why was hildebrand so short this patch and when is the next one

[Dualgunner]

Yikes, lucky i read that slowly.

O-O Wow I didn't even realize that

[TheFatHousecat]

Pretty cool you know all the details regarding budget and development!

Wall of text incoming!

SE rarely gives exact numbers, but it's not hard to connect the dots when you look at their quarterly fiscal reports. FFXIV 1.0 cost over 400 million dollars to develop, and it had a /fraction/ of the content of 2.0 & 3.0. And while a fair bit of 2.0/3.0 development cost goes to paying for voice acting for MSQ- Hildibrand doesn't have a voice, so surely the content doesn't cost much to develop, right? Here's the rub, though: Hildibrand isn't a oneshot quest, and it isn't just text and cutscenes. They've attached FATEs and instanced battle content to it. They've attached minions, emotes and glamour. If you know anything about development costs, you start to realize really quickly that 10-20m for all the Hildibrand stuff is probably a conservative estimate.

The problem with all this comes when you start to look into the value of those development dollars, which is generally figured out by looking at how much time X number of players spend on the content. They'll look at averages and they'll look at totals. And the average dollar-per-hour spent on Hildibrand stuff is going to be abysmal. My comment about people resubbing for a patch every 3 months to do Hildibrand quests for an hour isn't terribly far from the truth. So SE will look at this and think: "is there something else we could be spending this money on with a higher dollar-per-hour spent average?" The answer will invariably be "yes" and that's a bit reason why there was a big gap between the last Hildibrand stuff and this new stuff. They were looking for better ways to spend their money. But eventually people begged for it enough that they felt cornered into bringing it back.

Compare that to something on the opposite side of the spectrum like the Coil storyline. Yoshi was pretty open about how far over budget they went, and a large part of that was because of all the CG cutscenes and the voice acting. It was incredibly immersive, with just about the highest production value we can get from an MMO. It had actually interesting characters with actually interesting plot developments- which affected the entire game setting. By comparison, Hildibrand is largely inconsequential to the plot- a cheesy detective side-story. Anyway, it can be argued that since only 5% of the game population experienced the Final Coil storyline up to completion by the end of 2.0, that it was money wasted. But look again at the average dollar-per-hour spent. How many hundreds of hours did people spend on coil progression, and farming for gear? That may not be your thing, and that's fair- but the point is, in spite of only 5% of the population taking true advantage of this content, SE is still technically getting more bang from its buck from this type of thing.

You know what they get even more bang from their buck from? Dungeon roulette. Primals with rare mounts. PVP with ranked rewards. They put much much less money into this stuff than something like Coil, and it keeps an even larger segment of the population busier for an even greater number of hours, on average, per player. So in that sense, this content is at the top and middle of the bell curve, giving the greatest returns on value. This is also, incidentally, the stuff they try to incentivize through daily/weekly chore goals. And as much as that sucks, there's a good reason for it (financially).

So what does this all mean? Is Hildibrand or similar content a 'waste' of development dollars if people find enjoyment in it? Well, to the players who like it: no, absolutely not. The same can be observed about Coil storyline stuff. But while, in the end, SE are pumping many times more dollars into stuff like Coil, they're also getting a lot more value from it. However, MORE people do the Hildibrand thing, in spite of it's comparatively lower value, so those subs add up to MORE revenue. Raid stuff = (potentially) more value. Wonky throw-away side quest stuff = (potentially) more revenue.

To seriously answer OP's question: we're getting less of everything lately, not just Hildibrand. We used to get 3 dungeons per patch, now 2. We used to get huge zones in coil with deep, interesting story and now we get little circle/box arenas with silly, annoying gobbie junk nobody cares about. We used to get a lot more from our wonky side-quests, too. We're getting less of it all now because resources are being diverted to other projects, like FFXV, Final Fantasy VII Remake, etc. Same thing they did with FFXI to fund this game. Exactly the same.

Until those projects are finished, or SE decides to pull resources back to FFXIV, we'll either get a little bit less of everything or certain things will have to be cut out entirely. I'm sore about Hildibrand because it was one of the things they had originally cut to make room for other stuff. Now that it's back, the money they're putting into Hildibrand has to be taken from something else.

And the bottom line is: this game can exist just fine without Hildibrand. I'm not sure it can exist without the other stuff.

[TheFatHousecat]

>Plays on the unofficial role-playing server.
>Dislikes development time being put into more side story content despite playing on a story-heavy MMORPG.

Well, let's entertain that notion. If I was a roleplayer, and if I know anything about anything, I'd realize that the things that matter to me most (glamour, expansive and immersive zones, HOUSING!) are getting comparatively skimped on in order to fund other aspects of the game. Glamour costs the least overall of those 3 things, and so we still get a fair bit of it every patch (but people always want more, no?)... but what about zones and housing? I think it can be argued that the Heavensward zones are pretty pleasing in size and scope, especially compared to ARR zones, but there aren't very many. And then there's housing. Housing is a sham. People beg and beg for more of it, for greater affordability of it, for more variations of it, etc etc. And SE doesn't deliver.

Imagine, if you will, that SE is able to meet the demand for housing. How many more people would be convinced to come back to the game, or try the game for the first time, and stick around once they got their house? It's not hard to imagine this increasing their subscription numbers. Does Hildibrand really do that? Nahhh. Don't even kid yourself. Hildibrand occupies the hearts and minds of a particular niche and everyone else is either completely indifferent or hates it. When you look at the number of people playing other MMOs, perfectly happy without this kind of content, it's not difficult to ascertain that the ceiling for revenue Hildibrand can bring in isn't too high, and with current subscription numbers we're probably already pretty close to that ceiling.

So what if they cut Hildibrand out of the budget entirely and re-appropriated those funds toward bigger/better server infrastructure to handle more and larger housing wards? If I'm a roleplayer and I already pay to play this game, I'm that much more likely to stick around. If I'm a roleplayer and I don't play but I've been thinking about it, or I quit but can be convinced to comeback- well, that's just going to make me that much more likely to dive in.

Any way you look at it- objectively, the Hildibrand questline gives little more than fleeting enjoyment for a demographic notorious for fairweather subbing. I won't deny that people like it, and I won't tell them they're wrong for liking it... but I will say it's money that can objectively be better spent elsewhere in the short term. And then when you bring in even bigger numbers and have more money to play with, when you're not already being forced to make cuts for time and budget, understaffed and underfunded- then you can revisit the idea and throw some cash at it.

But right now? Not a good idea, simple as that.

[ValkyrieL]

I would prefer dev. time on something that has REPLAY VALUE, not something than u can skip through in 5mins and NEVER do it again..

[TheFatHousecat]

I would prefer dev. time on something that has REPLAY VALUE, not something than u can skip through in 5mins and NEVER do it again..

More or less my point. The trials were good content and implemented well. Fun stuff that gets the story done for people who only care about that, and has replay value for people who like collecting minions. Add in rare mounts or glamour set items people are willing to grind for, and it's even better.

But this 30-60 throwaway minutes every other patch thing is just...

The game is in the black, sure, but with SE diverting so many resources to other projects lately it's not nearly as healthy as it needs to be to take such liberties on behalf of a group of players notorious for subbing for a month every 3-6 months and playing maybe 1-2 weeks out of that month.

[Kyuuen]

Text wall of death, doom, and gloom.[/B]

So would you think it best to ask SE to increase Dev support/funds for XIV instead of just accepting less as we've been getting, as you've said? Instead of just saying 'hey! I dislike this, cut devs from it!' and rolling with the status quo, bring it to SE's attention XIV can be a lot more with more Dev support/funding.

Some of the stuff that you're claiming to be the meat and bones of the game, I can just as easily find people that don't touch that, just as you can find those that don't touch side quests.

[TheFatHousecat]

So would you think it best to ask SE to increase Dev support/funds for XIV instead of just accepting less as we've been getting, as you've said? Instead of just saying 'hey! I dislike this, cut devs from it!' and rolling with the status quo, bring it to SE's attention XIV can be a lot more with more Dev support/funding.

Some of the stuff that you're claiming to be the meat and bones of the game, I can just as easily find people that don't touch that, just as you can find those that don't touch side quests.

Successful long-term subscription-based MMOs with those elements: FFXI, WoW, Eve

Successful long-term subscription-based MMOs without those elements: n/a

In fact, MMOs that start sub-based but invariably fail and go P2P/F2P all seem to fail suspiciously because they lack the very "meat and bones of the game" that FFXI, WoW (and now FFXIV... for the time being) etc have. Truly strange. Truly.

Tl;dr- Fallacy of personal experience + biased/skewed sample size does not a good argument make. In other words, your friends are poor poor poor predictors of fiscal success in MMOs.

[dinnertime]

Hopefully they make more side quest stories other than Hildebrand and focus much more on it, preferrably.

[Kyuuen]

-snip-

Wasn't using my friends, but simply using myself as means of extrapolation. Until recently I'd never completed A4, just because I didn't care to do it. Not mentioning Savage, for obvious reasons. So I am but one person out of how many that play this game?

Now by no means am I stating that the game can exist without content that you're speaking of, but blindly cutting content because someone thinks it detracts from the whole is just as folly. Ignoring any groups of people in an MMO can have pretty sharp repercussions; and using your examples, WoW and XI are primary examples. XI who in it's early life only permitted; for the VAST majority, group based play beyond a certain point, essentially chasing any sort of solo player away, thus never becoming a Massive hit as WoW or what XIV already is. WoW's issues are a bit of cluster in that it being what 11 or 12 years old now, but constant reinvention, the PvE vs PvP balance struggle, and other issues.

Point being, cutting content from either side is going to; potentially, yield unfavorable reactions from your base. And if this is a status quo that is going to be around for an extended time, do you keep slighting one side, or seek balance?

[SuperZay]

Hopefully they make more side quest stories other than Hildebrand and focus much more on it, preferrably.

Now that you mention it, what happened to Mor Dhona kid adventurers? They just dropped that sidestory entirely halfway through.