Square Enix, it's time to come clean about your plans for the future

[Nebelheim]

I don't think anyone here would dispute that this will happen SOME DAY. Nobody thinks FFXIV is going to last literally forever. But OP is acting like the game is already in maintenance mode, and CBU3 is basically not working on anything despite a new expansion being announced a matter of days ago.

I see so much whining about how "white knights" shout down dissent and won't allow criticism of the game, but 90% of the "criticism" is so exaggerated and over the top, it's hard to take it seriously. And that's when it's not an obvious troll post.

I wouldn't consider the game in maintenance mode and think it could still last many years. Its just hard to predict how long a game will last. A company could have plans to continue support for a extended period like 10 years but there is also no guarantee it will last that long either.

[AwesomeJr44]

Yoshi is a PR person when appearing in public / interviews. People like you need to get that through their thick skull. He will lie if that gets people hyped. You can just look up the amount of things YoshiP said that ended up not happening. No gaming company will plan 8 years into the future, becuase if the next 4 years the game dies out, what you gonna do? Throw money away? LOL

More people need to hear this. He's not our friend. He's a businessman.

You don't even know a single raider, so why are you even talking about this lmao

People who don't raid and having strong opinions on raiding, name a more iconic duo.

[Rolder50]

While small businesses may work on a year to year planning, or at most 2 or 3 years. Most institution and corroboration will always have something call a "strategic" plan for at least 5 years. The place I'm working at both have a short term 5-years strategic plan, and a long term 10-years strategic plan. If you have paid intention to companies like Google, Facebook, Apple, Intel .etc. you will regular hear them talking about their "strategic" plan, and they will be all ways on the order of 6 or more years. In another word, what Yoshi said is completely "normal" in the actual working world once you get above certain size.

I'd imagine they have a rough outline of where they want to go in the next 10 years. But I doubt it's more then "Expansion 6 sometime in 2026, Expansion 7 sometime in 2028" and so on. I'd be amazed if they have actual storyboards and in depth plans for those expansions. At the same time, plans that far out are extremely subjective to change.

[Ravenblade1979]

It's funny but yoshi p tries to be pretty open during liveletters and whatnot. I also wonder what information you seek so badly that you want a gaming division to unveil their plans outside of their division, company and shareholders.

They frankly don't owe you or anyone anything. If they chose to shut down the game forever tomorrow...you can't do a thing about it. I also question just how invested in this game...how deeply and emotionally invested that you pretty much demand a gaming company to reveal their timeliness to you.

[Raven2014]

I'd imagine they have a rough outline of where they want to go in the next 10 years. But I doubt it's more then "Expansion 6 sometime in 2026, Expansion 7 sometime in 2028" and so on. I'd be amazed if they have actual storyboards and in depth plans for those expansions. At the same time, plans that far out are extremely subjective to change.

The point is, the admission of "no plan survive contact with enemy" doesn't mean you shouldn't have a plan. Like I said, the long term goal is there to set a focus and maintain coherent. And speaking from experience, working in a large organization it it an absolutely nesseccity. We had hit a few rough patches where we didn't know what was our long term goal is and it was a terrified feeling. Even when I got a raised, even when I have no reason to doubt my job security, when you're working a flux you would constantly question "what am I doing? what gonna happen next? What we will do after this project? Where this company will be in a few years?!?" It's only when the leadership set out a long term goal that you have that peace of mind. Even if after 10 years you don't end up where you want to be, still at the moment you have an idea where you will want to be.


And 10 years may sound like A LOT, but if you think about the game developing cycle, it's not that much. Mst triple A game - and by that I don't mean the FPS that pump out yearly, but stuffs like Elderscrolls from Bethesa, GTA from Rock start ...etc... look at the gap between their flag ship tittles, then safely assume their next tittle should already be in the pre-production cycle even before the current tittle is shipped out. The time line is not that much when you take the whole pipeline into account. Like right now with 7.0 is probably less then a year away, the reproduction and planning phase for 8.0 should already been at least half done. After all, you need to know already what you want to have in 8.0 before you can write how 7.0 gonna end. And if you want 10.0 (assuming that's where they gonna end the story arch) to have a good impact, the team need to at least have a vision so they can start building up the suspend and story momentum now.

Again, 8 to 10 years is not exactly a large time span in term of strategic planning. That doesn't mean it set in stone or gospel, but that kind of goal has to exist. In fact, if Yoshi doesn't think that far ahead, he wouldn't be deserved of his job.

[Ravenblade1979]

The point is, the admission of "no plan survive contact with enemy" doesn't mean you shouldn't have a plan. Like I said, the long term goal is there to set a focus and maintain coherent. And speaking from experience, working in a large organization it it an absolutely nesseccity. We had hit a few rough patches where we didn't know what was our long term goal is and it was a terrified feeling. Even when I got a raised, even when I have no reason to doubt my job security, when you're working a flux you would constantly question "what am I doing? what gonna happen next?"


And 10 years may sound like A LOT, but if you think about the game developing cycle, it's not that much. Mst triple A game - and by that I don't mean the FPS that pump out yearly, but stuffs like Elderscrolls from Bethesa, GTA from Rock start ...etc... look at the gap between their flag ship tittles, then safely assume their next tittle should already be in the pre-production cycle even before the current tittle is shipped out. The time line is not that much when you take the whole pipeline into account. Like right now with 7.0 is probably less then a year away, the reproduction and planning phase for 8.0 should already been at least half done. After all, you need to know already what you want to have in 8.0 before you can write how 7.0 gonna end. And if you want 10.0 (assuming that's where they gonna end the story arch) to have a good impact, the team need to at least have a vision so they can start building up the suspend and story momentum now.

Again, 8 to 10 years is not exactly a large time span in term of strategic planning. That doesn't mean it set in stone or gospel, but that kind of goal has to exist. In fact, if Yoshi doesn't think that far ahead, he wouldn't be deserved of his job.

So I'm assuming you work on a game this large and got the ins and outs of how a gaming division operates that's split between a few projects while the team for this game is working hard on our vacation expac before the new story actually begins in 7.1

[Raven2014]

So I'm assuming you work on a game this large and got the ins and outs of how a gaming division operates

No I don't. Do you? Granted I'm talking on my own conjecture, but I also had offered some example both in and out of the industry. Feel free to offer your own logic and counter example if you disagree.


The point here is the whole 8-10 years planning ahead is not such a far fetched concept in a company or project of this size, rather it's actually the norm - and that, I do speak from experience. So it's not necessary a made-up PR talking point. It maybe, it may be not, but often people don't need to make up thing that already exist as part of the norm.

[Ravenblade1979]

No I don't. Do you? Granted I'm talking on my own conjecture, but I also had offered you some example both in and out of the industry. Feel free to offer your own logic and counter example, if you have any.


The point here is the whole 8-10 years planning ahead is not such a far fetched concept in a company or project of this size, rather it's actually the norm - and that, I do speak from experience. So it's not necessary a made-up PR talking point. It maybe, it may be not, but often people don't need to make up thing that already exist as part of the norm.

Lol dude. I'm sure they got a plan of how they wanna lay out stuff. However, I wonder why a person who rents a character on a videogame they own no part of..nor is a shareholder wants with them giving away that much information? Like do you also go onto other forums and ask the same of those entities?

The only people that division has to answer to is their boss and their shareholders...anyone else outside of that isn't privy to anything.

[Ravenblade1979]

As I see this is probably an alt. Enjoy your trolling man

[Jojoya]

The fat Moogle thinks 20,000 Accursed Hoards is content.

The amusement park will rot and wither with no customers and the fat Moogle will still scream that there's entertainment.

The Accursed Hoard is an object.

PotD, which you will need to run thousands of times to get 20,000 Accursed Hoards, is content.

There you go, content to do. Entertainment to be had if PotD is your thing (it's not mine but then there's other content in the game I enjoy so I'm good).

When I hardcore raided, it was in EQ2 - a game where skill at healing mattered. The raid gear I got there pretty much trivialized all non-raid content, and I was able to use this gear to carry through healing undergeared / casual friends who otherwise had a hard time clearing the casual dungeons (which were harder than they are in this game).

My raid-only gear did all kinds of unique things, outside just higher base stats. Things like casting a heal could proc an additional heal for free. Or buffing how much my buffs did. My heals overall were stronger, faster, more efficient, and with gear would proc special effects for free.

My heal parses were night and day over a casual.

Maybe games were right to move away from such gearing differences, but I felt it made my time feel more worthwhile than 10 more gearscore here.

Chasing ilvl was never my thing while I was raiding in WoW though I understand that it does appeal to many players. If someone else on the team was also needing a piece for their raiding spec, I was fine letting them have it first then I would get it the next time it dropped.

Was moving away from the old gearing differences the right thing to do? I don't know if "right" is the word to use but games didn't suffer because of it. The highly skilled players doing more difficult content would get their full set long before the casual could catching up, and at that point new gear was being released for the cycle to start over. Casual players were never at the same level as the best players unless they paid for a carry with 100% loot rights, and word usually would spread around a server about the players who were buying. No one took them seriously.

Yoshi is a PR person when appearing in public / interviews. People like you need to get that through their thick skull. He will lie if that gets people hyped. You can just look up the amount of things YoshiP said that ended up not happening. No gaming company will plan 8 years into the future, becuase if the next 4 years the game dies out, what you gonna do? Throw money away? LOL

You delete the workflow outline, spreadsheets and whatever else might be related.

Planning is not the same thing as actively developing. Have you never made plans for a party before or do you just randomly buy things spur of the moment and hope it turns out all right?

More people need to hear this. He's not our friend. He's a businessman.

True but he's also someone who enjoys playing video games and know what different types of players are generally looking for. That doesn't mean he's got the ability to meet everyone's expectations for a game.

So I'm assuming you work on a game this large and got the ins and outs of how a gaming division operates that's split between a few projects while the team for this game is working hard on our vacation expac before the new story actually begins in 7.1

You don't have to be in the same industry to understand how business planning and development work in general. You just need to have experience in working with business planning and development with a decent sized corporation. Large projects aren't planned and developed overnight unless the corporation wants them to fail.