What is going on with Square Enix and the 14 team?

[Velnora]

I like how they also added a feature to where you can preview cash shop glam in-game. So much for "entirely out of the game". It always starts out not that bad. Never ends that way.

[Midareyukki]

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but unless they put the brakes on this attitude by 6.2, the truth is that they will just continue to decimate the game in the name of dividends. And since SE will never sell the rights to this franchise to ANYONE, EVER, the game will just get trashed when stockholders no longer like the returns.

Yes, it's a vicious circle and makes no sense, but investors want money asap, and continuously. Yes, this outlook actually cuts them out of money in the long run. But as an investor, they want what's hot now, and the second something cools off, the majority of them jump ship and take their investments with them, leaving the company or project in shambles with no revenue to fix anything.

The comparison is almost identical in all respects. And since even the majority of people that usually stroke Yoshi's ego (and other stuff) are remaining surprisingly silent, I dare say even THEY are sick of the BS at this point. Yes fanbois and girls, we noticed your silence. I'm no prophet, but I understand business, and what's going on here is an all too familiar story in this day and age. Welcome to the end.

...wait, they've been silent? Half the threads get flooded with people inhaling hopium and accusing others who say stuff like this to be high on doomium.

But when it comes to their attitude, I don't know. I'd like to think that, with the proper incentive and\or fan support, some of their attitudes toward certain topics may change. But as you said, money is the biggest motivating factor, and it's not like they'll be lacking by telling minority groups to F off or keep throwing stuff to lower people's standards. This game will still gross highly, this game will still be popular. And they know it.

Now, we like to think that they do listen to people. But as it stands, with how 6.1 has been dealt with and how its content, while great for the most part, has as many holes as swiss cheese...

Yeah, you are right. The housing team hasn't made anything not shit since its inception. With the benefit of hindsight, a 10 year track record of the housing team being incompetent kind of suggests that them fucking up ishgard housing was inevitable.

Hey that's not true... >w> they let us use glitches to float stuff without going nuts about it.

[MeiraStarborne]

… A lot of the people brushing aside criticism are like 30 something year old boomers (or older).

Of everything I’ve read in this thread, this is what caught my eye. 30-somethings are now boomers?

…goes back to sleep in the nursing home.

[XiXiQ]

Teams are as good as their leaders. If the subscription money being spent elsewhere, there's no point blaming a bunch of coders who clearly don't even get to test their code properly before it's rolled out.

[Insertusernamehere]

Teams are as good as their leaders. If the subscription money being spent elsewhere, there's no point blaming a bunch of coders who clearly don't even get to test their code properly before it's rolled out.

TBH it is what I intended to say but I afraid of backlash I might cause.

I never understand why they never did a test run for their code with dummy characters.
I understand if it was a rarely used function under very specific condition with hard to catch bug, but bug in the code not even hidden and easy to see with result 0.
It is not 1 persons fault, it is apparently a release without proper test cycle.

[Adamantini]

Between the healer problems for 6 years being ignored, the recent Hrothgar problems where they waited patiently for 3 years and got literal shit, to the horrid job design in 6.1, the pretty controversial story of EW, to now the housing system just imploding on itself. Do the devs just not care anymore? The game is seeing it’s peak, the game is bringing in more money than ever, and yet we’re somehow getting more broken systems. I guess this is what happens when they let the popularity get to their head? They start thinking they can half ass everything and people will continue to stay and kiss up to them. Seeing this community’s history i don’t blame them for thinking that way but…my god. The game is taking such a downward spiral. At this point i’m expecting Ultimate to have some major errors and that would be the icing on the cake.

forgot to mention the audio popping at the beginning of the expansion. I did the entire MSQ, with the audio destroying my ears. They didn't fix it until later...

[Jaywalker]

--snip--

Theodric. I don't have anything against you personally, but the conversation absolutely was not going civil up to that point.

I tried to explain this multiple times. I came in with zero idea of how extreme the discourse was on lodestone. I was and am honestly worried for the devs as human beings because based on history of expression and behavior during times of crisis, other huge additions in 6.1, plus having people justifiably angry over a bad fuck up--it makes sense to me that there would be devs freaking out. This isn't because of them being infallible in my eyes, clearly they can make mistakes. However this happened it's a bad situation.

Again, I did not know the level of anger going on on lodestone. This to me has all come across like the sort of reaction I'd expect if SE stole people's IRL pets. To the people who are in the thick of that rage, I'm sure that it feels totally justified. From an outside perspective, put against real life situations and taking it as something that happened in a leisure activity like a video game it reads as completely insane. It did not occur to me that encouraging the devs as they fixed the problem would be controversial because I was still acknowledging that the issues needed to take priority and get fixed. From where I stood, we all wanted the same thing. It didn't occur to me that there would be people who wanted the devs to be isolated and punished. It also never occurred to me that there would be people here trying to order others around about how they were or weren't allowed to feel/express themselves regarding the devs or the current situation.

The first few reactions confused me a lot because again, I came in blind. I had literally no idea I'd said something controversial and it wasn't aimed at other players. I seriously thought my post would get buried. I suspect that people are so angry right now and are sensitive to the idea that positivity toward the devs = toxic positivity, the devs can do nothing wrong, that there was a kneejerk reaction to me still caring about and overall liking the devs even if I think this was bad and needs to be fixed. If you're not 100% with us you're against us.

I got accused of shitposting yeah, but I also got accused of excusing mediocrity, facilitating toxic positivity, and dismissing/minimizing other people's complaints (which I never mentioned) pretty much out of left field from my standpoint. Those are all pretty terrible things. I did lash out in reaction to that, and I'm sure there was a better way I could have answered. I felt blindsided by a bunch of personal accusations/assumptions about me and where I stood. The spoiled and tantrum points were specifically because I've been involved in fan communities where creators behaved so abysmally and put out such monumental garbage that to me this honestly looks like a non-issue by comparison. Far as I was concerned I'd already acknowledged the ears and housing situations were huge problems, so it actually took a minute to fully sink in that anyone could think I was saying those messes were fine. The idea of calling FFXIV as a whole mediocre when the properties I saw exist also seemed absurd coming from that experience, especially as reason to get personal. This is not intended to tell anyone they can't be upset, or that this wasn't bad. No one on lodestone is psychic either so of course no one knew where tf I'm coming from. I fully expect this will be fixed and players will get compensated. I also don't think it was on purpose or the devs are unaware. To me it's a temporary problem.

Getting called a bootlicker and accused of taking money for praise is something I find viscerally disgusting. If you don't believe me w/e, but I literally have turned review jobs down IRL because the expectation was give praise for money. Maybe you wouldn't be offended to be called that but it's a huge deal to me. It wasn't nice to say 'bitch go outside', but the accusation was so gross and uncalled for by my standpoint that I honestly didn't want to discuss further. I still think the paid bootlicker comment was a stupid and insulting thing to say to another person for having a different opinion, as if the only reason someone could disagree is if they're being paid and trying to suck up for brownie points. Like there is no other conceivable reason someone could care about the devs as people, and only 'friends' or 'children' are allowed a measure of concern.

When I was talking to another player and agreed there are problems, someone chimed in to insinuate I was incapable of criticizing anything about the devs because I still like, respect, and appreciate them overall. I found it intensely creepy and disturbing to get put into the caricature of only being capable of praise and agreement because I still care and worry about devs as people.

I agree it wasn't a good time to say anything. Didn't know, made a mistake. I was seriously thinking about answering Ascended_Demon at that point acknowledging missteps (as I was doing with other people in the thread), but honestly I got overwhelmed and was kind of freaked out because it ABSOLUTELY started feeling like a mob to me. It felt like I wasn't going to be seen as a human being with my own varied thoughts, individual reasons for those thoughts, or anything. And again, whether you agree or not I find that viscerally terrifying.

I regret making the thread or trying to talk. I've asked to get it taken down twice, but idk if anyone will listen because of forum policy on thread removal. I did not go in wanting drama and again, the hostility blindsided me. You and a lot of other people on lodestone are likely way more involved in this whole conversation so it might seem weird to you that I could not know or have the opinion I do. As an outsider, this seems like an echo chamber where everyone has already agreed on a certain 'right' opinion and are just quibbling over nuances in that opinion. I'm not saying this to insult you or anyone else. I'm trying very hard to communicate in a sincere way, as clearly as I can manage.

I didn't handle everything gracefully. There were times I didn't express myself as well as I should have. I'm sorry about that. I got absolutely freaked out and was caught off-guard.

[Kaliesto]

I don't buy "quality" as being an excuse for them to withhold things for viera/hrothgar anymore. Like I've said before, my au ra horns clip through headgear, our tails clip through capes - which they are pushing out more and more frequently, tail clipping in general, racial features cut off in reaper form (when they said each race would get unique forms), miqo'te ears being nonexistent in newer headgear, floating circlets/tiara/crown, etc.. I think it's more about them not wanting to put in the work required, viera/hrothgar not being a priority, or simply being unable to do so due to scheduling and resource allocation.

They never tell us anything what goes on behind the curtain with absolute certainty on why X thing cannot work.

I like to know what software they're using here because other MMOs don't have this problem, and like is the game engine itself and code just too old?

But to be fair about the cape clipping, that has been a problem in game dev for decades. Many devs have tried, and failed to remedy that problem, and I think like very few ever succeed and its usually very high end games from what I've seen (that is far as I know anyway).

[Shin96]

They never tell us anything what goes on behind the curtain with absolute certainty on why X thing cannot work.

Because they don't seem of having any intention to add anything people are asking for. Silence is a viable answer especially if it takes years for them to even address it.

[Deceptus]

Here's my conspiracy theory:

We got the B team running FFXIV right now and the A team is developing FF16