The Devs need a much needed thanks!

[Silverbane]

You want to capitalize on a global market and take advantage of global money? Gotta take the good with the bad.

No, they don't, because people like you and Lustre keep paying for subscriptions anyway.
Your actions speak louder to them than your words, and that's as it should be.
I don't care why you keep paying, and they may not either.
They probably pay way more attention to revenue numbers than forum posts.

I don't judge you for continuing to pay for an experience you appear unhappy with.
It's fine: keep complaining and keep paying, even if the latter moots the former.
You do you, and I appreciate your continued contribution to SE's profitability.

[Atelier-Bagur]

I don't think it's a biased expectation at all. English is the world's most widely spoken language, and if you're a global game taking money from every country on earth, translating in English is the best way to cover as many bases as possible.

Yeah and for the most part they do their best to communicate with the general community with their numerous posts and letters and they do their official English stream recaps that seems to forget.

Mainline is, this game is ultimately a "Japanese team" and while it would be nice for them to cater to every single language instantaneously for every single morsel of new info (which they actually still do. Stop lying this yourself) multi-language communication doesn't come as easy as most people think they do at least from their end.

The rest of the world who don't speak English has to constantly learn to deal with this so how about stop acting like that special Karen snowflake with that "I pay for this game with my foreign money" talk.

Absolutely makes me sick seeing people with this entitled attitude.

[Avoidy]

Yeah and for the most part they do their best to communicate with the general community with their numerous posts and letters and they do their official English stream recaps that seems to forget.

Mainline is, this game is ultimately a "Japanese team" and while it would be nice for them to cater to every single language instantaneously for every single morsel of new info (which they actually still do. Stop lying this yourself) multi-language communication doesn't come as easy as most people think they do at least from their end.

The rest of the world who don't speak English has to constantly learn to deal with this so how about stop acting like that special Karen snowflake with that "I pay for this game with my foreign money" talk.

Absolutely makes me sick seeing people with this entitled attitude.

I'll be real, your posts read like you're just paid to sit here and say this drivel. Square's had live translators before, and most games do this sort of thing when they want to communicate to large segments of their base. The one with a bias here is you, and it's towards your corporate daddy.

[Midareyukki]

Yes, the bare minimum is done by the devs of this game. If you think otherwise, I dont know what to tell you.

From balance, to housing, to islands, everything is the bare minimum.

On one hand, he has a point, you know? Like, yeah some stuff ARE done with the absolute bare minimum such as race design (a lot of Hrothgar and Viera work is achieved through blatant cutting corners), job design (there are ways to translate Blue Mage into the game, it doesn't need to limit itself to the Learn mechanic as it isn't inherently its defining traits; using enemy skills is) and other features. Often those things are excused away with what's very clearly corporate bullsh**.

But a lot of it has its own justification, and unfortunately, corporate bull is something that permeates markets nowadays. You're bound to see it, and the fact that the game is still enjoyable, functional and the devs still care about player experience despite the rise in corporate bull is interesting. Half the time we wouldn't even have X feature had the fans not asked for it, and while it's not always done successfuly, they do at least try. Hrothgar was a race they wanted to implement, but Viera were asked for by fans. Yoshida admitted that Reaper was done with Western players in mind who kept asking for a scythe job. Blue Mage itself might not be the best thing in the universe for a lot of fans, but it's still there because the team heard people wanted something, went out of their way to do it through the vision they themselves interpreted of it.

Job Balance is its own can of worms, and a full revamp is in order. But it cannot happen mid-expansion, it's almost never how they've approached it. Housing has its issues, but the latest connundrum was technical rather than its design necessarily; it works as intended otherwise... the issue is that "what's intended" = "a system where someone will always lose", which isn't desirable. Housing's been reworked at least three times by now, and this raffle system is what we kept asking for years. As for the island, it looks and feels quite bare, yes, but given the amount of technicality inside it, it's normal for it to be bare. It's not a system they're wanting to focus on, it's just a side project. One that, hopefuly, they'll expand upon in the future. It's in its early stages, as was a lot of stuff in the game.

Meanwhile the rest of the world who doesn't speak Japanese nor English wish for other games companies to do the same for them when it comes to live communication, yet where are the cries from the general public to cater for them?

Face it, your biased as heck.

On the other hand, "others have it worse" doesn't excuse issues this one company has. If the bar is so low, then OF COURSE other companies will be that bad. Keep in mind that the standard in the gaming industry at the moment is crunching. Just because "it's the standard" doesn't mean it's a good thing that we need to shut up and accept.

And lately, corporate bull has been running rampant in the game. And there needs to be as close to a balance as it's realistically possible; a true balance will never be achieved, the corporation always comes first, but there are ways to mitigate the impact. And unfortunately that's not what we're seeing. A lot in the game is being approached with a laissez-faire attitude, and it's quite noticeable. Especially when before they could provide content with better-assured quality. We've cut out so many things to accomodate and patch times are now a few months longer. And what we got were earless Hrothgar/Hrothgar ears with a weird texture around them, verifiable glitches that shouldn't get past QA, and underwhelming job balance. Something is up. As much as we might want to love the devs, we cannot deny something is off.

[IDontPetLalas]

Meanwhile the rest of the world who doesn't speak Japanese nor English wish for other games companies to do the same for them when it comes to live communication, yet where are the cries from the general public to cater for them?

Face it, your biased as heck.

You do realize that you're on the English sub-forum, don't you? English also happens to be one of the most widely spoken second languages in the world, so it makes sense that if someone was going to do a simulcast, in order to reach the widest possible audience, then it would be in English. Not to mention, Yoshi-P also understands and speaks English, from what I understand, so should the translator misinterpret, which is always possible- it's likely he would catch the error and be able to correct it.

There are a lot of advantages in providing an official live translation in English.

[Silverbane]

Re: Atelier-Bagur:

I'll be real, your posts read like you're just paid to sit here and say this drivel.

Not hardly. No big corporation worth its stock price would dare to be as bluntly honest as Atelier-Bagur, they'd get their assets sued off.

Later:

You do realize that you're on the English sub-forum, don't you? English also happens to be one of the most widely spoken second languages in the world, so it makes sense that if someone was going to do a simulcast, in order to reach the widest possible audience, then it would be in English.

Only an idiot would waste money and time using a professional translator when there are hordes of perfectly good amateurs chomping at the bit to do the translation for just the 15 seconds of fame.

[Vahlnir]

Yeah and for the most part they do their best to communicate with the general community with their numerous posts and letters and they do their official English stream recaps that seems to forget.

Mainline is, this game is ultimately a "Japanese team" and while it would be nice for them to cater to every single language instantaneously for every single morsel of new info (which they actually still do. Stop lying this yourself) multi-language communication doesn't come as easy as most people think they do at least from their end.

The rest of the world who don't speak English has to constantly learn to deal with this so how about stop acting like that special Karen snowflake with that "I pay for this game with my foreign money" talk.

Absolutely makes me sick seeing people with this entitled attitude.

I think that a lot of the time they (SE) view the powerpoint slides as English enough. That works well enough I suppose, but they do say a lot between and during those powerpoints, so relying on fan translations isn't exactly ideal. They push out an official translation later of everything they said of importance, but that takes a little while. So yeah, I wouldn't complain if they kept a translator on standby regularly for this sort of thing, but I've also accepted that they will likely never do so.

[Avoidy]

No, they don't, because people like you and Lustre keep paying for subscriptions anyway.
Your actions speak louder to them than your words, and that's as it should be.
I don't care why you keep paying, and they may not either.
They probably pay way more attention to revenue numbers than forum posts.

I don't judge you for continuing to pay for an experience you appear unhappy with.
It's fine: keep complaining and keep paying, even if the latter moots the former.
You do you, and I appreciate your continued contribution to SE's profitability.

This is actually fair. Despite my earlier post, there are actually things I -do- enjoy about the game enough to just ignore smaller things. But the live letters are just an area where I'm consistently let down, and it wouldn't even be hard for them to improve it. They've even shown that they could do it; they simply choose not to, and you're 100% correct in that there's no incentive for them to do better since me, you, and everyone else here continues to throw money at them as long as the rest of the game is good enough.

The moment a better game comes out though, they're in trouble.

[Silverbane]

The moment a better game comes out though, they're in trouble.

This is true for every product. And smart companies understand this, and adopt a strategy of "cannibalization" --
using the revenues from their current successful product to develop the product that will replace it.

Which frankly is what I hope will happen with the FF franchise.
I don't want them to forever continue to patch and extend their decade-old game engine.
I don't want them to forever continue writing stories under the constraints of a decade of canon.
I want them to start from scratch and create a new FF MMOJRPG, a "17" to be to "14" what "14" was to "11."
And as with 11 and 14, I want them to keep the servers up for 14 when they do.

[Avoidy]

This is true for every product. And smart companies understand this, and adopt a strategy of "cannibalization" --
using the revenues from their current successful product to develop the product that will replace it.

Which frankly is what I hope will happen with the FF franchise.
I don't want them to forever continue to patch and extend their decade-old game engine.
I don't want them to forever continue writing stories under the constraints of a decade of canon.
I want them to start from scratch and create a new FF MMOJRPG, a "17" to be to "14" what "14" was to "11."
And as with 11 and 14, I want them to keep the servers up for 14 when they do.

I'm hoping this is the case, but watching their company squander funds on failed Marvel spinoffs and talk of NFTs makes me wonder. Legit sometimes feels like the XIV devteam is anchored to Square Enix's poor financial decisions, but whatever. I'm out!