Lack of content on patch release

[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?