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

[Jeeqbit]

Yes, I don't want the game to force me to play, I don't want to have to farm something endlessly. But damn it, is it hard to have interesting content? Something that is not necessary, but that I can distract myself? Or is that asking too much of Square Memex?

I haven't had this problem. We had Crystalline Conflict to farm a whole series for, a Beast Tribe, lots of side stories, an extreme to farm and a fun alliance raid to do each week that was praised by the internet in all areas. If these things are not fun there is almost 10 years worth of content to do instead.

[Ryaz]

I haven't had this problem. We had Crystalline Conflict to farm a whole series for, a Beast Tribe, lots of side stories, an extreme to farm and a fun alliance raid to do each week that was praised by the internet in all areas. If these things are not fun there is almost 10 years worth of content to do instead.

Some people only want to do one thing. All the other stuff means nothing to them, so it doesn't count as content for them. This is what is leading to WoW's failure. They listened to one small part of the player base- the top end raiders, and focused their game design 100% around raids and mythic dungeons and getting more player power. This led to a huge lack of other content for other types of players that didn't care about gear and wanted other ways to have fun in the world.

I personally would prefer to have a wide plethora of different content, even if someone if it is stuff I personally wouldn't ever do, than have the game hyperfocused on one thing. It's better for the overall health of the game.

[Denji]

Yeaaah. This has been kinda brutal in both content drought and quality.

They're slipping.

[Adamantini]

I haven't had this problem. We had Crystalline Conflict to farm a whole series for, a Beast Tribe, lots of side stories, an extreme to farm and a fun alliance raid to do each week that was praised by the internet in all areas. If these things are not fun there is almost 10 years worth of content to do instead.

Crystalline Conflict was cool, I did so much that I got sick of it, mainly due to bugs and imbalances.

Beast tribe? 3 minutes of quests per day, and that's it

Side history: like, 2h of gameplay and it's over too

extreme: do it, get your weapon and that's it. Or repeat this 99x to get a mount.

alliance raid: Do it 1x a day to get the coin, and that's it too.

[KariTheFox]

I haven't had this problem. We had Crystalline Conflict to farm a whole series for, a Beast Tribe, lots of side stories, an extreme to farm and a fun alliance raid to do each week that was praised by the internet in all areas. If these things are not fun there is almost 10 years worth of content to do instead.

There's also an Ultimate Raid, which from all I've heard is the most interesting Ultimate to prog to date.

The tragedy of developing games is that players are always going to be able to finish content faster than a developer can churn it out. Unless you want to be like Blizzard, and arbitrarily time-gate content behind long, mandatory grinds and scaling bosses to the point where they're mathematically unbeatable for the first week, your players are going to finish the content they're interested in and then want new stuff pretty fast.

But hey, there's other games to play.

[Ryaz]

Yeaaah. This has been kinda brutal in both content drought and quality.

They're slipping.

I disagree. PvP overhaul was great and very well received. It revived what was basically a dead mode. The raid series has been a blast so far. Aglaia has been well regarded as one of the best Alliance Raid tiers. DSR Ultimate was loved and is one of the hardest fights ever designed in the game. We've got a ton of new content coming in 6.2 with 4 man dedicated content, Island Sanctuaries, relic grind, etc.

[Striker44]

Frankly I think the team has completely lost interest in FF14 and we're now officially in managed decline mode. When there is no passion, just like with World of Warcraft, the quality will also slowly erode. This is just the beginning of the WoW-like decline. This exact trend has happened in WoW. Sadly FF14 is now heading the same path.

This may win the award of the day for post most divorced from reality. With criterion dungeons, island sanctuaries, etc. all about to come down the pipeline, FFXIV is currently the complete and polar opposite of "managed" mode. Are we just throwing terms around now without a clue or something? By the way, there have been bugs with practically every patch; it's called the nature of MMO's. Talk about a nothing-burger, sheesh...

[Deveryn]

We get it. You bore easily. That's why you people come and post here in the first place.

Fun fact: no amount of testing can help prepare for what happens when actual thousands of people try to use something at once.

housing boiled down to a simple error in communication. shit happens. we move on.

[Kaurhz]

Some people only want to do one thing. All the other stuff means nothing to them, so it doesn't count as content for them. This is what is leading to WoW's failure. They listened to one small part of the player base- the top end raiders, and focused their game design 100% around raids and mythic dungeons and getting more player power. This led to a huge lack of other content for other types of players that didn't care about gear and wanted other ways to have fun in the world.

Not that I disagree (or agree with the other poster for that matter), but over the course of time they have removed some nuances from the game that had potentially low development overhead, yet acted as a great incentivization factor for people to do content more than they otherwise would. To take raids for example, to my knowledge we currently have no equivalent of ADS Plating, Burning Auracite, Faust Plating, and Large Gordian Gear, all of which not only were used as crafting materials but equally act as an incentive for people to do the raids under sync'd conditions - and to top it off were not guaranteed drops. Heck, I still see parties for T1 occasionally to farm the Plating.

[Denji]

I disagree. PvP overhaul was great and very well received. It revived what was basically a dead mode. The raid series has been a blast so far. Aglaia has been well regarded as one of the best Alliance Raid tiers. DSR Ultimate was loved and is one of the hardest fights ever designed in the game. We've got a ton of new content coming in 6.2.

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