COVID showed why the Developers need to release Relic content sooner.

[Euphares]

-snip-

While this sentiment does have merit, and is refreshing in the age of companies exploiting every ounce of money from its players.

There is still a content threshold not being met in this game (imo), especially when you consider the X.Y patches aren't even the full package and major features are gated behind X.YZ patches which are also staggered.

And some people might not like this, but when you compare an entire patch in this game to other MMO's, its basically peanuts; and yet this game costs effectively the same as other games on top of having micro-transactions. I don't think that this is sustainable, and if everyone just quit after consuming this sparse content we're given the game would quickly lose lots of revenue. For even when I was a casual player (2 hrs of playtime a day, sometimes 2 days), I completed patches in less than a month. FF14 is really lucky in that its gotten a lot of (deserved) attention and traction, and has avoided a lot of traps other MMO's have fallen into because its a newer game, but I also feel like the devs are creating pitfalls for themselves that will ultimately hurt this game's lifespan.

My solution: Stop spreading patches out and just front-load them at launch. Things that we get teasers for should just drop with the X.Y patch, it would feel a lot better to stay subbed for two consecutive months and quit instead of unsubbing, resubbing, then unsubbing again, to consume every mini-patch. Redo the code to allow in hot-fixes, and release mini-content updates that way and much quicker, and if the current code doesn't allow it then stop putting out stuff until it does, I would've had no problem waiting six-months to allow the devs to update a lot of the subpar coding that restricts them and this game a lot. Because I at least would know that this would affect the game positively in the future.

As far as what new content they could put in to bridge the gaps, I would suggest adding in incentives to visit older zones and ways to keep old content evergreen, roulette's do a good job of this, but they are once a day. FATES, Side-Quests and more broadly the entire over-world in this game needs an overhaul to be worth traveling to instead of players just naturally afking in cities in between duities. Because the first thing I thought when seeing that ARR zones have flying is "who cares?" Due to the fact that travel in this game is already quick enough due to a well-made teleport system, and the fact that after you outlevel the zones there's nothing that warrants a revisit. Even something as simple as 'go complete a hunt-log in an old zone for progress on an end-game system' would be very good. XIV has a giant, beautiful world with tons of nifty nooks-and-crannies, but its wasted because virtually all things worth doing are instanced.

[Maleficent]

My solution: Stop spreading patches out and just front-load them at launch. Things that we get teasers for should just drop with the X.Y patch, it would feel a lot better to stay subbed for two consecutive months and quit instead of unsubbing, resubbing, then unsubbing again, to consume every mini-patch.

I suspect this solution was the problem to which its solution was to "spread patches out" instead of "front-loading them at launch".

I also suspect you may have unintentionally stated a more achievable solution to the problem of "unsubbing, resubbing, then unsubbing again, to consume every mini-patch" :

For the tail end of each major patch just "stay subbed for two consecutive months and quit". It should feel a lot better.


Jokes aside, stay safe everyone and be well.

[kaynide]

The game was designed for people to keep playing. You'll find there's plenty of people here who never unsub. Some people just like to pretend content they don't like doesn't count as content.

To those people, the most logic answer is "Unsub and come back later".

Not really a response to you directly, more of an “I agree and also blahblah”

But, Pretty much what you said. I will often take a break and play other games, but I never unsubscribe since I can still do dailies or whatever to earn some coin or a quick roulette.


In my case I’m happy to keep paying monthly fee even if I only play an hour or so a week. FFXIV is my fallback where I always know I can go and do something when I’ve got nothing else going on.

That said, if certain content isn’t someone’s “thing”, or if they are getting burned out too fast, they should consider unsubbing, cutting down on playtime or picking up a side game. Guildwars 2 was a pretty good alt for me for a while, especially because no monthly sub. It’s always good to play/try other things.

[kaynide]

My solution:...:

It’s not a bad idea to have a ton of extra content frontloaded, but it causes problems:
Certain players blaze through the content very fast, so unless it was hella-grindy, they will still run out of things to do. Moreover, it will make it hard for everyone else to catch up (which isn’t a bad thing necessarily).

I think being upfront about having a very time consuming grind to get BiS, but being very transparent along the lines of making the grind super easy when it’s no longer current. Like how easy older tomestone gear is to get.

It would mean people who absolutely want BiS will work hard for it/have something to do, but when it’s no longer BiS that particular step becomes es easy to catch up on.

[ForteNightshade]

... which is something they explicitly said they won't be doing for this relic due to player feedback.
That's why we only had relic quests heavy on reusing old stuff in ARR and HS. And since they've moved away from that approach they would have needed to take notable time and manpower from other content to make relic stuff happen earlier.

Except they are. While Bozja is available, you'll be able to do separate quests that essentially works like the old relics. Yoshida even came out and admitted his surprise at how much feedback they received asking for the old system back as they disliked Eureka.

[Krotoan]

I'm not sure how its entitled. No amount of preparation can completely mitigate something to the scale of Covid(global pandemic,) however it quite literally looked like they had zero fail-safes in place. We truly don't know how deep the damage to the game's future content schedule runs but we can speculate.

Entitled in that regardless of severity of the reason, it's been asked that the GAME we play continue to have stuff to do. Does this not sound like slightly misplaced priorities and expectations? We lost a seasonal event. They said they plan to remain on schedule for the rest of the updates.

In a game that has already skeletal content releases, their current methodology just doesn't work, and we are directly observing the consequences of the stubbornness from them, and I feel Shadowbringers will forever be tarnished as the 'what now' expansion which is such a shame because it started off so strong.

While I don't feel the same your perspective is just as valid. Truly if they maintain their pace they will lose players like you, but how many of the players are as desperate for content as you are? It's been pretty consistent for the last couple patches and as the TYPE of content has changed it was to be expected that the actual content of the updates changed. Different things take different development investments and as we know the team rarely changes size (not the devs fault, SE likely don't provide them with extra headcount regardless of success), the speed at which we get things will change.

All the updates they are putting forth are extremely welcome and good additions to the game, I'd never say otherwise. But they are not worth a six-month content drought. I resubbed at the very tail-end of this patch and I'm still feeling the effects the lull is having(worth noting that I am someone who enjoys pretty much everything this game has to offer.)

Additionally, there is nothing suggesting that this won't be a pattern for 5.4, 5.5, and maybe even the next expansion. Sure people are okay with a one-time deal, but can we really say its acceptable if it becomes the new norm? Should we be okay with such giant gaps for content that rarely has longevity? In my opinion I don't think so and I think its valid to call it out as a flaw of the dev team.

Why would something with a cause like a once in a lifetime pandemic REPEAT? They are adjusting, they continue to work to produce our GAME despite what goes on in the world. If the reason the updates come slower is because people outside are DYING I'm absolutely fine with it being slower or non existant. There is also the possibility a significant person or department gets decimated by the virus. What will you say then? They should have planned for people to die?

If we are expected to still pay the full subscription during this crisis then its not unreasonable at all to expect the devs to remain somewhat on track during it as well.

Therein lies the misconception. You are NOT expected to pay during a dearth of content. You are welcome to stop until it resumes. Therefore it is unreasonable to expect that the devs maintain pace even with extremely impactful unforseen global disasters.

[Driavna]

Except they are. While Bozja is available, you'll be able to do separate quests that essentially works like the old relics. Yoshida even came out and admitted his surprise at how much feedback they received asking for the old system back as they disliked Eureka.

This. However, I'm miss remembering or he also mentioned that this second option will come on a later date?

[ItMe]

Except they are. While Bozja is available, you'll be able to do separate quests that essentially works like the old relics. Yoshida even came out and admitted his surprise at how much feedback they received asking for the old system back as they disliked Eureka.

Exactly.
They are.
They're doing new shit and old shit.
That's a lot of content and that supports my point that having it ready earlier would have detracted from making other content.

[Derio]

If they are going to make the first stage always this simple. They need to release it on the X.15 patch

We are going from a complete content drought to a complete content overflow, not that I am complaining

[TheRealQuah]

You act like the developers can't multitask and develop multiple pieces of content at once. Besides, lets be honest, most of the content in FFXIV is re-using the same assets just in different ways. It's not like they're re-inventing the wheel here.

Have they been short staffed over the years? Yes, and that's 100% on them at this point. Since 2.0 they haven't invested in gaining new employees much, yet when things get pushed back it's "oh, they're short staffed".

Has COVID made it worse? Yes. But having the right people power to get ahead of issues is important for any company, SE is no different.

I'm well aware the developers can multitask. I know they can develop 4.4, 4.5 and 4.55, at the same time as developing 5.0. Do you want sub par content? Do you want quantity over quality because it seems like that's what you're advocating? Do you want the developers to crunch to give you what you want?

Being short staffed is one thing, working to a budget is another thing. Money is not unlimited. They've (COVID excluded) kept to the same strict schedule for 7+ years and that is admirable.

You haven't addressed my point that there's lots of content in this game that you could have done in the last 170 days. You can't chose to not participate in half the content in the game and also complain there's nothing to do.

Honestly the first steps of this relic were pretty much a joke. I'm not complaining because it was extremely easy to get a 480 weapon (which are generally supposed to be the hardest things to get). But in doing so made so much content irrelevant.

This quote right here just backs up my point. The first step of the relic had a lot of cutscenes, an interesting story, and a long and impressive single player instance, followed by an EX version of the final fight (yes before you say it wasn't part of the weapon quest, I know, but it was still part of the relic series). It was a lot of content, and if all of that was a "joke" to you then I don't know what else to say.

The alternative to this is a long and tedious grind, which it seems you want, but then you also complained about how bad Eureka was, so I really don't understand what kind of content you want.