring and that's a leadership issue.

[Xapapetsu]

The problem is Yoshi P and the dev team are choosing to cater to raiders and more hardcore players, which is a minority, not the majority of the player base. Thus, they are creating way more content for these players than those of us who are so-called casuals and are the reason FFXIV even exists today, because it's our support that keeps it alive.

Let every casual in this game say F-it, quit and leave only the raiders. This game will die faster than a 95-year-old man's libido.

I've played 12 years. I don't raid. I will NEVER raid. And if this game is just going to lean more and more into ex, savage, chaotic, unreal and activities like Forked Tower there truly is less for me to engage in. And yes, you could say that is my choice, but let's not pretend this game wasn't designed around a different type of player and now the team is choosing to swing into a completely different direction because the harder content attracts streamers and provides more engagement online.

The game definitely doesn't cater to raiders, we get a single extreme every patch which can be cleared in a few hours, 4 savage fights every even patch, and if we're lucky 2 ultimates in the expansion. Casuals have housing, glamor, crafting, maps, RP, G-Posing, the gold saucer, standard dungeons, standard trials, standard raids, deep dungeons, field exploration, the story, and 90% of the time any new form of content is catered towards casuals or midcore, not raiders, chaotic was the one exception. I don't get where this raiders get all the content comes from, is it because its time gated and we're forced to do it weekly because I'd prefer if it wasn't.