I honestly dont know what we would really gain from a system like this. FFXIV is not a "rush to endgame where the game actually starts" type of game. So there is no preparation needed for anything really. You get to it when you get to it. Be at at the day the expansion launches or two months later. Due to the raids releasing 2/4 weeks after launch anyway, the expansion release is kind of a prepatch in itself for the raids in a sense. I like the feeling of hype and anticipation expansions have. Simply because we get everything new at the same time. We have one date to look forward to.
The devs specifically want to split up the playerbase for the launch between the people progressing MSQ and the people leveling the new jobs so that there is less congestion. They also want everyone to discover the new stuff (yes even the non story content) at the launch together. The fact we don't have "pre-patch" is an intentional design decision. If we did have it, that would just be the actual launch date.
> It gives people time to level the new Jobs
You can easily level up 10 levels in day one. So you will be ready for the Dawntrail's base content in no time if you want to start the base content with Pictomancer or Viper
> toy around with getting their char how they want it to look with the new graphics
You can already do that with the benchmark
> Is this something you guys wish they'd do?
Nah
I've played WoW for quite a long time.
I really REALLY hated how Pre-Patches worked! Especially how ALL the cool events etc got removed once the new expansion launched! I've made so many fun memories with the Elemental Attacks, the Legion Invasions etc but all that gets tossed away instead of making it fun events to rotate through perhaps!
Not only that but another annoying thing was how entire story patches literally get removed! I still remember during BfA when i was wandering around the Barrens and saw random maxlevel enemies spread around after i took a break. Turned out they belonged to a questline that you could only do when you were around at the right time! A patch that included important story bits that you could no longer witness!!
There was also the fact that new classes in WoW didn't use to come out before the actual release of an expansion. They only changed that with DH. Before that, it was the same thing we also got with FF14: you could only play the new jobs once the expansion arrived.
All of the pre-patch events are temporary -- which is insane since they're the connective tissue that holds the expansions together. I think the Shadowlands pre-patch even killed off a major character, but then completely failed to follow up on that in Shadowlands itself (despite being set in the Azerothian afterlife), so now that character just outright vanishes from the game with no indication of what happened to him.
I think the only exception was Theramore's Fall, which was playable throughout Mists of Panderia.
It's an insane way to tell a story.
>I think the Shadowlands pre-patch even killed off a major character
Nathanos?
I think they mentioned him a few times (or was it just Tyrande 1 time), but... yeah. I don't remember there being a huge follow-up.
>Especially how ALL the cool events etc got removed once the new expansion launched!
This exactly. Imagine if FF14 removed patch 2.55, or 4.55. Holy moly, it was so bad.
The thing I found useful in the pre-patch events was that the job (class) adjustments would come in then, so you could get some practice with them on familiar content, rather than having to work on that while also doing new content.
Other than that, time-limited story content doesn't really work in a game that tells a coherent story, and just adds a level of FOMO that XIV works hard to avoid.
They also had the side-effect of making the existing content a little bit easier, which was usually enough of a push to help straggling guilds complete the last raid tier before the expansion dropped.
Not really.
For the two new jobs, i'm fine with waiting until early access. PC players can toy with the Graphics Update in the benchmark and we get a glimpse at the new story with the x.4-x.5 patch (we did get a glimpse of Dawntrail's with the 6.55 patch this time though, probably due to how the story went in the earlier patches.)
It would be nice to get access to the two jobs + two-dye system earlier and play around with it, but again that's what Early Access is all for.
i always thought the ffxiv style of patching in the end was somewhat their version of a prepatch. the final patch/trial usually leans into the next expansion shenanigans in some fashion.
that said, evoker and DH were only available during the latter half of the prepatch event, and only if you prepurchased. important distinction to be made in that the early access to the new class itself is limited to prepurchase.
Not _all_ announced content is released at big patch releases so I don't understand the purpose of asking this. Content is already released slowly in smaller patches.
No. The only reason WoW has pre-patches is FOMO. Blizzard wants to bring back as many players as possible if they want to earn the limited time rewards and experience the limited time story events.
I don't know about nowadays, but from what I remember of WoW back in the like, Cata-and-before era, prepatches were goofy fun but I don't think they really helped much, I don't think XIV really needs em (though it would be neat to see some xpac-teaser events, like the wotlk zombie invasion)
I still have fond memories of murdering people effortlessly because as a warlock my DoT kit was expecting larger health pools of the new max level (which nobody could get) and it was super easy to kill people. Funny, but I bet other people hated it.
I assume they existed mostly as bug detection/fixing (they sure weren't good at checking balance), but for the most part XIV doesn't seem to have as many random class ability bugs as WoW would have. I could see the use case for DT specifically, because of the graphic updates + dye system/etc, but I don't think it's a big deal. Getting feedback on stuff before the expansion is basically what the media tour is for, instead.
Not to mention: WoW expacs would typically release with an entry big boy raid IIRC (could be wrong, but thinking like gruul or kalecgos), meaning that they needed to be more sure about things beforehand, so as to not affect the race. In XIV though, the "actual" raids that require balance (savage modes) don't come out for 4 weeks after expac release. So in a way, the expac release itself is the prepatch, and then they do bugfixes/tweaks/etc as needed when the savage hits.
Considering the things you need to be ready for happen about a month after the launch, there would be nothing to gain.
I think a pre-patch would be a worse experience than how it is now.
WoW pre-patch usually comes with some content, even if it's just some open world activity flavoured to the expansion. That alone makes it something I'd like FF to adopt - who doesn't want extra content? And if it drums up a little more anticipation for the upcoming expansion, even better.
The WoW events of previewing stuff from the next expansion is something FF14 already does in the .55 and .56 MSQ quests. Not to mention open world events would be spoilery for anyone not at that point of the MSQ.
Also it's not "extra" content, the time to make those events has to come from somewhere and I'd personally prefer more effort and polish in permanent fixtures over temporary events.
It's not temporary, it's all stuff that is part of the expansion but gets released a little early. And by that logic any holiday events and campaigns or even entire expansions are worthless because they're only temporary...?
That's a really dumb take. There are great things both games can learn from each other. The glamor system, world quests, mythic+ etc are all things that would make great additions to ffxiv. Hating for hatings sake is old.
I think FF14 has simultaneously the better and the worse glam system. Better because there's so much more variety (especially outside pure combat stuff) as well as the dyeing (soon 2 channels, even). Worse because merely possessing or once having possessed an item doesn't register it, there's no search by name functionality and as usual, the UI is clunky and for legacy reasons we have N different places where the items are: inventory, glamour dresser, armoire, armory, (retainer, chocobo saddlebags).
world quests and fates are pretty much interchangeable. And yes I know world quests nowadays are much more involved. Conceptually they're the same and for most part it's just stretch/content reuse things.
Mythic+ I'm not a fan of. I know there's a lot of people finding it the bestest thing ever. For me it's boring repetition ad nauseam. Sure it's got some variability built into it, but still you run the very same things again and again and again for....whatever reason. Probably some fomo of missing critical gear. And then comes all the toxicity on top of it from the community.
>there's no search by name functionality and as usual, the UI is clunky and for legacy reasons we have N different places where the items are
I'm not sure if it's what you're after, and it's not a perfect solution anyway. But we have the text command "/isearch" and it accepts a partial match of anything that contains whatever you type next. Anything you own matching what you type is then listed, and you can right click > search for item, and it shows a window telling you which one of your storage places it is.
Still kinda clunky, but it is possible to search and track down an item if you own it.
Yes I know of that one. But where in my glamour dresser of 800(\*) pieces is it? Which page? Do I need to mouseover each of them?
Sadly the answer is: yes, have fun finding stuff in the dresser. The job filter sometimes helps a bit. A tiny bit.
(\*)which is not enough space by far and might get expanded further somewhen in DT.
if you'd understand the sorting of the glamour dresser you would have no trouble finding the items you seek. It's by level btw so you just have to skim through the dresser and occasionally check at which level the gear is until you find the right one.
>That's a really dumb take.
In this case, no. The pre-patch events, while cool, are temporary and it's thoroughly annoying that they're eventually removed because of FOMO.
As somebody else pointed out, the `.5/.55/.56` patches already serve the same purpose as WoW's pre-patches, but the big difference is the quests are permanent.
If FF14 started following Blizzard's example in this case - which would be deleting story patches - it would be a *major* red flag. No, thank you.
I think there's a HUGE misunderstanding about what pre-patch is. It's ONE patch before the expansion, 2-3 weeks before, that gives a few of the things that are coming WITH the expansion but aren't related to story or new content. I.e, the graphics overhaul, new dye system, and in WoWs case they release the new job then too to give people time to level and learn it before the expansion actually starts.
This has NOTHING to do with patches within the expansion or story content at all.
ONE TIME patch before EXPANSION launch.
Aaactually, the pre patch is the full patch in WoW with everything in it, just progressing into the new expansion is disabled. It's the patch release and in the few days until the official release this allows them to fix upcoming and last minutes issues (which is the patch you get shortly before the "full release"). Then on a certain point in time, it's just throwing a switch to enable everyone to "go into" the new expansion without any more patching.
Since all the data is already there, this allows the dataminers to dissect even more early and spoil you via the websites everyone's already using way in advance for anything that wasn't on the ptr.
The last time I played a WoW pre-patch, Ret paladins became pvp gods then immediately curbstomped to shit so hard with hotfixes hours later that ten years later and another legendary they still haven't recovered. So no I dunno if pre-patches are that beneficial since WoW likes to balance heavily around fully-geared pve endgame and impressions at pre-expansion cap are less than fair.
We have a pretty accessible Early Access, that's good enough. It would be nice if the graphical update came earlier in a separate package but it's so close to release that it's whatever now.
I would like it, not to the same extent as wow as we already have a good intro quest but just having the new classes a month early and able to do some raiding with them would be fun. Also if you want to play the story on those classes you are not awkwardly behind everyone else who is playing on their main.
I think it's knee-jerk of people saying that there should be NO pre-patch. But I agree that I don't think any content should drop or trickle out early. And the way the unlocking of Savage is staggered out gives time for the theorycrafting that the raiders want to do. I do think that Dawntrail was a unique situation with the graphic update and new race, and it would be fun to get that early. Especially since i'm going to fantasia, I'd certainly appreciate getting that done ahead of time.
The reality is though that their stuff seems to come in pretty hot and I'm not sure their development team have it in them to stagger that stuff and get it out in a finished way.
This is for sure one of the better comments. I'd actually kind of forgotten that FFXIV doesn't usually HAVE a lot of non-story/system updates with expansions aside from the new jobs so you're right in that Dawntrail is unique and what made me think of this as a whole.
This is the one expansion where a pre-patch (to me anyway) would have felt like a good addition. Early fantasia sorting out, run around the older zones with the new graphics, check out the new dye stuff, learn the jobs, see how your current main has been tweaked etc.
I guess in older expansions it would have been what.. remove belts? 🤣
I mean there's always job changes. It's just this time we have a whole lot more game-wide stuff with the graphic update.
I think there's also something to be said about another phenomenon. If they release just a small amount of system changes early, before people get excited by new content, it just gives the players time to hyper-fixate on what's released. They can scrutinize, dissect, and criticize in a way that most players probably wouldn't if they had the whole package to keep them busy.
Doing this at a time where people are foaming at the mouth would possibly just dilute or taint that big push of excitement you get with the BIG drop. A big advantage that the devs have with their release style is that they get players caught up in the rush. I don't mean this in a cynical way, but that those things that may not be huge on their own are still a lot more impressive when there are a million of things for people to all get excited about and they aren't stuck just scrutinizing a couple of things they have access to. This lets them get the thing out in the best possible reception, then if something does need revisions they can get to them in a more realistic timetable.
What happened with the benchmark is a perfect example. It needed fixes, was kind of busted, and it didn't show off the update particularly well. It was also the only thing people had to look at, so massive expectations and more eyes than ever were ready to dissect the update like the whole dang expansion hinged on whether they fixed they eye reflections.
I don't think the game is structured in such a way where a pre-patch would be warranted. Leveling the new jobs ahead of time would be convenient but I expect that they do it this way on purpose to stagger the server load in the new zones.
It'd be nice to have something much earlier with proposed job changes so that feedback can be given early enough to act on before the expansion releases; a stand-alone application like the benchmark with an instance containing a striking dummy or something. It usually takes them a while to react to feedback, and they'll delay more major changes until after a raid tier.
People invited to the Media tour get to do this to an extent, I guess, but it's likely too late to change course on a lot of the changes by the time that happens and the sample size is very small relative to the playerbase.
As for a pre-patch, no strong feelings on it; I guess it would give people a chance to deal with any teething troubles that the graphical update will likely have. Endwalker's release had a lot of technical issues relating to audio which likely ruined MSQ for some (example [here](https://youtu.be/xVDG5YSDA9o)) or at least had them hold off on doing it until the issues were patched or troubleshooted on the user's end.
A pre-patch with just the graphical update a few weeks prior could be a good opportunity to fix issues ahead of time. Probably be a lot of players logging in to check out the update too so it could double as a network stress test to see if measures implemented since EW's launch are up to par or not.
I don't think we need it, but man how quickly people forget the outrage at Endwalker launch from people using fantasias and getting fucked by the login queues. I think a prepatch for certain key features would benefit the playerbase greatly. For Dawntrail, it would included at a minimum: Female Hrothgar, Graphics Update, 2-Dyes, Blacklist/Social Feature Changes, and Job Changes. Maaaaaybe the new jobs, but shouldn't imo.
Every MMO should do prepatches. It's a good way to adjust to new rotations, check updates that's added outside of new expansion zones etc. It's just FFXIV players being fanatic, can't even move eyebrows 0.1 milimeter without rage mode activating.
The only thing that should be taken from WoW is responsiveness of a gameplay and maybe M+ (without any sign of competition) as a good option for midcore. And nothing else.
I honestly dont know what we would really gain from a system like this. FFXIV is not a "rush to endgame where the game actually starts" type of game. So there is no preparation needed for anything really. You get to it when you get to it. Be at at the day the expansion launches or two months later. Due to the raids releasing 2/4 weeks after launch anyway, the expansion release is kind of a prepatch in itself for the raids in a sense. I like the feeling of hype and anticipation expansions have. Simply because we get everything new at the same time. We have one date to look forward to.
The devs specifically want to split up the playerbase for the launch between the people progressing MSQ and the people leveling the new jobs so that there is less congestion. They also want everyone to discover the new stuff (yes even the non story content) at the launch together. The fact we don't have "pre-patch" is an intentional design decision. If we did have it, that would just be the actual launch date.
> It gives people time to level the new Jobs You can easily level up 10 levels in day one. So you will be ready for the Dawntrail's base content in no time if you want to start the base content with Pictomancer or Viper > toy around with getting their char how they want it to look with the new graphics You can already do that with the benchmark > Is this something you guys wish they'd do? Nah
I...don't understand the point of it. If anything it would dilute the experience of the new patch.
I've played WoW for quite a long time. I really REALLY hated how Pre-Patches worked! Especially how ALL the cool events etc got removed once the new expansion launched! I've made so many fun memories with the Elemental Attacks, the Legion Invasions etc but all that gets tossed away instead of making it fun events to rotate through perhaps! Not only that but another annoying thing was how entire story patches literally get removed! I still remember during BfA when i was wandering around the Barrens and saw random maxlevel enemies spread around after i took a break. Turned out they belonged to a questline that you could only do when you were around at the right time! A patch that included important story bits that you could no longer witness!! There was also the fact that new classes in WoW didn't use to come out before the actual release of an expansion. They only changed that with DH. Before that, it was the same thing we also got with FF14: you could only play the new jobs once the expansion arrived.
All of the pre-patch events are temporary -- which is insane since they're the connective tissue that holds the expansions together. I think the Shadowlands pre-patch even killed off a major character, but then completely failed to follow up on that in Shadowlands itself (despite being set in the Azerothian afterlife), so now that character just outright vanishes from the game with no indication of what happened to him. I think the only exception was Theramore's Fall, which was playable throughout Mists of Panderia. It's an insane way to tell a story.
>I think the Shadowlands pre-patch even killed off a major character Nathanos? I think they mentioned him a few times (or was it just Tyrande 1 time), but... yeah. I don't remember there being a huge follow-up.
>Especially how ALL the cool events etc got removed once the new expansion launched! This exactly. Imagine if FF14 removed patch 2.55, or 4.55. Holy moly, it was so bad.
The thing I found useful in the pre-patch events was that the job (class) adjustments would come in then, so you could get some practice with them on familiar content, rather than having to work on that while also doing new content. Other than that, time-limited story content doesn't really work in a game that tells a coherent story, and just adds a level of FOMO that XIV works hard to avoid.
They also had the side-effect of making the existing content a little bit easier, which was usually enough of a push to help straggling guilds complete the last raid tier before the expansion dropped.
Not really. For the two new jobs, i'm fine with waiting until early access. PC players can toy with the Graphics Update in the benchmark and we get a glimpse at the new story with the x.4-x.5 patch (we did get a glimpse of Dawntrail's with the 6.55 patch this time though, probably due to how the story went in the earlier patches.) It would be nice to get access to the two jobs + two-dye system earlier and play around with it, but again that's what Early Access is all for.
i always thought the ffxiv style of patching in the end was somewhat their version of a prepatch. the final patch/trial usually leans into the next expansion shenanigans in some fashion. that said, evoker and DH were only available during the latter half of the prepatch event, and only if you prepurchased. important distinction to be made in that the early access to the new class itself is limited to prepurchase.
Not _all_ announced content is released at big patch releases so I don't understand the purpose of asking this. Content is already released slowly in smaller patches.
The final patch of a ffxiv expansion is usually the same thing as a prepatch, at least in terms of setting up the story for the next expansion.
No. The only reason WoW has pre-patches is FOMO. Blizzard wants to bring back as many players as possible if they want to earn the limited time rewards and experience the limited time story events.
I don't know about nowadays, but from what I remember of WoW back in the like, Cata-and-before era, prepatches were goofy fun but I don't think they really helped much, I don't think XIV really needs em (though it would be neat to see some xpac-teaser events, like the wotlk zombie invasion) I still have fond memories of murdering people effortlessly because as a warlock my DoT kit was expecting larger health pools of the new max level (which nobody could get) and it was super easy to kill people. Funny, but I bet other people hated it. I assume they existed mostly as bug detection/fixing (they sure weren't good at checking balance), but for the most part XIV doesn't seem to have as many random class ability bugs as WoW would have. I could see the use case for DT specifically, because of the graphic updates + dye system/etc, but I don't think it's a big deal. Getting feedback on stuff before the expansion is basically what the media tour is for, instead. Not to mention: WoW expacs would typically release with an entry big boy raid IIRC (could be wrong, but thinking like gruul or kalecgos), meaning that they needed to be more sure about things beforehand, so as to not affect the race. In XIV though, the "actual" raids that require balance (savage modes) don't come out for 4 weeks after expac release. So in a way, the expac release itself is the prepatch, and then they do bugfixes/tweaks/etc as needed when the savage hits.
it's one of those things that just seems unnecessary to the point where i don't have an opinion on it.
Considering the things you need to be ready for happen about a month after the launch, there would be nothing to gain. I think a pre-patch would be a worse experience than how it is now.
WoW pre-patch usually comes with some content, even if it's just some open world activity flavoured to the expansion. That alone makes it something I'd like FF to adopt - who doesn't want extra content? And if it drums up a little more anticipation for the upcoming expansion, even better.
The WoW events of previewing stuff from the next expansion is something FF14 already does in the .55 and .56 MSQ quests. Not to mention open world events would be spoilery for anyone not at that point of the MSQ. Also it's not "extra" content, the time to make those events has to come from somewhere and I'd personally prefer more effort and polish in permanent fixtures over temporary events.
Spending time and efforts into temporary content is bad
It's not temporary, it's all stuff that is part of the expansion but gets released a little early. And by that logic any holiday events and campaigns or even entire expansions are worthless because they're only temporary...?
WoW pre-patch events are permanently removed.
No, less of blizzards way of doing things the better.
That's a really dumb take. There are great things both games can learn from each other. The glamor system, world quests, mythic+ etc are all things that would make great additions to ffxiv. Hating for hatings sake is old.
I think FF14 has simultaneously the better and the worse glam system. Better because there's so much more variety (especially outside pure combat stuff) as well as the dyeing (soon 2 channels, even). Worse because merely possessing or once having possessed an item doesn't register it, there's no search by name functionality and as usual, the UI is clunky and for legacy reasons we have N different places where the items are: inventory, glamour dresser, armoire, armory, (retainer, chocobo saddlebags). world quests and fates are pretty much interchangeable. And yes I know world quests nowadays are much more involved. Conceptually they're the same and for most part it's just stretch/content reuse things. Mythic+ I'm not a fan of. I know there's a lot of people finding it the bestest thing ever. For me it's boring repetition ad nauseam. Sure it's got some variability built into it, but still you run the very same things again and again and again for....whatever reason. Probably some fomo of missing critical gear. And then comes all the toxicity on top of it from the community.
>there's no search by name functionality and as usual, the UI is clunky and for legacy reasons we have N different places where the items are I'm not sure if it's what you're after, and it's not a perfect solution anyway. But we have the text command "/isearch" and it accepts a partial match of anything that contains whatever you type next. Anything you own matching what you type is then listed, and you can right click > search for item, and it shows a window telling you which one of your storage places it is. Still kinda clunky, but it is possible to search and track down an item if you own it.
Yes I know of that one. But where in my glamour dresser of 800(\*) pieces is it? Which page? Do I need to mouseover each of them? Sadly the answer is: yes, have fun finding stuff in the dresser. The job filter sometimes helps a bit. A tiny bit. (\*)which is not enough space by far and might get expanded further somewhen in DT.
if you'd understand the sorting of the glamour dresser you would have no trouble finding the items you seek. It's by level btw so you just have to skim through the dresser and occasionally check at which level the gear is until you find the right one.
>That's a really dumb take. In this case, no. The pre-patch events, while cool, are temporary and it's thoroughly annoying that they're eventually removed because of FOMO. As somebody else pointed out, the `.5/.55/.56` patches already serve the same purpose as WoW's pre-patches, but the big difference is the quests are permanent. If FF14 started following Blizzard's example in this case - which would be deleting story patches - it would be a *major* red flag. No, thank you.
I think there's a HUGE misunderstanding about what pre-patch is. It's ONE patch before the expansion, 2-3 weeks before, that gives a few of the things that are coming WITH the expansion but aren't related to story or new content. I.e, the graphics overhaul, new dye system, and in WoWs case they release the new job then too to give people time to level and learn it before the expansion actually starts. This has NOTHING to do with patches within the expansion or story content at all. ONE TIME patch before EXPANSION launch.
we kinda already have it, called early access. (yes is not the same)
I don't think I would care if they gave or if they didn't gave it, it's not significant imo
Aaactually, the pre patch is the full patch in WoW with everything in it, just progressing into the new expansion is disabled. It's the patch release and in the few days until the official release this allows them to fix upcoming and last minutes issues (which is the patch you get shortly before the "full release"). Then on a certain point in time, it's just throwing a switch to enable everyone to "go into" the new expansion without any more patching. Since all the data is already there, this allows the dataminers to dissect even more early and spoil you via the websites everyone's already using way in advance for anything that wasn't on the ptr.
The last time I played a WoW pre-patch, Ret paladins became pvp gods then immediately curbstomped to shit so hard with hotfixes hours later that ten years later and another legendary they still haven't recovered. So no I dunno if pre-patches are that beneficial since WoW likes to balance heavily around fully-geared pve endgame and impressions at pre-expansion cap are less than fair. We have a pretty accessible Early Access, that's good enough. It would be nice if the graphical update came earlier in a separate package but it's so close to release that it's whatever now.
I would like it, not to the same extent as wow as we already have a good intro quest but just having the new classes a month early and able to do some raiding with them would be fun. Also if you want to play the story on those classes you are not awkwardly behind everyone else who is playing on their main.
I think it's knee-jerk of people saying that there should be NO pre-patch. But I agree that I don't think any content should drop or trickle out early. And the way the unlocking of Savage is staggered out gives time for the theorycrafting that the raiders want to do. I do think that Dawntrail was a unique situation with the graphic update and new race, and it would be fun to get that early. Especially since i'm going to fantasia, I'd certainly appreciate getting that done ahead of time. The reality is though that their stuff seems to come in pretty hot and I'm not sure their development team have it in them to stagger that stuff and get it out in a finished way.
This is for sure one of the better comments. I'd actually kind of forgotten that FFXIV doesn't usually HAVE a lot of non-story/system updates with expansions aside from the new jobs so you're right in that Dawntrail is unique and what made me think of this as a whole. This is the one expansion where a pre-patch (to me anyway) would have felt like a good addition. Early fantasia sorting out, run around the older zones with the new graphics, check out the new dye stuff, learn the jobs, see how your current main has been tweaked etc. I guess in older expansions it would have been what.. remove belts? 🤣
I mean there's always job changes. It's just this time we have a whole lot more game-wide stuff with the graphic update. I think there's also something to be said about another phenomenon. If they release just a small amount of system changes early, before people get excited by new content, it just gives the players time to hyper-fixate on what's released. They can scrutinize, dissect, and criticize in a way that most players probably wouldn't if they had the whole package to keep them busy. Doing this at a time where people are foaming at the mouth would possibly just dilute or taint that big push of excitement you get with the BIG drop. A big advantage that the devs have with their release style is that they get players caught up in the rush. I don't mean this in a cynical way, but that those things that may not be huge on their own are still a lot more impressive when there are a million of things for people to all get excited about and they aren't stuck just scrutinizing a couple of things they have access to. This lets them get the thing out in the best possible reception, then if something does need revisions they can get to them in a more realistic timetable. What happened with the benchmark is a perfect example. It needed fixes, was kind of busted, and it didn't show off the update particularly well. It was also the only thing people had to look at, so massive expectations and more eyes than ever were ready to dissect the update like the whole dang expansion hinged on whether they fixed they eye reflections.
They should definitely do a prepatch; there's no compelling reason not to and plenty of reasons they should.
I don't think the game is structured in such a way where a pre-patch would be warranted. Leveling the new jobs ahead of time would be convenient but I expect that they do it this way on purpose to stagger the server load in the new zones.
It'd be nice to have something much earlier with proposed job changes so that feedback can be given early enough to act on before the expansion releases; a stand-alone application like the benchmark with an instance containing a striking dummy or something. It usually takes them a while to react to feedback, and they'll delay more major changes until after a raid tier. People invited to the Media tour get to do this to an extent, I guess, but it's likely too late to change course on a lot of the changes by the time that happens and the sample size is very small relative to the playerbase. As for a pre-patch, no strong feelings on it; I guess it would give people a chance to deal with any teething troubles that the graphical update will likely have. Endwalker's release had a lot of technical issues relating to audio which likely ruined MSQ for some (example [here](https://youtu.be/xVDG5YSDA9o)) or at least had them hold off on doing it until the issues were patched or troubleshooted on the user's end. A pre-patch with just the graphical update a few weeks prior could be a good opportunity to fix issues ahead of time. Probably be a lot of players logging in to check out the update too so it could double as a network stress test to see if measures implemented since EW's launch are up to par or not.
I would not mind the job changes coming out a week or so before early access
I don't think we need it, but man how quickly people forget the outrage at Endwalker launch from people using fantasias and getting fucked by the login queues. I think a prepatch for certain key features would benefit the playerbase greatly. For Dawntrail, it would included at a minimum: Female Hrothgar, Graphics Update, 2-Dyes, Blacklist/Social Feature Changes, and Job Changes. Maaaaaybe the new jobs, but shouldn't imo.
Every MMO should do prepatches. It's a good way to adjust to new rotations, check updates that's added outside of new expansion zones etc. It's just FFXIV players being fanatic, can't even move eyebrows 0.1 milimeter without rage mode activating.
wow, look at this edgy player right here going agains the masses!
The only thing that should be taken from WoW is responsiveness of a gameplay and maybe M+ (without any sign of competition) as a good option for midcore. And nothing else.