FFXIV outdated patch cycle is one of the biggest issues in terms of content cadence.

[DynnDiablos]

At this point I keep my sub for my house and my FC house for my airship and subs. That's it. I will login in tomorrow for the one-hour 7.1 MSQ, dungeon and alliance raid, then go away again until 7.2 all while paying monthly for nothing.

[Turtledeluxe]

This is all apart of their 10 year plan, to make sure that people can play the game when little to no one is around. All group content will eventually be trusts save for the raids.

I think this is why we see people talking about sunsetting the game and maintenance mode. Realistically, this game has 3 expansions left before it enters FFXI state at best. The problem is the patch cadence and MSQ are both really emphasizing that SE has/is dwindling the budget down as the game is also entering the latter stage of its prime time.

I think in general the vibes sort of feel like they're conditioning the game to be single player and kinda doing whatever they can with their budget to appease whoever is left actively playing.

*Instead of* feeling like WoW, Genshin, or virtually any other ongoing game that shows the publishers and devs really are sparing no expense to keep things fresh. XIV's team quite literally doesn't care if you're playing the game lol...it's an interesting marketing strategy...

[ForteNightshade]

They have been trying to hire.

Evidently, they need to loosen their restrictions instead of throwing their hands up and saying, "whelp, we tried!" There's no need for every developer to be fluent in Japanese. Simply make that a requirement for the team leader, management or whatever so they can translate when necessary. Other foreign companies have figured it out but as per usual Square is woefully behind.

Although, I'd argue it isn't just a personal issue. They've simply made very poor design decisions, especially more recently. No amount of developers was going to fix Island Sanctuary, for example, because the foundation itself wasn't good to begin with. Likewise, half the problem with housing is their stubborn refusal to accept the neighborhood concept doesn't work.

[Elizabetha]

I'd think the same thing, but the JP playerbase and the cash shop is going to keep this title earning for quite a while.

The reason the game is becoming worse is because they can spend less effort and still earn the same (or better) profit.

There is no incentive for SE to change the game into something western audiences are craving.

There's no getting around it in MMOs anymore: cash shops kill. It might be slow, it might be fast, but at some point the company will ask itself why bother with heavy dev if you can put another chibi mount in the cash shop and make as much as you do when selling an expansion.

[Kaliesto]

It's getting pretty bad, it's a death by attrition at this point. They cut content, give us slightly less, recycle more every time we go through this, the time period gets a little longer. I'm reminded of the Trust Thermocline concept that was floating around a few months ago.
It describes situations where companies give a little bit less, charge a little more, or deliver a little slower, but over time these small thigns add up until it's no longer worth it for people and they face a large backlash of consumers wanting better value.

That's where we're at, things have been going this way for a long time with fewer dungeons, worse gear designs, recycled content, and so on and now we've hit the point where it's becoming unacceptable.
And most people don't want to hear the excuse that it will get better in 6-12 months, they want to know what SE is going to do about it NOW. The LL on the 1st will probably make or break it for the rest of the expansion for a lot of people. If Yoshida dismisses people's concerns again like he usually has then they're not coming back for a while and they're taking their money to another game with them.

If only a renegade former FFXIV Developer would give us insight on what is actually happening.

[KernCadfan]

You know what they could do? Give us 1 server with all the classic content through the eras, let up re-live the joys of the content we loved, with the job-play styles we loved, and use THAT as a way to help deduce what actually worked, and what didn't work as a compare and contrast. It's been a long set of years since the original ARR iteration released, HW, so on and so forth... and to be honest, some of us liked other eras of gameplay better than others...

At the very least, it would allow us to do something while awaiting other content to drop... I hardly think people would be upset if we had an ARR server, or a HW server to play on, as so many people compare the old jobs to the new jobs and pinpoint what about that era they liked...

I do realize it will mean more work, but any solution will mean more work, and as it stands the fact of the matter is SE needs the workers, or they need to put in the elbow grease... One way or the other, we need something... just something...