Why don't we get monthly updates?

[KamikazeMan]

Please read before responding. I'm not asking for big 2.1 style updates every month; that's crazy talk! I'm asking why doesn't SE break down their big tri-quad monthly updates into smaller monthly updates? Here is an example of how I think the 2.1 should have roughly played out:

August - game launches. People rush to endgame, of course, then complain about lack of content. Not all players of course.

September - Beastmen quests, aesthetician, and treasure hunting get introduced.

October - Hard mode dungeons and pharos sirius

November - Crystal Tower and new story quests

December - EX primals and Ultimate weapon HM

And of course more things as well, but for the most part, I feel this method of update would be better. Why? Rather than feed the updates in one large gulp every few months (with possible delay because of one small thing not working), doing it this way lets people enjoy the content at their own pace and guarantees we get something new every month.

Don't get me wrong! I enjoy the big updates, but the idea of knowing once you've pretty much done all these is to do when each updates hits and need to wait 3-4 months for new content is starting to feel...meh. Been this way since 1.0.

[Lyrinn]

There was a big dev post on this somewhere. Long story short, supposedly, releasing everything in one mega patch lets them get content out faster in the long run.

*Don't shoot me, I'm just a messenger*

[NefGP]

because content takes time & money to produce plus maintenance to implement things, which often results in other stuff that was fine before getting busted and then that has to get fixed etc etc....


3 months is fine, though it used to be 2 back in the day for MMOs. 1 a month isn't so hot, and I'd rather get 1 giant update with a bunch of stuff then a bunch of mini updates that don't do much individually.

[Jellyfish]

Go play gw2 and you'll see why monthly/weekly updates are complete bullcrud

[EdwinLi]

all companies have different ways to handle major updates.

for this game we are given a large amount after 2.5 months.

However, 2.1 was a month late due to issues we had during the first month of FF14ARR release.

[Lafiele]

Go play gw2 and you'll see why monthly/weekly updates are complete bullcrud

Ya, super buggy completely untested updates which will then be rid with tonnes of hotfixes but even then the bugs still remain and nothing is patched except for it being quietly swept under the rug.

[Mazi]

They did release a official statement about why they do it this way instead of monthly updates.

Essentially it boiled down to with one big update you get one big mess of bugs that you can then fix vs every month release something, break it, have to fix it, next month thing comes out, breaks the previous month, fix fix fix blah blah blah.

[Codek]

a few notes:
-Most content does not get built in a month.
-Creating a layout where developments teams finish their projects in a rotating cycle takes lots of planning.
-Breaking these development cycles into branch builds also takes lots of planning.
-Testing these multiple branches becomes complicated.
or
-Focus testing a single piece of content may reveal big issues very late in the development process which causes bad delays.

Overall, it creates more risk, more complications, and lower quality of the patches for when they get pushed out.