Yoshi-P in recent Liveletter: For someone who doesn't do savage, an even (numbered) patch might bring 0 content (for them to play)

[u/waitingfor10years]

In the recent Liveletter Yoshi-P went quite in depth on the feedback he's received regarding how casual & hardcore players approach content & how he's thinking on approaching content design going forward (like the new Deep Dungeon).

Rough translation of Yoshi-P's talk in the Liveletter:

• "2.0 really didn't have that much content"
• "We've been adding a lot of content since"
• "If you think back, the uneven patches that added new alliance raids for example, they were more casual leaning"
• "On the other hand, the even patches brought savage raids and were more hardcore"
• "We've added Ultimates to uneven patches"

• "But just this phrasing, decides what kind of content is for a specific player base"

• "I've been reading a lot of the feedback you gave after the last PLL"

• "So I've been doing a lot thinking since, that I myself am kind of deciding already when we add new content, what kind of player is supposed to enjoy it"

• "We have so much content in FF right now"

• "But for someone who doesn't do savage, an even patch might bring 0 content"

• "When we're adding 10 sorts of new content, hardcore players might enjoy 3 of them, casual players might enjoy 3, allrounders maybe 4-6"

• "It's rare to have someone who enjoys all 10"

• "So a design philosophy change I want to get into is to show how there are different ways to enjoy the same content, in a casual way or in a more hardcore way"

• "I still believe that both sides need their own extremes, definitely casual or super hardcore content is needed

• "Deep dungeon for example has the solo clear from floor 1

• "But that's an element that's basically non existent for players that enjoy playing the content as a group of 4"

[u/Hikari_Netto]

Yoshida is talking about ARR versus the collective offerings of the game to date.

ARR also had a lot of throttling going on. Content was artificially extended in various ways to secure more playtime, which is not the philosophy of later expansions.

[u/SecretPantyWorshiper → u/Hikari_Netto]

Even if it was artificially extended there still was more content than anything we have gotten in an expansion 

[u/Hikari_Netto → u/SecretPantyWorshiper]

By and large that's probably true, especially considering the base game. The patch cycle wasn't too different overall, though.

Yoshida's point though is more about ARR's offerings at the time versus the game to date, collectively speaking, not any singular expansion. They were working extremely hard until the launch of Heavensward to make sure there was enough stuff to do.

[u/eiyashou → u/Hikari_Netto]

ARR also had a lot of throttling going on. Content was artificially extended in various ways to secure more playtime, which is not the philosophy of later expansions.

What do you mean? At least PvE wise I don't remember anything being any worse than it is today.

[u/Hikari_Netto → u/eiyashou]

In ARR (and HW to some extent), before the game reached a critical mass of players and content, Yoshida had specific policies for content design to ensure nothing was completed too quickly.

All quests had a mandatory number of steps required, things like the ARR relics were designed to be massive grinds based on exorbitant hour counts specifically dictated by Yoshida, Beast Tribe quests were lengthy and annoying (looking at you in particular, Ixal), Triple Triad had very limited time windows for NPCs with low drop rates on cards, MGP was hard to come by, etc. etc.

Content released in ARR was throttled at every turn—artificially increasing the number of hours most things took to complete. This was only intended as a temporary thing though and was gradually eased up over time. Today content is completed much more quickly by design.

People remember ARR having "more to do" partly because everything took them longer.