Help help help I need an adult, or perhaps an SE financial adviser. That would most likely be more beneficial.
I am going to go out on a limb here and conclude that the Dev team at this point in the game are rather understaffed for the desires of the player community.
Anyone who has played this game for a long time has seen the obvious decline. The last expansion pack was in 2007 and if I can go out on a limb I would say Wings of the Goddess was the official marker to the age of reusing old content for new content.
Don't get me wrong I am not complaining and I am not against recycling. It makes perfect sense to save time, money, resources, etc on reusing certain things. I happened to love WotG as campaign is incredibly fun (imo) and the great quality of work put into the story line easily makes it my favorite in the game.
However, somewhere along the line this game has reached a point of seemingly just being short staffed. We have reached a point where important adjustments are about "balance", adjusting what exists several times over in a year in more often than not being in minor ways, and reusing every square inch of vanadiel. The headlines of update day announcements today were above the footnotes or even the footnotes.
Never before was the player base to be excited and entertained by "AoE damage of bosses in WoE will do less damage" or "Testimony drop rates have been increased". That was at the very bottom of an update day announcement and never even worth mentioning amongst all the juicy details that make us all happy to roam Vanadiel as it ever changes and grows.
Those are not bad things, but when it is most of what we have to look forward to since 2009 with the add on scenarios it honestly seems like our plate of rations seems to be getting slimmer and slimmer.
Personally I am fond of abyssea, and it can serve as a unique event for the life of this game with a minor tweak here and there every now and then. However, something like abyssea could really have been an opportunity for a new expansion. This game honestly could be much more appealing to new and old retired players with just that as well as obviously keep the current subscriber base happy for years (well, some people are never happy, but you know how that works).
Why does EverQuest 1 get four expansions since 2007 and Final Fantasy 11 gets zero?
TL;DR + Questions to the big cheeses:
- How understaffed is FFXI, and is the cost not worth the benefit of adding on to the team?
- Besides a decrease in staff over the years what are multiple serious obstacles that stand in the way of breaking new ground in FFXI?
- What obstacles stand in the way of a content filled expansion pack to FFXI?
- How much of an issue does the amount of data the PS2 HDD can hold pose? What happens if it ever becomes filled? Are those "PS2 is partly responsible for holding the game back" rumors true at all? If so, what becomes of the PS2?
--------- (Random and unrelated) With the advent of the newer billing system and people using crysa. Could something like a 'Crysta Card' or a "Three months of FFXI card" usable for both FFXI and FFXIV (in the case of Crysta) be plausible to implement? You know, WoW has those cards at convenience stores and Walmarts it serves as decent advertising and a somewhat practical way to have people put in crysta or pay for FFXI over existing methods.
Someone needed eyeliner and while I was in the checkout the idea just came to me so...