Request to Yoshi P: Hire more staff

[Maikeru]

This. There's plenty to do in the game. It's just a lot of it, for whatever reason, is unappealing to a majority of the players. They don't necessarily need to churn out more per patch, but definitely focus on creating stuff that has some longevity and isn't immediately outdated in 3-6 months or gated behind some weekly cap/awful grind.

Based on what I gathered, some people don't bother with content where they can't progress or get some profit out of it. You know, playing a videogame to have fun. However, I think it's truly hard to achieve the creation of long term content without implying certain degree of grind or a lockout, because that way you play with people's energy and time, at the same time you create barriers around it. Is it cheap? Yes, but I can't think of a better way to do it. I have yet to read a balanced suggestion that could change that. If SE didn't figured it out, I really don't know what to say.

[Gilthas]

Based on what I gathered, some people don't bother with content where they can't progress or get some profit out of it. You know, playing a videogame to have fun. However, I think it's truly hard to achieve the creation of long term content without implying certain degree of grind or a lockout, because that way you play with people's energy and time, at the same time you create barriers around it. Is it cheap? Yes, but I can't think of a better way to do it. I have yet to read a balanced suggestion that could change that. If SE didn't figured it out, I really don't know what to say.

Well, lets looks at gathering and crafting.

As the system is now, it's far too grindy for the majority of the playerbase to enjoy, while at the same time not having any good equipment to craft for endgame. So, the current paradigm is for gathering and crafting to be far too time-consuming and unrewarding.

A definite improvement to the system would be to bring the grind back down to reasonable levels while also adding new recipees to craft competitive gear (albeit perhaps not the most powerful gear). To prevent people from just using the MB to gear themselves, the gear produced from these recipees would require untradable dungeon drops / token mats and the gear itself would be untradable. This will also help people to use other classes since they'd have an extra method of gearing them up. This surely wouldn't get everyone into crafting, but it would certainly open up a big chunk of content to a lot more players.

Of course this would require SE to stop listening to the hardcore gatherers and crafters that want to drive off everyone else so they can make more gil.

[Marxam]

This. Large companies, even profitable ones, are frequently very stingy with their hiring.

I must be getting old because I remember when SE or Squaresoft and Enix (before the merger) was in the business of making games, not making games to run a business. I agree with the op +1.

[Gilthas]

I must be getting old because I remember when SE or Squaresoft and Enix (before the merger) was in the business of making games, not making games to run a business. I agree with the op +1.

Lol, Squaresoft and Enix were always about making money.

[Catwho]

It's also the nature of software development. "Hiring more people to help a late project will only serve to make the project later."

Getting a software developer up to speed on your methods and design can take three or four months. And even then you don't know how really good that person is. Programmers class the very best of themselves as the 10x programmers - capable of producing good code ten times faster than a regular coder. Not because they're writing code faster, they're just writing much less code that is also far more efficient. (I'm a designer, not a programmer, so I'm on day four of the job and already writing code spec. Talk about trial by fire.)

Anyway, I'd rather they have fewer high quality guys like they do today than farm out large chunks of the game to China. The last time they did that, we ended up with 1.0.

[Zumi]

I also supported the game even more spent about $50 on the mogstation buying additional items. Hoping they make the game better.

[Amiaze]

While this was a different game entirely, the number one reason the development team of FFXIII cited for the game's jarring pacing/ideas/themes/etc. was a large staff and a lack of communication. Given the long development periods of SE's most recent key titles, I don't think that this issue was localized to FFXIII. I think it spread among all their projects, and they're only now working the kinks out. I'd rather they waited until then before enlarging FFXIV's staff.

[AdamuKun322]

The team that Yoshi P has is small. I believe once FFXV and KH3 are complete some people might transition to work on FFXIV with Yoshi P should the opportunity present itself and SE recruits from within.

[KaedrianLiang]

Hmm I will go out on a limb here and say that after doing the Alex raid, it was lackluster at best compared to Ulduar, ICC, Naxxramas, and almost every other raid from BC- WOD in world of warcraft. The raids were longer, required more time, had way more trash mobs that sometimes dropped end game gear and crafting materials, and had giant legendary quests for legendary gear.

I am sorry but the raids in this game IS a lack, a severe Lack when compared to other mmorpgs that are much older then this.

You are still focusing on one thing.

[SuperZay]

What many people don't realize is that maybe there are not so many active subscribers for a larger development team to be financially profitable. Square Enix has never released any official numbers, only '5 millions adventurers worldwide' which means nothing because it includes bots, gilspammers, twinks, alts and non active accounts. Officially less than 300k have completed Alexander Normal so that's the closest number of active subscribers with lv.60 chars we can get. And 300k is not that much in terms of MMOs.