Do you think cost is an acceptable excuse regarding not getting FFXIV content?

Truly a strange thing when considering this is not free-to-play. Sure they are very generous for new players allowing them to play through multiple expansions for free but this doesn't concern new content where the excuse is thrown at. That is for people actively paying to play.
In addition to this most people who haven't un-subbed are very dedicated and likely the people dropping $42 on a glamour or $30 for a cash shop mount. Yet that is not enough to prioritize making sure the company is budgeting right to give FFXIV ample maintenance?

You may feel like this dedicated fans are just granted and will always throw huge money at any new thing, but I have a suspicion that is not true.

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Originally Posted by Milea

Truly a strange thing when considering this is not free-to-play. Sure they are very generous for new players allowing them to play through multiple expansions for free but this doesn't concern new content where the excuse is thrown at. That is for people actively paying to play.
In addition to this most people who haven't un-subbed are very dedicated and likely the people dropping $42 on a glamour or $30 for a cash shop mount. Yet that is not enough to prioritize making sure the company is budgeting right to give FFXIV ample maintenance?

You may feel like this dedicated fans are just granted and will always throw huge money at any new thing, but I have a suspicion that is not true.

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Is this regarding the not having a normal mode for Forked Tower?

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Do you think cost is an acceptable excuse regarding not getting FFXIV content?

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Of course it is. You can wish for the moon and the stars but at the end of the day you have to be reasonable about what can actually be achieved given current resources.

Cost I don't think is a valid excuse, given how long this game has been running.

There are valid excuses, given the age of the codebase and everything else., e.g., especially when it may come to the ease of integrating new QoL systems.

But as far as content itself goes... Cost I don't really think is valid.

I think contrary to everything, their biggest issue is creativity and and scope of content... Back in the day you would have content which appealed to niche groups, e.g., crafting at the end-game, gathering, and other content like the OG Diadem... - But as time has gone by they have tried to widen the scope to players that aren't really interested in said content... Another way of putting it is that they have prioritized participation rates over substance of content, and in many cases the former comes at a detriment to the latter.. Especially when you look at abandoned systems like Grand Companies... Or those that they have outright removed, e.g., concealed nodes over actually reworking them.

The way I look at it personally is that this game has done a far better job in the past when the budget was most likely far smaller than what it is now.

So I don't really think it's a cost or budget issue as much as it is a creative bankruptcy and direction issue.

No matter the reasoning, it was a stupid decision.
They release a very casual zone where you level specific jobs that are only for use within the raid; and then they release no casual version of said raid.
It's comical.

It's an awful excuse. SE has chronically underinvested in this game which is why the patches take so long and deliver so little. They could have solved their staffing issues 5+ years ago if they wanted to, or at least during Endwalker when the game was raking in buckets of cash. Understand that the gradual decline that FFXIV is experiencing is a choice, not an inevitability.

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Originally Posted by hunter2

It's an awful excuse. SE has chronically underinvested in this game which is why the patches take so long and deliver so little. They could have solved their staffing issues 5+ years ago if they wanted to, or at least during Endwalker when the game was raking in buckets of cash. Understand that the gradual decline that FFXIV is experiencing is a choice, not an inevitability.

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Have they ever gone into why they chose this route? You would think when the game gets praise, wins awards and player numbers go up they would give more resources not less.

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Originally Posted by Milea

Have they ever gone into why they chose this route? You would think when the game gets praise, wins awards and player numbers go up they would give more resources not less.

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I don't think they've ever directly said so (that would be a PR disaster) but the idea is to have diverse revenue streams so that the company is still healthy even if one revenue stream suffers. A lot of SE games have flopped though, so in hindsight that money would have been much better spent ensuring that XIV is a reliable financial backbone of the company.

You didn't specify what sort of cost. Financial cost? Time cost? Productivity cost?

In terms of financial cost, not really, because SE clearly has billions of yen.

In terms of time cost, which is the specifically what led to the Forked Tower issue, yes, because you can't necessarily employ someone, train them and assign them a task if there is not enough time to do so.

That said, they should have predicted the issue and accounted for it earlier than they did. Unfortunately, they had only decided to make a Field Operation right before the expansion release due to Zepla's video, so they didn't actually have as much time to plan it as they did all their other content.

What happened is that SE changed business strategies a couple times and fucked up big time, leading to big losses. So they curb them by not reinvesting into XIV. If you want details on it, I recommend reading the last few shareholder meeting summaries.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

You didn't specify what sort of cost. Financial cost? Time cost? Productivity cost?

In terms of financial cost, not really, because SE clearly has billions of yen.

In terms of time cost, which is the specifically what led to the Forked Tower issue, yes, because you can't necessarily employ someone, train them and assign them a task if there is not enough time to do so.

That said, they should have predicted the issue and accounted for it earlier than they did. Unfortunately, they had only decided to make a Field Operation right before the expansion release due to Zepla's video, so they didn't actually have as much time to plan it as they did all their other content.

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But one cannot help but wonder just how much of the "billions of yen" - much of which FFXIV generated - is allocated to FFXIV.

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Originally Posted by Exmo

Of course it is. You can wish for the moon and the stars but at the end of the day you have to be reasonable about what can actually be achieved given current resources.

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The poor little indie company with their 2.43 billions revenue in 2024.

Understandable they couldnt afford forked tower normal really, with this small amount of money, people really need to be understanding that money is very tight. /s

We throw lots and lots of money at Square-Enix for this game.

Square-Enix, unfortunately, throws significantly less money at this game.

Final Fantasy XIV struggles with great developers in a piss-poor company that doesn't take its playerbase seriously.

Just quit. This game is not even worth $0, since you have to suffer the displeasure of actually playing it.

May I recommend Expedition 33

Okay this is NOT a defense of what they did at all, but "cost" does not just mean monetary. It's development resources, time, etc. As a software engineer, I took it with that sort of meaning.

And we know that CS3 has multiple projects now and it stands to reason they are having to make resource decisions. Or they are having those resource decisions made for them by those higher up. Developers don't always get to choose what to work on, unfortunately.

I do think whatever the case, someone with some sense needs to assess the amount of resources they are allowing for XIV and if they are taking developers or other resources away for other projects, reconsider that action. Because the effects are starting to become obvious.

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Originally Posted by bic12

May I recommend Expedition 33

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Simply excellent game. My GOTY so far.

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

Simply excellent game. My GOTY so far.

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Difference between a company that does it for the passion of gaming, telling a good story and giving a good experience, delivering ART

vs

Pleasing shareholders, carrying the rest of your company like some f'd up school project with 4 hangers on that don't do the work. "Timmy is dumb, so you're gonna have to support them." = The rest of their failed projects. 9 to 5 job mentality bare minimum effort spirit.

Yoshi P : "High fidelity graphics and turnbased dont work" oof
Yoshi P: "Do they even play their own game?" to Blizzard, OOF

Well, do you? Yoshi P, because you've reached the same point as them. "Well the game sucks, but its the game I chose to play so" Except WoW for it's suckiest times ALWAYS innovated, their story is hot garbage sure, but you aren't far behind on cementing that either.

I just sense 0 passion from their team, they always speak of the COMPANY. Not FF14. "Lets attack them with multiple projects, please look forward to it" You are supposed to be directing FINAL FANTASY 14. Just give the damn job to someone else Yoshi P if you aren't interested anymore. Dude 100% didn't play Dawntrail.

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Originally Posted by Milea

Truly a strange thing when considering this is not free-to-play. Sure they are very generous for new players allowing them to play through multiple expansions for free but this doesn't concern new content where the excuse is thrown at. That is for people actively paying to play.
In addition to this most people who haven't un-subbed are very dedicated and likely the people dropping $42 on a glamour or $30 for a cash shop mount. Yet that is not enough to prioritize making sure the company is budgeting right to give FFXIV ample maintenance?

You may feel like this dedicated fans are just granted and will always throw huge money at any new thing, but I have a suspicion that is not true.

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For them to say that means they essentially do not care about the players who have been supporting them since 1.0 and 2.0. These early players have supported and saved the game from becoming non-existent. Saying that cost is the factor is a spit in their and everyone else's faces.

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

Okay this is NOT a defense of what they did at all, but "cost" does not just mean monetary. It's development resources, time, etc. As a software engineer, I took it with that sort of meaning.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A81DYZh6KaQ

Under normal circumstances: yes

Considering we know that money made from XIV has been historically funneled into L projects: absolutely not

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Originally Posted by Veritas-Ancora

We throw lots and lots of money at Square-Enix for this game.

Square-Enix, unfortunately, throws significantly less money at this game.

Final Fantasy XIV struggles with great developers in a piss-poor company that doesn't take its playerbase seriously.

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The bigger question to me is how much money is allocated to CS3 as a whole, because everything beyond that is almost entirely on the one man that's managing it. I know that XVI's development was paused at one point because of 6.0's development, but with that era of XIV having ended, how much money and manpower is Yoshida allocating to it versus the overpriced Tactics remake and the Sakaguchi game?

Do you think getting so involved into a game that you can stop anytime acceptable ?

It depends on the context. It's impossible to develop everything imaginable due to costs, of course.

But in the context of the Occult Crescent Zone and the Forked Tower Blood Raid? No, I can't accept that as an excuse. I can't accept their decision to create a Casual Zone just to focus on creating a Hardcore-only Raid.

And to this day, I also can't agree with them releasing Glamours, Emotes, and Mounts exclusively for the Cash Shop, especially since many of them could easily be in-game rewards. But I also understand that the Cash Shop isn't completely under Yoshi-P's control (cough cough Yoichi Wada).

Still, it's a shame that I feel like my subscription money isn't being put to good use and that I might stop playing in the future.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

... they had only decided to make a Field Operation right before the expansion release due to Zepla's video, so they didn't actually have as much time to plan it as they did all their other content.

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May I ask what Zepla's video has to do with OC?

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Originally Posted by Daralii

The bigger question to me is how much money is allocated to CS3 as a whole, because everything beyond that is almost entirely on the one man that's managing it. I know that XVI's development was paused at one point because of 6.0's development, but with that era of XIV having ended, how much money and manpower is Yoshida allocating to it versus the overpriced Tactics remake and the Sakaguchi game?

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Yoshida isn't the one with the decision making power on where money gets allocated in SE. He's not even on the board anymore and even then, that power still wasn't his. I get you're upset, rightly so, but let's put the blame where it lies in regards to the financial situation XIV is in.

Does that mean Yoshida gets a pass on other things that ARE within his control and fell short? No. Just...accountability where it's due.

Who is to blame is not our problem to solve, it's theirs.

Our problem is to make them listen how we are unsatisfied with the game they're delivering to us.

It's unacceptable this kind of amateurism.

Occult Crescent feels like it was made by people who never played a single MMO in their lives.

Forked Tower feels like something copied from an anime like Sword Art Online Season 2.

FFXIV devs, don't you guys have PCs?

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Originally Posted by Brandr

Who is to blame is not our problem to solve, it's theirs.

Our problem is to make them listen how we are unsatisfied with the game they're delivering to us.

It's unacceptable this kind of amateurism.

Occult Crescent feels like it was made by people who never played a single MMO in their lives.

Forked Tower feels like something copied from an anime like Sword Art Online Season 2.

FFXIV devs, don't you guys have PCs?

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It's Japan, of course they don't

He prefaced the cost excuse saying he knew it wasn't a good excuse to give to customers.

I don't quite buy it myself. I think they never even considered doing a Forked Tower Normal, or specifically chose not to given the "DRS support was too good" comment. They could have made a normal instead of the one we got for presumably similar cost. So the real issue is just design. Whoever was making those decisions is at fault, not a lack of money/manpower/whatever costs.

It's an acceptable answer, it's just not usually an answer we'd hear. It's almost certain there has always been content cut due to budget! lots of content doesn't have normal or savage modes.
There was too many quality issues around Forked Tower that had to be addressed, so it was.

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Originally Posted by hunter2

I don't think they've ever directly said so (that would be a PR disaster) but the idea is to have diverse revenue streams so that the company is still healthy even if one revenue stream suffers. A lot of SE games have flopped though, so in hindsight that money would have been much better spent ensuring that XIV is a reliable financial backbone of the company.

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The exact same mistake CCP/PA made with EVE Online. Every attempt at diversifying the revenue stream resulted in financial losses and antagonizing the players of EVE.

I've been here since 1.0 - the worst of the worst. I'll never understand how people can defend the game being in the state it is while also raking in more money than it ever has. Its clear SE isn't investing in this game like it should and deserves to be.

Progging forked more makes me feel like there is an element of designing boredom to their decisions

Anyone who has done forked up to magitaur will tell you that the puzzles are really well designed and you can feel the devs had fun flexing the phantom job utility as far as possible. Something like bridges wouldn’t be possible without it being a high end field content duty and the map room is arguably the most beautiful area of the game in its entirety

But if you made forked normal you’d be cutting out the three puzzle sections and replacing them with DRN “here’s 2 pointless traps that may kill a random or a vet who stopped caring”. It just feels (at least to me) they wanted to make what became current forked and not be limited by what could conceivably fit in a normal mode

It’s not really a valid reason from the wider customer perspective but I can at least imagine it must get boring to create normal instances that are designed to be destroyed with little thought

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

You didn't specify what sort of cost. Financial cost? Time cost? Productivity cost?

In terms of financial cost, not really, because SE clearly has billions of yen.

In terms of time cost, which is the specifically what led to the Forked Tower issue, yes, because you can't necessarily employ someone, train them and assign them a task if there is not enough time to do so.

That said, they should have predicted the issue and accounted for it earlier than they did. Unfortunately, they had only decided to make a Field Operation right before the expansion release due to Zepla's video, so they didn't actually have as much time to plan it as they did all their other content.

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Are they really making content decisions based on a single video or content creator? There were rumors that was why CAR had the characteristics it did. If so, a bizarre approach when surveying the player base as a whole is an option used by many companies.

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Originally Posted by Mawlzy

Are they really making content decisions based on a single video or content creator? There were rumors that was why CAR had the characteristics it did. If so, a bizarre approach when surveying the player base as a whole is an option used by many companies.

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Not a single video or creator, but they've been making changes based on feedback given by content creators since the dawn of time. Many of the oversimplifications to the combat system were implemented in response to "feedback" from Xeno, for example.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Progging forked more makes me feel like there is an element of designing boredom to their decisions

Anyone who has done forked up to magitaur will tell you that the puzzles are really well designed and you can feel the devs had fun flexing the phantom job utility as far as possible. Something like bridges wouldn’t be possible without it being a high end field content duty and the map room is arguably the most beautiful area of the game in its entirety

But if you made forked normal you’d be cutting out the three puzzle sections and replacing them with DRN “here’s 2 pointless traps that may kill a random or a vet who stopped caring”. It just feels (at least to me) they wanted to make what became current forked and not be limited by what could conceivably fit in a normal mode

It’s not really a valid reason from the wider customer perspective but I can at least imagine it must get boring to create normal instances that are designed to be destroyed with little thought

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Would a Normal mode necessarily have to be boring though? What is it about the puzzles that have to be high-end difficulty? You wouldn’t think a good puzzle would need a rez limit or wipe mech to make it more interesting… If the puzzles require certain phantom jobs to complete, just have Normal mode allow you to switch phantom jobs as long as you’re out of combat.

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Originally Posted by BigCheez

Not a single video or creator, but they've been making changes based on feedback given by content creators since the dawn of time. Many of the oversimplifications to the combat system were implemented in response to "feedback" from Xeno, for example.

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Makes sense. Basing changes on an unrepresentative sliver of the player base is a recipe for disaster.

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Originally Posted by Mawlzy

Are they really making content decisions based on a single video or content creator? There were rumors that was why CAR had the characteristics it did. If so, a bizarre approach when surveying the player base as a whole is an option used by many companies.

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I've no idea about Chaotic but it was the case for the Field Operation because they said so. In general, they watch a lot of videos on YouTube so they get a sense of all the memes and things like that.

When content creators go to Fanfests they tend to discover a lot of Square Enix staff are fans, regardless of the region they work in. That shouldn't be surprising when, after over 10 years, a lot of people working for Square Enix were just players of the game before that.

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Originally Posted by BigCheez

Not a single video or creator, but they've been making changes based on feedback given by content creators since the dawn of time. Many of the oversimplifications to the combat system were implemented in response to "feedback" from Xeno, for example.

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I mean there were probably specific changes that he influenced. For example, the entire debacle with Strength vs Vitality that led to a series of plaster fixes culminating in the Shadowbringers stat rebalancing and the Tank Mastery trait, or that big rant on needing to switch to Gunbreaker to clear P8S. Maybe they eventually saw one of his DRK Living Dead memes?

But I think it's a lot bigger than Xeno really. I think their goal is to make the game playable by people who just returned to the game after 6 years, people who are not gamers but are dragged into the game by their partner, etc. And that goal has shaped years upon years of decisions, including the move away from status effects in Stormblood, where they added job gauges instead, aligning buff windows, giant hitboxes, bosses recentering themselves, etc. It's all to reduce stress for that 6-year returning player, or non-gamer partner that was dragged into playing.

I don't disagree that they should make it playable by them but they should make it also enjoyable for people who are actually gamers and give them options. And to a certain extent, dungeons were perfectly fine for such players in Heavensward despite these things not being the case... sure they may have died to things and done their rotation completely wrong, but it didn't matter.

If they listened to Xeno it's probably only because they agreed with it anyway.

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Originally Posted by Khryseis_Astra

Would a Normal mode necessarily have to be boring though? What is it about the puzzles that have to be high-end difficulty? You wouldn’t think a good puzzle would need a rez limit or wipe mech to make it more interesting… If the puzzles require certain phantom jobs to complete, just have Normal mode allow you to switch phantom jobs as long as you’re out of combat.

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Something like bridges really wouldn’t work without it being high end simply because of how the mechanic works, if you removed everything that made bridges high end (coordinating both sides, high damage from wildcharges, specific necessary jobs, inter tank coordination as examples) then bridges wouldn’t be bridges

You could probably get away on hallways just removing super traps and only having one hallway rather than splitting and having two mirrored hallways

Lockwards the rooms would probably be doable but the dance with the lockwards probably not, the map room is fine though

So it might work, but I wouldn’t definitively say it would work

You can't have hypercasual content that is fun and engaging because, as Snow said, it's designed to be destroyed with little thought. All content becomes trivial if you remove the parts that makes it what it is. If you removed DPS checks, mandatory mitigation and coordination from Savage, you'd get boring slop. The same goes for Forked Tower. I think the devs designed it exactly the way they intended, but I wouldn't mind them giving hypercasuals a normal version.

But you can't have your cake and eat it, too. Either you enjoy the challenges of the video game and put in the required effort to overcome them, or you can grind mindless content without access barriers, or non-combat content. Or PvP.

the suits don't like diverting resources to their cash cow cause people keep paying dozens of amounts for this game and its predecessor which to this day is still somehow live service despite its age lmao if people would stop paying subs then they'd be sweating again but obviously they make enough to not feel like "rocking the boat" i think honestly what YoshiP is trying to tell us is that he fought the suits but the suits won an diverted the resources away from this project to be withheld until 8.0 launch assuming they meet their pre-order quota that is.
its honestly the playerbase, content yappers, and community team's fault for why we are plummeting so hard in quality and quantity cause they refused to hold the game to a higher standard an boycott paying for the game to force SE to correct course afraid the only thing we can hope for is another 1.0 fiasco to make the game crash an burn all over again its the only option left to us at this point to salvage whats left otherwise look forward to this game following its predecessor's footsteps an fading into obscurity