Live Letter Thoughts

[ReynTime]

lucky for you.. they are hiring!

since you are obviously what they need on their development team and to all indications you feel and think you can do much better than who they have currently. now is your chance to put your skills where your mouth is. since its so easy, it should be a breeze for you.

please.. apply!!!!! make the better game for us! the player base is waiting in breathless anticipation for you to show us how they should be doing it ^^

Don't be an hypocrite. If they can't point out what they think the game is lacking you should probably stop criticizing how their team handles bots.

Let's not start that atrocious argument of "you can't criticize if you can't do better/do it yourself".

[Atelier-Bagur]

Just to give you an idea, lets compare FFXIV's patch cycle to WoWs. This is kinda old info, but here's a timeline someone made of the content patches from ARR-Shb compared to Vanilla-Shadowlands 9.1. https://i.redd.it/qut9puhli5i71.jpg

Yeah as you can see, WoW has almost an entire year long worth of drought compared to the measily 4 or so months schedule, and even then the patch in of itself gets sprinkled gradually within that time frame to fit everything it has to offer. So I have no clue what you're even talking about, regarding "quality content". Apparently, having a big side recreational side activity, alongside new types of midcore dungeon content, quests and raids is just nothing for a patch.

[Jojoya]

A simple content patch? It's been 4 months since the last patch, which was an absolutely tiny patch if you don't play a lot of pvp or do ultimate. I'm not looking for an entire expansion's worth of content in one patch, but there's been nothing to do except unbalanced pvp that you can't even play with your friends, the same boring dungeons we've all played a thousand times, an insultingly easy extreme that loops half way through, and an ultimate which by design doesn't appeal to most people. And this has been true for the past 7 months since savage dropped. There NEEDS to be new quality content and enough of it to last at LEAST part of the way to 6.25/6.3. This is an MMO, we're not meant to play it a few times for a couple hours when a patch drops. If Yoshi P doesn't have enough people to make quality patches that aren't just weekly chores to do, he needs to hire more people or replace the ones he has.

So what MMO is doing it right in your opinion?

MMOs aren't about massive content releases every couple of months. You get a large content release at game/expansion launch then smaller amounts of content released at intervals until the next expansion. What keeps players occupied is repetition of the content they've already done for rewards they haven't received yet, not a steady stream of completely new and original content. If you get the rewards you want quickly, then you take a break to play other games until the next content release. That's MMO life.

For a MMORPG, this is a quality game regardless of what you want to think. Players might have differing opinions about what content design among the different MMOs is better suited to what they want but it doesn't change that SE is putting out a quality game for the experience they intend. It tends to have far fewer major bugs than many other MMOs.

The more you talk, the more it sounds like MMOs are not the genre for you. That's fine. I have a lot of friends and family that I would never recommend a MMO to because it's not the type of game they enjoy. There are others I do recommend it to because they would appreciate the story emphasis being a priority over an end game min/max emphasis like WoW.

It's up to players to find the game that appeal to what they want, not for a game to try to please all the millions of players who have different interests and preferences.

Have you ever wondered if maybe I talk about the game so much because I care about it and don't want it to be so content-starved that I literally cannot play it outside of a weekly chore for months on end?

It's not content starved. Raids, dungeons, trials, PvP, tribal quests, FATEs, hunts, maps, crafting, gathering, Gold Saucer, and so on. There's lots of content and most of it is repeatable for useful rewards.

Your problem is that it doesn't have enough of the content you want while you're ignoring all the rest of the content the game has. You really seem to be playing the wrong type of game if you're expecting more out of a MMORPG.

[Cach]

Indifferent on story
Not touching Island Sanctuary

Everything else looks cool and I hope there are more FF4 songs in there.

[Amenara]

Glad I can remeld warrior to be the same as the rest of my tanks. Seems like a normal patch so just waiting on the patch I really care about in 6.25.

Gear looked cool for tanks, so excited to get all of that.

[VelKallor]

Thank you for fulfilling this promise

I dont ever remember them making any kind of promise in this area.

I think it would have been a better opportunity to add something more in the way of tropical fantasy for island sanctuary as opposed to the two sets that were previewed today.

You just DID...the Moonfire gear?

[Raoabolic]

When they introduced the new housing items I was hoping they were going to tell us which ones were going to earnable in game and which is mogstation exclusives, lol.
The island really reminded me of the mog island in XI, that's pretty neat.
The fact they restated that they were not going to do sweeping changes without telling why they are made me lol. Why give us an explanation if you are going to do it regardless, lol?
I'm pretty sure I saw one of the four fiends from FF4 so that's neat that we are going to see them in glorious "Third Dimension".
The music sounds pretty good and it sounds like Soken cranked out another banger!
The MSQ stuff really didn't do it for me anymore, that felt weird. :/
Oh yeah! Also, the glowing gear they showed off reminded me of all the bad parts of WoW gear. That was really disheartening. lol

THEY ARE HIRING, so now you can apply and show them how it should be done. seriously... it was in the live letter.

since you love teh game so much more than everyone else, and you have an idea of how things should be done, would be great for you to work there. so go ahead, work there. it sounds like an ideal fit with your passion for how things should be done and all that.

Bro, just call him a hater and tell him to unsub, lol.

[Gemina]

I didn't watch the LL, but caught enough of the condensed version from content creators to conclude that this is a packed patch. A concern I had with Island Sanctuary was wondering if it would be something like gardening or contributing to projects in the workshop, and become chore-like to be included with daily activities. It's still yet to be seen, but it looks like it will take a long time to get your island to maintenance levels, and they will add content to it every other patch iirc.

That was my main focus. I was also a little worried that the patch would get pushed. Some in game buddies already took the 23rd off in anticipation, and I told them hopefully that doesn't come to bite them in the arse. They will be quite happy to point out that was not the case next time I talk to them. Other than that, I will save the majority of the critiquing after the patch release.

Every time these come up, I always have a smidge of hope for the release of a silk moth mount (Bombyx). Sadly not this time. Maybe next time

[AwesomeJr44]

A concern I had with Island Sanctuary was wondering if it would be something like gardening or contributing to projects in the workshop, and become chore-like to be included with daily activities. It's still yet to be seen, but it looks like it will take a long time to get your island to maintenance levels, and they will add content to it every other patch iirc.

This is something I've been a little concerned with too. I'm personally cautiously optimistic about it. It could be really cool and be something I want to spend lots of time doing, but if it's just a beast tribe level daily chore I might give it a skip. Showing up to the island every day to click a few buttons every day doesn't sound too interesting.

That was my main focus. I was also a little worried that the patch would get pushed.

Again, same here haha. SE has been pushing back a lot of content releases and I was concerned we'd get a message saying "it's not done yet, sorry. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯". I think at this point there's no way they push it back though.

Other than that, I will save the majority of the critiquing after the patch release.

Fair. It's hard to tell how good or bad something will be as we haven't seen much. I've been cautiously optimistic about this entire patch. I have the gut feeling it will be good, and we're actually getting a sizable amount of content, but I also know that it's very possible that it's another 6.1 where there's not much to do.

[VelKallor]

log out to play something else

Thats fine. See as follows.

Yoshida "It's alright not to play it everyday. Since it's just a game, you can stop forcing yourself if it's hard on you to keep that up. Rather, it'll just pile up unnecessary stress if you limit yourself into playing just that one game since there are so many other games out there. So, do come back and play it to your heart's content when the major patch kicks in, then stop it to play other games before you got burnt out, and then come back for another major patch. This will actually make me happier, and in the end, I think this is the best solution I can answer for keeping your motivation up for the game."