So, the Final Fantasy XI dev team?

[Spellbinder]

As someone who actually works in game development, it boggled my mind that they just said "welp, we'll all be taking a vacation so there'll be a month delay".

Not that I'm defending them, mind you, but that's not what he said. But you know, when it gets diluted from retelling after retelling, this is the story everyone runs with.

[Gaddes]

Not that I'm defending them, mind you, but that's not what he said. But you know, when it gets diluted from retelling after retelling, this is the story everyone runs with.

Did Yoshi-P not say that they would be taking a vacation that would delay 3.1?

I'm also not saying that they aren't entitled to a vacation from their hard work, but usually companies that plan well are able to have some people roll off in waves for comp time and still retain others so that the workflow remains consistent. It's very odd to see something to the contrary, especially with a product that has ongoing expansions and patches.

[Iromi]

It's quite amusing to point to the relatively small dev team as justification for limited/delayed content. If that's the case, then the decision to design content with a short lifespan on an endless treadmill was the absolute worst thing they could have done. If even half of the hard work the devs poured into 2.0 still paid dividends today by being even remotely relevant, then they wouldn't feel such enormous strain to pump out content. As far as I'm concerned, they sowed their own demise so my empathy is limited.

Exactly this. Couldn't have said it better myself!

[Colorful]

snip

I believe Yoshida said that they're also restructuring the development team, the specifics of what this means we'll likely never know. Wouldn't it be hilarious if they were relocating staff members to other projects?

[Spellbinder]

Did Yoshi-P not say that they would be taking a vacation that would delay 3.1?

This is a post I made in one of the older topics about this, including what he said.

Well, let's consider what he said during the live letter.

「ちょっとだけお休みを開発チームいただきました。あとワークフロー壊れてしまってるところとかを調整したので、ちょっといつものパッチよりは長くかかってるんですけど、１１月上旬リリースする予定です。」
「すみません、１０月には間に合わないですね。」

So, the dev team had a short break. He didn't say how long it was, we just know they had a short break.
They also had to fix problems with the work flow. What those problems are and how they affected the patch, we don't know.
The intended release schedule was October.

From the release of Heavensward, they've rolled out patches like so.

6/23 - 3.0 Heavensward Release
7/07 - 3.01 Alexander Normal and other additions
7/21 - 3.05 Alexander Savage, Frontline Seize, and other additions

I'm not going to count 3.07 as that was mostly job adjustments. The entirety of Heavensward was released in increments, with everything available on July 21.

Counting three months from that point puts us in October, the deadline he said they couldn't make.

For argument's sake, let's say the developers are incompetent jerks and they scheduled the release for October 26, a full three months from July 21, pushed to the nearest Tuesday because they always release on a Tuesday.

Then let's say the dev team at some point during this patch cycle took their breaks. Half took a week off, the other half took a week off and rotated.

Then they had to fix the problems with their work flow, which we don't know how it affected their schedule. Let's also include that this week just happens to be Silver Week, so unless they're working on national holidays, they are out of the office until Thursday, which costs them more time. Where does that put us?

I agree that they should plan accordingly for things like this. I can only hope that whatever problems they had with work flow have been sorted out.

[Canadane]

Late is late, regardless of the excuse.

Except in 3.1's case where it was intended to take longer.
By the definition of the word late, it isn't late. ...yet.