If FFXIV is their most profitable product, why is the game so mistreated?

Honest question, and honest thought that has been rolling around in my mind. I see it so often here on the forums, and in chats, but is FFXIV really the most profitable game SE has? If that's true, why does it have so few people working on the project? Why do we have such long content and patch cycles?

I love FFXIV (flaws aside, all MMORPG's have flaws). Nothing will ever be perfect, and I both acknowledge and even concede that is the proper way that work/life balance works. I certainly don't want the dev team to melt in their respective corners from overworking... but seriously, I must ask myself as a player why this supposed cash cow is floundering under the weight of its own struggles if it's truly as strong a contender as we, the player base, hope it is...

Are we just drinking the cool-aid? Or, is it truly the cash cow, left to be over-milked and under-fed, and we should be royally rioting at the drip feed of content?

It's a fair question, because if it's not the cash cow, I can forgive so much more reguarding the patch cycle. I can forgive so much more about the job-related nurfing and gutting, and the way content seems to be rehashed with the standard trash-pack/boss formula in instanced content. I can forgive the minor gripes I had with DT's MSQ (I mostly liked it, aside from a few little things), but I could forgive those things if this game is not the cash cow...

If it truly is the cash cow though, the thing that is indeed funding other investments and other games, then we need to truly think about what that means for FFXIV as a whole when it ends up getting so little love and attention from potential development staff...

This has been rolling around in my mind for a while... and i'm not sure what to think about it...

It's a common part of the lifecycle for a lot of games. You invest heavily to get the game established, then get it into a cruise control mode where you can start cutting corners to save on development time/money.

I'm sure XIV makes a good wad of cash and has a pretty healthy playerbase, but I imagine if things don't turn around they'll slowly bleed players until they hit a trust thermocline.

https://every.to/p/breaching-the-tru...sk-in-business

Giving that blog post a read makes me think that SE needs to course correct more swiftly than they may anticipate... and that is worrisome...

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Originally Posted by KernCadfan

Honest question, and honest thought that has been rolling around in my mind. I see it so often here on the forums, and in chats, but is FFXIV really the most profitable game SE has? If that's true, why does it have so few people working on the project? Why do we have such long content and patch cycles?

I love FFXIV (flaws aside, all MMORPG's have flaws). Nothing will ever be perfect, and I both acknowledge and even concede that is the proper way that work/life balance works. I certainly don't want the dev team to melt in their respective corners from overworking... but seriously, I must ask myself as a player why this supposed cash cow is floundering under the weight of its own struggles if it's truly as strong a contender as we, the player base, hope it is...

Are we just drinking the cool-aid? Or, is it truly the cash cow, left to be over-milked and under-fed, and we should be royally rioting at the drip feed of content?

It's a fair question, because if it's not the cash cow, I can forgive so much more reguarding the patch cycle. I can forgive so much more about the job-related nurfing and gutting, and the way content seems to be rehashed with the standard trash-pack/boss formula in instanced content. I can forgive the minor gripes I had with DT's MSQ (I mostly liked it, aside from a few little things), but I could forgive those things if this game is not the cash cow...

If it truly is the cash cow though, the thing that is indeed funding other investments and other games, then we need to truly think about what that means for FFXIV as a whole when it ends up getting so little love and attention from potential development staff...

This has been rolling around in my mind for a while... and i'm not sure what to think about it...

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For the exact same reason why hard-working people hardly ever get promoted. They bring a lot of money for the company with minimal or 0 investment which means a huge win for them.

You have to see it from the bean counters perspective.

If they can extract infinite money from XIV with out reinvesting more than they already do, why invest?
They are making money hand over fist plugging the holes of failed projects they develop and then some.

Time will tell if history is to repeat.

They got so used to success after launching Endwalker that they expected Dawntrail to be easy autopilot slam dunk of success too.

Its dreadful, but even from the depths of my ire for what the game has become. From cutting stories into toddler level shonen anime and pacing them horribly.
To repeating the same kind of gameplay, not improving their QoL.

(Even removing pillars was a rush job and can only be done in one type of layout of house. Instead of just giving us the option to remove pillars in in the other types.) Speaking of housing, the housing system to build is still toddler level, forcing people to glitch on both console and pc to get good looking houses. Or use black magic on pc.

I STILL think the true test will be 8.0. THEN if we get the same cycle of gameplay, the same story designed for anime-tweens (hell even disney is more mature at this point.)
I think its safe to say they are so high up their own rear that they cant see the sky for what it is and the game is cashing out to support stupid remakes and more.

Nothing is lighting the metaphorical fire under their backsides to innovate or reinvest in the game. Competition breeds innovation and scandals breed one guy gets banned before a QoL gets implemented.

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Originally Posted by Kohashi

For the exact same reason why hard-working people hardly ever get promoted. They bring a lot of money for the company with minimal or 0 investment which means a huge win for them.

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Exactly.

In fact, It's actually worse than that.

Whilst can only 'talk' in terms of my own experience, it goes beyond "hard-working people hardly ever getting promoted" in this day and age. In my workplace it has become commonplace for a member of staff retiring/moving to another job/leaving for some reason being replaced by someone of a lower pay grade. For example, our Band 4 medical secretary retired recently. They were replaced with a Band 3 medical secretary who is, for all intents and purposes, doing the same job as the person they replaced but being paid rather a lot less for it.
And that's if they bother replacing the person who left at all. Because they'll often find a reason/excuse not to, and distribute the workload of the person who left amongst the remaining staff. It is utterly dishonest and lacks any demonstrative value whatsoever since it utterly destroys staff morale, but the numbers sure look good on paper and in the end, keeping the bean-counters happy is, sadly, always the highest priority.

And needless to say, the money saved from said employee leaving never finds it's way back into the bank account of the service itself.

Obviously because there's NFT projects to fund. Duh.

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Originally Posted by Carin-Eri

Exactly.

In fact, It's actually worse than that.

Whilst can only 'talk' in terms of my own experience, it goes beyond "hard-working people hardly ever getting promoted" in this day and age. In my workplace it has become commonplace for a member of staff retiring/moving to another job/leaving for some reason being replaced by someone of a lower pay grade. For example, our Band 4 medical secretary retired recently. They were replaced with a Band 3 medical secretary who is, for all intents and purposes, doing the same job as the person they replaced but being paid rather a lot less for it.
And that's if they bother replacing the person who left at all. Because they'll often find a reason/excuse not to, and distribute the workload of the person who left amongst the remaining staff. It is utterly dishonest and lacks any demonstrative value whatsoever since it utterly destroys staff morale, but the numbers sure look good on paper and in the end, keeping the bean-counters happy is, sadly, always the highest priority.

And needless to say, the money saved from said employee leaving never finds it's way back into the bank account of the service itself.

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It's a very widespread tactic to prioritize short-term gains.

You can see it in the workplace or games because ultimately companies aim for profit. They prefer to exploit momentarily gains for a short time while using people who desperately need money or fun or to evade reality (if we talk about games).

If people would stand up and not allow that to happen, the story would be vastly different but the world has no shortage of the poor, naive, and desperate.

Square Enix is not doing well right now financially. The management team cost the company a lot of money by trying to force DEI into their products. They can't afford to invest more money into FFXIV right now. Thankfully they have realized their mistake and are taking steps to correct it, but it will still take quite some time to right the ship and get things back to how they used to be.

I think it is a mixture of / three things that I can imagine to be the biggest reasons:
- a 10-years running system
- input vs output
- lack of (new) reliable/able/willing manpower

for the first (a 10-years running system):
It has been running for 10 years and they adjusted for 10 years.
For some things, they found the sweet spot/sweet process over the years and are keeping to it, which makes sense, you always have only a limited amount of recources and cannot burn all of it for trying out new things all the time.
Some resources are needed to keep the game running fluently.
I can imagine them trying to do things more efficiently over time as well, and that adjustment bears the question of: where is it still efficient and where does the quality suffer too much?
In the end, they are a company and have to think of those things and maybe, the finetuning is visible to us, as they might have put a bit too much effort to the efficiency part potentially?

for the second (input vs output):
Commonly known as 80/20 rule, but the better the game gets, the more resources are needed to make it even better and at some point you have to ask the question, if its worth the input.
To make it more simple:
If I have an overall bad game: bad story, bad writing, bad ui, bad graphics, also potentioally very simple ... I can improve the overall game huge bounds by adjusting just small portions of it.
But if the game is, let's say, above average with everything, you need to make huge changes and it still only feels like a small impact

One side of the medal is: Players got used to its high quality and complain when its unfair (i.e. forget how good the ganme is compared to other games)
The other side of the medal is: Danger of SQEX getting used to being at the top for too long and getting lazy;
And this is also a very thin line, I'd think.

the third (lack of (new) reliable/able/willing manpower):
This is just an assumption, but considering worldwide economy being in the slumps for a few years since the pandemic and many western countries lacking manpower while costs are going through the roof for the past years (and japans economy has it really rough lately, I mean, just look at how far the yen currency has fallen), I can imagine this to have a huge impact as well?

3 cents from my side :)

Kind regards
Maeyria

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Originally Posted by ThaCa

They got so used to success after launching Endwalker that they expected Dawntrail to be easy autopilot slam dunk of success too.

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I remember watching the WoW exodus happen with dread.

Not for fear of any influx of "outsiders", but because of how likely it was for SE to mistake WoW's catastrophic pants soiling for their own success despite the game's design already groaning under the weight of its numerous problems at the time.

We are a full expansion behind the "oh crud we need to innovate" moment.

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Originally Posted by Roda

I remember watching the WoW exodus happen with dread.

Not for fear of any influx of "outsiders", but because of how likely it was for SE to mistake WoW's catastrophic pants soiling for their own success despite the game's design already groaning under the weight of its numerous problems at the time.

We are a full expansion behind the "oh crud we need to innovate" moment.

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The sad thing is that, according to Yoshida, 7.0 was supposed to be the start of their innovation. He said that they were throwing ideas at the wall to see what stuck, but the only difference was that most of it was worse.

short answer: most consumers are no smarter then their cousin the ape and lack common sense or critical thought.

long answer: the company doesn't care about this project anymore an only pledge the bare minimal to keep the servers running giving crumbs to the dev team to barely get by on but rather then spending those limited resources on rebuilding and improving systems they instead have let things die an become irrelevant, and they keep re-hashing content that barely appeases the lowest common denominator an hardly justifys even paying for a monthly sub at all which needs to stop they should and desperately need to start doing new things the cycle is no longer sustainable and its not working any longer.
instead of hiring gm's or wasing money on advertising i think its time they started hiring more quality control/check, more community engagement, an push for people to complete surveys after having completed a expansion or patch so they can finally get a better idea of WHAT the players actually want an can then begin making plans around instead of waiting for the ship to sink..

SE sadly invests the money from FFXIV into failing projects. The Management is trying to chase certain models that COULD potentially make a lot of money but fail to see that barely anyone is interested into those Models. They push them anyway and just expect people to like and buy it which obviously fails.

They stopped making Games for Players, they try to make moneyprinters for investors.

Each time i see someone on the forums saying that since the game has good financial results, it should be easy to get more employees working on it to get even better, i automatically assume:

- that these people did never work at all;

- that if they did work, they, without knowing it, did have a very, very sheltered job.

Since it would be way too long if i wrote about all that i did experience, i am gonna give only two examples from my last job. We were the very best shop in a retail chain of several dozens of them, with the best financial results and the best inner workings. The higher ups were taking us as a living example to say to the other shops "see ? you should do like them !", and we were even sometimes asked to send temporarily some of our employees to the underperforming shops to show them how to work correctly, even though it was not stipulated in our contracts that we should do that.

So there is quite a lot of people on these forums who must think that when we asked for more employees to get even better, we should have been granted that, right ?

Wrong, totally wrong.

The answers were :

1 : yes, like you said, you are getting great results... But you know, after sending money to the other underperforming shops to keep them afloat, there is no money for you anymore.

Which can totally relate to FF14 funding all the others SE's failed projets. But hey, that's not even the worst excuse by far. The second one was :

2 : you know, we in the higher ups are really wondering how you are doing so well... Especially when all the other shops are struggling so much... Are you sure that you don't already have way too much people instead of not enough ? So, instead of asking to have more employees, you are gonna write a detailed report of xx pages explaining what everyone is doing, so we can talk of how many people we can fire.

I am not joking about this one and i am totally 100% serious. Imagine how twisted you must be in your mind to answer someone who brings you a lot of money, and is basically preventing your whole activity to be crashing down, that if they do so well that's because they obviously have too much employees slacking on the job, and that they need to get fired.

Of course in the long run it did lead to people thinking "why do i even work so hard for ?", and beginning to do only the bare minimum needed, and the better gifted leaving for better working conditions elsewhere. Leading to the previous good financial results taking a nosedive, but hey the higher ups responsible for that did probably never notice nor understand it, too busy they were to put into their resumes "i did optimize the workforce of a dysfunctional shop, i am so very good at my job and i am such a great leader !".

Now, contrary to the 1, i am not saying that the 2 does apply to SE. I just wanted to give a practical example of how doing well and bringing great results doesn't mean that you can have more employees whenever you want. When i read people on this forum thinking the contrary, it feels like they come from a different parallel dimension than the reality i live in.

Because they are funding other projects, which wouldn't be an issue really if XIV didn't glaringly suffer as a result, and nor would it be as big an issue if their other projects were actually successful.

and in general part of the problem is because they aren't heeding their own PR advice which is feeling that anything can be addressed in a future patch. We have long been in a state where they have thought "We can just resolve this in a future patch"

They are more concerned with maintaining the game, than they are with thinking on how they can actually improve on the service without taking significant risk.

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Originally Posted by KernCadfan

Honest question, and honest thought that has been rolling around in my mind. I see it so often here on the forums, and in chats, but is FFXIV really the most profitable game SE has? If that's true, why does it have so few people working on the project? Why do we have such long content and patch cycles?
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I think the short answer is: Because most players let them get away with it. Or at least the most vocal ones that dominate twitter and reddit where SE seems to gather most of their feedback from suggest that FF14 DT is still the bestest game evar and everyone that disagrees is just a toxic isto-phobe.

As far as i see it FF14 is running on a skeleton crew atm in terms of talent and experience which is probably also the reason they increased the patch cycle which is effectively just a price increase per patch for those that stay subbed between patches.
Just look at 7.1, you wait almost 5 months for a patch with a few hours of content (unless you are a raider). The MSQ was boooring and felt like a sidequest except for the last few minutes ...
5 months with 13€ a month would be like 65€ for THAT !?
I think in 5.x we got a 8/24 player raid series, a trial series and and exploration zone with a shorter patch cycle ...

DT managed to disconnect me so much from my character that i no longer see the need to play through the MSQ myself. Might as well just watch a streamer to see what happens.
I don't think i ever had so many instances of my characters acting in a way i completely disagree with in all of 2.0-6.5 than in DT

SE will keep milking the FF14 playerbase to fund the next projects that will "not meet expectations"

SE stock also took another hit recently so i wonder if we will see another pricey mount in the cash shop to milk those whales a bit more...

i already unsubbed both my accounts but this one just had another 6 month renewal before i did it so i can still post for a while

After tons of financially catastrophic adventures like Forspoken they propably have to use the money from FF14 players to cover these losses. The other studios have serious skill issues, it seems. So yes, it is sad, but it is what it is. And the only language, a company truely understands is the financial one. So if you unlucky, how FF14 is treated then stop giving them money. SQEX will then either improve FF14 or they will shut it completely down because it could turn into another financial disaster.



Cheers

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Originally Posted by Larirawiel

After tons of financially catastrophic adventures like Forspoken they propably have to use the money from FF14 players to cover these losses. The other studios have serious skill issues, it seems. So yes, it is sad, but it is what it is. And the only language, a company truely understands is the financial one. So if you unlucky, how FF14 is treated then stop giving them money. SQEX will then either improve FF14 or they will shut it completely down because it could turn into another financial disaster.

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XVI did a lot to show that CS3 isn't exempt from the skill issues that the rest of the company have.

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Originally Posted by KernCadfan

is FFXIV really the most profitable game SE has?

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MMORPGs typically end up the most profitable because, while a single player game is a one-off purchase that spikes with the release hype, an MMORPG is able to charge a monthly fee in addition to this or alternatively provide shop purchases to display to other players, both of which provide long-term revenue after the original purchase of the game.

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If that's true, why does it have so few people working on the project?

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Define few. They have hundreds of people working on it. The credits for Dawntrail took 48 minutes.

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Why do we have such long content and patch cycles?

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Because development takes time. More people doesn't mean quicker because diminishing returns exist. It's like asking why we don't get a new Star Wars film/series every week despite thousands of people working on it. At a certain point, more people doesn't speed it up anymore, without getting an AI to automate every single task in seconds but the FFXIV community is very resistant to that.

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I must ask myself as a player why this supposed cash cow is floundering under the weight of its own struggles if it's truly as strong a contender as we, the player base, hope it is...

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The issues they talk about are fair and reasonable issues that can take time to resolve. It's just that some of these issues have lingered for longer than is reasonable - such as housing. Island Sanctuary was a perfect opportunity to create instanced housing and they didn't do it, for example.

Problem is people don't mind paying for subpar content as its always about the money. I don't see the situation improving and I bet 8.0 will the same formula as they won't try anything totally new anymore.

My assumption, if I'm being generous, is that a large part of their focus at the moment is overhauling old systems that we don't necessarily see. This is why we've been getting a ton of quality-of-life improvements, the graphical improvement, etc. They are setting the groundwork to be able to properly expand in the future.

Of course, as a player, this doesn't take away the feeling that the content cycle is extremely stale at this point.

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Originally Posted by Daralii

XVI did a lot to show that CS3 isn't exempt from the skill issues that the rest of the company have.

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FF16 was not a failure. It did not meet their expectations but it was still profitable. And the reason for "not met expectations" was propably the PS exclusivity and not the game itself. Forspoken however caused them a 100 million USD loss.



Cheers

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Originally Posted by Kaecilius

My assumption, if I'm being generous, is that a large part of their focus at the moment is overhauling old systems that we don't necessarily see. This is why we've been getting a ton of quality-of-life improvements, the graphical improvement, etc. They are setting the groundwork to be able to properly expand in the future.

Of course, as a player, this doesn't take away the feeling that the content cycle is extremely stale at this point.

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Good point.
I agree.

I see many comments online about how quality of life is not content and that many do not agree with quality of life improvements and prefer more content instead.

Personally I disagree though, because quality of life improvments are necessary for long run stability.
The longer they are kept from improving, the more work they become, I feel like.


Kind regards
Maeyria

I'd like to see them introduce the long-term content sooner.
If we had either the relic weapon grind or something like island sanctuary in the x.1 patches then people who only play FFXIV will have more to do earlier in the patch cycle.

Otherwise I'm not sure how it's being mistreated?
This currently feels like a good work/life balance not just for the devs but for players as well.

Problem is that by their neglect and mistreatment they've made it so that it's no longer their most profitable product... Their mobile gachas likely make more money than XIV does.

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Originally Posted by Larirawiel

FF16 was not a failure. It did not meet their expectations but it was still profitable. And the reason for "not met expectations" was propably the PS exclusivity and not the game itself. Forspoken however caused them a 100 million USD loss.

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I'm talking about the game itself, not sales. Quest design largely consisted of traveling across a large, pretty, empty environment to have a short fight or start a cutscene and just repeating that constantly, combat was flashy but had very little variety or depth, character progression was hollow, etc. These are things that should sound very familiar to anyone that has played XIV.

If throwing money at developing the game isn't a solution then why throwing money to ads is?

It is like the game doesn't like veteran and try to get new generation of players that has way less likely to follow +1000 hour story

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Originally Posted by KernCadfan

Honest question, and honest thought that has been rolling around in my mind. I see it so often here on the forums, and in chats, but is FFXIV really the most profitable game SE has? If that's true, why does it have so few people working on the project? Why do we have such long content and patch cycles?

I love FFXIV (flaws aside, all MMORPG's have flaws). Nothing will ever be perfect, and I both acknowledge and even concede that is the proper way that work/life balance works. I certainly don't want the dev team to melt in their respective corners from overworking... but seriously, I must ask myself as a player why this supposed cash cow is floundering under the weight of its own struggles if it's truly as strong a contender as we, the player base, hope it is...

Are we just drinking the cool-aid? Or, is it truly the cash cow, left to be over-milked and under-fed, and we should be royally rioting at the drip feed of content?

It's a fair question, because if it's not the cash cow, I can forgive so much more reguarding the patch cycle. I can forgive so much more about the job-related nurfing and gutting, and the way content seems to be rehashed with the standard trash-pack/boss formula in instanced content. I can forgive the minor gripes I had with DT's MSQ (I mostly liked it, aside from a few little things), but I could forgive those things if this game is not the cash cow...

If it truly is the cash cow though, the thing that is indeed funding other investments and other games, then we need to truly think about what that means for FFXIV as a whole when it ends up getting so little love and attention from potential development staff...

This has been rolling around in my mind for a while... and i'm not sure what to think about it...

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Short answer is that XIVs profits are subsidizing other games and if I am not mistaken quite a few of their other ventures have not done well as they had wanted, such as FF16. There's a longer answer I am sure, but that its in a nutshell. They're using XIV to prop up other poor investments.

If this was an aircraft, they are ignoring their instruments (all of us warning them) as they have been calling out stall warning, sink rate, artificial horizon (8 ball) pointing down.

They are looking through the windows at night and in the clouds, not paying attention to how bad things are getting.

The hard deck is approaching fast…

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Originally Posted by Hyperia

If this was an aircraft, they are ignoring their instruments (all of us warning them) as they have been calling out stall warning, sink rate, artificial horizon (8 ball) pointing down.

They are looking through the windows at night and in the clouds, not paying attention to how bad things are getting.

The hard deck is approaching fast…

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WOOP WOOP Terrain Terrain Pull Up Pull Up WOOP WOOP...

Shoot, I'd take the aircraft analogy even further and say that SE accidentally entered a spin and is having trouble applying any of the proper spin recovery techniques. They only have so much time to figure it out before it's too late.

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Originally Posted by Swordsman

Shoot, I'd take the aircraft analogy even further and say that SE accidentally entered a spin and is having trouble applying any of the proper spin recovery techniques. They only have so much time to figure it out before it's too late.

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Judging from the numerous episodes of air crash investigation I've seen, it's already far too late for the devs to avoid a catastrophe if the situation is so bad that their aircraft has already entered a spin. I don't personally think the situation is quite that dire, yet, but I agree with what someone else mentioned about them ignoring their instruments. I'm sure a lot of other players are losing trust in our pilots, too.

My thing is. If FFXIV is their most profitable product. Why isnt the MSQ fully voiced along with key side storylines?

Because the game is comfortably in a spot where it continues to print money without needing substantial updates. Put bluntly, there's zero incentive from a business prospect to invest significant resources into a project that's more or less self sufficient with the bread crumbs on often.

Think of it like this. They could invest an additional 20-30M into FFXIV but would that bring in a wealth of new players? Probably not. On the flipside, putting that money towards another game could very easily pay it back and then some. Unfortunately, SE's attempts at new IPs or anything not Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest related have been woefully inept. But that isn't a flaw on the concept itself just their poor decision making.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

Because the game is comfortably in a spot where it continues to print money without needing substantial updates. Put bluntly, there's zero incentive from a business prospect to invest significant resources into a project that's more or less self sufficient with the bread crumbs on often.

Think of it like this. They could invest an additional 20-30M into FFXIV but would that bring in a wealth of new players? Probably not. On the flipside, putting that money towards another game could very easily pay it back and then some. Unfortunately, SE's attempts at new IPs or anything not Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest related have been woefully inept. But that isn't a flaw on the concept itself just their poor decision making.

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Sometimes I wonder why developers such as SE don’t do things like a kickstarter by having fans buy games early at a reduced price. If milestones are hit, the game goes forward and more is added if they hit more milestones.

If they don’t hit enough, a refund is given and they try again. This way, games that we want get made and they know their production budget from what they earned. If they fail to reach milestones, concessions have to be made. Upon release, any sales after is their profit.

Part of the issue is that FFXIV is an MMO, and its success and development slice is partially forecasted from their first MMO.

I don't remember the exact year, but sometime during or around Shadowbringers, FFXIV finally overtook FFXI as their top earning product. This means that it took FFXIV around 10 years to earn enough to out earn FFXI, and by that point FFXI had dwindled to a few thousand stalwart fans and their many multi-boxed accounts (and all of the RMT bots of course).

Then you remember that FFXIV was also once a failed project, and that it took most of XI's earnings in order to bankroll it TWICE!

This set a bad precedent for SE, because what it taught them was than an MMO could be insanely profitable and bankroll other projects without a lot of investment. FFXI's always been given content in the form of stories but also in the form of insanely long grind processes for relic weapons and their analogues. Like XIV relics but on steroids, XI's relics take months to years to make for the average player, even now.

I've said it once and I'll say it again, the suits at SE don't understand that XIV is an entirely different beast, and they expect it to print money relative to its scale for as long as XI did. XIV is basically a big ladder that they add new rungs to every few months. FFXI was essentially a plateaued maze with multiple goals that they added onto every few years. it takes a rather long time to get anywhere or advance in XI. For XIV it's one linear journey up the ladder that only lasts that one trip, and then you're at the top with everyone else waiting on new rungs.

So XIV's model requires new content more often as well as new players more often in order to last, because it is not designed to last. But the suits think it will.

And it's extra funny because the game's credits have started to credit literally anyone that's even on the periphery of involvement as well as slowing down the crawl year after year to make it seem like they haven't lost most of their actual development staff. They also continue to list people who worked on older sections of the game that haven't touched a XIV dev kit in years.

It's all so tiresome. Classic Square though. Amazing how Enix even carried that aspect of Square forward.