Lack of content on patch release

[CorbinDallas]

If you weren't here for 3.1 then you have absolutely no idea what a true zero content patch looks like, just saying.

More serious answer, it's a catch up patch, they've always been thin on content. Yeah they might be spacing out releases, but why is it such a big deal? You'll only be done with it in a matter of days then sit and complain about nothing to do. Take up crafting and gathering, we have lots to do this patch. That might not be "content" in your eyes but it is something to do. Worst case scenario, just stop playing the game for a while until the content you like doing comes out.

[Vhailor]

For me this latest patch has been the most lacklustre patch to date, after farming the new trial, getting the weekly drop from the new 24-man raid and doing what feels like the exact same Namazu quest 3 times per day there isn't much left to do within the patch.

Yeah, agreed. Like normal with Stormblood thus far, though. There's a lot of content in some sense: a new dungeon, new 24-man Raid, new Trial, new Beast Tribe, and of course the attendant QoL changes, MSQ additions, etc.

The problem is that it's all shallow as hell. There's a bit of a learning curve with Ridorana, which is fun. There's a learning curve with the EX Trial, also fun. The MSQ is fun. Annnnd once that 20 or so hours (tops) of content is done, there's nothing appreciably distinct from the equivalent content tier we had before 4.3. Same old shit, different coat of paint.

SE needs to slow down the pace of iLevel improvements, and introduce content that actually has some meat to it. There is one area of the update that features this, actually: but it's exclusive to crafters. The upgrade path to the new 3-star Crafting gear is suitably meaty. There's a nice mix of items required, there are some reasonable time-gates (unless you want to spend tons of money), and it's not a carbon copy of something we were doing a month ago (though it is more or less a mirror of content we were doing back when the last gearset released - but that was far enough back it feels alright, at least to me). It's worth noting, by the way, the differences between DoH / DoL upgrades introduced in 4.3, and those for combat jobs:

(1) The DoH / DoL gear stays relevant longer; I can count on it being BiS likely through to 4.5, just as the Ala Mhigan gear was BiS through 4.3. Combat gear? Hah. Not only does this make the DoH / DoL gear more desirable, but it also means that the various repeated mechanics required to obtain it don't feel so goddamned dull. I haven't made a push to farm for DoH / DoL gear crafting since 4.1, months and months ago. Combat gear, though? There's always a latest EX Trial; there's always a latest 24-person Raid; there's always an Expert Roulette; for the mid-core player, these activities just get drilled in for weeks or months until we're burnt out on them. Swapping the tilesets and the mechanics does very little to combat this burn-out, because it's still the same sort of content rotation.

(2) I can 'feel' the difference my new DoH / DoL gear makes. I can't feel the difference in combat gear. That exacerbates the feeling that 4.3 didn't really give us anything.

(3) The DoH / DoL gear is a significant time sink. Hundreds of timed node items are required, there's a ton of Yellow Scrip items needed. The Namazu currency puts something of a soft cap on progress. There's rotation planning, especially if you're new to 3-star items. There's long-term Meld planning and materia acquisition to occupy you once the items themselves are made. Combat jobs? Yeah, I'm spending what, maybe 3 hours per week on dungeons? Call it an hour in Ridorana, and three Expert Roulettes which take at most forty minutes each including queue time? We'll be closing in on 4.4's release date before it can compare to the time I spent on my DoH / DoL gear, and that's assuming I didn't decide to make extra copies of the gear for friends or profit. If I did, the DoH / DoL content - a simple couple-dozen recipes or so - just completely outclassed the new, fancy Dungeon / Raid / EX Trial.

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TL;DR - It's not that XIV doesn't have content, or doesn't get enough content added. The problem is that it's the wrong type of content. Ridorana feels fresh for maybe a run or two, at most; then it's just another possible item to get in the Alliance Roulette. The same sort of dynamic exists with the new Trial, and the new dungeon. New content has to be more than a fresh tileset and remixed mechanics, particularly when said content types are built to be repeated steadily for weeks or months on end. Eureka is a great example of what new content can - and should - look like; if SE can manage to release content like that regularly, and without displaying such amazing levels of incompetence in terms of balancing and general supporting systems, XIV will transform into a true AAA experience. Until such time as that, however, it's very much a one-trick pony. The game's great, but we're pretty much playing the same game we had in 2.1 / 2.2 or so, only with expanded Roulettes and a higher iLevel. That'll only entertain people for so long.

Edit / Addition:

This game was designed to be casual-friendly unlike most MMOs that want to gobble up all of your free time. Yoshi-P himself has said that he wants you to be able to play FFXIV and other games too.

Yeah, this gets thrown around a lot. Absolutely brilliant statement, and exceedingly deceptive. Two things I'd point out about it.

Firstly, FFXIV is not very casual-friendly. It's incredibly mechanics-intensive, which is quite punishing for people who are more casual gamers. There's a significant number of abilities available, and mastering them is complex. The 'real' end-game (Glamours and such) are murderously expensive, or insanely time-consuming to acquire. The Relic weapons - supposedly the casual player's path toward end-game level gear - have, prior to Eureka at least, been ridiculous time sinks. The storyline bloat and the sequential nature of the MSQ makes getting started a brutally time-intensive process as well (but, oh, wait, you can pay extra to skip this... what a convenient fix). FFXIV is good about enabling people to catch up to modest gear levels upon hitting level cap. That's really about it, as far as newbie-friendliness goes.

Secondly, aiming to be casual-friendly does not excuse Yoshi-P and the development team from treating shallowness almost as a point of pride. The original statement was a positive one (affirming commitment to a good experience for casual gamers), not a negative one (avoiding a good experience for anyone with more than 10 or so hours a week to play). So can we discard it as an excuse for the sort of bland bullshit SE has been feeding us for well over a year now?

[Remedi]

Firstly, FFXIV is not very casual-friendly. It's incredibly mechanics-intensive, which is quite punishing for people who are more casual gamers.

Let's not kid ourselves, the game is very easy all around, it only gets mechanically intensive when you reach savage and ultimate level, it's not that complex before.

[Maeka]

Firstly, FFXIV is not very casual-friendly. It's incredibly mechanics-intensive, which is quite punishing for people who are more casual gamers.

Only when you get to the non-Casual (Savage) Content.

Duty Finder is very casual-friendly except for a few outliers (Shinryu, and maybe Fluminis).

There's a significant number of abilities available, and mastering them is complex.

Not really. I haven't found a job yet that I couldn't play casually and passably well for Duty Finder content.

I've gotten NIN to 60, RDM to 59, PLD and WHM both on 70. Nothing about any of those jobs is all that hard.

The 'real' end-game (Glamours and such) are murderously expensive, or insanely time-consuming to acquire. The Relic weapons - supposedly the casual player's path toward end-game level gear - have, prior to Eureka at least, been ridiculous time sinks.

I don't know of any casual player who NEEDS the Relic Weapons. The current "Relic" weapon is from Eureka, and that one isn't that bad, I hear players being able to do it in 6-10 hours.

The storyline bloat and the sequential nature of the MSQ makes getting started a brutally time-intensive process as well (but, oh, wait, you can pay extra to skip this... what a convenient fix).

It can be done quite casually, an hour here, and hour there and you will eventually get there. That's how I did half of it, I would log on for an hour or two and whittle away at them and just enjoy them cutscenes and lore.

FFXIV is good about enabling people to catch up to modest gear levels upon hitting level cap. That's really about it, as far as newbie-friendliness goes.

Everything in Duty Finder and outside of Savage/Ex is casual-friendly, lol. FFXIV is a game you can log on for just a bit and do your daily roulettes, any beast tribes you're interested in and still have a little time to do put into other things too (gathering, GC turn-ins, what-not). Now if you're a casual player, then no maybe you can't afford the most expensive glamours, maybe you won't have a mansion, etc, but you don't NEED those things to have fun in FFXIV.

Secondly, aiming to be casual-friendly does not excuse Yoshi-P and the development team from treating shallowness almost as a point of pride. The original statement was a positive one (affirming commitment to a good experience for casual gamers), not a negative one (avoiding a good experience for anyone with more than 10 or so hours a week to play). So can we discard it as an excuse for the sort of bland bullshit SE has been feeding us for well over a year now?

If they did give things that were 10 hours per week of content, then casual players would get left in the dust because they simply couldn't keep up with that kind of ridiculous content release.

As I previously said, Yoshi-P says he wants us to play FFXIV for awhile, turn it off, and play something else for awhile too. He can't have a game like that if he dumps a ridiculous time sink that causes us to feel like we MUST play 10+ hours a week.

As it is, players have no control over themselves already, as evidenced by the relic weapon quests pre-Eureka where people would grind hour after hour after hour doing nothing but that grind and then burn out and then complain that they don't like FFXIV because it's too grindy. Nobody held a gun to their head and forced them to do that grind. Why do you think there's a 450 Tomestone Cap per week? Why do you think you can only do 12 beast tribe quests per day?

Because time-gating is the ONLY way to get players to limit how much they do, otherwise they would log on for 48 hours straight and gobble up all the content like greedy pigs at the feeding trough and then complain when it's all done and there's nothing left to do.

Players have no self-control, they've proven this in any MMORPG that has ever existed. They have to do it RIGHT NOW. They gotta have it NOW NOW NOW NOW. They can't proceed at a steady pace, oh no. It's gotta be ASAP.

EDIT: Just look at the whine threads about maintenance if you want a dose of players chomping at the bit to devour the content as soon as absolutely possible.

[Vhailor]

Only when you get to the non-Casual (Savage) Content.

Duty Finder is very casual-friendly except for a few outliers (Shinryu, and maybe Fluminis).

I disagree, unless you define 'casual' as 'experienced gamer who is time-limited'. My girlfriend is what I'd call a casual gamer: she's got a fair amount of free time, but has never strayed beyond the friendly confines of mobile games and the occasional Nintendo title. She wasn't comfortable running dungeons on her own until she'd progressed all the way to 70. Think about that: she sunk in hundreds of hours over weeks of effort before she was comfortable queuing up a Roulette on her own. Now that she's got enough experience, sure - anything short of EX / Savage / Ultimate content, she can do. But there's a steeper learning curve than you're admitting to.

I've gotten NIN to 60, RDM to 59, PLD and WHM both on 70. Nothing about any of those jobs is all that hard.

There's more complexity to the jobs than you're admitting to, and very little help provided. Consider a Bard, for example: for even your standard, run-of-the-mill dungeon run, you'll need to be able to maintain uptime on songs, watch people's TP / MP as appropriate, and maintain enough DoT to generate Rain of Death procs. That's just for standard trash pulls. To make matters worse, many of these demands are seen almost exclusively within dungeons, meaning there's little ability to practice - because oh, right, those Squadrons require quite a bit of progress before you can really take advantage of them. Really casual-friendly, that decision was.

Oh, and all of this of course is combined with handling increasingly diverse boss mechanics. It's a lot easier when you're doing your second, third, fourth job: all you're focused on is the ability usage, because mechanics are almost on autopilot by then. That first one's not so easy, though, particularly for people who are more casual gamers.

I don't know of any casual player who NEEDS the Relic Weapons. The current "Relic" weapon is from Eureka, and that one isn't that bad, I hear players being able to do it in 6-10 hours.

Yes, Eureka is easier (so far). I exempted that one from my post, if I remember correctly, but maybe not.

However, it's not about need. It's about who this content is accessible to, and who it's targeting: casual gamers on up. And in the past, it's been quite brutal.

I'd also point out that you've kind of made my point for me with this response, too. Introducing long grinds is perfectly OK, so long as it's not to the exclusion of more friendly goals.

Everything in Duty Finder and outside of Savage/Ex is casual-friendly, lol. FFXIV is a game you can log on for just a bit and do your daily roulettes, any beast tribes you're interested in and still have a little time to do put into other things too (gathering, GC turn-ins, what-not). Now if you're a casual player, then no maybe you can't afford the most expensive glamours, maybe you won't have a mansion, etc, but you don't NEED those things to have fun in FFXIV.

Depends on the player. Some will, some won't. And, no, not everything in the DF is casual-friendly, as I explained in more detail above, with an example player for evidence.

If they did give things that were 10 hours per week of content, then casual players would get left in the dust because they simply couldn't keep up with that kind of ridiculous content release.

So... what about Relics? What about Savage? What about Ultimate? SE is already making content for players with more time and/or experience.

As it is, players have no control over themselves already, as evidenced by the relic weapon quests pre-Eureka where people would grind hour after hour after hour doing nothing but that grind and then burn out and then complain that they don't like FFXIV because it's too grindy. Nobody held a gun to their head and forced them to do that grind. Why do you think there's a 450 Tomestone Cap per week? Why do you think you can only do 12 beast tribe quests per day?

Because time-gating is the ONLY way to get players to limit how much they do, otherwise they would log on for 48 hours straight and gobble up all the content like greedy pigs at the feeding trough and then complain when it's all done and there's nothing left to do.

Players have no self-control, they've proven this in any MMORPG that has ever existed. They have to do it RIGHT NOW. They gotta have it NOW NOW NOW NOW. They can't proceed at a steady pace, oh no. It's gotta be ASAP.

Wow, bias much? Since when is a different play style / more available time a reason for getting defensive on behalf of a development studio?

Here's the thing: FFXIV shoots itself in the foot with this crowd because it is so fucking shallow. If it would stop its steeply vertical progression tree, this problem would disappear. SE releases tons of content, as I said before, but when they eradicate the relevance of all content six+ months old, they leave players with an awfully small segment of content to focus on. Is it any wonder that when something truly new comes around, people gorge themselves on it?

Hell, look at the game most people in this 'not enough content' boat pine for: FFXI. It had time gates all over the place! 2-3 day spawn timers on HNMs (with competition risks!); 72-hour lockouts for Dynamis; lockouts on Einherjar; lockouts on Salvage. Want to know why people weren't bitching? Because all of it was relevant at the same time, so you could space things out. Dynamis a couple times a week. Einherjar a couple times a week. And these were long events!

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One other thing to consider: this vertical itemization path SE is on, and the rapid depreciation of items, is inherently anti-casual. Personally, I felt FFXI was more casual than XIV. If I took a break for a few months in XI, which I routinely did, my gear was still roughly as relevant as it was when I left. My Mog House wasn't cleared out and destroyed. My SPs and Linkshells hadn't replaced me to make space for someone new, because most content was quite flexible in terms of how many people could actually participate.

In FFXIV? None of that. My gear right now is significantly depreciated in three months, and almost what I'd consider baseline in six. Always. My house would be bulldozed, and I'd be left with a message along the lines of 'your shit's in storage, don't let the door hit you on the way out'. Any SP I had would have had to replace me, because every Duty in XIV requires exact group numbers for the most part.

SE can do better. They can build deeper content that stays relevant longer, and in the process silence complaints about having nothing to do, and make the game more friendly for people with erratic time needs. The only thing stopping them is themselves. And, the oddly defensive players on the forums who seem to think it's their job to defend problematic design decisions.

[Whocareswhatmynameis]

People have been complaining about this for YEARS.... the devs simply don't care. Which is sad.

There is a lot of content, but none of it takes very long to complete. So you do everything there is to do in like 2 days.

[Airget]

From the standpoint of challenges, the game does lack the content each VU. in 4.3 the challenging content is just the new EX, dungeon is a cakewalk and the other new battle content is tuned to be easy.

In theory the Ultimate content would be released at the same time as all other content but for the sake of allowing players to finish other content before grinding ultimate they hold it off for two weeks.

With Deep Dungeon I'm not certain but I do wish this content could see more production earlier in the patch cycle rather than the 3rd Version update, pretty much a year after Stormblood release, it provides the most bang for your buck when it comes to challenging content on top of RNG to get loot that other content doesn't provide.

Though there is also the question of wasted resources, aka Squadrons, releasing 3 new areas NPCs can go to with players does use up resources that could be used to make other content I honestly don't see the worth of doing Squadron instances since the game already provides a bunch of other ways to level a DOW/DOM. If they had worked it to be it's own entity unique from just npcs can go to dungeon with you and play as well as Tataru plays arcanist. . .

What could help a lot is if SE considered releasing standalone boss encounters of all the raids tuned to 8-man content. Imagine all the bosses but extreme versions, while yes it would require resources to produce it would have the benefit of already having the main assets designed for the boss while adding more layer on top of it.

Basically using what they deemed overtuned fora casual 24-man experience and create unique challenging 8-man encounters.

[Alleo]

Feels like most of the content of this patch won't be released for a while until eureka and deep dungeon eventually come out which seemingly could be anywhere from 2 weeks time and 2 months time.

I just wished that they had at least put one of the two casual updates in it. Ultima might be nice for hardcore raiders but its not something for casuals and thus we have to wait more weeks to get more content. I am fine if they dont release all of it with the patch but putting all of the meaty content for later releases feels just a bit bad. Stretching all of their extra content out like that really feels like they themselves dont believe that its longlasting content..even though the palace is still run even today so the new tower should keep us busy for a while.

It doesn't matter how much content is added at once. It's always the same idea of "take time off of work, rush all the content on the first day, complain there is nothing to do on day 2."

People make it their goal to do the content as fast as possible. They could release all the content that will ever be in Stormblood, at the expansions release, and in a week people will complain about nothing to do.

There will always be those people that can play a huge amount of hours per day and yes you probably wont have enough content for them to do. (Other than truly restricting everything with a weekly limit) But why should we force ourselves to just play the patch a minimum amount per day so that we might have enough for a few days more? This patch has nothing in it right now that takes huge time to complete. MSQ and any side quests can be done once. I read through every text slowly, I talk to all the NPC near the quest to see if they say something else, so I dont race through the MSQ. Heck with this patch we had another server problem so I could only do the last part of the MSQ later that day. Yet with doing everything without true rush I was done with the majority of the patch in 2 days.

Now I have only the daily quests and the weekly stuff left from the patch itself. How much more should we hinder ourselves so that the patch feels bigger than it is?

I have other achievements ingame and as soon as a friend comes back from his break we will try to do palace runs again but shouldnt a new patch itself at least keep the people busy for a few weeks? And leave the rest of the game and achievements for those weeks till the next patch comes out? Right now it feels more like the patch is done in less than one week and I have to try to find something else from older content to find, to keep me busy for the rest.

[Remedi]

The only way to make patches have a longer lasting feeling would be ditching the idea of casual from running 24 man and have them to be a real raids feeling. There's really no other way. Maybe also tuning dungeons to be much harder that it's not a 15 min clear.
Outside of that there's really no way that you can make lasting content outside of grinding.
No game had patch content lasting for longer than a day, what they had however were walls either timed/skill/grind/gear walls that lead you to take time, be it forming a group, gear up or skill up or wait to get things done.

Think about it as the game change that it was CD beignj resetted on wipe. You now save so much time between wipes that a 100 pulls inc requires much less time to be cleared. In the same way, having no real lock on the content, and a duty finders too has speed up it's consumption incredibly, but the creation time has not really speed up.

That is why Legion has spread all the quests of the story on a timer, why they are still reliant on mission tables and why they now release raids on .5 patches which leads to why now they are able to release an expansion before the 1 year mark of the release of the last raid.
And this is important because it's a known fact that the FFXIV dev team and the Wow team do look at each other.

And honestly i MIGHT just be fearmongering here now but I believe they'll split story in parts next even before the last patch of an expansion

[Remus]

This game is wide as an ocean but only deep as a puddle.