November? really?

[Colorful]

Clearly someone's never played other mmos. lets look at WoW's 5.4 lasted over a year, their average patch cycle is 6 months upwards. FFxiv has some of the quickest patch cycles to.

The thing is, excluding Warlords and Cata the patches had more content than FFXIV for the most part. It's not quite fair to compare 6 months for 10+ bosses to 4-5 months for 4. WoW has gone down the shitter though, so I don't suppose that matters. Yoshida did make mention of increasing the patch delay to make larger patches (similar to WoW), but believed it wasn't the way to go due to people unsubscribing, and that he hasn't built loyalty or whatever to keep people subscribed for that long without new content.

[Azper]

Completely agree, but that's the same reason we have a right to debate it. I think everyone's being really polite and civil towards each other in this thread, even when disagreeing, and it's really nice.

Maybe you don't realize how you and your attitude come across. Telling people their expectations are unrealistic and that they need a reality check hardly seems polite or civil. Maybe that's just me, though.

[SuperZay]

Clearly someone's never played other mmos. lets look at WoW's 5.4 lasted over a year, their average patch cycle is 6 months upwards. FFxiv has some of the quickest patch cycles to.

WoW also always has 8-9 expert dungeons to run, not just two. FFXIV patches are much smaller in comparison.

[BreathlessTao]

Telling us that you're going to be lazy and create 210 pink gear that has random old appearances so you don't have to develop new models... lol.. another easy peasy ctish raid..probably with ilvl 200 or 190 gear.. and mob grinding the islands for those pink items.. I'm sorry, but since HV release this game is going the route of 1.0 failure.

Indeed, the shortcuts in this game so that designers don't actually have to come up with new designs are rather...peculiar. HW being an actual expansion - and look at all the "new" leveling gear reusing models from old tomestone pieces! Look at leveling dungeon drops using the very same models with different paintjobs! Meh. Void Ark also looks interesting, but yes, it also looks like a lot of rehashed designs again.

Their dev team is not very large... let's forget about deserving vacation and let's get better servers and stop being cheap.

This has been increasingly glaring indeed. I don't think I've seen or heard variations of "hardware limitations" and "network restrictions" and "the team is small" and "would be too difficult" used as frequently and as many times in other games as I have been seeing and hearing it here. When at the same time boasting large numbers and reporting huge profits. It's shady and it leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

Hire more staff and quit releasing boring content and content that doesn't really do jack all for the gaming experience..oh look something like a moogle house!!.. sort of... This is what they spend their time working on while there are so many other glaring issues?

Just take a look at the dungeon models. ... No wait, model. I don't think there's more than one. It has been the same since...the beginning? And for quite a long while we have been saying how boring and un-fun it is. Effect? Nothing. We even get the expert dungeons reduced from three to two, and while HW brought two that were visually new, at least, 3.1 is bringing one new and one we already have. They work on adding features and new visuals and furnitures to houses? When the whole housing system is a huge letdown, with availability so disproportionate it's out of this world? With no plans on actually fixing it, just a vague "we'll add more servers in the future", when it's evident that that can't solve the core issue? Um.

The most sickening part of this entire situation is that ironic Yoshida npc quest that tells us they learned from their mistakes and actually listen to their players now.. what a load of garbage. They aren't going to listen until they see how many subs vanished at the end of September/October. Artificially inflating subs with promises of Twintania mounts from ppl dumping their cash to do it, because their actual friends refuse to touch this game is not going to be there this month. It's time for the SE development staff to "get good."

This here. I clearly remember phrases like "break of trust" in regards to 1.0 - and then they went ahead and did it again, first with the housing, and a few more times with other things since then. And sorry, but I don't feel like they're working to repair any of it. The cash shop, the retainers, the hair design contest, the transfers - er. No. Just no. They might be listening to their Japanese playerbase, for all I know, but I can't feel like they're listening to anyone else, not when so many things are broken and left alone for so long. I'm not doubting the fact that they're working their butts off, either, they do seem too passionate to slack off. The problem is that the focus is not where it should be.

Viktor, you're speaking truth there.

[Daralii]

WoW also always has 8-9 expert dungeons to run, not just two. FFXIV patches are much smaller in comparison.

That's also 8-9 at launch, none added afterwards, and the bulk of those are just harder versions of the leveling dungeons.

[rainichan]

snip

That's all fine and good, but to say that the devs shouldn't have like 3-5 days off as a "vacation" after a near 2 year grind with probably 1 day off every week or so - if that - because they want their shiny new content NOW NOW NOW? Is Not Okay in any context. They're likely close to a schedule that mangaka work on: 18-21 hours of your day is dedicated to storyboarding and drawing, and you get the 3-6 hours not taken up by that to eat/sleep. They might not be as hardcore as that, but they're likely close. So no, they had a well-deserved vacation, heaven forbid it delays the next patch some.

Editing to add: basic economics here: yeah, FFXIV might generate decent sales numbers, but the money generated from subscribers/cash shop does NOT just stay within the FFXIV dev team, it goes to the parent company as a whole. They get a budget they're allowed to work with, and it's the parent company that approves more money usage. If they don't approve it, or only approve part of what they ask for, IT IS NOT THE DEVS FAULT.

[ViktorMestrovic]

There was more raid content in the first 4 months of rift than the entire existence of FFXIV 2.0 If you're going to compare the content off FFXIV and things to do.. let's just erase some of these things from our lists because they all of these: crafting.. most mmo's if not all being compared to this game have a crafting system, in many ways curb stomping this game in terms of relevance. PVP.. yes they also have pvp and, again, they do it better than this game.

[ViktorMestrovic]

Dungeons... following a raid format of gaming... yes they have these too, in equal or greater abundance. End game raids... WoW rift, wildstar etc... can have more bosses in a single raid encounter than 2 sets of FFXIV patches... but they usually release more than one raid at a time to work on progression.. a single WoW expansion offers roughly 12 bosses to tackle. They release expansions with a similar schedule... but honestly... a single WoW expansion is like HW + 3 content patches. Rift pumped out like 4 or 5 raids in rapid succession to keep up with their community.

[ViktorMestrovic]

SWTOR suffered heavily from bugs with regards to their raid encounters and failed to pump out more content quickly enough and had fewer fanboys crutching the subs. What this game has going for it is controller support and console support. The other games look graphically dated, but contain the same boring dailies and ability to level other classes blah blah.. of every RAID based mmo to exist this game has provided the least amount of content and yes.. this game is a raid based MMO..that's their midgame/endgame model.If you can't see that, you are beyond help. Similarly, if you think FFXIV has more content in its patches etc than other raid based mmo's.. you are also mentally, tragically screwed. FFXIV borrows from other titles and attempts to innovate, but its development team is too small.

[Greyfrost]

Now would have been the perfect time to add relics, to be honest

The grind (If any) would at least give people something to do while waiting for the hype.