Stop band-aid fixing the glamour system and just fix it for real

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Originally Posted by Arzalis

If they'd done it right the first time, the playerbase would be happier and they'd actually have a more efficient system that scales forever instead of need to readdress this every few years.

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I'm not going to speak on their setup since we don't know it. But I will say as a software engineer that there are times you can't do it completely right the first time. You may be limited by deadlines or resources outside of your control. So even when you *know* you should do it X way, you may not have the freedom to. I hazard a guess that they're also still sitting on older code and that's not easy to change after the fact. My company has been going through a slow migration to new systems now for about three years carefully pulling things out of our current system because there aren't resources to do it all at once and we can't afford for our company to not be able to do business because we just rip some core process out of the middle of a bunch of other processes. I have wants with the glamour system like anyone else, but I also understand how sometimes you can't prevent technical debt.

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

I'm not going to speak on their setup since we don't know it. But I will say as a software engineer that there are times you can't do it completely right the first time. You may be limited by deadlines or resources outside of your control. So even when you *know* you should do it X way, you may not have the freedom to. I hazard a guess that they're also still sitting on older code and that's not easy to change after the fact. My company has been going through a slow migration to new systems now for about three years carefully pulling things out of our current system because there aren't resources to do it all at once and we can't afford for our company to not be able to do business because we just rip some core process out of the middle of a bunch of other processes. I have wants with the glamour system like anyone else, but I also understand how sometimes you can't prevent technical debt.

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They've said somewhat recently they basically had a glamour log ready to go and the servers couldn't handle it. Which sounds to me like the suits weren't willing to dedicate resources/hardware to make it happen. This was way before the hardware shortage too, before people bring that up.

I'm a programmer for my day job, so I understand the realities of implementing changes and you can't always do exactly what you want. That said, given the amount of time it's been since they implemented the glamour system in it's current form (roughly 5 years) it's just a matter of priorities.

My hope is with the dev team scaling back to 4 months between major patches they can actually focus on things like this. I think it's been obvious for a while now that FFXIV's pace is starting to create a situation where the game buckles under its own weight. The fact they're upgrading the graphics engine is tacit acknowledgement of that. The main thing about technical debt is you do have to acknowledge and address it eventually, and I think they're also realizing it's past time that happens.

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Originally Posted by Arzalis

They've said somewhat recently they basically had a glamour log ready to go and the servers couldn't handle it. Which sounds to me like the suits weren't willing to dedicate resources/hardware to make it happen. This was way before the hardware shortage too, before people bring that up.

I'm a programmer for my day job, so I understand the realities of implementing changes and you can't always do exactly what you want. That said, given the amount of time it's been since they implemented the glamour system in it's current form (roughly 5 years) it's just a matter of priorities.

My hope is with the dev team scaling back to 4 months between major patches they can actually focus on things like this. I think it's been obvious for a while now that FFXIV's pace is starting to create a situation where the game buckles under its own weight. The fact they're upgrading the graphics engine is tacit acknowledgement of that. The main thing about technical debt is you do have to acknowledge and address it eventually, and I think they're also realizing it's past time that happens.

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I'm sure plenty of them want to address the technical debt. But like you said, the suits won't allow it. And we don't always get to set our own priorities. I know I'm regularly pulled from one "#1 priority project" to another.

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

I'm sure plenty of them want to address the technical debt. But like you said, the suits won't allow it. And we don't always get to set our own priorities. I know I'm regularly pulled from one "#1 priority project" to another.

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Well, people just need to be vocal enough so the suits eventually cave and do allow it. Given their recent earnings reports it seems like they might finally realize this game is a significant factor in keeping their entire company afloat and they might finally be putting more money into the game. Shouldn't be a surprise, but it apparently was to them.

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Originally Posted by Arzalis

Well, people just need to be vocal enough so the suits eventually cave and do allow it. Given their recent earnings reports it seems like they might finally realize this game is a significant factor in keeping their entire company afloat and they might finally be putting more money into the game. Shouldn't be a surprise, but it apparently was to them.

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This statement is absurd on the face of it. The company did report a 4% increase in sales and a 17% increase in operating revenue, which was attributed to the popularity of the Endwalker expansion, but it is in no way "keeping the company afloat".

The entirety of sales for all MMOs at Square Enix is half that of sales of the Mobile/Browser group, and even with the lackluster sales of various HD Games this last year, that group still made 1.5 times the sales of the MMO group.

One hopes that there will be a budget increase for the MMO group in the coming year so that they can begin to add things to the upcoming 7.0 expansion. Do not think that management will wildly increase the infrastructure costs for this game without solid evidence that subscriptions generated by the 'WoW Exodus' remain.

In any case, the changes you desire are not going to be available in this expansion, budget increase or no.

https://external-content.duckduckgo....gif&f=1&nofb=1

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Originally Posted by DPZ2

This statement is absurd on the face of it. The company did report a 4% increase in sales and a 17% increase in operating revenue, which was attributed to the popularity of the Endwalker expansion, but it is in no way "keeping the company afloat".

The entirety of sales for all MMOs at Square Enix is half that of sales of the Mobile/Browser group, and even with the lackluster sales of various HD Games this last year, that group still made 1.5 times the sales of the MMO group.

One hopes that there will be a budget increase for the MMO group in the coming year so that they can begin to add things to the upcoming 7.0 expansion. Do not think that management will wildly increase the infrastructure costs for this game without solid evidence that subscriptions generated by the 'WoW Exodus' remain.

In any case, the changes you desire are not going to be available in this expansion, budget increase or no.

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Sorry but FFXIV is the only game that Square Enix has. They haven't made any other game. /s

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Originally Posted by Amon-ster

Sorry but FFXIV is the only game that Square Enix has. They haven't made any other game. /s

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??? Why quote me when you want to write this? Better to quote the people who are actually making the argument the FFXIV is "keeping the company afloat".

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Originally Posted by Ransu

WoW's failure's are self inflicted and have nothing to do with the age of the game and everything to do with the toxicity of the dev studio.

Don't count on a new FF MMO any time soon with FFXIV getting graphical upgrades come 7.0 and continued support for the game easily going for another 10 years.

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When you mistreat your staff, your staff won't feel motivated to release high quality content of course but the age of the game does make a big problem. Content after content it becomes less bearable and eventually people want to leave but they spent over 10 years into a virtual world with their friends, it's a bit hard to just toss it away and start over someplace else. The WoW exodus was influencer made. It was the influencers on Twitch and other platforms who decided it was time to go and people said that it was as good of a time as any to try something else. If influencers didn't exist, there wouldn't have been a WoW exodus no matter how "toxic" the workplace may have been. People are easy to shrug things off as "not their problem" and keep doing what they are doing. Right now people are so easy to manipulate with social media to where they don't have a mind of their own, it's pretty sad. But, I wouldn't be surprised if people returned to WoW after catching up in FF or getting bored of it.