Patches take too long to come out. Please Hire more staff

[Xeno]

So the presence of apologists justifies the presence of self-entitled game industry experts?

If the patches keep getting delayed, that's the management's problem. The dates are merely their made-up predictions based on the progress so far and thus in no way always accurate.

How can this be so hard to grasp?

Not hard at all. Maybe it's just everyone I know but most people don't consistently tell their customers that they'll have a product in nearly two weeks before they do.

Enter the business world, especially software and game development -- You'll learn very quickly delays happen.

The real world? Maybe you should be the one who enters the real world. If 10-20 delays consistently happen, something is wrong, and it needs to be fixed.

[OMEGA_HACK]

Xeno I want you to write a 1000+ line C++ code, then let me change one thing in your code (a single letter perhaps) without telling you what I changed and see how long it takes you to figure out the problem. Then you might appreciate the process and the reason for delays in the media/gaming industry.

[normalforce]

The real world? Maybe you should be the one who enters the real world. If 10-20 delays consistently happen, something is wrong, and it needs to be fixed.

So, basically you're saying, when they create their milestones and make predictions months in advance on when patches are expected to drop and they are off by a few weeks that signifies a problem?

Xeno I want you to write a 1000+ line C++ code, then let me change one thing in your code (a single letter perhaps) without telling you what I changed and see how long it takes you to figure out the problem. Then you might appreciate the process and the reason for delays in the media/gaming industry.

He just doesn't understand. My last employer, who according to Michael Moore is the world's leading manufacture of weapons (who knew!), always padded their schedules because delays are a way of life. Tell the government 6 months, tell us 3 months and then watch us scramble as month 4 approaches. Goodbye nights and weekends.

[zaviermhigo]

Simple. Once we go p2p I bet they will have the money to hire more staff, and to push patches out faster. Can you wait? Can you pay? Those are the questions. We've dealt with slow patches for a f2p game right now, if you check f2p games there patches come out slow, some games faster than lets say WoW, but some f2ps just aren't real games leading for ease of expansion, not as slow as FFXIV, but that's due to cash revenue coming. FFXIV had no money coming in for it except what people paid for the disc, so thats anywhere from suckers like me who paid 80 for CE, and people now who pay 5-25 (all values in USD) That's still just not enough money to keep the servers going, pay the staff, and pump out new content for a year w/out borrowing money from Square Enix made from other games. WoW doesn't rely on Blizzard for its money, or on Activision, it relies on WoW. Final Fantasy will need to make enough money to support itself, and in due time it might have the chance to, be patient.

And to the previous person "normal force" cause I'm too lazy to quote, padding for arms and other goods that go to the government normally occurs out the ass your right, its like Durant from back in the day with the railroads like "lets build this curvy, $16,000 per mile assh#les! I'm rich!". I bet some padding occurs between devs and the main company like, ffxiv dev team and SE, but I wonder how much incentive there is for padding in an mmo company, since with government things time is more money typically, getting paid for doing nothing (or something similar), but with a gaming company it would be interesting to see how much padding goes on between what the devs tell the consumer, and what the devs tell their parent company/bosses.


I don't expect XIV to ever hit the exact time they tell us, they're developing new content for 7th Umbral Era, they're fixing the current game to match the new game, and their working on their engine, while trying to make sure everything from now can convert to the new engine. Anyone who has checked the 2.0 timeline knows they have a ton of crap to work on, and out of the 8 main things they work with, 100 or more little things can go wrong, its the nature of programming, if we could program perfectly there would be no need for patches or microsoft updates c'mon. Some of these people complaining need to look at all of what SE does with FFXIV, and not just what they see in the patch notes. Read, its your best resource, other people in other countries aren't as literate, be thankful, take advantage of the skill and read.

[Betelgeuzah]

Not hard at all. Maybe it's just everyone I know but most people don't consistently tell their customers that they'll have a product in nearly two weeks before they do.

That's a cool world you live in, I wish I could join you. A place where dates can be given ahead of time without them being mere predictions at best.

At least in some industries the labour doesn't have to work in an environment where even a single letter in a wrong place can cause a day's delay.

[normalforce]

And to the previous person "normal force" cause I'm too lazy to quote, padding for arms and other goods that go to the government normally occurs out the ass your right, its like Durant from back in the day with the railroads like "lets build this curvy, $16,000 per mile assh#les! I'm rich!". I bet some padding occurs between devs and the main company like, ffxiv dev team and SE, but I wonder how much incentive there is for padding in an mmo company, since with government things time is more money typically, getting paid for doing nothing (or something similar), but with a gaming company it would be interesting to see how much padding goes on between what the devs tell the consumer, and what the devs tell their parent company/bosses.

With the fast pace of their schedule and probably the code they've been saddled with, I doubt they have much padding at all. Maybe if they get lucky and it breezes through those QA sticklers. And depending how they've set up their processes: there are code reviews, progress meeting, testing, documentation, debugging, and a whole slew of crap I don't miss dealing with, two or three months goes by very, very quick.

[Xeno]

Xeno I want you to write a 1000+ line C++ code, then let me change one thing in your code (a single letter perhaps) without telling you what I changed and see how long it takes you to figure out the problem. Then you might appreciate the process and the reason for delays in the media/gaming industry.

Interesting, you would propose that I work in a field in which I have received no training for and expect me to be able to understand the code as well as someone who studied in that field? All I'm saying is that it is bad business if you have to constantly delay every single patch by 10 or more days.

[Renshi]

the excuse of "be patient" or "they are working on 2.0" goes out the damn window when they start charging...

That means that money > patience, hence you can wait for 2.0 without spending anything or pay starting January the 6th and have fun with the game while waiting.

Your excuse of being impatient gets outta the window =)

[OMEGA_HACK]

my point being was all you need is a SLIGHT error--an honest human mistake if you may put it--to cause you to back track for hours trying to pinpoint what went wrong. And to deny human error means to deny your own existence, since none of us are perfect...no one.

(Oh and there really isn't any "easy-mode troubleshooting" when you are in primary coding...because are you at the core, there is nothing to help you really besides yourself) You don't have to be part of that process, you don't have to be trained in that field of expertise to understand that. If you cannot understand it...well then to be quite blunt you are quite ignorant to the truth of life itself.

[Xeno]

Fair enough, and yes I know that coding is very tedious because of the thousands of lines of code, I did not deny that. My point was that if you are consistently delaying patches maybe you shouldn't be optimistic about when they will be released because it constantly disappoints unsuspecting customers (I'm used to it but I won't expect everyone to be)