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

[Jeeqbit]

That's nonsense. Just look at WoW. They can release one major patch after another with countless new content, events, new maps, gameplay, and so on. Players then consume what they want, and especially how much of it they want, without time pressure, without stress, and without having to do nothing for months. WoW is also an old game and costs less than Final Fantasy, since you don't have to pay for extra storage space with real money every month.

From my understanding, that's a recent thing. WoW had "9 month content drought" complaints and grind RNG complaints for years until very recently when they bought out a game studio with 100 employees and got them all to work on WoW. Unless SE goes and buys out a local game studio in Tokyo with 100 employees, it's reasonable for SE to be in the boat WoW was before they did that.

[ViinaS]

Yes. The actual over 4 month is much too long. And many people forget that this also means a whole major patch less in a year. The content is much too thin.

And never, ever forget:
3 months per patch + whatever till next expac = guaranteed 15 months sub + ???
5 months + whatever = 25 months sub + ???

So you pay at least for 10 more months for nothing new. So depending on your sub it's 120 bucks or more you gotta pay.
And the only way the wait before a new expac can go is up, not down with how they do things.

[TaleraRistain]

I don't think it's likely patches will go back to 3 months. That was not a good schedule for the developers. It was leading to overwork and burnout. And while we deal with that in other places like here in the US, I've gathered the culture with it in Japan is much worse. It seems like bringing that back would be detrimental to the game.

[Catwho]

From my understanding, that's a recent thing. WoW had "9 month content drought" complaints and grind RNG complaints for years until very recently when they bought out a game studio with 100 employees and got them all to work on WoW. Unless SE goes and buys out a local game studio in Tokyo with 100 employees, it's reasonable for SE to be in the boat WoW was before they did that.

Yeah, and while it's true that WoW caught a LOT of flak for that, they learned from their mistake and have never let the game go that long again without any new content.

In FFXIV"s case, It's not like we don't also get the steady drip feed of other stuff throughout the cycle of a patch.

I don't think it's likely patches will go back to 3 months. That was not a good schedule for the developers. It was leading to overwork and burnout. And while we deal with that in other places like here in the US, I've gathered the culture with it in Japan is much worse. It seems like bringing that back would be detrimental to the game.

I also do not think they can safely compress the patch cycle any more without reducing scope. QA is already suffering because the game is so big. Fred Brooks said of software development: "A baby will always take 9 months to grow to matter how many women are assigned to the task."

[Yuella]

Or maybe people need to have a life outside of FFXIV and only play 12 hours per week instead of 12 hours per day and exhaust all contents before the next patch.

[Supersnow845]

Or maybe people need to have a life outside of FFXIV and only play 12 hours per week instead of 12 hours per day and exhaust all contents before the next patch.

You can play 12 hours a month and still exhaust the games content

[hynaku]

They should just have a new expansion every year and have patches at 3 months at a time.

[Khutulun]

The content issue may ease up in 8.0 short of Square making the galaxy brain choice of splitting dev teams again.

Tbh though, I think the larger problem is content replay value. With how much content exists in the game... you'd think the time between patches would be less of a problem in terms of engagement than it presently is. This game is operating on a pretty fierce treadmill rn.

[boop03572]

If Square pushes 8.0 to 2027, they'll lose by default to Warcraft.

They certainly wouldn't lose me. I'm completely done with WoW forever even if they start spewing expac worth of content for free every 6 months. Besides I'm only like halfway through all of the achievements in FFXIV so even if SE completely stops producing new content there will be at least 2-3 years before I start having issues with no content