I solved the problem with this game.

The problem with the community and developers is the community doesn't understand it takes money to implement even the smallest QoL. So they are always asking for stuff that's unrealistic because the game isn't a fan service it's a business.

So my solution? For every single person complaining about races, housing, whatever it may be Square should allow a crowd funded development option. It's that simple. Square gives an estimate for the development and implementation cost and it's up to "but I want housing now" guy to fund it.

Pretty simple right? Here is a example, "I want developers to implement instanced housing because I feel left out and my feelings hurt and I'm soft". The premise is that a huge amount of the community wants this right? *according to the forums*

Since people are so confident in their stance, square can give an estimate to cover the cost of this because they DON'T HAVE unlimited resources. Let's says its 300k, the community can crowd fund it and get it implemented and since they believe everyone should have access to everything they definitely will let people use it even if they don't contribute right? See, EZ PZ. Want new background colors for the UI? 50k new unisex glamor? 400k.

This solution allows the developers to maintain their business and work towards new content for the rest of us without limiting resources to the new content. This then allows them to take that money and outsource it to smaller companies and get it implemented. This solves everything really. People can get what they want without demanding a company to bend to their personal insecurities.

Are you put off by people offering suggestions and input? If not for that, what else are we doing here? Most people are complaining from a place of love ("I like this thing and I'd like to see it improve"). I mean, I don't think you can even post here without an active sub. We're already paying for them to do work.

Sure, resources aren't unlimited, but we can't know what their plans are. We voice our opinions in hopes that our opinions are shared and our feedback is heard.

Go tally up how much money they're making per-month off of subs alone, then lets talk.

Let's not give 'Small Indie Company' Square Enix any ideas please... They already act like they aren't a major AAA company for most of the year, actually treating them like an indie company would be a disaster from which we'd never come back from.

It also has to be developed using SE Crystal Tools (or whatever engine they use now... was Crystal Tools the old one?) - the people implementing it have to be understanding of the code of FFXIV. In essence, it'd be a case of hiring new people. Then training them etc. I believe Yoshi P has gone on record saying finding appropriate developers (that can speak Japanese, which is what they communicate with each other using) is extremely difficult. Thus, while I can see where you're going with this, it is not as simple as that.

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Originally Posted by Enla

Let's not give 'Small Indie Company' Square Enix any ideas please... They already act like they aren't a major AAA company for most of the year, actually treating them like an indie company would be a disaster from which we'd never come back from.

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What do you mean by this comment? Are you insinuating that they have unlimited money to focus on just one IP in their portfolio? That they should not diversify and keep the game withing a budget? That they should not give raises to employees? That they should just return all profit from this game back into the game?

Not sure if this is a troll post, but I'll take it as a legit discussion.

You are right in saying that it takes money to develop stuff, but more than that it takes time and human resources.
Yoshida san has said before that even more money or more developers can't make them release updates faster.
He also has a tight schedule for every patch, everything that will go into the next patch gets scheduled and assigned.
Adding more stuff in the middle of an iteration is hard, so they usually move into onto the next one.

Development is a complex thing, multiple factors can affect the ability of a team to introduce changes or features.

Quite a few people understand things cost money to implement, they just still want it. I think you're exceptionally simplifying your opposition and being insulting at the same time (see your points of being soft and insecurities as reference, I feel like making a poor and insulting form of communication).

As for the idea of the thread I wonder if Mogshop could contain that concept... I'm just worried that it would lead to bad behaviors where they don't add anything significant unless it's been kickstarted by the players first (and then of course monetizing the result of their kickstart, meaning SE doesn't put it's own funds forward as much... which is normally what one would expect from businesses). Like other big corporations with lootbox fever and claim they can't make anything without them- which we know is not true (see CDProjektRed), and even though they have massive funds they don't seem to invest those massive funds for anything more interesting (see those lootbox sport games as reference lol). Just seems like opening a path to worse deals on the player's part (though a very honest company could potentially use the idea for great effect for both the game, players, and dev team).

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Originally Posted by Paladinleeds

It also has to be developed using SE Crystal Tools (or whatever engine they use now... was Crystal Tools the old one?) - the people implementing it have to be understanding of the code of FFXIV. In essence, it'd be a case of hiring new people. Then training them etc. I believe Yoshi P has gone on record saying finding appropriate developers (that can speak Japanese, which is what they communicate with each other using) is extremely difficult. Thus, while I can see where you're going with this, it is not as simple as that.

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Well then that can be factored into the cost, making more apparent to the "it's so easy" crowd, how monumental the task they ask actually is. I swear I hear how easy it is to put in instance housing ,and how easy it is to put helmets on viera and how easy it is to unisex over 10k peices of gear in the game.

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Originally Posted by Raldo

Are you put off by people offering suggestions and input? If not for that, what else are we doing here? Most people are complaining from a place of love ("I like this thing and I'd like to see it improve"). I mean, I don't think you can even post here without an active sub. We're already paying for them to do work.

Sure, resources aren't unlimited, but we can't know what their plans are. We voice our opinions in hopes that our opinions are shared and our feedback is heard.

Go tally up how much money they're making per-month off of subs alone, then lets talk.

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I'm not put off I'm just tired of hearing about it, there is complaining to complain, then there is whining a raging and demanding and insinuating intolerance.

How many active subs are there? 1 million? That's 15 off million dollars, after taxes (I dont know shit about Japan's tax structure) they have to reinvest in this IP diversify their product line by investing into new IPs and the mundane things like, cover 401k investments, healthcare, yearly COL wage increases. So I'm willing to bet it's not much.

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Originally Posted by Mistyregions

Well then that can be factored into the cost, making more apparent to the "it's so easy" crowd, how monumental the task they ask actually is. I swear I hear how easy it is to put in instance housing ,and how easy it is to put helmets on viera and how easy it is to unisex over 10k peices of gear in the game.

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Asking for us to pay for these western developers to be trained in Japanese (which by the way, requires a minimum of five years of study IIRC to be allowed to take the exam to be considered fluent enough in Japanese for a work visa for this sort of company) won't be feasible due to the timescales involved in getting them on board (like I said, it's a multi year process to get the talent involved with Japanese). Also, because of code issues, NDAs would have to be signed and the staff brought onto the team (remember this is an in-house game engine that they don't allow other companies to use). These developers would have to leave their other jobs (so they'd have to WANT to work for SE), or foreign developers trained up in the language. The fact is that SE runs FFXIV on a shoestring budget. We make stupid amounts of money, and that gets siphoned off to other projects. Also, Yoshi P has gone on record stating that they made the cash shop to be able to try and get more funds to the team (although I don't know whether that's just PR speak he was told to give and SE actually take all that too for other projects). Diversifying yes, I get that. But for years this game has been run on a shoestring budget.

Given Japanese developers aren't likely to move en-masse to SE to work for them, we'd have to train up western developers in Japanese. So, we'd be waiting multiple years to see it anyway, not as simple as this is. Plus, I believe SE doing these sorts of Kickstarter type campaigns as an AAA developer would get them in trouble with Japanese law. So it wouldn't be possible. It's not as simple as the technical and human resources aspects, there's also legal aspects to consider.

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Originally Posted by Mistyregions

I'm not put off I'm just tired of hearing about it, there is complaining to complain, then there is whining a raging and demanding and insinuating intolerance.

How many active subs are there? 1 million? That's 15 off million dollars, after taxes (I dont know shit about Japan's tax structure) they have to reinvest in this IP diversify their product line by investing into new IPs and the mundane things like, cover 401k investments, healthcare, yearly COL wage increases. So I'm willing to bet it's not much.

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Once again, they added the cash shop. Not to mention, from my understanding in Japan, they pay for their healthcare with their taxes (and judging from the mention of the 401k, I assume you're American, so that may explain why you added the healthcare part). So, the outgoings might not be as much as we think.

They can take part of that budget from the bag "15 euros for mounts/glams that should have been implemented by quests" and use it.

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Originally Posted by Mistyregions

What do you mean by this comment? Are you insinuating that they have unlimited money to focus on just one IP in their portfolio? That they should not diversify and keep the game withing a budget? That they should not give raises to employees? That they should just return all profit from this game back into the game?

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I'm outright stating that in the past SE has acted like an Indie company with no money for anything even as a quick look at their financial reports, which are public by the way, shows they're making record profits. I'm also stating it as someone who still very much remembers the hell Yoshi P went through just to beg for the last round of server upgrades even as SE funneled money hand over fist out of FF14 to fund other projects. You should never, ever, let a company like SE treat itself like they're a small start up with barely any money to their name because they will never stop taking advantage of you once you let them get their foot in the door. If they need to wait for funds to be raised internally, fine, but like hell should we ever crowdfund for them.

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Originally Posted by Paladinleeds

It also has to be developed using SE Crystal Tools (or whatever engine they use now... was Crystal Tools the old one?)

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Crystal Tools was used to build 1.0 (and was one of the reasons for its downfall). The developers use the Luminous Engine for most of FFXIV now—however, there’s likely still 1.0 spaghetti code floating around, and I really wouldn’t be surprised if its continued existence is why some things aren’t implemented; or why other things are implemented, but operate in an extremely cumbersome way.

The danged company probably make more than all of us combined lol.

i kinda feel like i am crowdfunding it... like... with my subscription fee.

they want me to still be subscribed next month right? and the month after that? we are telling them how they can get that outcome. this is the easiest focus group in the world. companies PAY for this sort of thing?

so not only am i crowdfunding their development with my subscription, i'm working for free by supplementing their market research! i am the BEST SE fan.

what are YOU doing here other than suggesting crazy monetization models that will get them laughed off the internet? why are you trying to sabotage this poor multibillion dollar global corporation like that? why do you hate squeenix and want to see FFXIV die?

yikes, man. <.< you clearly have issues

I might be misunderstanding the OP here, but I believe this isn't so much aimed at the "Hey, y'know what might be a good idea?" players, but aimed at the "I PAY YOSHI P MY SUB SO THEREFORE I AM ENTITLED TO DEMAND X AND Y BECAUSE I WANT IT AND I ALONE MAKE SURE HE HAS A ROOF OVER HIS HEAD" players.

Could be wrong, but that's the feel I get.

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Originally Posted by Mistyregions

What do you mean by this comment? Are you insinuating that they have unlimited money to focus on just one IP in their portfolio? That they should not diversify and keep the game withing a budget? That they should not give raises to employees? That they should just return all profit from this game back into the game?

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For a monthly sub game my sub has cost me $3600 rounded down to an even monthly number. That does not include any cash shop or expansions purchased. Do you think I have gotten a product worth $3600? That enough of my money has gone back into QoL improvements of the game. Neither you nor I are privy to the info, but does it even feel like even a fair percentage has gone back into the game. A fair percentage for me being over 60% which would include staff costs, leaving SE to use the other 40% however they see fit.

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Originally Posted by Blokeymon

I might be misunderstanding the OP here, but I believe this isn't so much aimed at the "Hey, y'know what might be a good idea?" players, but aimed at the "I PAY YOSHI P MY SUB SO THEREFORE I AM ENTITLED TO DEMAND X AND Y BECAUSE I WANT IT AND I ALONE MAKE SURE HE HAS A ROOF OVER HIS HEAD" players.

Could be wrong, but that's the feel I get.

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Entitled or question why the game has gotten so much since 2.0 from the players and receive so little improvement. Or why such a beloved team that communicates so well blows smoke at players with the excuse "Housing is for community feel." You know another garbage statement from 2.0 was "GC frontlines is because of lore so its staying." He would get more respect if he said, "we refuse to pay for more instances and world servers aren't over taxed and thats why we refuse to do instances."


Also players might not be so bent out of shape if the cash shop was a little better and they didn't charge for extras that are in game. This is a monthly sub not a phone game.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

Crystal Tools was used to build 1.0 (and was one of the reasons for its downfall). The developers use the Luminous Engine for most of FFXIV now—however, there’s likely still 1.0 spaghetti code floating around, and I really wouldn’t be surprised if its continued existence is why some things aren’t implemented; or why other things are implemented, but operate in an extremely cumbersome way.

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From my understanding there is still some but each expansion level patch takes away more and more of it, ie how most of SCH and SMN’s abilities were separated in 5.0, probably as a precursor to the class system being finally removed. My guess is they are slowly removing the old code to make sure they don’t break anything which takes time.

It says we have 16million players population. Idk the exact numbers of active players but maybe half of that are paying their subs regularly so imagine how much monthly income they make.

"While FFXIV will continue to strive to maintain a regular 3.5 month major update cycle, we must also ensure that sufficient time is secured for the meticulous development of new content—or else the quality will invariably drop. This is a complex problem that can’t be solved simply by throwing more money or people at it, as it impacts both debugging and QA."

https://gamerescape.com/2019/05/10/l...producer-lxii/

SE is by no means a smol indie company, its a giant corporation with hundred of millions of $$ funds to throw at the games, just like they did with FFXV creating absolute mess.

There are companies that could upgrade their graphical engines, upgrade their netcode to the game and change a lot of technically difficult stuff for a part of the money SE is doing on FFXIV.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

Crystal Tools was used to build 1.0 (and was one of the reasons for its downfall). The developers use the Luminous Engine for most of FFXIV now—however, there’s likely still 1.0 spaghetti code floating around, and I really wouldn’t be surprised if its continued existence is why some things aren’t implemented; or why other things are implemented, but operate in an extremely cumbersome way.

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Nearly all the old code was scrapped. IIRC it was only some item and character database stuff that made the transition, primarily because 1.0 characters had to be able to be imported into 2.0.

Which makes sense when you think about the type of things they have issues implementing.

What do you think our sub fees are for? Our purchases of almost full price expansions? Mogstation?

In other companies, most of the profit from this game would be pumped back into it (well, whatever they don't skim off the top for themselves) since it's their golden goose. SE funnels it elsewhere. We already pay them plenty. Go lick corporate boot elsewhere.

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Originally Posted by Mistyregions

The problem with the community and developers is the community doesn't understand it takes money to implement even the smallest QoL. So they are always asking for stuff that's unrealistic because the game isn't a fan service it's a business.

So my solution? For every single person complaining about races, housing, whatever it may be Square should allow a crowd funded development option. It's that simple. Square gives an estimate for the development and implementation cost and it's up to "but I want housing now" guy to fund it.

Pretty simple right? Here is a example, "I want developers to implement instanced housing because I feel left out and my feelings hurt and I'm soft". The premise is that a huge amount of the community wants this right? *according to the forums*

Since people are so confident in their stance, square can give an estimate to cover the cost of this because they DON'T HAVE unlimited resources. Let's says its 300k, the community can crowd fund it and get it implemented and since they believe everyone should have access to everything they definitely will let people use it even if they don't contribute right? See, EZ PZ. Want new background colors for the UI? 50k new unisex glamor? 400k.

This solution allows the developers to maintain their business and work towards new content for the rest of us without limiting resources to the new content. This then allows them to take that money and outsource it to smaller companies and get it implemented. This solves everything really. People can get what they want without demanding a company to bend to their personal insecurities.

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I fund this game with my subscription, retainer costs, and the money I spend on the mog station.

Can a lot of the tech issues the devs deal with be alleviated if they transferred from Crystal Tools / Luminous Engine over to Unreal Engine?

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Originally Posted by Kleeya

"While FFXIV will continue to strive to maintain a regular 3.5 month major update cycle, we must also ensure that sufficient time is secured for the meticulous development of new content—or else the quality will invariably drop. This is a complex problem that can’t be solved simply by throwing more money or people at it, as it impacts both debugging and QA."

https://gamerescape.com/2019/05/10/l...producer-lxii/

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Thank you for sharing that.

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Originally Posted by Tanama

Can a lot of the tech issues the devs deal with be alleviated if they transferred from Crystal Tools / Luminous Engine over to Unreal Engine?

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that would mean rebuilding the game for a second time, it’s too big to go back and do that now that they have the base game and 3 expansions worth of content

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Originally Posted by Tanama

Can a lot of the tech issues the devs deal with be alleviated if they transferred from Crystal Tools / Luminous Engine over to Unreal Engine?

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I mean maybe... but they'd have to DO it first. So basically building a third iteration of the game from nothing. It's not like you can just push a button and transition everything from one game engine to another. I wish it worked like that.. it'd be very nice.

Gotta spend money to make money. Fixing small things like how the inventory system works and they claim how it's a load on servers would be a start.

Invest some time to fix inventory code and then you can massively improve systems like Glamm storage and so on. Maybe stop charging real money for extra storage as well.

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Originally Posted by Krojack

Gotta spend money to make money. Fixing small things like how the inventory system works and they claim how it's a load on servers would be a start.

Invest some time to fix inventory code and then you can massively improve systems like Glamm storage and so on. Maybe stop charging real money for extra storage as well.

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That would be tricky because of the mess 1.0 was and it would take away resources from working on new things that they have in their pipeline. Who's going to pay the developers and engineers to do that if we aren't paying for things like extra storage?

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Originally Posted by Mistyregions

The problem with the community and developers is the community doesn't understand it takes money to implement even the smallest QoL. So they are always asking for stuff that's unrealistic because the game isn't a fan service it's a business.

So my solution? For every single person complaining about races, housing, whatever it may be Square should allow a crowd funded development option. It's that simple. Square gives an estimate for the development and implementation cost and it's up to "but I want housing now" guy to fund it.

Pretty simple right? Here is a example, "I want developers to implement instanced housing because I feel left out and my feelings hurt and I'm soft". The premise is that a huge amount of the community wants this right? *according to the forums*

Since people are so confident in their stance, square can give an estimate to cover the cost of this because they DON'T HAVE unlimited resources. Let's says its 300k, the community can crowd fund it and get it implemented and since they believe everyone should have access to everything they definitely will let people use it even if they don't contribute right? See, EZ PZ. Want new background colors for the UI? 50k new unisex glamor? 400k.

This solution allows the developers to maintain their business and work towards new content for the rest of us without limiting resources to the new content. This then allows them to take that money and outsource it to smaller companies and get it implemented. This solves everything really. People can get what they want without demanding a company to bend to their personal insecurities.

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If they removed the subscription model and the mogstation items, deal.

I rather not see Square Enix fall under the shackles of greed. It's one of the few companies that I'm happy to throw my money at for all Yoshi P and the development team has done even if everything isn't 100% perfect but what game is? Things may take time but that's worth the wait. I rather pay for a subscription than have to throw my money into, weapon upgrade chances, items to upgrade gear, etc. Plenty of games have done this and I end up walking away from it. Forcing it's employees to work faster and harder will only ruin the passion for the game/company if you try to throw money at it. Let them work at their own pace, we're all human in the end. Feel free to make suggestions but you aren't going to get anywhere if you demand things by throwing money at it.

I just came here to say that I think it's funny that the OP thinks that SE even considers amounts of money like "400k/300k/50k" as anything more than a drop in the bucket. SE is a multi-billion dollar company. They don't implement something because their budget team has done a projection of the expense and estimated profit of that project and told the dev team no. It's not because they don't have the money to do it, it's because they don't think it will generate as much revenue as a different endeavor would (i.e. something that keeps people subscribed or attracts new players). Time is the currency that SE is working with, not money. They want stuff that will turn out quarterly profits by their deadlines.

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Originally Posted by Callinon

I mean maybe... but they'd have to DO it first. So basically building a third iteration of the game from nothing. It's not like you can just push a button and transition everything from one game engine to another. I wish it worked like that.. it'd be very nice.

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My office is in the process of upgrading our system from the development tool of Grails 2.0 to Grails 4.0. That project meant we took six months off from new feature development. During those six months, our clients are getting NOTHING but emergency hot fixes on the old system. Granted, we're significantly smaller than SE is, but that was only upgrading a version, not transitioning development from one system to another. Six months just for that.

They're more likely to build a new MMO on a new system than they are to upgrade XIV again.

As for where our Mogstation money goes - I believe they said it gets put into equipment and facilities upgrades? Like the EU data center when it split from Montreal, and when the NA data center moved from Montreal to California. Data center moves like that cost a lot of money, but they're also the easiest thing to outsource to third party contractors.

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Originally Posted by YojimboM

Time is the currency that SE is working with, not money. They want stuff that will turn out quarterly profits by their deadlines.

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That's why I feel a better question to players would be asking how long they would want to see content delayed if it meant more requested features would be put in. The problem with that though is there would ultimately result in lower profits since players would rather have some content released quicker rather than more content released later if they had to maintain a subscription.