Not enough staff and no leader that can demand more from the team.

6 months to build new gear?! Seriously? How do they manage to put more gear in XI with all the new content with a whole lot more of variables to work with?

Don't give me that HD graphics excuse I've seen entire character models built within a week with competent 3d modelers and I'm sure SE workers are some of the best in the industry.

Compared to XI gear in XIV is multiple times easier to make because the 3d models are just scaled copies of one another whereas in XI Galkas and Tarutarus had actually different 3d models because of their tails and ears. In XIV only 2 gear sets need to be made and usually the female version is almost the same.

I understand that the battle tweaking takes a lot of time but I'm constantly surprised by how little visual tweaks the patches bring.

Even the potato sack-gear could be easily made to look better with a more interesting texture and some 3d sculpting to the normal map to make the surface more individual.

XIII-2 is being made with a lot of the assets from the previous game and rest of the staff is doing only a few PSP games. Can't you please utilize the 3d modelers a bit more?

The landscape doesn't need to be completely turned upside down at once but at lease seeing that you're working on it would go a long way to boost the confidence in this game's future.

Having said that I really like the new quests. It feels like the first time there's content that doesn't feel cheap and the new music tracks are really good addition to the game.

But the 3d modelers really need someone to crack a whip on them to make them work at least on a decent speed. Optionally if I'm completely wrong and there's only one 3d artists working on this game I'd really suggest hiring more.