My two cents on development.

There's been a certain amount of vague about just what is being done behind the scenes on this game, and the pessimists argue that things are moving rather slowly.

Yoshi says there's a lot of stuff in the works, but nothing gets released until it is ready.

Here's why i think that the next 3-5 months are going to provide us with a mind numbing amount of content.

EVERYTHING.. and i mean EVERYTHING tracks back to a couple of major projects and nothing can really be released until those two major projects are good to go.

#1) Battle system.
#2) Geographical redesign.

Every monster, every fight, every dungeon and every everything having to do with anything you fight in game, is designed with a purpose in mind. it would be silly to release any significant new battle content that is designed under the current smash the attack key till its dead battle system.

Lets face it, the current battle system is a button mash, and the new one is geared towards what FFXI did so well. PARTY BASED TACTICS, with some solo if you'd like.

In any case, why waste hundreds of human work hours designing new battle content, only to redesign it as soon as you implement the new battle system? You know they're going to have to completely rework these 2 new raids and put a lot of double up hours into them as the new battle system expands right?

But you all demanded the content NOW.

Ah well, it's only two.

But furthermore, for the next 10 dungeons, or all the beastman camps.
We'll get em in a big explosion as soon as the new battle system is up to snuff.

Also, the geography.. i mean it's nice to say there's new content from hubs to beastman tribes and such, but they have to go somewhere, and well...

if you're making a new beastman camp in the Ul'dah region that is a mountain maze like the orc camp outside of sandoria in FFXI, well, it would be really strange if it suddenly appears in the middle of a big flat field. >_> it would be like some kind of big GLITCH.

Anyways, i am excited for what is to come.

If SE was smart, they would release the new dungeons pre-made for the new battle system and everything involved in it. They said they are already aware of everything going into the new system, so the dungeons (And like I said, if they are smart) will reflect that.

About the geography, SE said they are redoing the maps, with that in mind, they will have the opportunity to create placement for these new beastmen strongholds they are talking about, and any of the new HUB's. These strongholds will most likely be new zones.

Excellent topic, however I'm afraid your battle is already lost as people just don't bother to actually think this all through. Yoshi and team have already said numerous times why this is all taking so very long (which is why I was AGAINST battle reforms), but it falls on deaf ears.

We all want, want and want some more and have absolutely no patience to wait for the devs to make all these changes for us.

IF after the battle reforms and geographical changes are made content still comes in at a trickle then yes there will be a huge problem of an undermanned team, right now though it's pretty much going as I expected and feared. :S Still I am excited for chocobos and the like...

Heh like FFXI, once this is all said and done we'll get content at a steady pace -- XI is their other active (and highly successful) MMO for those that don't know/choose to ignore it. If XIV was in the same position as XI (no need for foundation reform) we'd be at previews of our second expansion pack right now.

I always think it's hilarious when people call the playerbase impatient and claim that we want things "now", when in actual fact we've waited almost ten months for them to give us something (of substance) to do.

SE are the only ones at fault here, and I'm pretty sure they'd tell you that too.

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Originally Posted by Mug

I always think it's hilarious when people call the playerbase impatient and claim that we want things "now", when in actual fact we've waited almost ten months for them to give us something (of substance) to do.

SE are the only ones at fault here, and I'm pretty sure they'd tell you that too.

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I think most people speak out about being patient and calm, because no matter how we look at the problem, it doesn't change the fact that it will take a good amount of time to repair. If you rush the devs then you get exactly what you asked for, rushed/ incomplete work. Just like with the release of this game, it wasn't ready, and we shouldn't expect them to rush new content if it's not ready, or else this game will go right back where it started.

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Originally Posted by Mug

I always think it's hilarious when people call the playerbase impatient and claim that we want things "now", when in actual fact we've waited almost ten months for them to give us something (of substance) to do.

SE are the only ones at fault here, and I'm pretty sure they'd tell you that too.

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I also "love" when they say we're notorious for "rumor mongering" and then they still don't ever give us complete information. You don't have to be a student of law to ask the questions we ask them, we see obvious holes in their information and ask questions. Any questions we don't get we search for the answer there, if answer is in different languages forum people want to know that info, we can't rely on SE to do this faster than the players, so the players put up a rough draft.
Like c'mon, its human nature to be curious, are they saying people outside of the NA/English speaking forums aren't...curious? :/ I hate surprises. Maybe that's an american thing now :/ (take all stereotypes as sarcasm)

It's players like these that make SE's fumbling seem really sad when there are still naive players like the OP who think the SE's unseen slowness in development of XIV is about to change somehow.

Even when all the evidence points to just slow speed and this is really all there is for the next patch. People though chocobos take a lot of time because there's going to be something new about the way they're implemented. Almost a year in the making and we'll be just getting the bare-bones version first. Same for the companies. An unseen amount of hype and all the plans seem to be reduced to them being just quest hubs even though previously we were led to believe they're going to be something completely new player run we haven't seen in MMOs before.

I'd like to have my head in the clouds as much as the OP but it's about time you wake up and smell the Lodestone updates. SE is scrambling to get even this patch out of the door in time for Thursday they even made the absolutely ridiculous claim that one set of gear takes half a year to complete.

To wish for them to achieve something over the bare minimum after all these disappointing patches and MW still being a code-mess then I think that's a bit unrealistic really.

When content arrives they're forced to make it extremely grind oriented and repeatable to play time for future because if players burn through the new quests in days they'll be no closer to achieving a playerbase that's willing to pay than they are now.

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Originally Posted by Seif

It's players like these that make SE's fumbling seem really sad when there are still naive players like the OP who think the SE's unseen slowness in development of XIV is about to change somehow.

I'd like to have my head in the clouds as much as the OP but it's about time you wake up and smell the Lodestone updates. SE is scrambling to get even this patch out of the door in time for Thursday they even made the absolutely ridiculous claim that one set of gear takes half a year to complete.

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First they are completly redesigning a game that took 5 years prior to release to develop, so its going to take a long time, if you take that into perspective they arent really going that slowly, the reason people say development is slow is because of SE's priorities, a complete battle system overhaul which needs to be top priority to accomodate how, in practice, the changes will make will affect how content works. SE say they are going to release x, y, z and people think it will come instantly when it requires alot of work to get it, then there are unforseen problems or the current systems dont make it viable for release until some battle or geographic overhauls are done, then everyone says development is slow.

Also you comment saying that them saying its ridiculous that it takes half a year to make new gear, they have to make a model for each race which is about 15 differant models, then they need to add stats to it, and make sure it affects said stats, then they need to add the physics to it, for example if you were running around in a full length coat and it didnt move around your legs, basicly like it was left in the starch too much, what would you think? Programming anything takes time, and appart from the most simple programs there are always unforseen problems, look at FFXI's latest patch, there was a glitch that made cures always do 99,999 to undead mobs, and there were no changes to cure mechanics, which is why it got through to the final patch because no one would have thought somthing would cause a problem to that completly unrelated piece of code.

The only people that can talk about slow development are programmers that know the problems of programming, I have done some, admittedly not much, but enough to know how hard it can be, I have never done as big programs as FFXIV, but i find it hard enough to sift through 50 lines of code to find that I missed 1 semi colon from the end of a line, never mind over 1 million (which FFXIV is bound to have).

Well, no one is going to wait around forever just to be nice to SE because they're having programming problems (and you don't need to be a programmer to say that).

For me, a lot depends on these next few patches. How fast we get them and the quality of them. If the pace picks up and we get fun things to do, then that's awesome and I only see good things for the game, but if it continues to be this slow, then I struggle to see how it will work in the long run.

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Originally Posted by Mug

Well, no one is going to wait around forever just to be nice to SE because they're having programming problems (and you don't need to be a programmer to say that).

For me, a lot depends on these next few patches. How fast we get them and the quality of them. If the pace picks up and we get fun things to do, then that's awesome and I only see good things for the game, but if it continues to be this slow, then I struggle to see how it will work in the long run.

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Because the most time consuming things are the foundations, like the battle system and geographic changes are gonna be done in 1.18 for the battle changes (and optimising in future patches) and the geographic changes will be coming soon, we should get them faster, the reason this patch has taken so long is because its gonna be huge with all the changes we are getting, i would imagine 1-2.5GB (maybe more)

OK first of all, when people complain at SE for being slow to release new content, yes you are being impatient. It does take time to make these current changes, they're massive changes, not to mention how hard it is to start programming with a code that you didn't even create (the new dev team that took over). You aren't paying for this game, so just wait for new content to come, it will take time, deal with it.

It may not be official, but this game is still in it's beta stages. And don't even bother arguing with "but we paid for the game so we should get our moneys worth blabla" because there are plenty of games still in beta stages that people have to buy to play it. Take minecraft for example http://www.minecraft.net/

In short, almost non of you know what you're talking about when it comes to developing games, so shuddup and enjoy the currently free-to-play game while they make it better.

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Originally Posted by zaviermhigo

I also "love" when they say we're notorious for "rumor mongering" and then they still don't ever give us complete information. You don't have to be a student of law to ask the questions we ask them, we see obvious holes in their information and ask questions. Any questions we don't get we search for the answer there, if answer is in different languages forum people want to know that info, we can't rely on SE to do this faster than the players, so the players put up a rough draft.
Like c'mon, its human nature to be curious, are they saying people outside of the NA/English speaking forums aren't...curious? :/ I hate surprises. Maybe that's an american thing now :/ (take all stereotypes as sarcasm)

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Asking for details about upcoming features is one thing and completely warranted, refusing to understand that reworking the game's base systems is going to take an age and half and pushing back solid content until these systems are done is another.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the current team basically the old team with new leadership? All I remember them saying is that they switched people around a bit.

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Originally Posted by Mug

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the current team basically the old team with new leadership? All I remember them saying is that they switched people around a bit.

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No. They only announced the managerial team positions -- You honestly don't think they would list every artist, programmer or debugger they throw onto the team, do you?

They even stated they brought in more people to help with the project from other teams.

Well, if what you're saying is indeed true, then wouldn't it be backwards to sack the people who knew how to work with the code?

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Originally Posted by Mug

Well, if what you're saying is indeed true, then wouldn't it be backwards to sack the people who knew how to work with the code?

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Like most other companies who use one engine or an in-house engine (like Konami) everyone has knowledge of it. They logically wouldn't sack the people who designed the engine since they kind of need them in order to do said core engine fixes they mentioned a little while back.

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Managerial Changes

Producer/Director
Naoki Yoshida

Section Leader Changes

Assistant Director
Shintaro Tamai (FINAL FANTASY X, Front Mission 5: Scars of the War)

Lead Game Designer
Nobuaki Komoto (FINAL FANTASY IX, FINAL FANTASY XI)

Lead Combat System Designer
Akihiko Matsui (FINAL FANTASY XI)

Technical Advisor
Yoshihisa Hashimoto (Next Generation Game Engine Development)

Lead Programmer
Hideyuki Kasuga (FINAL FANTASY XI, DIRGE OF CERBERUS -FINAL FANTASY VII-)

Senior Concept Artist
Akihiko Yoshida (FINAL FANTASY XII, Vagrant Story)

Lead Artist
Hiroshi Takai (FINAL FANTASY XI, THE LAST REMNANT)

Lead UI Designer/Lead Web Designer
Hiroshi Minagawa (FINAL FANTASY XII, Vagrant Story)

These members will make up the development team's new core-a core...

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Based on the words core-a-core, and common sense, it is fair to suggest that more changes were made lower in the tree.
I can't find that list... this one is on any forums topics discussing the changes when they happened.

I'm patient, and a complete supporter, but even I don't believe it should have taken 10+ months to reach basic auto-attack functionality.

I realize they didn't begin work the moment the new team was reformed, and i'm sure there was a lot of immediate and future direction of the game planned and mapped out... but considering some studios develop and ship a game in a year + It's my belief that they had struggles whether it be direction, or programming, or whatever, but something has slowed them down in the process and they've just recently overcome it as we're finally starting to see the real fruits of their labor.

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Originally Posted by RedAffinity

I'm patient, and a complete supporter, but even I don't believe it should have taken 10+ months to reach basic auto-attack functionality.

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People need to stop assuming it was being made since the launch of the game -- It wasn't. Auto-attack was no where near the plan for XIV and Tanaka even stated he moved away from it for a reason, therefore how could it take 10 months to do something that wasn't even planned from the start?

I think people are letting their cynicism get the best of them.

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realize they didn't begin work the moment the new team was reformed, and i'm sure there was a lot of immediate and future direction of the game planned and mapped out... but considering some studios develop and ship a game in a year

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Now, you understand it there shouldn't be a "but" thrown in there. I actually work in this industry and we can produce a game in 1-3 years depending on what it is -- That's an offline title, and some games can take 5 years; You just never hear about it till it's close to release. The only example I can think of a game from start to finish that was released in a yearish was Dragon Age II, and they largely had assets to build off of already -- Most games from scratch take significantly longer, especially on this generation consoles if it's taking full advantage.

It's no secret that there's problems with XIV's engine that can slow them down, but you can't assume everything was being done from the absolute first day of release to now.

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Originally Posted by Jennestia

but you can't assume everything was being done from the absolute first day of release to now.

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I work part of a small studio myself. I understand the process as well. I'm also hoping the quote statement above was just a general statement and not directed towards me as I was relatively clear in my original post I didn't believe they immediately began working on auto-attack.

Also, while minor, we can't forget the other updates and improvements the game has seen thus far. Those also took time and resources. Yoshi and his team saw it a priority over auto-attack and allocated resources and time into minor UI improvements, NM's, mini-quests etc... all draining resources from different talents within their team. I still firmly believe they should have prioritized Auto-Attack and a battle system that makes sense over some of the other content that hasn't seem to have made much of a dent in improving the game, 10 months in.

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Originally Posted by RedAffinity

I work part of a small studio myself. I understand the process as well. I'm also hoping the quote statement above was just a general statement and not directed towards me as I was relatively clear in my original post I didn't believe they immediately began working on auto-attack.

Also, while minor, we can't forget the other updates and improvements the game has seen thus far. Those also took time and resources. Yoshi and his team saw it a priority over auto-attack and allocated resources and time into minor UI improvements, NM's, mini-quests etc... all draining resources from different talents within their team. I still firmly believe they should have prioritized Auto-Attack and a battle system that makes sense over some of the other content that hasn't seem to have made much of a dent in improving the game, 10 months in.

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The fact that FF14 of all things lacks resources and talent, is itself a statement.

No matter what the prioritization, they just haven't been able to do quality and quantity as of yet.

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Originally Posted by RedAffinity

I work part of a small studio myself. I understand the process as well. I'm also hoping the quote statement above was just a general statement and not directed towards me as I was relatively clear in my original post I didn't believe they immediately began working on auto-attack.

Also, while minor, we can't forget the other updates and improvements the game has seen thus far. Those also took time and resources. Yoshi and his team saw it a priority over auto-attack and allocated resources and time into minor UI improvements, NM's, mini-quests etc... all draining resources from different talents within their team. I still firmly believe they should have prioritized Auto-Attack and a battle system that makes sense over some of the other content that hasn't seem to have made much of a dent in improving the game, 10 months in.

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You cannot make content for a battle system that isnt made, you say you work for a small studio so you should know if you make somthing, it can have unforseen problems, people say make the content first then the battle system, but if you do that you have to rework the all the content that has been made for the differant mechanics and guess what that takes time as well.

Its more logical to make a battle system then make content and fix the bugs rather than make loads of content, fix bugs, make a battle system, change the content, fix bugs.

You cannot make content knowing they battle system will change and waste more resources changing the content to accomodate the new system.

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Originally Posted by Delsus

You cannot make content for a battle system that isnt made, you say you work for a small studio so you should know if you make somthing, it can have unforseen problems, people say make the content first then the battle system, but if you do that you have to rework the all the content that has been made for the differant mechanics and guess what that takes time as well.

Its more logical to make a battle system then make content and fix the bugs rather than make loads of content, fix bugs, make a battle system, change the content, fix bugs.

You cannot make content knowing they battle system will change and waste more resources changing the content to accomodate the new system.

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You can work on both at the same time, that's what planning is for, and I'm pretty sure they have been doing that. It just takes a lot of time to do all of these thing, a lot more than most of you seem to realise.

Releasing a 1/3-finished multi-platform next-gen MMO while simultaneously expecting to win and sweep the competition is pretty much synonymous with failure.

Actually, the only way you can make that fail any more is if you released the game one one platform ahead of time, to warn the other platforms of the incoming barrage of failure.

/morganfreemanfacepalm

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Originally Posted by MattyWS

You can work on both at the same time, that's what planning is for, and I'm pretty sure they have been doing that. It just takes a lot of time to do all of these thing, a lot more than most of you seem to realise.

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They can work on both working on thorey, but you need to see what things need to work in practice as well or you will see loads of game breaking bugs.

And i know it takes time I have said it about a million times to haters

They do internal testing too, I should image they have been playing with auto-attack for a while now in the studio, working on it as well. it's not like the separate teams do different parts of the game then throw it all together for the patch last second. Most studios work with a file managing system over a network, so everyone's kept up-to-date while they work. To think that they are making content for the auto-attack system without actually having the auto-attack system for themselves is ridiculous.

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Originally Posted by MattyWS

They do internal testing too, I should image they have been playing with auto-attack for a while now in the studio, working on it as well. it's not like the separate teams do different parts of the game then throw it all together for the patch last second. Most studios work with a file managing system over a network, so everyone's kept up-to-date while they work. To think that they are making content for the auto-attack system without actually having the auto-attack system for themselves is ridiculous.

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I arent saying they do differant things and throw it all together at last minute, there are things in all projects that must follow a specific order, in this instance auto attack must be created, then checked for bugs and fixing the bugs before new content can be made, otherwise you are making the content for manual attacking when it will have to change soon, or if the design it with auto attack in mind before auto attack is made they have broken content until auto attack is implemented.

Implementing content before the foundations would be like trying to build a house then dig then foundations it just will never work out

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Originally Posted by Delsus

You cannot make content for a battle system that isnt made, you say you work for a small studio so you should know if you make somthing, it can have unforseen problems, people say make the content first then the battle system, but if you do that you have to rework the all the content that has been made for the differant mechanics and guess what that takes time as well.

Its more logical to make a battle system then make content and fix the bugs rather than make loads of content, fix bugs, make a battle system, change the content, fix bugs.

You cannot make content knowing they battle system will change and waste more resources changing the content to accomodate the new system.

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What part of "I firmly believe they should have prioritized auto-attack and a battle system that makes sense" made you believe I was asking for game content over much needed core changes?

What you quoted, if you read over, should tell you I understand the need for improving the core mechanics of the game before releasing content.

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Originally Posted by RedAffinity

What part of "I firmly believe they should have prioritized auto-attack and a battle system that makes sense" made you believe I was asking for game content over much needed core changes?

What you quoted, if you read over, should tell you I understand the need for improving the core mechanics of the game before releasing content.

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Sorry must have missread your post in my rage over certain things lol

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Originally Posted by Delsus

Sorry must have missread your post in my rage over certain things lol

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It's fine, we agree on the same thing here anyway ~

While I hope this is true, I'll have to see it to believe it.

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Originally Posted by RedAffinity

What part of "I firmly believe they should have prioritized auto-attack and a battle system that makes sense" made you believe I was asking for game content over much needed core changes?

What you quoted, if you read over, should tell you I understand the need for improving the core mechanics of the game before releasing content.

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That's fictional since that would mean nothing will ever get done.

Content makers can still work with story board ideas and battle blueprints, etc.

Things are worked on at the same time. While they may or may not be stalled by another department, it's still worked on.

It is probably true they are understaffed, but that doesn't mean that you can have all hands on one aspect even if it's all important.

It's also more proof why FF14 failed so badly the last few years in development, if nothing every got done to completion. Management is a skill for a reason. Efficient allocation of resources.