Thread: 4.5 month patch release is NOT a problem

It's okay, OP. Forum FFXIV players aren't the most literate bunch within the FFXIV playerbase. That includes myself, btw. xD

But yeah, completely agree with you. If we had at least the exploratory zone content and possibly the Beast Master limited job to last us 4.5 months, then this wouldn't be a problem.

Devs need to reorganize when they release certain content so people aren't just left with practically nothing to do at end game.

Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Yes, as if there isn't other content released in the patch that also takes 10-20 minutes. That builds up to where you can easily spend a few hours a day.
It won't. Because this "10 minutes here" and "20 minutes there" builds up to where you've then spent a few hours. And guess how long an average person has after work? Some of those people also have to juggle looking after children, maintaining their house and preparing food.

I, a man in his 30s with a job, a wife, and a 10-year-old son, believe that MMORPG studios should never cater to parents with ten wives, 39 children, and fifty jobs.

MMORPGs are games that require significant time investment. And in comparison to the early 2000s, they require very little effort currently (because they are all extremely casual), but they are still to this day intended as a platform to become immersed in and continue playing monthly while paying for a subscription.

If you don't have time for an MMORPG, you should probably avoid playing them.

Simple as that.

I feel like another problem that this playerbase has is that they don't realise how bad they have it. Play almost any other popular live service game and the difference in content delivered is night and day. The frequency and replayability of content is just far higher in most other live service games. Getting more replayable content is not entirely a matter of a significant increase in dev time and resources. In some cases they can change the way loot works to encourage people to play more. The way they design content is just total ass and gives 0 possibility of longevity through replayability.

It took us a whole expansion to realise this (hell even Shadowbringers was quite bad if it was not for Bozja saving the latter half) but I am glad more and more people are seeing how barren this game is outside of its expansion releases. The post expansion patch content has been abyssmal for quite a while, the extension of patch cycles and removal of various content just exacerbated the problem.

There are just so many areas this game could improve on.
- The zones they add each expansion. I think many people would appreciate regular updates to the hunt or fate systems. To this day I still wonder why the 6 new zones they add each expansion don't get anything worthwhile added to them outside of the .0 release.
- Dungeons are another area that they just do nothing with except it being an MSQ vehicle. The devs should take a look at WoW's Mythic+ system, it's very fun.
- Raids are in a better state but it could really use a rework in its loot systems ,mainly alliance and savage loot. Savage should be unlocked far earlier.
- This might be the first expansion where PvP will get 0 new maps. We have yet to see an announcement for a new map so I am cautiously hopeful, but usually a new map gets added in the .1 patch. Another thing they skipped for this dry patch. No one cares about a PvP rework if all we have to play are the same maps we have had for the last 5 years.

These are just the pieces of content I am personally invested and interested in. I am sure people have similair feelings about other content like crafting and gathering. Point is, this game has not innovated on almost any of its most popular systems and has actively taken away content like dungeons and PvP while delivering longer patch cycles.

The time between patches is not the main issue, just a symptom I feel, but I can understand why people think it is.
The actual main issue is the amount of content provided in these 4.5 month patch cycles that leave people wanting more, and "do old content" is an unfair request especially to the people that already did most of the old content, and not every player is a hardcore raider to get months of enjoyment out of running the new chaotic or savage raids constantly.

All content in the game has only ever lasted 5-20 minutes per attempt.

This is because the game is a pick-and-mix:


That is how it's designed, always was designed and probably always will be. And that is why everything will always last 5-20 minutes:



That is a job listing from 2022. That is my point. It's not copium, and I'm not saying there can't be more content, I'm just saying some people have a fundamental misunderstanding of the game. It could last longer than 20mins, but they intentionally ask their designers to restrict it to this timeframe.

It does really feel like FF 14's dev team has gotten "lazy with success" these days even Everquest II is besting them on content, both in quality and quantity, if not for the fact that I fought for a house in 14(before the lottery) for 11-12 hours straight(my arm hurt for days), I would have shifted my subscription already. If they don't put some actual effort into things soon, I may just go ahead and give up the house, as other have mentioned, when a mobile title(Azur Lane is my reference) is outdoing a full subscription based MMO in terms of both quality and quantity of content, there's something seriously wrong. The sheer amount of money FF 14 pockets monthly is staggering, I see no viable reason why they can't match teams and budgets less then half their size, other then simple greed.

For examples of the kinds of things they could add, have you ever stepped foot into the Feerrot in Everquest II, it's a decent sized zone, with your normal MMO quests, most are labled on the map, however you'll notice that sometimes walking through the zone that random flytrap flower lights up when you cursor over it, if you investigate, there's a page from a book in there, thus begins an unmarked quest to find all the pages, they could be in any flytrap flower in the zone, they shift around and spawn in a different one any time they're picked up, by any player, no quest markers, just a search to put a book back together, that when you're done is a fancy furniture item you can place in your home. Or, in the same zone(this probably won't work in FF 14 exactly as it is) you can find a totem, it's not always there, as it teleports all over their world, to preset locations, but it's teleports are as random as random gets(to this day there's no way of knowing exactly where it is(that I could find)) you get one piece of a language there, you need 4 pieces to understand the language, there are 4 different totems all teleporting to their own locations all over the game world(not just in the one zone) finding them turns into an epic quest that can take days to weeks of searching if you don't cheat with a guide. Then there's their dungeons, they're not a single corridor with mobs in it like FF 14's are, they're mazes with puzzles, hidden passages, hidden quests, with no on screen map or quest indicators. Getting lost is a real possibility(and I have done so more then once) took myself and a friend 3 days to clear the temple of Cazic Thule, and it's easily been more memorable then any part of FF 14 has ever been.

Originally Posted by Kaurhz

versus asking someone to design something like Exploratory content, relics, or 8-man encounters

it isn't the content such as exploratory content, relic progression, HoH or even stuff like Island Sanctuary which is their 'new feature' list for each expansion.

• Field Operations contain Skirmishes/NMs, that take about as long as FATEs.
• Field Operations contain CEs, that take about as long as a dungeon boss.
• 8-man encounters take about 10 minutes per pull. You can choose to do more pulls, but it's designed this way so you can stop every 10 minutes if you need to go, thus fitting the "pick-and-mix" concept.
• HoH is split into sets of 10 floors, each of which take roughly 10-20 minutes. Can take longer at higher floors if solo, but yeah.
• Relics are... grinding dungeons, FATEs, Skirmishes, things that last less than 20mins on average. You can stop any time. Thus pick-and-mix.
• Island Sanctuary was reduced to a 5-10 minute weekly or daily upkeep. And it didn't take much work to rank up initially either.

I'm not disputing that they have grinds like relics and Island Sanctuary ranks. In fact, that is what I have been saying the whole time. We have mount grinds to motivate us to repeat content. But the content itself can be done in increments of 5-20 minutes.

It is just a lot of people take the "5-20 minutes" thing and use it to say the developers are lazy, when it's intentional to allow people to manage their time with a pick-and-mix and take breaks.

Originally Posted by Sunhwapark

I thought it's because they wanted a break ? Or something along the lines of "having an extra week will give us an extra bit of time to catch stray problems so that each patch has good quality checks on it".

In any case, less content over a longer period of time doesn't feel particularly great to me.

I really don’t remember the entire thing word for word but that was in shadowbringer and Covid pretty sure had a hand to play in this. I mean we got only one ultimate in shadowbringer because of Covid and the workplace changes for SE at the time. But that situation has past a long time ago and they still don’t really give us enough casual content per patch or reinvest money into ff14. I mean look at this small patch breaking the light instance servers so they have too emergency fix that (which by the way didn’t help because we had so many dcs in fru it wasn’t even fun anymore). In my eyes it looks like they have become complacent with the success ff14 has and when online games do that the way downwards isn’t normally far away anymore.