Final Fantasy 14 still keeping Square Enix afloat amid declining financial results

[KayRadley]

Sounds to me like they should just give the keys for SE to Yoshida. He knows what he's doing.

[Tetsujin]

And yet we still have only 4 people in the job design team for 20 jobs, supposedly? Insane. Sad that if the budget for FFXIV has increased, it has all gone to MSQ cutscene stuff like voices and marketing. Here's hoping the team expands and we get more content every 4 months, not just better shot and voiced cutscenes. Then again, I've been saying that to myself since they started to cut back on how much is released.

[Deveryn]

And yet we still have only 4 people in the job design team for 20 jobs, supposedly? Insane. Sad that if the budget for FFXIV has increased, it has all gone to MSQ cutscene stuff like voices and marketing. Here's hoping the team expands and we get more content every 4 months, not just better shot and voiced cutscenes. Then again, I've been saying that to myself since they started to cut back on how much is released.

So how many people are supposed to work on jobs? There's a point where too many cooks spoil the pot on something like that.

Cutbacks. lol. You only see what you want to see because maybe you don't like all that's coming out. "New hardware doesn't exist. New game modes don't exist. We're not getting two ultimates. We've got no new game modes this year. " :rolleyes :rolleyes :rolleyes

The budget! The budget! like you know. :rolleyes

[Absurdity]

So how many people are supposed to work on jobs? There's a point where too many cooks spoil the pot on something like that.

Certainly more than 4 people. Not only do they have their own bias, having no healer main and only 1 tank main on the design team leads to quite obvious differences in the amount of time they invest in designing these jobs and the amount of insight into how the jobs are actually played that the team has. But they also literally can't design 19 combat jobs to be unique, engaging and viable with only 4 people...and this is only going to get worse with each expansion bringing more and more jobs.

I can't claim to have a deep understanding of 4-5 different jobs, we can't really expect the devs to do either.

[Amenara]

So how many people are supposed to work on jobs? There's a point where too many cooks spoil the pot on something like that.

I would like to have at least one developer per role, so minimum 5. Don't forget those 4 people are responsible for every job currently in the game on top of the new jobs being added every expansion and at this point I would question whether anyone would have the mental bandwidth to be able to handle such a daunting task.

[Thaciscokidd]

Eh not totally unexpected. No blockbuster titles plus some sub par games combined with Elden Ring doing better than what was even was projected thus hurting SoP.

Mobile gaming is going to carry for the foreseeable future. With 16, 7.2, KH 4, and multiple games they could just remaster to build up HD sales in the future.

And if worse comes to worse Sony just buys them for cheap.


Edit: If anything this is gonna put pressure on Yoshi P to insure 16 sells and tides things over till 7.2 releases in late 2023

[Sotaris]

And water is wet

[Dzian]

Square Enix states that "paying subscribers for Final Fantasy 14 rose YoY", while for HD games "sales did not reach the level of the previous year despite the release of multiple new titles".

Depends what exactly that means or how it's interpreted..

is that just an increase in the total number of players who have subscribed for a period of t ime over that year.. or a total of revenue from subs..

8 people subscribing for 3 months, is financially the same as 2 people subscribing for 12 months

but at thesame time 6 people subscribing for 3 months could be seen as an increase in subscribers over 2 people subscribing for 12 months. even if the 2 people subscribing for 12 months are bringing in more revenue..

point being an increase in subscriber count isn't necessarily indicative of growth if the subscribers aren't staying subscribed for very long.. where a few subscribers that spend more time subscribed has the real possibility of resulting in more revnue than lots of subscribers who only subscribe for short times...

Despite that success, the report states that no expansion pack releases are planned for Final Fantasy 14 this financial year - instead the company will "focus on retaining users through a variety of operational initiatives".

retaining players has always been this games problem. because contnet gets consumed so quickly and easily and everything is disposable and short lived. and the game has the big problem of having a truck load of content but players still have nothing to do... any focus on retaining players at this point would require some serious design changes and a shift in focus from simple and shallow to deep, engaging and fun.

The HD sales part is an example of this.. one of the reasons many of there new games suck and dont sell well is because they have no depth, they,re not engaging and they're not fun... they all fall intot he trap of super simplistic and super shallow = more accessible equals more customers.. never works out..

take a pack of cards.. you can play a game like snap.. super simple super shallow but you'll be bored in minutes...
or you can take a game like gin or poker,, and still be engaged and having fun hours later...
exact same pack of cards though...

XIV needs to throw this simple and shallow BS out and start focussing on fun after all

[Axxion]

So how many people are supposed to work on jobs? There's a point where too many cooks spoil the pot on something like that.

Cutbacks. lol. You only see what you want to see because maybe you don't like all that's coming out. "New hardware doesn't exist. New game modes don't exist. We're not getting two ultimates. We've got no new game modes this year. " :rolleyes :rolleyes :rolleyes

The budget! The budget! like you know. :rolleyes

here me out they have the money but they are putting it in the wrong places. keep in mind yoshi p and the team did save se from going bankrupt thanks to 14. All the money that they got from 14 is not being invested back into it. Thats pre covid as well. A few things pre covid in aar they patched in nin and we got three dungeons a patch, hw got three jobs and still 3 dungeons. stormblood two jobs because of the developing time understandable and two dungeons. Now we are getting one dungeon a patch.

Going back to investing so far SE has been placing money in NFTS and selling there assets which to me is not the brightest decisions to make.

The budget should be bigger for this department as well and not small. They always have been trying to hire more people to help with 14 development, during the fanfest they where trying to hire and take the most recent live letter they have posted jobs in it.

[TMW001]

here me out they have the money but they are putting it in the wrong places. keep in mind yoshi p and the team did save se from going bankrupt thanks to 14. All the money that they got from 14 is not being invested back into it. Thats pre covid as well. A few things pre covid in aar they patched in nin and we got three dungeons a patch, hw got three jobs and still 3 dungeons. stormblood two jobs because of the developing time understandable and two dungeons. Now we are getting one dungeon a patch.

Going back to investing so far SE has been placing money in NFTS and selling there assets which to me is not the brightest decisions to make.

The budget should be bigger for this department as well and not small. They always have been trying to hire more people to help with 14 development, during the fanfest they where trying to hire and take the most recent live letter they have posted jobs in it.

The problem with SE is they play it safe so hard if its KH, FF traditional (mainly FF7) they will shell out every dime they got look at Smash bros they had no issue giving us another FF7 rep when we could have gotten maybe a character from 8, 9, 10 heck even 14 but then when we look back last time they tried being bold with a series we got Spirits Within.