See? This man gets it!
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What did you expect? 1.0 was a financial catastrophe of near Biblical proportions. Of course Square Enix wants to play it safe, especially in this world economy. You can argue they spend thousands upon millions of dollars(or Yen, etc.) on Fan Fests and other things but advertisements cost so does trying to keep a populace of an MMO happy(generally speaking). 2.0 and 3.0 did not have to be made. The board could have flat out told Yoshida no. But they didn't and I am sure they had limits in place for what he could and could not do for the sake of not repeating 1.0's failure. He may be director/producer but that does not mean he has full authority. Someone else signs his paycheck.
Totally true. But responding by leaping to the other extreme isn't exactly the wisest of decisions. Especially regarding long term interest.
By removing elemental weaknesses, keeping jobs on a stringent holy trinity system, and keeping gear on railroad style progression, they've basically written themselves in a corner when it comes to variety for gameplay. And without strong variety, people start to get bored. I love a lot about this game, but there's something to be said for the lack of deeper character customization.
Char grow, in my opinion, is also more Itemlevel. Power balanching, feel the ultimate ying yang effect between negative stats and god ones for your class. And the satisfying moment if you see: you had choosen whisely.
That is also true. By and large I think it is mostly them keeping with two rules: First, keep with the current market trends for MMOs. Makes sense from a financial standpoint. Little risk and greater chance for reward if you play your cards right. Second, don't repeat the mistakes of the past whether they be your own or someone else's. There is much to be learned from history and that holds true for businesses too. I don't deny that this game I love so much can improve. Everything can. But I don't want improvement at the cost of the potential loss of it altogether or loss of friends in game because they can no longer invest what little time they had to begin with.
With risk comes reward but who can say when the risk is greater than the reward? These are things they have to work out on a development basis. Again, Yoshida has been quoted many times as saying there are tons of things he wants to implement but can't. At least he wants to, you know? That has to count for something.
You would be surprised. To use Dragoon, they are sitting on 27 abilities. A skill tree effectively doubles or triples that number as they now have to balance around the possibility of all those additional perks people may choose. Comparatively, a new job is static. They will already have an idea of what role it will serve, thus they needs only design skills around that one idea and balance them accordingly.
By the devs' own admissions, it seems like they're looking into pruning abilities and rotations with the next expansion, though. You're right though, considering what a disaster Astrologian has been to balance I'm not entirely sure I'd trust the XIV dev team with something as work-intensive as talent trees, lol.