Quote Originally Posted by Jeeqbit View Post
snip

1) SE's potential ability to design houses properly would mean they wouldn't require players to keep renewing subscriptions to maintain their plots, or to bid on new ones. For this reason, they've chosen the current system and decided to stick with it. More on this in point 3.

2) Using the lack of changes in their architecture as an excuse is giving them more good faith than they deserve this expansion. My logical conclusion is that work is being avoided, and the money reinvested into the game hasn't matched the profits it generates. This is backed by the fact that EW/DT lasted 6 months longer than HW/SB, while FFXIV had exponentially more players.

If anything, the lack of changes only strengthens my point: if the goal is to retain players with the least possible effort, it's logical they wouldn't rewrite spaghetti code, just like the content released has been subpar. They've just released a patch full of obvious bugs, and reworking the architecture would be a huge task for a company that has openly admitted to a shortage of team leaders, and exposed sensitive data in the form of a new blacklist. They are likely more comfortable just designing yet another dungeon and new glamour. The flexibility inside this comfort zone is so low that I don't remember a recent dungeon with 2 or 4 bosses, or a different number of trash packs.

3) "Almost nothing SE does is for sub retention" >>> This simply cannot be true. It's a live service game in a capitalist market. The company has shareholders and publicly available financial reports. If the developers weren't designing most of their game with sub retention in mind, they'd be out of a job — that's how they get paid.

The problem? They set the bar extremely low for these expectations, and thus don't produce enough content. The remedy to that are the overused FOMO/lockout systems. This doesn't align with what most of the community expects from the game, as long-lasting content is still desired, rather than just playing short-lived content for a locked reward. They managed to keep their current approach for a while due to factors like the WoW exodus and Covid, but once the MSQ dropped in quality, it was like opening Pandora's box. Long-term issues became far more discussed.

4) I do agree they could make better use of the content they're already creating. Unfortunately, it took a sharp drop in profits for Yoshi-P to finally admit that recently. Before Dawntrail, they never expressed any intent to provide players with more options, and for most people, doing high-end content was the only reliable way to extend the lifespan of a patch.