Quote Originally Posted by Wasselin View Post
I’ll give you an example: Throughout Endwalker, one of the most common complaints was the lack of a field operation. People brought it up constantly. Then, when the devs announced that a field operation would be coming in Dawntrail, the complaints didn’t stop—they just shifted. Now, people are upset that it’s not coming soon enough.

To me, this starts to feel unrealistic. If the devs could have released a field operation in Endwalker without compromising other content, I’m sure they would have. But these things take time, resources, and careful planning. Now, instead of acknowledging that, the demand has simply changed to ‘we want it sooner.’

This is just one example of many. If people truly want to be constructive, I wish they’d take a step back and try to be a little more reasonable—or at least acknowledge that the devs aren’t personally out to get them. It’s okay to critique, but by grounding those critiques in reality and recognize the effort that goes into creating the content we enjoy I think that would improve communication for everyone and not harm the game by creating an echo chamber of ever escalating negativity.
The expansions before Dawntrail were all financial successes for Square Enix. You mentioned that things take time and resources, but SE has repeatedly shown that it has no intention of reinvesting those profits back into FFXIV. First they removed 15-week patches, then 16, and then 17. Despite being highly profitable, the game lacks resources.

Stormblood was released in late June, and Eureka arrived in March with patch 4.25. If you apply the same timeline to Dawntrail, the issue becomes clear: we haven’t received patch 7.2, when by this point in previous expansions, we should be in .25, maybe 1 or 2 weeks behind it. What did the majority of the playerbase get in exchange for waiting two extra months for the Operations Field? Nothing.

People are getting louder with time due to SE doubling down on their decisions of delaying and recycling content, but none of these complaints are actually new. People do not complain because they want new content. They complain because they want new content released at a reasonable pace. As someone mentioned above, if you think complaining about time between patches is a shift, you're misunderstanding the situation.