When Creative Studio III first announced that Final Fantasy XIV would be moving its patches from hitting after three and a half months to four months, my reaction was fairly subdued because… why wouldn’t it be? It’s fine. The schedule was always a bit flexible toward a longer duration, so this was not a major shift. And indeed, I generally feel the same way about the patch cycle as I did before. But there is a connected element that I don’t feel as good about, and that is the ongoing sequence of Moogle tomestone events.

At this point, we get one at the tail end of every single patch, running for a couple of weeks to keep populating content so that everyone can get through it; you know the routine by now. And while I understand the purpose, I’m increasingly of the mind that this is kinda bad and annoying, even though I also recognize that it’s probably an objective good idea. It’s the sort of thing that would prompt me to write a whole thing about it if, say, I had a weekly column about the game.

Oh, hey.

First of all, let me state something I feel is both uncontroversial and very cynical: The purpose of these events is to help ensure that people are queued for content which otherwise might get depopulated. That’s really it. The added rewards are there wholly to motivate players who might otherwise be tempted not to bother, presumably because you already have all or most of the rewards from the event and because it’s a pretty low-effort event when you get right down to it.

This is not a bad idea, and I completely support this as a concept. There is absolutely no way to be sure of when people are or are not coming into the game, and this makes sure that even if someone starts playing during the low period, the game doesn’t feel abandoned. Oh, sure, there are areas that are no longer bustling with players (for example, outside the starter cities), but you can still queue up for content and expect to have a reasonable wait time.

But it’s clear that while this trick worked for a while, it wasn’t ideal. So now there are other ways to get the same tomestones, and those kinda rule the roost.

However, it’s not as if that is the primary problem that I personally have with the moogle tome events; the primary problem is that these days they happen every single time. It starts to puncture the illusion, and when you consider that every single MMORPG is about 90% illusion, that’s kind of an important element.

If it isn’t immediately obvious, “illusion” in this case is not a negative thing. At the time I write this I’m just a few days out from seeing the new Superman movie, and I love it. It is also a gigantic and carefully crafted illusion because James Gunn did not actually have a flying man named Clark Kent to film on set. (Edi Gathegi can fly, but he’s not terrific at everything; he’s not a great artist, and he can’t play basketball any more after a knee injury.) But there’s a thing about illusions, and it’s a thing I learned when I was studying stage magic as a younger soul.

Whenever you get good at a trick with stage magic, it really does look like magic. The person watching you knows it is a trick, of course, but that doesn’t mean that it’s evident how you did it. So you will almost certainly be asked to do the trick again – and if you want to retain your credibility, you should politely change the topic and avoid doing that. Because every single time you repeat the same trick, the closer people are watching your every move to see how you did it.

I stated right at the start that I know full well the point of this event is to keep older content relevant when it might not be otherwise. This did not require some deep analysis to figure out. I traditionally do not care because, sure, technically everything I can earn from this event is something I can get through other means that are probably more straightforward, but why not just do some older content and help newer or returning players and get it that way?

The problem is that this starts to wear thin when it’s an every-couple-of-months thing. Both because the list of items that I don’t actually have gets shorter (that’s how these things work) and it makes it feel like a plea from the developers. “Hey, don’t be mad that there isn’t new content yet!” And I wasn’t mad until you kept apologizing for it! The constant apologies made me really annoyed by it!

Now, in case it’s not clear, this is at least somewhat tongue-in-cheek. I have long been clear on what to do if I am bored with my options in FFXIV, and that is to take a bit of a break and go do other things. (As I have said here multiple times, I probably play more of this game than anyone reading this, and I also do a lot of things unrelated to FFXIV.) But I do still get the feeling that the constant array of moogle events winds up being an apology to players for adding two extra weeks to the turnaround time.

This team being what it is, I don’t really expect that to change. But I, for one, do not want the apologies. The apologies make it feel more unreasonable. I know when the next patch is coming. You run tons of coverage around it; I am not going to miss it. Just let it be. I can handle entertaining myself for an extra two weeks.

Every time you repeat the tricks and make me feel like you’re afraid I’ll lose interest if I don’t have something new to do for an additional two weeks, I feel more odd about it. Like maybe I should take a longer break because you’re so afraid of my reaction even with the extremely minor gaps we actually have. It’s all right to just have a break! I don’t need a shiny object dangled in front of my eyes because I’ll lose interest or I lack object permanence. It’s fine.

I think that it is commendable that Yoshida has cultivated a strong sense of being willing to apologize for any and all missteps, and it’s very clear that the man loves the players and loves this game. But that can also go to far, something I have learned repeatedly over the years. If you apologize profusely for everything, even when you haven’t done anything wrong, it gets on people’s nerves after a while. And as silly as it might be, this is why I kinda wish we’d get fewer of these events. Just let me find my own thing to do during the not-actually-significant additional two weeks. I’m sure I can manage. I have hundreds of games in my Steam library. Promise. I’ll be fine.

Feedback, as always, is welcome in the comments down below or via mail to eliot@massivelyop.com. Next week, as I have done many articles looking at series references, I want to actually reverse course and take a look at things from another angle. What are the most fertile games that could be mined for references moving forward?

The Nymian civilization hosted an immense amount of knowledge and learning, but so much of it has been lost to the people of Eorzea. That doesn’t stop Eliot Lefebvre from scrutinizing Final Fantasy XIV each week in Wisdom of Nym, hosting guides, discussion, and opinions without so much as a trace of rancor.