Final Fantasy XIV Expansion Pack

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Originally Posted by Wolfie

How could a game with barely any content and horribly mangled fundamental gameplay aspects even warrant an expansion pack?

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Zilart was the "fixer" to FFXI after initial foundation tweaks, most of what everyone know of XI's early years that weren't importers or Japanese native is the world post Zilart.

So it's not that unheard of.

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Originally Posted by Corrderio

Why do we need an expansion when we still have 4(?) unused regions and Ishgard in the data?

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It's actually not in the data anymore, only some textures and a few (3) Guildleves exist. Unless you mean they're still needing to be added and unlocked based on what the map says yes.

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Originally Posted by Zanfire

Their team seems so damn tiny, especially for what it is ( a #d FF MMO) i just dont see why they have the people to build a whole new MMO (whatever it will be) but cant get some more people for this team, who clearly seems to need it.

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I hear this big time... I don't get it at all.

Being a dev myself... whenever I walk into a clients site and they ask me... 'why are we not killing it???'. 99.9% of the time most of the following is true...

1. Team is not skilled.
2. Leadership lacks that 'killer instinct'.
3. Foundation/Architecture is rubbish so changing on the existing platform slows to a snails pace.
4. Company is too large, slow and bureaucratic resulting in poor disconnected sobs in cubes who don't give a shit even though in their hearts... they love what they do.

Bottom line... It just seems to me that if the crystal tools worth paying dividends.... they should be able to start cranking out content left and right like no tomorrow.

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Originally Posted by Corrderio

Why do we need an expansion when we still have 4(?) unused regions and Ishgard in the data?

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expansion = open up these areas

not so much a physical area expansion.

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Originally Posted by Zanfire

Their team seems so damn tiny, especially for what it is ( a #d FF MMO) i just dont see why they have the people to build a whole new MMO (whatever it will be) but cant get some more people for this team, who clearly seems to need it.

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100+ isn't exactly "tiny", given there's people who can make entire games solo (Touhou). They also mentioned that while they intermingle (XI/XIV dev team for example) the rest are on their own divisions because despite popular belief, Square Enix isn't an MMORPG company that can dedicate everyone on the payroll to one project.

XI's dev team is tiny, as they pulled people from it for XIV's initial development and the dry spell of content from 2007 - 2009 kind of shows that.

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Originally Posted by Jennestia

Zilart was the "fixer" to FFXI after initial foundation tweaks, most of what everyone know of XI's early years that weren't importers or Japanese native is the world post Zilart.

So it's not that unheard of.

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Perhaps the c-level peeps at squeenix feel that they way ffxi survived still applies to today. start slow and fix. this would explain a great deal...

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Originally Posted by Jennestia

Zilart was the "fixer" to FFXI after initial foundation tweaks, most of what everyone know of XI's early years that weren't importers or Japanese native is the world post Zilart.

So it's not that unheard of.

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Doesn't mean anything. Do you think that if FFXI was released today in its initial state (albeit with a graphics improvement) that it would fare just as well as it did back then? It would crash and burn just like FFXIV. There's some things to be learned from older MMOs; justifying a crappy release or justifying an expansion immediately after a crappy release when the vanilla game is still in disarray is not one of them.

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Originally Posted by Jennestia

100+ isn't exactly "tiny", given there's people who can make entire games solo (Touhou). They also mentioned that while they intermingle (XI/XIV dev team for example) the rest are on their own divisions because despite popular belief, Square Enix isn't an MMORPG company that can dedicate everyone on the payroll to one project.

XI's dev team is tiny, as they pulled people from it for XIV's initial development and the dry spell of content from 2007 - 2009 kind of shows that.

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I keep hearing its like 50 people tops. And they clearly are big enough to be both kinds (MMO and non-MMO) they already have 1 thats been going for a long time, have this pile they are working on AND another in the works...hell most MMO companys cant do that many at once. Tbh i think they took people away from 14 because of how bad it was and from FFXI (its old and wont be around forever) and put them on this new game, which they really must be puttin all their hope into.

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Originally Posted by Zanfire

I keep hearing its like 50 people tops. And they clearly are big enough to be both kinds (MMO and non-MMO) they already have 1 thats been going for a long time, have this pile they are working on AND another in the works...hell most MMO companys cant do that many at once. Tbh i think they took people away from 14 because of how bad it was and from FFXI (its old and wont be around forever) and put them on this new game, which they really must be puttin all their hope into.

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Ok let me get you straight, SE think that they have a product that has been in development for 5 years, the launch didnt go well, but everyone says it has potential, so they will pull people out of it to other projects which will make them loose money faster because the content takes longer to make and they are still employing the same people, rather than the 2 logical choices which are lay people off to save money, which makes them loose less, or get more people from other projects to attempt to salvage ffxiv faster and start to get back what they have already lost.

Also where did you hear the 50 people from, im sure yoshi-p said that it was over 100 people on the dev team.

The reason development is going slowly is because crystal tools was designed for ps3, and the opengl api, so they need to optimise it for PC and directX, admittedly this should have been done pre-release but we are stuck now.

Also for anyone talking about the lack of recent patches, what would you prefer buggy, incomplete, rushed content and emulate the release with every patch or would you prefer smooth complete content that they have taken time over that you can just enjoy straight away? lets not forget why the game is like this now, because it was rushed for release.

When I was playing alpha I said to friends that it wouldnt be released on time because of the state of the game, I was wrong but in a way right because the release should have been delayed.

tl;dr: No company would pull people out of a dev team for other projects if a game has potential and is loosing money.

SE has never said (as far as I can remember) there are 50 people on the dev team.

Crystal tools is slowing development down because it was designed for PS3.

Most people would prefer content that is complete rather than rushed because everyone rages when its delayed, lets not forget why the game is in this state right now, a rushed release.

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Originally Posted by Jennestia

It's actually not in the data anymore, only some textures and a few (3) Guildleves exist. Unless you mean they're still needing to be added and unlocked based on what the map says yes.

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Well that sucks

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Originally Posted by Catapult

Here is a problem: What about beta testing? Not taking in enough beta testing feedback was a lot of what got them in to this situation in the first place.

By allowing us to keep playing the patches, we can help ensure the game stays balanced and bugs/problems are picked up in greater detail before the PS3 version is launched.

Thus, I am against not continuing patches. This is a part of beta development.

And I consider this game as if it were in a ALPHA phase.

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I fixed it for you.