The "Yoshi needs more sleep" petition! Save him before it's too late!

[Eekiki]

My cousin's husband is a programmer for a game company (the one that's all about things happening a long time ago in far away galaxies), and it's kinda like that. The thing is, the people working there are for the most part living their dream, and are perfectly okay working these hours since they're doing what they love.

[Rane]

健康って何よりも大事ですよ、吉田Pさん。もっと寝てください！今も応援していますが、ちゃんと寝るともっと応援します。
頑張ってくだ・・・・いや、もう頑張りすぎですね

******

Yoshi-P, nothing is more important than your health. So get more sleep! I'm backing you, but I'd pull for you more if you slept properly.
Keep up the good work....wait, no, you already work too hard

[Roaran]

Yoshi is an adult, he can take care of himself. Although sleeping is undoubtedly one of the best ways to stay productive, there are special cases where some people only need a few hours of sleep a day their whole lives. Essentially they sleep hard and fast. I have no idea whether Yoshi is one of these people, but they tend to be very intelligent and active; so, I think it's best to let Yoshi decide for himself how to best live his life.

[Reinheart]

My cousin's husband is a programmer for a game company (the one that's all about things happening a long time ago in far away galaxies), and it's kinda like that. The thing is, the people working there are for the most part living their dream, and are perfectly okay working these hours since they're doing what they love.

Yep exactly... if I could get in game programmer job... which was my dream job since I was 8... I don't mind working my butt off non stop...

Like he said on the german interview version don't put too much negative stuff on the FFXIV official forums... that probably pisses him off which get's him stressed out and probably being more unhealthy imo lol.

Some negative comments are good but some on here is just ridiculous... but to be honest... the Japanese side of the forum is much much worse on this part, stupid idiots have threads going about how the company should go out of business and all kind of crap which has nothing to do with FFXIV... wish there was a way to black list user and don't see their threads; the banning on this forum (per JP posts) seems like you only get 2-3 hour punishment and you can just come back and start posting all you want again...

[giftforce]

I'm sure we would all sleep only 3 hours a day if we got to run an MMO like FFXIV.

[Mieck]

I don't believe for a second that gear takes that long

I won't comment on anything else you said. I have no wish to debate opinion. But the above section is a wild claim that appears to based on very little practical knowledge. 3d art is a broad church of complicated and very deep disciplines. Take, for example, the character models for the main cast of Final Fantasy XIII - 6 months. Absolute minimum. Modelling, optimisation, UVW mapping, texturing, texture baking, animation, and many more. You are creating an actor that has to sustain scrutiny over many dozens of hours of screen time, in unforgiving 720p plus. In FFXIV, you're looking at every character design having to cover each available race and each available gender. The correlation between the time taken to develop MMO characters and their equipment (who will have to sustain screen time that is orders of magnitude more than a single player game) is clear.

That goes along with everything else we're demanding be added. Those quest hubs will have required a lot of man hours. Those map redesigns that are be spoken of, will require a phenomenal effort by the artists on the team. And what about those "missing genders" that there was so much clamour for a while back - I seem to recall (please correct me if otherwise) that these were being added to the mix at some point. And then we will have the release of new monster types, and lest we forget, the inevitable pre-planning and design work for future zones and non-player characters.

Games development is a labour of love, and yes, people will work long hours. But that doesn't mean that all the hours in the working weeks and months are sufficient to tick all the boxes we want ticking when the process of making that mark is so staggeringly complicated.

[Eekiki]

Seif's forum avatar looks like it's saying, "ni**a please".

[Eldaena]

lol it's nappy time Mr. B.

[Cendres]

LOL /signed. *sings lullaby*

Really don't care about productivity and what not, Yoshi needs a nap or three regardless. ^_~

[Aldora]

Honestly Seif, you're not a game designer so you have absolutely no clue how long it takes to design anything. Games like this usually require vast amounts of pre-planning because of how long it takes to make most things, that's the reality of game design.

I'd love for more of this type of information to come out personally, to help people such as Seif get a grasp on the development process he so clearly does not understand.

In the interview of the community team he mentioned the "entire" process of creating new equipment, namely this:

Yoshida: The process of commissioning new equipment/weapons is largely split in two. The first is 'what's required from a game design point of view', e.g. it goes without saying an ultimate weapon players can only get when reaching the maximum level for a certain job should look unique. The other side entails 'equipment in the form of a reward' for 'content' that players must aim to clear. For both cases, a full time Item Team was established and they are accepting offers from the whole project. As there are so many unique designs that are essential to game planning, the production costs really add up. We then proceed with commissioning reward-based equipment after we decide whether it should be made with existing adjustments + parameters built-in or by redesigning the look. The character design team are the ones who get the actual request. Akihiko Yoshida's team creates the artwork used for character modelling and then modelling work starts based on this. Work proceeds to sculpting and when it's ready, it takes about 6 months to create one full set of equipment that maintains FFXIV's high standards of graphics. We can't get a good supply of these items ready if we don't establish a long-term plan for creating them. This is the most important part. Finally, the staff responsible for each content adds the items to the in-game item database and we're done!

I personally think that process of creating an entire set would take 6 months, if you would sum up all the hours the team has put into it. Let's say an entire set of equipment consists of a weapon, head, body, hands, legs and feet. That would 6 pieces of equipment that would need to be designed, planned, modelled, textured and eventually implemented. In average that would take 1 month per item. But, in reality it will not be just 1 member of the dev that will be design, plan, model, texture AND implement the item in question. They would probably have 1 person designing the item, 1 person planning the process, 1 person perform the modelling of the item, 1 person responsible for creating the textures and 1 person for the implementation.

Based on that, you could say that 5 people are working on 1 specific piece of equipment. Divide the 1 months worth of man hours between these 5 people and each individual would have work about 5 days on it. That would sound more resonable to me...

Keep in mind that this is pure speculation, based on my experience in development. (^_^ )