There has not been a single major patch without a critical issue since Endwalker.

[Wolwosh]

As someone who hasn't unsubbed since 2013 I might really start doing that this year if things aren't getting better, I get why people do it now..

[GrizzlyTank]

EW queue wasn't a bug. They just made improvements and optimizations to something that had worked for years. A development server was repurposed as a login server to increase the amount of processing power.

DC travel is not part of a major patch. It's 6.18 and it's just congestion from people using it a lot.

Error 2002 in queue was a "bug" though because the queue for some reason would not refresh, but straight up drop the connection for prolonged periods and then try to reconnect. If i recall the post from a networks analysis from reddit, and it wasn't long after that post that the 2002 error was fixed too...

Alternatively the 2002 error for a full queue was not a bug though.

[Momo_Kozuki]

I am waiting for people not being able to access Island Sanctuary cuz too many simultaneous attempts for lulz and giggles

[Missbone]

Honestly i like this game, but it gets more and more uninteresting. The stuff i like dosnt get updates, there are no new features and the thing i was really looking forward will be most liky ingame at some point next year. Remember Ishgard Housing announcement with the release of Shadowbringers? It was such a big advertisment before the release and it took nearly 2 1/2 years before people could finaly get a house there. Sure the rework of the PvP is a nice and welcome thing but that dosnt keep me playing this game everyday.

The Features i still miss, is shared housing for all you alts, workshop for private houses and something like an account bank. I bet there are a lot of ppl like me that abuse the FC system to create a small private FC for their chars, to be able to use all thouse features that wouldnt be possible with a private house.

After a long long break i started last month with ESO again (as sub). Sure its also not perfect but there is so much to do and new things that no matter if you are new or a returner you will have more than enough stuff to discover for more than a half year non stop playing. Also another thing i mentioned while playing ESO the world feels way more lively than in FFXIV and every little shit npc has voice acting, something that we can only dream off. Also ESO has a nice varity off actions that maybe could be used as inspiration for FFXIV: Public Dungeons and Open World dungeons which could be done solo, Normal and Elite dungeons (which are same as here), Open World bosses (which spawn way more frequent than here), Open World group activities (something equal to bosses but with normal enemys), thievery (yes you can steal from npcs), artifact searching (with enough time you can get powerfull legendary gear solo), Thousands of quests (all with voice) aaannnddd Housing for everyone yes, you can even own multiple houses and use them with all your chars on that server (they are handled like collecting mounts or pets but accountwide) and they will never ever get demolished. Also thanks to way lvling and new stuff is handled in this game you gear from years ago is still viable and you are ready to go even after a 3 or 5 year long break.

[Zaniel]

Don't count your chickens before they hatch. You shouldn't rely on what -might- happen next patch.

But the doomsayers are allowed to critique and piss and moan with no actual patch? Got it. What's actually happened is the population of FF14 has massively increased so the number of trolls and poop-posters has also massively increased.

Also, inb4 "white knighting" post, there is no feedback or rational criticism in this thread, it's just malding (or outright denial of reality). If someone ever posted something remotely resembling feedback such as "SE should have continued using the (normal)(hard) model for dungeons in later expansions to increase our dungeon content" ... THEN I might be able to take it seriously and talk about how criterion dungeons seem to be retaking this path and discuss it with them.

Instead we get this posting:
"Yeaaah. This has been kinda brutal in both content drought and quality.

They're slipping."

Well done, clearly reasoned feedback there!

[Vezper]

I think the issue is more so that these patches are releasing things that are altering the fundamental rules of the game in a way that just won't be perfect on release, or in the case of Endwalker queues, the game simply never reaching a higher peak in its population; and even then, it was less messy than Stormblood's launch. For housing, the approach to a new and different kind of system altogether. For DC travel... that goes without saying, did anyone honestly believe that system would have no problems on release? That's probably the single biggest step in terms of extending the community that they've ever attempted.

The simple answer as to why a lot of pre-Endwalker patches didn't have these issues is that they weren't as ambitious in changing core aspects of the game. I think it's kinda weird to act like they're losing their touch or something, based purely on the fact that major changes require some patching to get in order. Frustrating, sure, that's fair; but doomsaying? Eh.

[hynaku]

I see the trend is still going just look at world travel with ines now stuck in other worlds and can't return. Maybe they should just spend the money and replace the whole engine if that is whats giving them all the problems or hire more for their team.

[Nizzi]

I'm regularly critical of the developers here and it seems to work completely fine. I got to go to Aether and play with my friends - we ran several instances and there was no issues, and even though I couldn't get back to Crystal last night before, I logged on before I had to leave for work this morning and got my character back to Crystal fine. It doesn't really seem like it's having "critical issues" to me just because they temporarily shut it off because it was getting slammed first thing in the morning. Once the novelty of going to check out other DCs wears off for people, I doubt the issue of not being able to go back to your home world will exist much at all either. Seems to me like they've done a good job.

[Jeeqbit]

If I messed up like they did I'd be out of a job real quick.

No, you would not. The issue is congestion. This happens to many companies when launching a new website. Governments, Facebook and even Google has had it before. If the employer understands anything about how servers and networks function, they would not fire them just because there was a lot of interest on the first day. It's unlikely there will be that much interest all at once ever again. SE knows that and I doubt they would fire anyone over it.

More to the point, why is the relationship between us and the devs presented as a personal one when it's actually a business arrangement? There arent supposed to be emotional responses from the businesses side, that's just plain unprofessional.

MMOs are different. You can't run it purely like a business. Since you are quoting the presentation on MMO design, it also mentioned that you have to run an MMO like a government rather than like a business.

The most successful companies create an emotional relationship with their customers with conventions. You have Apple conventions, Star Trek (or other TV show) conventions, games conventions and they exist for MMOs as well. With an open place where the key people meet their "customers" in person, it becomes a two-way relationship and if everyone at the convention is throwing tomatoes and booing whatever they do, they would probably want to quit.

All I know is that it isnt our responsibility to cater our responses for the sake of someones emotions we're never gonna meet.

People do meet them at fanfests so not everyone can say that they will never meet them. They play the game sometimes publicly so you can approach them and send tells, they stream the game and read comments and they let you ask questions on the forums to be answered in live letters.

There was another mmo a decade ago, where the forums were a constant back and forth between "white knights" and "complainers" and very little feedback was looked upon. That was wow. Now look at wow. Not exactly in a good way is it? I apologise for not wanting to see XIV go the same way

WoW seemed to go that way, among other reasons, because the developers were attacked whatever they did, so they stopped listening altogether and became defensive. That is what we don't want and to avoid it we need to praise them sometimes and to be polite when we do complain.

[Akiudo]

WoW seemed to go that way, among other reasons, because the developers were attacked whatever they did, so they stopped listening altogether and became defensive. That is what we don't want and to avoid it we need to praise them sometimes and to be polite when we do complain.

i would argue that one of wows biggest problems actually was trying to find "forever content" , they knew they could never produce content faster than people would consume it (something which the ff forums proof pretty much every single day) so they opted for turning the gear grind eternal which made pretty much no one happy.

now i'll admit that ff does have shortcomings with making content last, there are several things i believe could be handled better in that regard, but considering in here you are a "white knight" if you say people are free to state their opinion but should do so in a respectfull tone and at least try to look at the bigger picture (instead of just homing in on what they personally believe to be the most important issue(s) without any regard for the possibility that in the grand scheme of things they might be wrong on that, or that the thing they have issue with indeed is "more important" than something else that gets worked on but would also take 5 times as long to fix) it's no wonder the devs are so silent.