endwalker was an unacceptable unfished product

[Sebazy]

The credits don't agree with the assessment that the team is small.

Are you sure about that though? Have you compared FFXIV's credits to some other big league MMOs?

Spoiler, I already did. Years ago. It's not good reading and it's certainly not gotten any better in recent years.

TLDR FFXIV's core creative team (The job design, raid design etc) is tiny even when compared to far less successful and enduring MMOs.

FFXIV has 4 job designers credited currently as of Endwalker, it's stayed at this mark since ARR with 1 member getting replaced and Kei Sato getting promoted to a director position in that time frame.

WoW released back in 2004 with 6 class designers and it's important to note that many of the quest writers also had quite significant input in class design matters (See J Kaplan as an example of this).

Even Wildstar had a broader team with 6 core class combat designers along with an additional 4 PvP systems designers.

Ok cool, I'd like to think that FFXIV's job design team woes are well understood by now, but what about the rest of the team? Content designers and quest writers?

FFXIV has 26 quest writers, 13 battle content designers and 8 non battle content designers for a total of 47 content designers

Blade & Soul lumped their content designers into 1 single group, which has 46 staff named with their 2016 release....

Now BnS is hardly a small fry, but it's also not even remotely close to being of the same kind of scale and scope as FFXIV either nor was it ever likely to be quite as big given how saturated it's market was at the time. Do you think NCSoft over invested in BnS? Or are SE underinvesting in FFXIV?

the time it takes to recruit and train people faster than they leave or retire.

Again, I was pointing this out as an old hand of the industry literally over 4 and a half years ago at this point. The signs were clearly visible from the outside looking in so it absolutely would have been a known thing internally, yet nothing was being done about it and as such, here we are listening to you say 'it takes time' when action really needed to have been taken years ago.

They have only admitted so far that Soken, Koji and 1 English localization person worked on both and obviously Yoshi-P oversees the spreadsheets and resource allocation and logistics for it because he oversees that for the whole of CBU3, but he wasn't the director who oversaw the creative process.

You do realise that a bunch of team leads from XIV were working on XVI as well right?

From FFXIV:
Lead quest designer: https://www.mobygames.com/person/196...shiaki-suzuki/
Lead game designer: https://www.mobygames.com/person/278...utoshi-gondai/
Lead game designer: https://www.mobygames.com/person/108...ichi-murasawa/
Art team lead: https://www.mobygames.com/person/34376/shinya-ichida/
Art team lead: https://www.mobygames.com/person/384846/yusuke-mogi/
Lead character concept artist: https://www.mobygames.com/person/384846/yusuke-mogi/
UI art lead: https://www.mobygames.com/person/247127/yoichi-seki/
Lead engineer: https://www.mobygames.com/person/265...suru-kawahara/
Lead engineer: https://www.mobygames.com/person/279000/keisuke-tanaka/
Client systems engineering supervisor: https://www.mobygames.com/person/89869/mamoru-oyamada/
Project manager: https://www.mobygames.com/person/933560/kei-iwamiya/
Project manager: https://www.mobygames.com/person/805298/yuko-mizoguchi/

And that's just a selection of creative and systems leads. I've not touched the rank and file.

I think the Byregot and Nald'thal fights was were great conceptually as well, it is just them not withstanding current gear. I looked forward to doing Aglaia week after week, personally.

I appreciate that it's subjective and all, but as someone who endured Everquest's original Ragefire camp twice, Aglaia had me alt F4ing in boredom and frustration as a healer, the later fights were passable but Byregot was unforgivable trash. I imagine it could look cool to a spectator who had no idea what was actually happening and the floor gimmick was neat but man, don't make me tap the damage taken sign. It made Stone Sky Sea look exciting and by comparison, even Alte Roite was a decent boss because at least it did something.