Originally Posted by
Runespider
Titles don't really mean much, FFXI is Tanakas baby. If you think his influence would be ignored at the meetings then you're crazy, he gets his way or the director would be steamrolled. The way I see things, it's more that the director and team is making decent content (under a very VERY low budget) and Tanaka is ruining it by crappy drop systems and low drop rates (in an attempt to make up for the serious lack of content due to that low budget).
They removed him from FFXIV due to incompetence (a game with almost nobody playing it) and leave him on XI which is vastly more important to the company. Makes a lot of sense.
A lot of people returned to FFXI because it got better in almost every way, now it's going back to old ways that made these people quit in the first place. I'd rather not see this game die any time soon, especially not due to crappy budgets when the game makes enough to warrant more and ruining the content they do add with useless stupid overdone time sinks.