I hope Square doesn't keep deeming certain content unnecessary

[KizuyaKatogami]

They've been constantly working on data center visit since that point. Diving was an incredibly superficial system that didn't add almost anything to the game TBH and I wish was never introduced. Ocean fishing is still very popular, I don't see how you can say it was abandoned. Mahjong hasn't been dropped and last I heard was INCREDIBLY popular in Japan (there's an annual mahjong tournament).

I'm not into making excuses for the devs, but I've played a game where the devs DO drop ALL the endgame system every expansion and introduce new ones each time and FFXIV is nothing like that. Squadrons were abandoned presumably to keep the incentive of playing with other people and that's fair enough

EDIT: Also Island sanctuary was originally supposed to come in Shadowbringers I think, which would have fleshed out content a bit but oh well. Things got delayed

Squadrons were abandoned to make room for trusts which....just function way worse lol. A downgrade in a sense. Instead of expanding on squadrons they dropped them for something worse. Ocean fishing has arguably no use once you’ve hit cap on fisher unless you want achievements. Mahjong sees almost little to no play in the West and is only popular in like you said JP, which makes sense. It was content designed mainly due to the popularity of one group. Diving was at least something new and gave new ways to explore which is more than can be said for ShB which introduced nothing of the sort. None of this really addresses the other downgrades though like the missing voice acting in the weapons series. The missing primal weapons for gnb and dnc and the missing unique Ultimate Models for them as well. The loss of hildibrand quests or allied beast tribe quests. The missing pvp set, missing end of expansion set....

[Rae88]

Squadrons were tons better. The problem I see with it is if you can upgrade squadrons significantly two things can happen. First it encourages you to run significantly more content on your squadrons and second people will or may always find a way to upgrade so that it's more efficient to run with the squadrons then PUG. And Square is trying to keep people running old dungeon content so new players will always have short queues

I hated diving TBH. I'm not great with directions when it comes to elevation so diving was just horrible, and there was almost no reward for doing it. Quest markers, some nodes, it just made getting to those points really annoying for me.

The missing Primal Weapons for GNB and DNC was REALLY disappointing TBH

I'm looking forward to Endwalker. They've been open to doing another deep dungeon in the patches, and if they get the deep dungeon, island sanctuary, Ultimate raids, and hildibrand out, and Yoshi P has said he'd like 2 ultimates in Endwalker and they're trying for the others, then I think people will be a lot happier Especially if the Gold Saucer addition is really good

[KizuyaKatogami]

On a quick search this is the one I could find which only does a comparison between SB vs ShB.

* To that chart I would add that before we used to have a questline for each job, and now we only have a questline for each role, which is a very drastic reduction.
I remember a more popular one that compared all expansions, but right now couldn't find it. Will get back to this later.

The only thing that has consistently increased through time is cutscenes, with ARR only having 3 hours of voiced cutscenes, HW having 4 hours, SB having 6 hours, and ShB having 9! hours, and EW has been announced to have even more cutscenes. Forgive me for not being part of the "FFxiv story circlejerk", but I'm paying a videogame sub to play a videogame, not watch a movie.

Would like to also add. Despite there being more voice acting in the msq of ShB. We’re missing voice acting in both the alli raids and the weapons trials(SB had both voiced alli raids and the 3 fiends questline trials were fully voiced). Quite the downgrade.

[linayar]

In other words FFXIV did followers better but now they’re unsupported

Well, they're still usable for their level ranges.

Combat guildleves and guildhests are mostly for new players still levelling up. They will always be "new" contents to new players just starting.

I get that. But every time I make a new character, I'm sad that they're no longer for me. On the other hand, new players wouldn't miss them if they were removed. And I support making new experiences for leveling to replace them, ones that can hopefully be extended throughout the expansions.

Squadrons are a lot better than trusts; a fully leveled squadron all set to offense clears dungeons faster than most DF groups, so replacing it with trusts would gimp our ability to level 1-60.

I get that. Personally, I don't care about speed, and I value TRUST helping me with mechanics for the most part and being indepndent for the most part more. But as I said earlier, I wouln't mind a mix of the two systems.

The argument that ultimate was cut doesn't stem from how much work was put into it. The argument that ultimate has been "cut" is derived from the assertion that the content cycle's norm is 2 ultimates per expansion.

If we accept that each expansion has two ultimates, then unless endwalker has three ultimates (the one delayed from shadowbringers and the two assumedly slated for it), then an ultimate was cut. Maybe not dragonsong ultimate, but *an* ultimate.

In the framework of this argument, let's say endwalker has only two ultimates; one would be dragonsong ultimate, which is a Shadowbringers Ultimate, and the other would be an endwalker ultimate. This means that, unless 7.0 has 3 ultimates, including the second from endwalker, an ultimate was cut.

One can argue several points; the premise is flawed since we have a data set of two (storm blood and Shadowbringers) so we cannot form a pattern from that. This would be the more legitimate argument imo. One could also continually make the argument nothing was cut and everything was just delayed, which... Well, the devs can ride that "borrowing from the future" train forever to never admit that content was cut, we'll just have this same scuffle every two years about the subject.

The real answer is it's both cut and delayed depending on what "it" is.

An Ultimate was cut from Shadowbringers, not because Stormblood had set a precedent for having two Ultimates per expansion, but because they've announced plans for a second Ultimate for Shadowbringers. There is now no second Ultimate in Shadowbringers, therefore, an Ultimate was cut.

However, the specific Ultimate (Dragonsong War) that was supposed to be in Shadowbringers was delayed, because it will still appear, only this time in Endwalker, and at level 90 instead of 80.

So it (an Ultimate content) was cut from Shadowbringers because it (the Dragonsong War Ultimate) was delayed to patch 6.1 of Endwalker.

Regarding whether there should be three Ultimates in Endwalker, that's a different issue. There was no promise for two Ultimates in Endwalker (as far as I know) before they announced delaying Dragonsong War to Endwalker, which means it can't be said that an Ultimate was cut from Endwalker if there are only two instead of three. As these are major contents, there is a low possibility that they're thinking ahead beyond completing the next Ultimate and maybe planning for the one after that.

The next ultimate being originally planned for 5.5 but later delayed does imply that 2 per expac is the intended cycle norm.

Perhaps, but that doesn't mean specific Ultimates were planned yet for Endwalker. Ultimate was new content in Stormblood, and they tried it again with Shadowbringers only to have unexpected difficulties.

If the content is still in even if not expanded upon then there are going to be people, even if very few, who like it being there.
I for one like the concept of guildleves and wish there were more combat leves past 58. The issue I take with them is that they added QoL improvements over 1.X but also made them ultra trivial to complete and super unrewarding in Heavensward. The fact you lose allowances for accepting to join a duty was a really stupid oversight too, in addition to Heavensward's levemete being located only in Ishgard, making trips take a chunk of the little gil reward you get just to confirm completion of leves.

Honestly battlecraft leves would be a neat alternative for leveling with a party of select few friends when you're tired of duties and FATEs don't let you do it at your own pace. I'm really disappointed they just dropped them. But I also use them for alts ocasionally and would hate to see the ones that exist removed.

I don't disagree. It's just a personal wish based on my own feelings. I like things to be "cleared" if "unfinished." It's why I would create new main characters when my old characters started on something, but then I don't complete it.

It's why I love that FFXIV doesn't have too many things that are account-wide, as I can have a near reset every time I make a new character.

Removing content, even old, vestigial content is never good optics and I think the bottom line is that updating, cutting, or compensating is just more work for them whereas letting the content sit there forever is zero work.

I don't do ex trials or savage raids so that left me to do some of these other fringe bits of content like squadrons. I'm still a bit peeved that the effort I put into squadrons was just thrown to the wayside by a replacement that offers less control and optimization, and is just tortuously slow.

Nothing, however, bugs me as much as the lack of attention the Gold Saucer receives in general, and chocobo racing in particular. Chocobo racing and breeding was a pretty popular bit of side content for 7 but in XIV it gets totally neglected for years with no new tracks, no new rewards, and minimal improvements. Player engagement really comes down to incentives and it baffles me how readily S-E will abandon casual/fluff content they have in place to put something new out that they will soon abandon as well. I'm willing to bet Island Sanctuary ends up being one-off content that dies by the end of Endwalker, yet they go that route instead of working what they want to do with IS into a better housing system.

It may be easier for them to leave it in, which is why I'm not pushing for their removal, but expressing my preference for them to either be updated or removed rather than stay as is. But I won't be mad if they just stay as is.

I think the difference with the various Gold Saucer activities is that there is always a chance of them being updated. I do not ever see contents like combat guildleves and guildhests being updated, but I welcome the surprise.

[Shurrikhan]

The real answer is it's both cut and delayed depending on what "it" is.

An Ultimate was cut from Shadowbringers, not because Stormblood had set a precedent for having two Ultimates per expansion, but because they've announced plans for a second Ultimate for Shadowbringers. There is now no second Ultimate in Shadowbringers, therefore, an Ultimate was cut.

However, the specific Ultimate (Dragonsong War) that was supposed to be in Shadowbringers was delayed, because it will still appear, only this time in Endwalker, and at level 90 instead of 80.

So it (an Ultimate content) was cut from Shadowbringers because it (the Dragonsong War Ultimate) was delayed to patch 6.1 of Endwalker.

Regarding whether there should be three Ultimates in Endwalker, that's a different issue. There was no promise for two Ultimates in Endwalker (as far as I know) before they announced delaying Dragonsong War to Endwalker, which means it can't be said that an Ultimate was cut from Endwalker if there are only two instead of three. As these are major contents, there is a low possibility that they're thinking ahead beyond completing the next Ultimate and maybe planning for the one after that.

Perhaps, but that doesn't mean specific Ultimates were planned yet for Endwalker. Ultimate was new content in Stormblood, and they tried it again with Shadowbringers only to have unexpected difficulties.

^ The fairest and most complete take on the subject I've seen.

[ElciaDeiLinus]

I imagine because they have so many different kinds of content that all get a bit of development time, they also have a good idea of who spends time on them. I'd imagine if something niche gets a lot of player engagement they'll be willing to put more into it, but for some things they probably don't have too many players want to do it so they move resources away from it.

The curse of an mmo is that there'll never be enough content for everyone, even WoW with considerably more resources and content already in it barely put out anything in the last year.

I know my biggest disappointment is the lack of Hildibrand, doing that after the often heavy events of an xpac (and this one absolutely had some heavy parts) is like an amazing break to have some laughs.

I do hope between the pandemic lifting and maybe SE seeing the massive surge in interest that they can invest more into this game, because I feel like what the dev team is being given is not enough yet they're still putting out an amazing product.

[Theodric]

Even popular content has been neglected/abandoned over time though. I loathe Hildibrand, though I'll acknowledge that he's popular - yet ShB went without a quest for him. We didn't get an Allied Beast Tribe quest this time around, either - despite being an established tradition for each expansion.

I'd rather not see old content removed. That's exactly why I left World of Warcraft. Well, one of the major reasons at least. Guildhests are great - quite often my Mentor roulette is a guildhest, so there's definitely players still queuing up for them.

[DrWho2010]

you know... eventually you all are just going to complete everything the devs make for the game. congratulations. you beat it.

they won't have anything more for you. you know what happens then?

you go play something else. ezpz

[KizuyaKatogami]

you know... eventually you all are just going to complete everything the devs make for the game. congratulations. you beat it.

they won't have anything more for you. you know what happens then?

you go play something else. ezpz

That’s not the point. Quit blindly white knighting SE. The point is that we’re getting less content than we’ve gotten last expansion. We should be seeing upgrades as the game progresses further and it gets more money. Instead we’ve just seen downgrade after downgrade this expansion. It’s not about finishing the content. It’s about the content missing which leaves us unable to even attempt it.

[DrWho2010]

The point is that we’re getting less content than we’ve gotten last expansion.

That's subjective.

We should be seeing upgrades as the game progresses further and it gets more money.

That's... not up to us as the players to decide how they spend their money and resources. You disagree you vote with your wallet/sub button. It's prettty much simple as that.

Instead we’ve just seen downgrade after downgrade this expansion. It’s not about finishing the content. It’s about the content missing which leaves us unable to even attempt it.