Quote Originally Posted by ovIm View Post
Then you have misunderstood the criticisms, i fear. People asked for a moderately grinding bit of content early in the expansion (something that is kind of an MMORPG staple), which the field operations is. Something they can spend hours in, if they want to, to work towards any kind of goal.
Now the first bit of content that allows you to spend a lot of time in (and that is not a room with boss raid) comes a year after the expansion release, which is definitely too late for a content that is designed to be played over a longer period of time. Non-Raid players will have had 11 months of no real repeatable battle content at this point. 11 months is a damn long time.

If CS3 had released something else in the meantime, like for example a Deep Dungeon in 7.1, or a smaller relic step, then those kinds of complaints would have been somewhat mitigated. Its not that the players want "field operations" sooner, they want "something to play" sooner than a year after expansion release.
Hope that makes sense!
Don’t forget that releasing a deep dungeon in patch 6.3 didn’t seem to mitigate anything for those who wanted a field operation.

It doesn't clear anything up for me that people requesting a field operation in Endwalker shifted their complaints to asking for it sooner once it was announced. While it’s fine to express a desire for it to come sooner, the underlying issue is that many still don’t acknowledge the reality that these things take time to develop. The implicit criticism seems to be that the developers have a field operation ready to go but are choosing not to release it, which feels like an unfair assumption. In practice, it simply appears to me that people are looking for anything to criticize.

It’s important to give feedback, but it’s equally important to be reasonable and recognize the constraints of development.