Where is the "never before seen content"?

[polyphonica]

We may see another upswing around 4.4 because of the Monster Hunter Collab, but I guarantee it will plummet severely come 4.5, especially if we're given no new surprises beyond more Eureka.

Stormblood has basically fed off constant hype yet poor sustainability. Be it Ultimate, PvP, Eureka all the way to something as simple as job gauges. They were all hyped substantially despite only Ultimate paying any real dividends. And if 4.5 does repeat the drought of 3.5, I cannot help wonder if people's faith will have been spent. After all, if they follow predictable patterns, we're looking at a very lengthily drought with virtually nothing to do. Stormblood was supposed to SE's chance to be innovative. Instead, they played it punishingly safe, going so far as to make everything even easier. I just can't see them getting away with a retread of that same philosophy come 5.0.

I doubt it's that dire. By the time 4.5 comes around, they'll have Fanfest and announce the next expansion. This will start bringing people back who took a break so they can catch up on before 5.0 hits. And even if 5.0 ends up following the exact same pattern to the letter, it'll still sell well as if it were a single-player game -- people will come back, buy the expansion, sub for a few months, and then take a break again until 5.5 in prep for 6.0. That itself is a large and valuable market for this game. In the meantime, there are still enough people who don't mind the pattern to keep the game afloat.

In the end, as much as people complain about the familiar pattern, this is SE's most financially-successful MMORPG by far. At this point, it can afford to play it safe until it rides into the sunset, if that's its fate. The real question, as even SE has alluded to recently, is how long they want to keep this game running, or if they hope to transition their focus to a new MMO. That decision will probably be the key factor in terms of how much room there'll be for changing the formula (probably after 5.x, though, as they've said before that 5.x concludes the current story arc).