I'm concerned for ffxiv's future

[Kaedan]

Ehh... It's not quite as simple as that.

From a consumer perspective, throwing money at the game will make things go faster and will solve our problems.

Since, more money spent on more people means shared workload. I.e. Instead of having 1 guy go through the game altering 10,000 items to fit a new race, you get 10 people going through the game altering 1,000 items each to fit a new race. Effectively increasing efficiency tenfold.

snip

That's the reason I mentioned the "saturation point" of manpower. There is a point where no matter how many people you add to a project, you get nothing but diminishing returns. It's where the idiom "too many chefs spoil the broth" comes from.

They already have a VERY large staff. Far more than is typical. It isn't as simple as the basic math you have tried to apply. But you do illustrate how the "consumer perspective" is a flawed one with a very narrow view of the whole picture. That's precisely the false thinking that throwing money at a project will allow them to simply hire more people and get things done faster.

[Kalise]

That's the reason I mentioned the "saturation point" of manpower. There is a point where no matter how many people you add to a project, you get nothing but diminishing returns. It's where the idiom "too many chefs spoil the broth" comes from.

They already have a VERY large staff. Far more than is typical. It isn't as simple as the basic math you have tried to apply. But you do illustrate how the "consumer perspective" is a flawed one with a very narrow view of the whole picture. That's precisely the false thinking that throwing money at a project will allow them to simply hire more people and get things done faster.

But then, if you read literally the sentence afterwards that you snipped out, you'd also see that once you hit the point of "Diminishing Returns" (Which in of itself, isn't a hard wall of productivity, merely a reduction in the increase each person provides which is literally every person past 2 people working on something in my example. I.e. 1 guy going through 10,000 items. A 2nd guy then makes it 100% more efficient by splitting the load to 5,000 items for each of them. A 3rd guy merely increases productivity by 50% because it's now splitting those 5,000 items between 2 people into 3,333 items between 3 people. Thus a diminishing return of investment)

Then you can put more people towards OTHER things. Such as like Yoshida mentioned "While FFXIV will continue to strive to maintain a regular 3.5 month major update cycle, we must also ensure that sufficient time is secured for the meticulous development of new content—or else the quality will invariably drop."

They need to keep pumping out the regular release of the new Dungeons/MSQ/Raids.

Thus if you can have a larger team working on Cosmetic things like Races/Character Customization AND have a larger team working on Dungeons/MSQ/Raids at the same time, that is more efficient than having to split focus because you only have a small team working on one aspect, or you have a larger team that works on the core content (Dungeons/MSQ/Raids) first and then works on other things afterwards.

You're the one who's illustrating flawed and narrow views of the whole picture in this scenario. By having limited understanding of how game development works. Including your reference to them having a "VERY large staff". Which often will be distributed into different teams that work on different aspects. I.e. The Art team won't be doing any work on Job Balance. The Art team will simply be working on Art assets. If this team gets larger, they can work on more Art assets. If the team gets large enough where more people won't help, you get people in to different teams, such as the Job Balance team so they can work more efficiently.

[Gemina]

But then, if you read literally the sentence afterwards that you snipped out, you'd also see that once you hit the point of "Diminishing Returns" (Which in of itself, isn't a hard wall of productivity, merely a reduction in the increase each person provides which is literally every person past 2 people working on something in my example. I.e. 1 guy going through 10,000 items. A 2nd guy then makes it 100% more efficient by splitting the load to 5,000 items for each of them. A 3rd guy merely increases productivity by 50% because it's now splitting those 5,000 items between 2 people into 3,333 items between 3 people. Thus a diminishing return of investment)

Then you can put more people towards OTHER things. Such as like Yoshida mentioned "While FFXIV will continue to strive to maintain a regular 3.5 month major update cycle, we must also ensure that sufficient time is secured for the meticulous development of new content—or else the quality will invariably drop."

They need to keep pumping out the regular release of the new Dungeons/MSQ/Raids.

Thus if you can have a larger team working on Cosmetic things like Races/Character Customization AND have a larger team working on Dungeons/MSQ/Raids at the same time, that is more efficient than having to split focus because you only have a small team working on one aspect, or you have a larger team that works on the core content (Dungeons/MSQ/Raids) first and then works on other things afterwards.

You're the one who's illustrating flawed and narrow views of the whole picture in this scenario. By having limited understanding of how game development works. Including your reference to them having a "VERY large staff". Which often will be distributed into different teams that work on different aspects. I.e. The Art team won't be doing any work on Job Balance. The Art team will simply be working on Art assets. If this team gets larger, they can work on more Art assets. If the team gets large enough where more people won't help, you get people in to different teams, such as the Job Balance team so they can work more efficiently.

You seem to get one side of the equation, and the other, but not how these two sides coincide with each other. If throwing a ton of money at a project was the answer to everything, the Star Wars franchise wouldn't have gone to total schite. Yet, if you look at a recently posted video I saw on youtube which is a reimagined version of Darth Vader vs Obi Wan in episode 4, you see how a limited amount of people with a limited amount of funds with clear setbacks was able to produce content that the hardest of the hardcore fans are saying easily beats out anything Disney has been able to churn out. Why do you suppose this is?

As another example: you have two machines, and two people to operate them, and one person that manages them. They love what they do and are passionate about it. Their work is so good that demand for their product has increased. The manager decides to get two more machines. The immediate issue here is if all four machines are not running at full capacity, then not only are you not making more money, you're losing it. Because the two operators cannot run all four machines at full capacity, the manager decides to hire two more operators. While the two new operators are experienced with running the machines, they are not familiar with the product and will require X amount of time training to learn about and adopt the same passion as everyone else.

This is a small scale version of what happens behind SE's doors. The reason why we have the game we do is because SE has a team of peeps who are passionate about their work and the product they deliver to their customers. They work those long hours and put in the extra effort without additional compensation because they poor their hearts and their souls into their work. This is NOT something you can just throw more money and people at and achieve the same result. If it was, they could just hire more people and everyone could just work normal hours, and not sacrifice so much of their personal time. That is what he means by this comment:

"While FFXIV will continue to strive to maintain a regular 3.5 month major update cycle, we must also ensure that sufficient time is secured for the meticulous development of new content—or else the quality will invariably drop."

Gong back to my previous Star Wars comment, this is an example of how throwing more money and having more people involved ultimately causes the product to fail. Is that what you want for FFXIV as well?

[Kalise]

Why do you suppose this is?

Because George Lucas ran the franchise into the ground with the prequels and then sold it on to a mega-corporation that had already lost any essence of actually wanting to create quality content and was instead focused entirely on maximizing profits while minimizing effort?

You might want to pick a more apropos example next time.

Such as a time when actually throwing money at things was the issue, as opposed to the opposite effect where people where too concerned about profits to make good content.

[Gemina]

Because George Lucas ran the franchise into the ground with the prequels and then sold it on to a mega-corporation that had already lost any essence of actually wanting to create quality content and was instead focused entirely on maximizing profits while minimizing effort?

You might want to pick a more apropos example next time.

Such as a time when actually throwing money at things was the issue, as opposed to the opposite effect where people where too concerned about profits to make good content.

You might want to readdress this topic when you learn what passion towards one's work entails. What you stated is exactly why just throwing more money and resources at FFXIV won't work, and your arguments are self-deflating. If you look at Yoshi as the George Lucas of FFXIV; if his passion towards it was to wane much like Lucas's did for SW and/or gives it to someone with maximum funds and minimal insight, the very same thing will happen to FFXIV. You can't talk about throwing money at a project in the past tense when it is directly the cause and consequence of people being too concerned with profits to make quality content.

It's a really good thing you're not making the decisions for FFXIV.

[Kalise]

You might want to readdress this topic when you learn what passion towards one's work entails.

I know what passion towards one's work entails.

What you stated is exactly why just throwing more money and resources at FFXIV won't work, and your arguments are self-deflating.

It is not. You've yet to create a tenable link between "Throwing money and resources" at something and that thing not working.

Heck, even Kaedan whom I originally responded to had a better link, which one was where they mentioned:

You can throw as much money as you want at something, it won't make it necessarily successful. There are thousands of examples of companies throwing money at a project and it still going belly up.

In which the argument is that money spent =/= success. Which is true.

Since success is determined by profitability and sustainability. If you throw tons of money at something and don't get back that money, your venture, however good, will fail as you will eventually run out of money.

If you look at Yoshi as the George Lucas of FFXIV; if his passion towards it was to wane much like Lucas's did for SW and/or gives it to someone with maximum funds and minimal insight, the very same thing will happen to FFXIV.

Hiring programmers and artists and other members of a team doesn't necessarily mean replacing Yoshi as the lead designer and thus handing over the reins of creativity over to someone else.

Nor does it mean Yoshi trying to maximize profits for little investment and so start writing any old trash and selling it because of the name on the tin rather than the actual content.

Which is the difference between Star Wars and FFXIV.

George Lucas, was very successful with the original Star Wars films. His creativity and passion was unmarred by anything such as greed and it was truly a work of passion.

Then he got lazy and then wrote the prequels to cash in on the licence (Just like had been done with the PLETHORA of Star Wars merchandise which was actually terrible but sold because it had the Star Wars name on it). He had no passion and thus the creative force in the content was non-existent.

People who worked on the films, the actors, the CGI team, the film crew, the make-up artists etc. THEY might have had passion for their job and might have been super stoked to be working on a Star Wars film. But that's all for naught if the creative lead who wrote the script and directed the film was anything but.

You can't talk about throwing money at a project in the past tense when it is directly the cause and consequence of people being too concerned with profits to make quality content.

I very much can.

Especially when I did in fact mention, that it was crucial to manage monetary expenditure.

You know, if you bothered to read my initial post the whole way through.

You'd know I mentioned that the Developers of the game need to weigh costs versus profits because they have to sustain the business.

This includes stymieing their own creativity by the nature of they might have plenty of ideas but it's not feasible for them to implement them.

At the end of the day, if someone had infinite amounts of money to throw at a project, as long as it was invested properly, that's how you create the best product, as you give your creative team the freedom to work on what they feel would be good additions without worrying about manpower, resource management (Other than time) and can focus on putting their ideas out there and polishing them to perfection.

This includes, taking into consideration fan feedback about certain things.

However, money is not infinite and thus developers, including Yoshida, are bound by costs and manpower.

This is wholly different to Star Wars, which basically did have infinite money when doing the prequels, but at that point George Lucas didn't give a crap about it because he was already ridiculously rich and thus couldn't care less and so put together any old tosh and sold it for another fortune.

Then he sold it on to a corporation, which, much like the parent company Square Enix, doesn't give a crap about creativity and only cares about making stockholders happy and making predictable income by rehashing the same formula over and over until people stop opening up their wallets.

It's a really good thing you're not making the decisions for FFXIV.

It's a really good thing that no-one reads my posts. Otherwise you'd have made yourself look quite the fool.

[WaterShield]

It's a really good thing that no-one reads my posts. Otherwise you'd have made yourself look quite the fool.

That's awfully rude and uncalled for. Also, are you a game developer? Can you prove that throwing more money at the problem will fix it?

I'm legitimately curious where your information comes from.

Edit: Why are people calling Yoshi a liar? I don't get how they understand game development more than the director of this game.

[Gemina]

I know what passion towards one's work entails.

All evidence to the contrary.

It is not. You've yet to create a tenable link between "Throwing money and resources" at something and that thing not working.

I never tried to toss a link where throwing more money and resources at something doesn't mean it will be successful. There isn't a need to when you are also stating things like this:

Heck, even Kaedan whom I originally responded to had a better link, which one was where they mentioned:

In which the argument is that money spent =/= success. Which is true.

Since success is determined by profitability and sustainability. If you throw tons of money at something and don't get back that money, your venture, however good, will fail as you will eventually run out of money.

Again I point back to you having a firm understanding of the two sides to the same coin, but have no clue how they coincide with each other in order to provide a product that is not only profitable but also sustainable. The example I provided displays that money and resources isn't everything, because a small group of people was able to produce content that far outweighs what has been delivered when those deep pockets and resources are provided. The reason behind this is passion and understanding. The intangibles, and what cannot be coached. You could argue that if those same people who produced that video had more money and resources, what they could have done would even be more amazing. And I would agree, IF they can find the same people who are as passionate as they are. This isn't easy. Certain qualities that people possess, arguably the best even, doesn't have a price tag. You can't just go out there and buy it.

Hiring programmers and artists and other members of a team doesn't necessarily mean replacing Yoshi as the lead designer and thus handing over the reins of creativity over to someone else.

No it doesn't. But if you think you can just go out there and buy programmers and artists who share his vision and understand what he's trying to accomplish then you are sorely mistaken. Once you understand how difficult this is to accomplish, especially in the field of business, then you will know exactly what he's talking about.

I very much can.

Especially when I did in fact mention, that it was crucial to manage monetary expenditure.

You know, if you bothered to read my initial post the whole way through.

You'd know I mentioned that the Developers of the game need to weigh costs versus profits because they have to sustain the business.

This includes stymieing their own creativity by the nature of they might have plenty of ideas but it's not feasible for them to implement them.

Actually no, you can't. Right here is why I say your arguments are self-deflating. You talk about and seem to understand exactly what happens when you choose quantity over quality. You're fully aware of why the SW franchise went to schite, and then in your last breath suggest that SE do the exact same thing by "stymieing their own creativity" because it isn't feasible. They have indeed had to do this as is, otherwise FFXIV would be even better than it is already. Time is one of their biggest constraints, and in order to meet deadlines they do have to cut corners and not implement everything they would like to. Money and resources don't help here, which my earlier example of the two machines should have helped you understand. Could I have provided a better example? Possibly, but if you can't understand such a simplistic approach such as that one then perhaps someone else can make it even simpler for you.

At the end of the day, if someone had infinite amounts of money to throw at a project, as long as it was invested properly, that's how you create the best product, as you give your creative team the freedom to work on what they feel would be good additions without worrying about manpower, resource management (Other than time) and can focus on putting their ideas out there and polishing them to perfection.

Good grief. smh

It's a really good thing that no-one reads my posts. Otherwise you'd have made yourself look quite the fool.

Wait. You admit that no one reads your posts, and I'm the fool? Alrighty then, I believe this little argument has reached it's conclusion.