4.5 month patch release is NOT a problem

[Clockworks]

• 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.

God forbid people play more than the 20 minutes per day allowed time.

Cant wait to be limited to 20 minutes in game just like we are limited to 20 posts a day on the forum, after all this game respects our time greatly (lmao), so why let us stay online past our 20 minutes allowance time ? We should automatically be disconnected until the next day in which our 20 minutes allowance per day resets.

[Hallarem]

• 5min weekly Custom Deliveries for the mount.
• 16min daily Expert roulette.
• 20min daily Frontline for the PvP Series rewards.
• There were more FATE rewards, Orchestrions and TT cards to farm.
• Hunts can also be farmed for the new rewards.
• Many people went to farm the new maps for the new rewards such as figmental coffers.
• New extreme trial to farm for the mount. 8.3 hours, roughly, excluding wipes and prog, and most people won't do that all at once.
• Some people will still do M4 and savage reclears.
• Any other unfinished content.

And of course there are other sub-patches that follow the .1 patch, such as .11 with the Ultimate and .15 with the Chaotic raid.
If they have too much content, they could feel overwhelmed and stressed, a feeling other MMORPGs have created in the past.
That's another part of what made it off-putting in the older style of designing an MMORPG. Grind for hours and hours and hours and it be actually required. There are games notorious for this still, and many people avoid them due to it.
The ones not on these forums, casually enjoying the game as they always have.

Oh here we go again with the OLD CONTENT excuse.

[remiff]

Yes, the fact that patches are released every 4.5 months is not an issue if the content has good longevity and replayability, and if the patch quality is up to par.

However, I don’t feel that the current Final Fantasy XIV patches are better than those from the 3.0 era.

Patch cycle 4.0 undoubtedly had the best balance of quality and content longevity for PvE and other features.

In that case, yes, it negatively impacts the perception of the game when patches were better during the Stormblood era in terms of replayable and engaging content.
Back then, there was a massive amount of content delivered in patches every 3.4 months.

The extended patch cycle now is clearly noticeable and frustrating, especially since the game’s quality hasn’t improved—neither in features nor job design,
on the contrary, it has declined.

Even the mobile version of FF14, still in developpement and not yet released, already has far far away better features than the PC version has managed to deliver to the players in 12 years of existence.
The developers clearly aren’t making enough effort, and one often wonders where the money goes.
Is it being used to fund the commercial failures of their poorly executed AAA games?

[Kaurhz]

• 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.

See whilst this may be true, with all of these there is a grander goal at play, e.g., in doing Skirms/NMs, you build up Lost Actions, items for relics, and there is a level of actual character progression involved, since this usually involves weapon, gear or collecting Mettle to eventually make yourself stronger, it's the same with doing deep dungeons, you build up Aetherpool, you can get a weapon which may be stronger, and you climb floors, with the goal of eventually reaching the highest, and due to the randomization involved with floor generation, and how certain classes interact with the content, it means there is still more of a reason to go for higher floors.

This is what Square Enix failed to understand with V&C dungeons, it's what they partially fail to understand with any content they release. Players like and want character progression. Grinding more a minion, a mount or an orchestrion role just doesn't have the same level of incentive as character progression. A mount, minion orchestrion role is like a nice little side checklist, and another issue you have with many of these is you have your things you can grind 10-25 FATEs on, e.g., for a minion for that zone with the gemstones, but then the next stage up from this is 50,000 gemstones, which is the equivalent to around 3200 FATEs, give or take on napkin math. There's no goal between that, which is what makes the distinction between doing something like Skirmishes/NMs and FATEs (even if you can argue they are technically the same thing), they just don't have the same goal posts with them. People still want that progression to actually matter in some shape or form.

I am fine with content involving miniature 10-20 minute activities, but there still has to be a goal at play to mean that you repeat that content, otherwise it's just a hollow and soul-less experience, which is what most of the content is. Again, going back to your example a lot of them are... You do it once, then it is done, like literally done, either for the patch (e.g., story quest), or for the day (e.g., roulette/beast tribe), or for the week (e.g., Custom Delivs)

My actual play-time outside of joining friends, and helping friends is perhaps a couple hours on the weekdays, and maybe a bit more on weekends, outside of that I am doing other things, whether this is personal IRL goals, studying, other games, or learning new skills, and even on that I am really struggling to find a valid excuse which isn't just dopamine play with seeing my gemstone voucher count increment every 6-7 FATEs, until I have done a good 3000-odd for a mount that will probably never get used outside of a checklist.

[Daralii]

Even the mobile version of FF14, still in developpement and not yet released, already has far far away better features than the PC version has managed to deliver to the players in 12 years of existence.
The developers clearly aren’t making enough effort, and one often wonders where the money goes.
Is it being used to fund the commercial failures of their poorly executed AAA games?

Yes. XIV is one of Square's only products that reliably turns a profit, with the others being a loss, breaking even, or doing okay but worse than they were projecting. CS3 was also very open about pulling most of the senior staff off XIV to make XVI(which, according to the CEO, was another flop), and after that they were promoted to supervisory positions, and now CS3's second best group is working on an unnamed project while Yoshida primarily oversees that, the mobile game, the studio's general operations, and his duties related to being on the board of directors. At this point, XIV is simply a dusty money printer that's largely being maintained by amateurs.

[Supersnow845]

Just a correction 16 wasn’t a flop, 16 was a success that wasn’t a big enough success to cover their actual flops like forespoken

[Jeeqbit]

See whilst this may be true, with all of these there is a grander goal at play, e.g., in doing Skirms/NMs, you build up Lost Actions, items for relics, and there is a level of actual character progression involved

Extremes, FATE farming and beast tribes have a mount and other rewards as a grander goal to farm/progress for. Dungeons' grander goal is leveling, tomestone capping, minions, orchestrions, TT cards, relics and glamour. All of them have a grander goal, which is ignored or dismissed by many posters.

it's what they partially fail to understand with any content they release. Players like and want character progression. Grinding more a minion, a mount or an orchestrion role just doesn't have the same level of incentive as character progression. A mount, minion orchestrion role is like a nice little side checklist

For me personally, I can just view mounts as character progression.

Yoshi-P has actually said he understands that people want power progression. I have my doubts if that will happen in a much more significant way than relics ever. Part of that is going to be so people can return to the game after a long break, buy crafted gear and hop into Savage immediately.

[Kaurhz]

Extremes, FATE farming and beast tribes have a mount and other rewards as a grander goal to farm/progress for. Dungeons' grander goal is leveling, tomestone capping, minions, orchestrions, TT cards, relics and glamour. All of them have a grander goal, which is ignored or dismissed by many posters.
For me personally, I can just view mounts as character progression.

Yoshi-P has actually said he understands that people want power progression. I have my doubts if that will happen in a much more significant way than relics ever. Part of that is going to be so people can return to the game after a long break, buy crafted gear and hop into Savage immediately.

They have a grander goal, but there isn't really that go-between step, so it's straight from 1 spectrum, to the absolute extreme of another, bearing in mind they view an achievement such as the 5000 FATEs as a lifetime achievement award. It had the same issue as something like the Pteranodon mount, where there's the entry goal, and then just straight to the final product, and the lack of milestones behind them is just as common a complaint point as what the lack of content is. You need to encourage that progression by creating appropriate milestones, e.g., Do 200 FATEs in a Dawntrail region. Achievement 10 points, with a tangible reward. It's no different from those games that are like "Collect all collectables", no "Collect 30%, collect 70%". Sorry I didn't clarify but those milestones are also just as important as the grander goal as well to actually incentivize people trying them in the first place. The amount of people that want to go straight from "Farm 45 FATEs, straight to the "Farm 3000" FATEs is very far and few between.

Many of the stated examples also really lack some form of actual character progression bar a pretty little checklist... Levelling is a once and done thing at the start of an expansion, or something satisfied directly through Beast Tribes and Roulettes, minions have no real impact on gameplay, perhaps if Verminion wasn't such a colossal disappointment then minions would be better, tomestone capping you do once per week, once again through roulettes or your bog standard hunts. TT Cards are just as irrelevant as anything else, it's a pretty little checklist then plunged into irrelevancy, it hasn't really had a staple feature update since the Open Tournament?, and beyond a certain point, there is no distinction between one TT card to the next. TT is one of those things that actually has high potential, but largely abandoned. Relics are solid, I agree with, it's tied directly to character progression.

It's not that it is ignored or dismissed, it just doesn't fill that hole that a game should. You might see mounts as character progression, but many people don't.. In the same way that I used to see Achievement hunting as a form of character progression (many people also don't), but beyond a point of 21,500 points it just dawned on me that it isn't really character progression.. Whether I have 11,000, 17,000, 21,000, 22,000, or 27,000, there is no real distinction. This is also why I have a difference of opinion from what I did in Endwalker. Just in the same way when it comes to Gil

This is what needs to be understood, the standard that people are setting isn't obscene, heck, it isn't even high. You could release relics sooner, have more substance with them, and just do more routine adjustments to the required progression (e.g., nerfing steps as the expansion progresses to accommodate), and literally most people would be happy with that. He may understand people want power progression, but he's going with the absolute most regressive approaches of it, all in the guise that everyone should be able to do everything. It's OK if people can't, that's what made HW/SB/ShB so great, because you would have spillage content between expansions so nobody really ever noticed that we had this gigantic lul between .0 and .35.

Interesting discussion at least since I am being able to reflect on some of my points, thank you.

[Supersnow845]

This game completely lacks the “I want to do x to get reward y which then reward y will make me z% better at a task which allows me to undertake b quest which gives me c reward”

It’s not everyone’s cup of tea but it is also a core component of what MMO’s have been like over the last 30 years.

Nothing the game has makes me want to get it because nothing helps me do anything else any better

[Dastan]

All of your casual content is gated towards later patches. That's what the problem is. There's no reason why things like cosmic exploration and field exploration zones should be kept towards the halfway to end part of an expansion. The only real casual thing players get until then is MSQ and some sidequests. Once you do all that, there's nothing more for the casual player to continue subbing for until the rest of the casual content comes out. Casual players aren't going to get gear or even try to do Exs or savage content. They will log in, do their dailies and log right out, having no interest in harder content for this game. Having no field exploration in Endwalker really showed this game's lack of endgame casual content. They rely heavily on the story and nothing else. That's what the problem is.

Release casual content sooner and complaints of "No content" will die down.