What's the point with that quite lackluster story in Endwalker?

[Lunaxia]

I wouldn't be surprised if the decrease in open communication comes partially from the playerbase becoming as big as it did. It's not a phenomenon unique to game development - it's something you can see in daily life in different communities as well, albeit on a smaller scale (something like discord servers centered around some topic, for example)...

It's a tricky subject. That's undeniably a part of it, for sure, but it's somewhat sanitising the truth; that invariably the path chosen will be the one that better appeals to the mass market in order to garner the most profit, and in so doing alienate older players who have enjoyed and supported the game for the majority of its life until that point. It might be the natural road to take - or at least the expected one, so far as corporations are concerned - but it's not necessarily a good one. I don't really think comparing a discord trying to get off the ground is exactly comparable to an established game that was already successful in its own right, either. There is no do or die here.

What we perceive to be the "right path" is subjective, of course, but I think there's a fair argument to be made against that. At this point, though, that is perhaps best left to time to either prove or disprove. After watching the game proceed in the direction it has done for the past two years, and what I've witnessed in the community, I'll be interested to see, to say the least.

[Halivel]

It's a tricky subject. That's undeniably a part of it, for sure, but it's somewhat sanitising the truth; that invariably the path chosen will be the one that better appeals to the mass market in order to garner the most profit, and in so doing alienate older players who have enjoyed and supported the game for the majority of its life until that point. It might be the natural road to take - or at least the expected one, so far as corporations are concerned - but it's not necessarily a good one. I don't really think comparing a discord trying to get off the ground is exactly comparable to an established game that was already successful in its own right, either. There is no do or die here.

What we perceive to be the "right path" is subjective, of course, but I think there's a fair argument to be made against that. At this point, though, that is perhaps best left to time to either prove or disprove. After watching the game proceed in the direction it has done for the past two years, and what I've witnessed in the community, I'll be interested to see, to say the least.

Pardon me for a later answer, it was 3am by the time you posted so I didn't see it until now.

I agree that discord server isn't a perfect comparison, since those are usually non-profit projects and that alone simplifies a lot of things. That's what popped up in my mind though and what I had to deal with myself, so I used it.

My point in general was that even if the devteam wants to be as open as possible - at some point it becomes harder because of the sheer amount of users there are (which also means profits being brought in, since more people = more money involved, as you've mentioned, and that adds to the issues with communication).

And I'd agree that at this point it's best to see where it goes with time. The company as a whole will obviously push for more profits no matter what the development sector thinks about that. I can see during streams that they still have passion for what they do, and honestly so long as that's the case, I'll be glad for them. Now... if (or when) the moment comes where the devteam itself will stop having any love for the project because they strided away from what they wanted to make too far under the pressure of those from financial department, that's where it'll become truly disappointing for me. But that's also not something under our control, sadly, so we can only watch.