FFXIV: Do you think Square Enix will put more money and resources into it?

[Lauront]

But what about the time saved from things being removed? No hildy, less dungeons, no Ultimate, consolidated Job/craft quests, no new deep dungeon. I know Covid has played a part but everything just seems lighter.

It's also worth noting that COVID was accounted for through a delay to 5.3 by something like 3 months, and the expansion releasing 4-5 months later than it otherwise would have. Yoshi put the loss in efficiency at first from WFH at around 90% of their usual operating rhythm, which they've since recovered to 95% if I remember rightly. The patches are meant to be released every 3.5-4 months. Taking the lower end of that, you get 105 days. So a loss of around 10 days per patch post 5.2, cumulatively adding to say 1 month.

So unless they underestimated the time it took to account for COVID (which I doubt), I'm inclined to attribute it to other factors. They were/are working on male Viera and female Hrothgar (with one coming later, and they delivered 2 races for SHB anyhow) and a MSQ that is 130% the volume of 5.0's in terms of story content, i.e. 30% more (by choice, to start a new story as of 6.1), plus additional work to bring it to the PS5, and it also sounds like they're commencing work on the high-res textures, and ruminating openly about an engine upgrade.

On that basis, I could forgive them for the reduction in content, but the proof will be in the pudding and in particular regarding the latter two things I mentioned.

[KizuyaKatogami]

But what about the time saved from things being removed? No hildy, less dungeons, no Ultimate, consolidated Job/craft quests, no new deep dungeon. I know Covid has played a part but everything just seems lighter.

The thing is, a lot of things were missing before covid even hit. The loss of dungeons, deep dungeon, hildibrand, and Dnc and Gnb weapons were all confirmed not coming before covid was a thing. I feel like people use the covid excuse a bit too much honestly.

[RitsukoSonoda]

No it is just a reality. Throwing money and people at a problem doesn't mean it will be solved quicker. Nor is that really smart when it comes to business. Further decisions like expanding server resources tend to be planned out quite far ahead.

The decision to prioritize stuff other than expanding servers was made before the recent influx. This priority will not change to the immediate, though may be pushed up a bit.

To be blunt, it is unrealistic for them to just shift gears immediately like people think they can. Add in the current chip shortage caused lead times and there is no way for them to just switch priority.

Keep in mind that a lot of consumers consider anything simple and easy if it doesn't involve any action or monetary commitment to be made directly by themselves because their own personal impact is the only thing they look at. About equivalent to them looking at a handful of pieces of a 10,000 piece jigsaw puzzle and assuming they know what the entire picture looks like.

[Masekase_Hurricane]

It's also worth noting that COVID was accounted for through a delay to 5.3 by something like 3 months, and the expansion releasing 4-5 months later than it otherwise would have. Yoshi put the loss in efficiency at first from WFH at around 90% of their usual operating rhythm, which they've since recovered to 95% if I remember rightly. The patches are meant to be released every 3.5-4 months. Taking the lower end of that, you get 105 days. So a loss of around 10 days per patch post 5.2, cumulatively adding to say 1 month.

So unless they underestimated the time it took to account for COVID (which I doubt), I'm inclined to attribute it to other factors. They were/are working on male Viera and female Hrothgar (with one coming later, and they delivered 2 races for SHB anyhow) and a MSQ that is 130% the volume of 5.0's in terms of story content (by choice, to start a new story as of 6.1), plus additional work to bring it to the PS5, and it also sounds like they're commencing work on the high-res textures, and ruminating openly about an engine upgrade.

On that basis, I could forgive them for the reduction in content, but the proof will be in the pudding and in particular regarding the latter two things I mentioned.

The thing is, a lot of things were missing before covid even hit. The loss of dungeons, deep dungeon, hildibrand, and Dnc and Gnb weapons were all confirmed not coming before covid was a thing. I feel like people use the covid excuse a bit too much honestly.

I totally agree about Covid being used as an excuse. Content started to get reduced in SB and continued into ShB with the excuse of we're working on some new stuff. ATM those gaps don't seem to be filled with new stuff.

[ReynTime]

Yoshi-P has spoken elaborately on this. The problems facing FFXIV cannot be solved by throwing more money or staff at it. It is highly unlikely that we are going to see XIV content increase in frequency or depth of features, not due to lack of ability or lack of funding, but rather due to lack of time. In order to maintain the steady patch cycle they have devoted themselves to keeping, they can't massively expand the amount of content per patch.

Think about it. Even if they added staff, and committed them entirely to doing some new and unusual piece of "extra" content, that would be more people for Yoshi-P to supervise, more QA time required, more work meetings, more music for Soken to compose, etc. SE has the money to do this, and there are many talented people who could take up these roles at SE's offices, and they have no end of people who would like to work for them.

But they simply do not have the time to cram more into the game than they already do without creating extensive patch delays.

Well for their sake I hope it keeps working for them, because the rigidity of their patch cycles depends entirely on the playerbase continuing to be happy with what is objectively an extremely formulaic content update approach that takes away from a type of player to give to another when they want to add anything new.

Personally, I'm tired of it. And I wouldn't have minded waiting longer for patches if that was what it took.

[Alexandre_Noireau]

Personally, I'm tired of it. And I wouldn't have minded waiting longer for patches if that was what it took.

A patch each 5 months if that means more VARIED content instead of more of the same but less... i would love it.

[KizuyaKatogami]

Well for their sake I hope it keeps working for them, because the rigidity of their patch cycles depends entirely on the playerbase continuing to be happy with what is objectively an extremely formulaic content update approach that takes away from a type of player to give to another when they want to add anything new.

Honestly the devs could remove dungeons overall along with alli raids and this community would continue to praise them and talk about how they’re working so hard etc lol. I don’t see much changing anytime soon. They have the playerbase wrapped around their finger.

[NanaWiloh]

Sorry presentation matters and graphics are part of said presentation, FFXIV textures are a mix bag which makes it far more noticeable.

Modern gamers suffer from graphical obession. They wont touch older games like Metriod on Nes but will gladly play a game with eye candy graphics even if the game play is a dog turd. But its a two way street there are gamers who wont lay a finger on a game with garbage gameplay no matter how pretty its graphics are.

[Lauront]

That only really matters if we're talking about sacrificing the gameplay significantly for the sake of graphics. Games that do that tend to do so from the outset. It's not an obsession to not enjoy the grainy pixels of some of the character models and hope for eventual upgrades, IMO.

[Shougun]

Modern gamers suffer from graphical obession. They wont touch older games like Metriod on Nes but will gladly play a game with eye candy graphics even if the game play is a dog turd. But its a two way street there are gamers who wont lay a finger on a game with garbage gameplay no matter how pretty its graphics are.

I think the moral of the story is people should stop playing with dog turds . . . :3

Also obsessions are not good lol. Obviously FFXIV 1.0 had some issues where the team made weird decisions on graphics, creating huge problems that they couldn't optimize for (sometimes you can make a super good looking game that runs on many machines, this clearly didn't happen. . . ). Yet to suggest it's impossible that an MMO can't utilize technology to greater effect wouldn't be quite accurate anymore either (not saying you said that).

I think what they were aiming for, Awha can correct me if wrong, was calling out the idea that "graphics don't matter". They do, otherwise you'd not have Loooaaadds (loddss) of money spent on it, and also calling out the idea by clarifying presentation is part of graphics. Because I think sometimes people think texture size or poly count only when they say the word graphics, but graphics includes just the general presentation. Which means a game like Hades or Dead Cells, neither of them 4 billon poly 8k texture games, have 'good graphics'. This obviously gives a certain timeless edge to some stylized games. It also adds a different challenge to more realistic games, but it is a challenge we see semi-regularly met- which means lowering expectations is difficult.

Of course good old games are still worth playing, imo, but it's easier, for me, to think "eh whatever this is fun" when it's not being actively carried in the present time. Like watching an old VHS movie, vs if some studio released a current day movie in that quality. Pick some legendary movie and then imagine it was released in worse quality, let's say Lord of the Rings in VHS quality, out on cassette near you! lol. I do think there is more priority on good gameplay over good graphics, just that I don't see why I wouldn't always want both .