How is anyone fine with the 4-month patch delivery schedule?

[Lunalepsy]

What are players who aren't going to do Ultimate do for four months in 6.1?

1. Do the alliance raid, which probably takes 1-2 hours to complete on day 1.

2. Do the Tataru and Hildebrand quests which take 2 hours judging by previous instances.

3. Do the new extreme trial which takes like 2-4 hours to clear.

4. Waste 5 mins every day on beast tribes, and waste 3 mins every week on custom delivery.

Congratulations that's all you have for 4 months. $60 in subscription fees. That's even less than what you get from the typical AAA single player title.

With this little content they should be accelerating patch delivery, not slowing it down.

Why not? Other games take years to update.

[Xuled]

Play Elden Ring and other titles. Easy.

[TheMightyMollusk]

Until the housing situation is fixed, unsubbing like the devs have suggested will not cut it.

You could always do what I did and let the house go. Otherwise it's up to you whether keeping the house is worth the sub fees.

[sharknado]

Congratulations that's all you have for 4 months. $60 in subscription fees. That's even less than what you get from the typical AAA single player title.

The game director encourages people to play only when they want to. So people subbed for expansion launch, did it, quit, came back for 6.1, quit... This isn't WoW, you don't have to be subbed 24/7.

And even WoW with all it developers and cash can do a patch half a year or longer, it's generic as usual and most is tested by players, not the company

[ZedxKayn]

You could always do what I did and let the house go. Otherwise it's up to you whether keeping the house is worth the sub fees.

I did that, but locking some content (since apartments don't give you access to outside decorating and gardening) behind a required sub is still slimy and worth calling out

[Mandudez]

... because they are human individuals who do not have 30+ hours in a day to keep up with content release schedules and ensuring that everything is stable, and that shows? An extra two weeks harms no one - in fact, it allows for someone to unsub for 3 months at a time and still be 100% up to date on content patches, rather than 2 weeks behind and have to put up with potential spoilers. It follows their design philosophy.

(This answer is not for Skiros, but for those who genuinely think this way and forget that humans are not robots)

So are you saying up until now SE was forcing the devs to crunch for 9 years straight? Sounds like it should be headline news on all gaming websites... Game devs finally given a few days off after working 24/7 for 9 years in a row!

[Ath192]

What are players who aren't going to do Ultimate do for four months in 6.1?

1. Do the alliance raid, which probably takes 1-2 hours to complete on day 1.

2. Do the Tataru and Hildebrand quests which take 2 hours judging by previous instances.

3. Do the new extreme trial which takes like 2-4 hours to clear.

4. Waste 5 mins every day on beast tribes, and waste 3 mins every week on custom delivery.

Congratulations that's all you have for 4 months. $60 in subscription fees. That's even less than what you get from the typical AAA single player title.

With this little content they should be accelerating patch delivery, not slowing it down.

Okay the content had gotten really repetitive and stale when doing the 3 month period, could they be pressured? Eh sure, but I don't think you'd see the results you want. Lets review what they are working on:

1. Redoing the PVP stuff so its viable endgame stuff to dedicate to
2. Graphics update
3. The same old stuff of new (same with different paint dungeons and alliance raids), ultimate etc...
4. The new dynamic difficulty dungeons
5. New deep dungeon
6. Sanctuary Island

For each of these things they'll have to revamp entire ecosystems in case of PVP, Touch every texture in the game, develop a new dungeon system for dynamic difficulty (probably learned a few things from Bozja), Keep doing what they were doing before in the three month schedule and develop a new instanced zone with mechanics for the sanctuary Island system.

Like, yeah it takes time but let's face it, they're giving a lot more than they were a year ago in terms of development and things to do so it seems like they are back in full force.

I will agree with one thing, this game has nothing to do at the moment, not for people that have been playing it for a long time and did what they wanted. But I will also admit I am SEEING that square is trying, and its not like they haven't announced huge things upcoming besides the regular so they are trying. There is evidence the money isn't just going poof.

Each one of these activities probably has a team dedicated to them and well it does seem like they are mobilizing. So I think the money we spend on the sub isn't being wasted personally.

[Ixon]

I did that, but locking some content (since apartments don't give you access to outside decorating and gardening) behind a required sub is still slimy and worth calling out

Idk about you, but I can't decorate the outside of my apartment and have zero land to garden in...

[ZedxKayn]

Idk about you, but I can't decorate the outside of my apartment and have zero land to garden in...

That's exactly what I'm saying, because whenever someone brings up housing requiring a sub not to be locked out off, someone always come in to say "BUT APARTMENTS!1!!" so I wanted to get that out of the way first, that apartments and FC rooms don't equate a house

[Ixon]

That's exactly what I'm saying, because whenever someone brings up housing requiring a sub not to be locked out off, someone always come in to say "BUT APARTMENTS!1!!" so I wanted to get that out of the way first, that apartments and FC rooms don't equate a house

I really think you are stretching for evilness and schemes when it's just a by-product of the circumstances. Maybe I'm a blinded simp to SE, but I don't see it. Here's how it went as far as I can tell:
- People wanted houses, so they built houses, and to make it feel like a community, they put a bunch of them in sections called Wards.
- They were/are building off the crappy 1.0 system that wasn't built well in the first place, so the wards were also more optimal and required less space than individual housed instances.
- They only started with a few, not foreseeing them running out as quickly and not anticipating people and FC's buying out whole wards.
- They slowly added more and more wards as server limitations allow, but there still isn't enough, so they come up with the idea of evicting people who literally do not log on an play the game. You can call this scummy or w/e, but why if I was SE, and I had choose between the subbed player wanting a house and the unsubbed player NOT even using their house, would I ever favor in the person who isn't subbed. That makes zero sense.
- Still there is a cry for housing, what can they do that isn't taxing on more and more wards? Apartment! Which by themselves are just the rooms like you have in a house. Again, this makes sense as you can add more of them as they are not restricted by physical land, and probably do not takes as much space as entire wards.
- Of course you can't decorate the outside of an apartment, unless you have a balcony you can't do that irl either. the only point I could argue is maybe give way for gardening inside. I know they have some already with certain flowers and pots if I recall.

Again, you can think of it being big bad SE nickel and diming you, but I see it as the devs having an IDEA of what they thought housing SHOULD be, and trying to play catch-up. You know, like they do for everything new they have ever added ever. The current housing system is too big now to radically change it, they are always adding features, so in the words of the illuminati, "Please look forward to it."

Also not directly you, but I love when people mention the Mogstation. Yoshi-P has absolutely ZERO control over that, he said so himself. That was the deal he struck with S when he took over. He got full control over FFXIV's direction, but the Mogstation was given control to a "scary lady" I think he mentioned in who works for SE. So when crummy Mogstations stuff goes up, that's not Yoshi-P or the devs, that someone in SE looking for their next cash grab, so if you are looking for a villain look there instead of the devs.