I hope Square doesn't keep deeming certain content unnecessary

[FrogDog]

Speaking of, I actually don't like when there is content that just stops but is still in the game. Guildhest and combat guildleve are two such contents. I've said in the past that combat guildleve is my favorite type of open world content, but since they're not updating it, I'd rather these two contents be removed and adjust the rewards for other contents to compensate.

I'm not sure how I feel about contents that seem to be replaced, like squadron-trust. If they roll trust to older contents, then I would be fine with removing squadron. Otherwise, I guess it could stay as it has distinguishable features, like being related to the GC.

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.

[KizuyaKatogami]

As someone who prefers Eureka over Bozja ... Bozja CE's are way more mechanically complex.

Also not only was there Covid, but we had the ARR rework in 5.3 to revamp the new player experience. And also we had the male Viera, female Hrothgar thing. I think there were a number of reasons why content was a bit light this expansion but hopefully the next expansion will be rich in the sort of content everybody is looking for

Island sanctuary will be amazing but hopefully there'll also be 2 Ultimates to satisfy the raiders

SB had Female Viera and Male Hrothgar in the works, while also implementing diving,world transfer, 4 eureka zones, a new housing district etc etc, had upgraded things from HW without cutting out on content. Yet for Shb, it’s just been downgrade after downgrade from SB. Honestly, seeing as how things like ocean fishing,chocobo racing,mahjong etc were abandoned and rarely played, i see Island Sanctuary being no different. They keep implementing fluff like this that just ends up being dropped once the expansion is over, and ignore serious issues like either content loss itself or things like the shitty housing system. I’m just tired of seeing people continue to make excuses for the devs when there’s obviously something wrong and we need to call it out instead of babying them.

[Rae88]

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.

At least there's something big supposed to be coming to the Gold Saucer in Endwalker. So hopefully it makes people happy

[Rae88]

SB had Female Viera and Male Hrothgar in the works, while also implementing diving,world transfer, 4 eureka zones, a new housing district etc etc, had upgraded things from HW without cutting out on content. Yet for Shb, it’s just been downgrade after downgrade from SB. Honestly, seeing as how things like ocean fishing,chocobo racing,mahjong etc were abandoned and rarely played, i see Island Sanctuary being no different. They keep implementing fluff like this that just ends up being dropped once the expansion is over, and ignore serious issues like either content loss itself or things like the shitty housing system. I’m just tired of seeing people continue to make excuses for the devs when there’s obviously something wrong and we need to call it out instead of babying them.

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

[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

[Raskbuck]

Plus the usual catboi villain guy doesn't exist on the First either. It was a stretch that he was there for the Stormblood one.

I feel like this is a really weak argument because, just like there's a First's equivalent of Rowena and Gerolt in the form of Mowen and Grenoldt, they could have added a reflection of him. I just get the impression it was scrapped last minute and the emote, presumably Flower Shower, was put on the Mog Station instead.

It seems like a lot of content was scrapped relatively late in the cycle, like the conclusion of Bozja building up for a possible continuation, but then doing a complete 180° and wrapping everything up through the Field Notes (plus Matsuno's confirmation on Twitter that the story is over).

[Shurrikhan]

Honestly, seeing as how things like ocean fishing,chocobo racing,mahjong etc were abandoned and rarely played, i see Island Sanctuary being no different. They keep implementing fluff like this that just ends up being dropped once the expansion is over, and ignore serious issues like either content loss itself or things like the shitty housing system. I’m just tired of seeing people continue to make excuses for the devs when there’s obviously something wrong and we need to call it out instead of babying them.

It's funny how much WoW gets crapped on for its one-expansion-and-done borrowed powers systems, which were at least granular and integral (everyone used them, and they could be interacted with or progressed in nearly any way one pleased), with so comparatively little scorn falling on resources here that neither promote the game nor are played by any significant portion of players even in their few moments of vitality.

We've got quite a lot of content of which development amounts more to reskinning than reiteration, thereby neither meaningfully improving on old designs nor reusing old assets -- a worst of both worlds, development-wise. I'd have much rather have seen, for instance, PotD improved and stretched a further 10 levels than get a barely-changed reskin in the form of HoH. Bozja at least brought relevant and variably enjoyable plot tie-ins, but I'd have rather seen the fundamental systems -- such as mob behaviors and something, almost anything, beyond merely FATEs / CEs and killing X mobs of type Y to spawn them, and early span being designed in a way less susceptible to starving under too few active players in the given area -- improved further upon if Bozja seemed worth having at all. There needs to be a plan for longevity, beyond the current expansion alone, especially in side-content.

[KDSilver]

To be honest, this is pretty much the reason why we have less content. Square enix factually made less content, with comparison charts to prove it, while making more money than ever, but Square forum warriors will contort themselves into a human pretzel trying to justify it.

Show these charts then.
Prooves will be more objective than calling people blinded-warriors like.

Because what's the comparative point ? ARR ? HW ? SB ?
The more the game goes forward in time, the more they have to do in general. We have significantly more classes to balance, more race to care about with hairs and gears and weapon to do.
We got a lot of QoL in several department, content for crafter/gather as well as battle content.

So yes, please just show real proof that they put less effort in the game.
Because it's easy to not have what you want and then cry on forums saying devs cut content without taking the big picture.
People have been complaining of the "lack of content" since.... the game is out.
So they surely need to work on certain things they didn't, but saying they do less to earn more out of nowhere... Anyone can do this.

[lezard21]

Show these charts then.

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.