Quote Originally Posted by Xatsh View Post
A) design content faster
I enjoyed the read, as you had several valid points to give out (some of which I agree with, such as the linear progression), until you stated the quoted part. Short of hiring many more people, and bringing on a second director to the team, it's not something that can be made a reality. The 3-month expectations for content patches is actually very impressive as is with a game like this. Real world work conditions, the fact that it's people doing the work, and that there's only one director (who also travels frequently, as that's part of his job) makes it unreasonable to say that they need to "design content faster".

The problem you point out isn't necessarily that the content is lacking (because it really isn't if you include non-endgame/raid related material... which you really should), but rather that the direction of the game is the problem. What if content were rather limited in ilvl reward? What if progression rewards were upgrades, but in a minimal sense? That's kind of how games like XI and WoW (vanilla) worked. Although with WoW, raiding was pretty linear and WAY more restrictive. I don't think people would be happy with XIV if content were designed for 40-man groups or the like. Even exclusive 24-man content might be too demanding in this day and age, as even WoW struggles with their 25-man raid activity currently. Some FCs would be fine on that, but I'm quite certain that nearly every one of those people would naturally think that everyone should be fine with it too.

Bottomline is that no matter what they do, in a realistic sense, people will complain. Go to any game and I can guarantee you will find the following complaints at some point in time: "Not enough content", "Too easy", "Too hard", "Catering to the casuals", "'I'm quitting because of X complaint' threads", and so on.

We're stupidly predictable and never pleased. It's the way business works. This is why devs generally stick to their ideas without following their consumers demands without question. Unless it's an important, but broken system (which it really isn't), the devs just don't have much reason to go against the way they want their own game to work. If you've ever worked with others, or dealt with the public in general from a professional standing, you'd also realize how insulting the intelligence is of your fellow man and why we (the consumer) are not as smart (or right) as we like to think we are.