Release 8.0 faster. And bring back 3 months between patches.

[Jeeqbit]

The current pacing would be fine if they:

a) Reorganized the schedule of the known things: Why we have to wait almost a year in to get a Field Operation and the relic weapon grind? The first half of the expansions is literally void of side stuff to do.

b) Find ways to add longevity and replayability to the content they release, especially normal modes.

I agree with those things, particularly the 2nd one since the content is extremely scripted and ends up going exactly the same too often. I do personally find lots to do in the first half of the expansion, but it wouldn't bother me if they rearrange things either.

c) It's not worth to invest resources making High End fights for 24 or more people. See what happened to the Chaotic mode, or even worse in the Forked Tower.

I don't agree with this one however, because there are plenty of examples of 24 people being fine. Alliance Raids are one example, and Occult Crescent CEs, Bozja CEs, CLL, Dalriada and DR are examples of where it succeeded. Arguably, hunts and large boss FATEs are other examples of large scale fights that work.

The problem isn't the scale of the fight but that they have a mechanic that requires every single person to get it right. 24 people will not universally get a mechanic right, because a certain percentage of them (pretty large percentage in FFXIV) will not be good at them. They should just make 8 people need to get it right. This worked so well for CLL and was a proof of concept. Find 8 competent players then let the others be so bad at the game they wipe 50 times if they want, and it strikes the perfect balance for what FFXIV is.

[ForteNightshade]

The main reason they do not have 3.5 month intervals anymore is because they don't want to overwork their staff anymore. Preventing burnout and keeping them passionate is quite important and along with this, they enforce holidays on people overworking themselves, rotate roles and allow people to transfer to a different role.

The gap is really quite fine for people who do all of the content; the problem is that most people do not do all of the content so they finish MSQ and then they are done for the rest of the 19-20 weeks until the next patch. Raiders might just do the raids then say they are done. But a smaller minority do all the content for achievements or mounts and are pretty satisfied.

I somewhat disagree here. The content on demand per patch simply isn't enough even if you do everything. 7.3 is only two weeks old and even if you're playing at a snail's pace you will have everything done unless you've deliberately put it off. The sole exception to this is if you play at an incredibly sparse pace, e.g., 1-2 hours a week max. While that definitely is the allotted time some players have, it's a comparable extreme to those putting in 30+ hours.

It should also be noted that it isn't necessarily the amount of content which is the problem, but rather the lack of longevity. Case in point, treasure maps and such are cool, but expecting that to carry you for 4-5 weeks is pushing it. Especially if Cosmic Exploration isn't to your flavour. Which, considering the drop off rate a mere week later was enormous. I'd hazard a guess in saying most people didn't vibe with it. So treasure maps are now carrying the load for over two months. Yes, there's the EX and Unreal, but for non raiders those aren't content. Even if you do dabble, the Unreal is two kills per week while the EX is 50 runs or however long your sanity lasts trying to farm beyond that for a sub 5% drop rate.

They seem to cause more problems than they solve. Plus I heard of a cheat system that was implement within a monitor itself, technically independent from the computer, making it impossible to detect. People will always find a way around it and all it ends up doing is making it annoying to login or false positives. In any case, they see it as going against privacy laws in various countries.

To be blunt, we've long since moved past the point of no return regarding third party stuff. The sheer number of downloads has far exceeding it being worth the risk for SE. Just to put this into perspective, one brought up recently on the discussion reddit has 5 million downloads. And that's only the third most popular one; fourth if you count parsers. What they're doing now is the only solution they will ever implement.

[Zoreth]

The main reason they do not have 3.5 month intervals anymore is because they don't want to overwork their staff anymore. Preventing burnout and keeping them passionate is quite important and along with this, they enforce holidays on people overworking themselves, rotate roles and allow people to transfer to a different role.

The gap is really quite fine for people who do all of the content; the problem is that most people do not do all of the content so they finish MSQ and then they are done for the rest of the 19-20 weeks until the next patch. Raiders might just do the raids then say they are done. But a smaller minority do all the content for achievements or mounts and are pretty satisfied.

I mean, the gap before the expansion isn't good. But there's always been a massive patch lull before an expansion release. It is a problem they have tried to solve by splitting the .5 MSQ in half, doing most of the collab event re-runs, and the mog tome system they added. They also once told us "we can finish off all the relics" in that time. And it's proven not to be a problem by the fact that, despite the huge gap before Dawntrail, people returned to the game and the population almost reached what it did when the game went viral in 2021 before Endwalker launch.

Obviously the population reduced since Dawntrail, but the fact it increased the amount it did at its actual launch shows most people can wait and just resubscribe later.
I mean, it will help for Ultimate raiders, yes. But plenty of people don't do that. That's why they said about finishing off relic weapons (I think that was in Heavensward), but given we now also have Field Operations in the last patch it also helps.
They seem to cause more problems than they solve. Plus I heard of a cheat system that was implement within a monitor itself, technically independent from the computer, making it impossible to detect. People will always find a way around it and all it ends up doing is making it annoying to login or false positives. In any case, they see it as going against privacy laws in various countries.

I agree with their approach of trying to implement a lot of third-party features into the game. The problem is mainly that they are too slow at doing it and do not prioritize it at all.
They don't do it because most people wouldn't want it since it would create toxicity in the game. There is no point in it when DPS doesn't matter unless you wipe to enrage, and if you wipe to enrage then you know you need to try and increase the DPS of your party - such as by getting foods, pots, asking or observing if others are using core rotation abilities.
Maybe they will do that. They at least plan to for the next Variant dungeons.

Im glad that you respond with your opinions and give me insight to think in a different way tho i dont agree with you on everything.

[Jeeqbit]

7.3 is only two weeks old and even if you're playing at a snail's pace you will have everything done unless you've deliberately put it off. The sole exception to this is if you play at an incredibly sparse pace, e.g., 1-2 hours a week max. While that definitely is the allotted time some players have, it's a comparable extreme to those putting in 30+ hours.

Well I can give some examples. Extreme trials get learned and often farmed 50-100 times. Personally, I spread that out and do, say, 1-6 clears a day (that is in theory up to an hour but doesn't account for wipes or waiting for fills). If the fight is easy enough, I often just help out enrage parties (which can be traps) and then it can take me a month, because helping people get the clear can be fun.

I am also doing Frontline once a day to progress the Series rank, farming nuts to augment as much tomestone gear and crafted gear as I can or finish relics.

Realistically, I still have old things to do. For example, I just finished capping my last Phantom Job and my last +2 gear. And I really did not even finish Cosmic Exploration, because getting so many points is the sort of thing I'm doing when there's absolutely nothing else left. I think that is SE's intention as well, that there are probably things you didn't do yet to catch up on.

treasure maps and such are cool, but expecting that to carry you for 4-5 weeks is pushing it.

Treasure maps are another thing. While the content itself is pretty boring, working towards the mount tokens can take a long time due to the rarity of getting to the final stage. And during that time it can be a social event you do every few days with a friend (or friends). I did this a lot through Endwalker.

Especially if Cosmic Exploration isn't to your flavour. Which, considering the drop off rate a mere week later was enormous. I'd hazard a guess in saying most people didn't vibe with it. So treasure maps are now carrying the load for over two months. Yes, there's the EX and Unreal, but for non raiders those aren't content.

That's really exactly my point though. "Cosmic isn't your flavour". "For non-raiders it's not content". "I'm not interested in getting the mounts". These sorts of reasons are what really result in the majority of people feeling there's no content. They don't engage with it the way SE intended and dismiss it as valid content, leaving the 100,000 - 200,000 ish achievement hunters (a minority, of course) satisfied because they just do everything and are motivated by collecting and doing everything.

On the other hand, if someone does somehow manage to get through everything and get all the mounts and rank everything up really quickly including Cosmic and Phantom Jobs etc, then the question becomes that maybe they don't prioritize their health, eating and sleeping properly and that this isn't SE's fault.

I do think that SE needs to try to make the content interesting and replayable to more people, since it seems they make different content for different types of players, but they at least seem to have accepted that is an issue because they are trying to make a lot of content have dynamic difficulty going forward.

[Volgia]

I think the biggest problem I have is that people say there's nothing to do in the game, and when you point out things that there's to do they just say that it isn't their flavor... Or it's too hard, or it's too grindy, or there's always an excuse.

[Supersnow845]

Yoshi p literally went on record last LL saying that their strategy of “over 5 patches release 6 different types of content and hope everyone does every piece of content otherwise you are going to come up short on content” is decidedly not working and is the foundation of why they pivoted with quantum

Most people aren’t that excessive with their content exclusions, usually it amounts to not wanting to do high end content or not wanting to do what is seen as grindy content. If you can only give people with said mild exclusions content in 2-3 out of 5 patches in a 2 year expansion cycle then yes you aren’t releasing enough content. I mean hell outside of OC’s content design discussions peoples biggest complaint with it was simply that it had nothing in the middle. Forked is annoyingly difficult for a 48 man and everything else can be cleared dead on the floor for 95% of it

The current games party cycle relies on the idea everyone does every content and that just isn’t true and acting like that’s a player problem isn’t going to fix the issue

[Teno]

The main reason they do not have 3.5 month intervals anymore is because they don't want to overwork their staff anymore. Preventing burnout and keeping them passionate is quite important and along with this, they enforce holidays on people overworking themselves, rotate roles and allow people to transfer to a different role.

Lol please. Keeping a sane work environment is one fundamental thing, not doing the job right is another, entirely different one. And it's the second thing here...

[XtremePrime]

Warcraft just announced their next expansion (Midnight) for 2026. Both the current WoW expansion (War Within) and Dawntrail released around the same timeframe in 2024.
If Square pushes 8.0 to 2027, they'll lose by default to Warcraft.

[theunhappypotato]

I think the biggest problem I have is that people say there's nothing to do in the game, and when you point out things that there's to do they just say that it isn't their flavor... Or it's too hard, or it's too grindy, or there's always an excuse.

imagine wanting to learn a fight by dying 500 times, when i can just stand inlimsa and be mad at the toxic raider community for gatekeeping and getting an entire expansion catered to them /s

[Volgia]

imagine wanting to learn a fight by dying 500 times, when i can just stand inlimsa and be mad at the toxic raider community for gatekeeping and getting an entire expansion catered to them /s

Sarcasm aside... the only thing I've had to listen is the "toxic casual community" cry that the AoE they have seen 500 times in a dungeon still gets them, over and over again.