Why does Yoshida keep using Covid-19 as an excuse for delays or setbacks?

[Jandor]

Before I begin I would like to say he’s a genius for creating final fantasy 14 and I appreciate his work. I’m going to get a lot of hate for this but I don’t care at this point, this is kind of insane…

I have noticed with just about every single delay, setback, or inconvenience, from creative business unit 3 (Yoshida’s group) the excuse is always Covid. I understand it’s serious, but …

Server congestion
World visit queue
World transfer being down for weeks possibly months
Queue wait time kicks
And even the delay of FF16

Naoki Yoshida’s public statement for just about each of these has been “Covid complications”….when employees have the option of working from home, and I assume each employee is vaccinated and wearing a mask. You cannot just use “Covid” as an excuse for everything that goes wrong. Please own up to your mistakes and just say you were not prepared for this and didn’t plan ahead..

Covid, or more correctly I suppose, the lockdown measures implemented in response, are still a valid excuse. The knock-on effects of closing everything and telling everyone to stay home will be felt for ages, I expect they won't totally dissipate for years.

It seems obvious in hindsight, but the economy isn't something you can just switch on and off like a lightbulb.

-----

The industry I work in requires steel and workers to man the machines turning said steel into finished products. The factories are all set up, the jobs all exist, the supply lines are all in place, and yet I'm still getting 2023 delivery estimates for some items.

2023, while the work required is precise it's still fairly low-tech mechanical stuff in the grand scheme of things. I dread to think what lead times are looking like on more specialized computer components.

[Darthgummibear]

My personal feelings about Covid aside, the domino effects are playing havoc on EVERYONE. Just because you are completely ignorant of how the technology industry operates doesn't invalidate his reasoning. Product and supply shortages are global. Manpower shortages are global. A huge influx of players came in at the last minute. This is a perfect storm of factors they couldn't possibly have planned for far enough in advance. I feel Yoshi is doing the best he can with what they have...also with his general operating practices with how he communicates and interacts with the community, he's more than earned some patience.

[rainichan]

I have noticed with just about every single delay, setback, or inconvenience, from creative business unit 3 (Yoshida’s group) the excuse is always Covid. I understand it’s serious, but …

Server congestion
World visit queue
World transfer being down for weeks possibly months
Queue wait time kicks
And even the delay of FF16

[...]You cannot just use “Covid” as an excuse for everything that goes wrong. Please own up to your mistakes and just say you were not prepared for this and didn’t plan ahead..

Covid in Japan is still really bad.

Japan is not a work from home sort of country either - that's why there was a huge delay in getting 5.3 out, because they were not prepared to be working from home and had to make the necessary preparations + make sure the home environments were in working order in order to actually start producing patch content again. Sure, they're prepped to do it now, but that wasn't something that really happened before. If the FF16 team gets their assets or other data pieces from elsewhere (not in-house) they may have their own issues in fulfilling those orders also because of covid messing up whatever those schedules are, and since the in-house team for FF16 is wildly different than the 14 team, trying to get the 16 team ready to be work from home ready likely took a lot of time as well.

Semi-conductors and the shortages on those aren't the fault of Yoshida and his team - while I also have some minor grumblings that during 2019-early 2020 when they were seeing the ShB crowd growing and seeing their numbers grow they could have future-proofed at that time, they didn't. But they also didn't have a crystal ball to look into to see that Blizzard would crap the bed and bleed their players to other mmos. They've already said they're getting the necessary pieces needed for the OCE data center finalized and in place and will tell us when it's fully up and running to mitigate some of the issues on the NA data centers later this month.

They fixed the queue time kicks on their end; any further is your own connection hiccupping or dropping long enough for it to kick you out, as is most 90k errors.

World visit is tied to login queues as you're competing for a spot against those in the login queue, and with more people playing, it's a risk you the player take to world hop for mb prices or whatnot. It's fine during off-hours (aka not prime time) and in most DCs/servers it's finally starting to thin out. It will eventually on Aether as well, but seeing as how that's the DC that big raiders and big streamers have congregated on, you'll likely still see some login times until people take a break from playing or decide they don't like the game and will just watch their streamer of choice play instead. That also i sn't the fault of Yoshida and his team.

Just because you don't like the answer they give, does not mean it's an excuse.

[Miiu]

Welcome to globalization where more severe effects in one country impact others as well.
As people have noted there are a lot of reasons at play here.

An ongoing pandemic which resulted in production stops in china for a very long due to lockdown. (hence the chip shortage) Global lockdown which confined people to their homes.
People being bored which resulted in more people getting into gaming. More people buying pc. Crypotcurrency still on the rise more and more GPUs being bought.
With the global demand in electronic wares rising scalpers were quick to act on the limited supply thanks to covid who used bots and all kind of other tools to clean up.

Blizzard screwing up royally ending in a mass exodus of players who migrated over to FF14 (Queue times were already a thing with each new expansion. which is normal for MMOs)
With the chip shortage still being a thing and supposedly still being a thing until 2023 there is a limited supply for servers as well which SE tried to acquire to accompany the large influx of players.

Now in terms of delays. Don't forget big companies can be very slow to implement change. With new regulation for workplaces and logistics suddenly needed game studios to adapt to people working from home. Which means things got pushed back.
And it's not just a "Okay guys from tomorrow onwards 80% of our staff will work from home and everything will continue as it has". Not every employee might have the necessary tech at home to do that. (PC specs/fast enough internet/internet security)

This is a change that takes time and despite the vaccine being a thing it's not like that was the moment were everything started going back to normal. We're still in the middle of it and we'll notice the effects of the last 2 years for a while longer.

[TheMightyMollusk]

Imagine being surprised and indignant that a global pandemic that's been ongoing for almost two years now is, in fact, still a huge problem.

[Rhysati]

OP, I go to the store to pick up things I need and constantly find shortages our complete outages of what I need(finding cat litter was rough for about a month in my area). Food places have shortages on various items on their menu. Sheetz(a convenience store/gas station that also makes food) has switched from plastic bags with their logo and colors to brown paper bag and have switched to paper straws because they can't get their normal supplies.

The impact of supply shortages in the world hits pretty much EVERYWHERE right now. So what makes you think that a massive game development studio isn't impacted by the things that are impacting literally every other business in the world?

[Seraphor]

Because it's still an issue?

Working from home is still very much a thing and although they've taken steps to accommodate that, there are still going to be some processes that take longer due to not having a centralised production team.

There are tasks in software development and digital rendering that require specific equipment, not any old home pc can do the job.

Plus the logistical issues in securing and setting up new servers which I don't need to repeat.

[Theodric]

To be fair, at least some of the issues with the game arguably existed before the pandemic. Server instability has been a long term issue. Awkward coding has been a long term issue. Content being cut and reduced over time has been a long term issue. Niche projects being pursued at the expense of pleasing a greater number of players has been a long term issue...and so on and so forth.

[Shin96]

Imagine being surprised and indignant that a global pandemic that's been ongoing for almost two years now is, in fact, still a huge problem.

What pandemic?

[EgilTheStressedMage]

Imagine unironically asking this.