Standing There Syndrome

[Archeron]

I mean they can't even voice every cutscene in the game, thats something even Free to play games have found ways to do, and this is a paid, subscription game. The amount of times they fade to black to avoid having to create an animation, or do like anything interesting is simply embarassing, especially with people paying for this game MONTHLY. Make no mistake this is about budget. This is SQEENIX milking every last penny out of their cash cow to fund their other failing business endeavors.

[Hallarem]

I mean they can't even voice every cutscene in the game, thats something even Free to play games have found ways to do, and this is a paid, subscription game. The amount of times they fade to black to avoid having to create an animation, or do like anything interesting is simply embarassing, especially with people paying for this game MONTHLY. Make no mistake this is about budget. This is SQEENIX milking every last penny out of their cash cow to fund their other failing business endeavors.

I'll give you the classic defense to this from their defenders when it comes to lackluster quality and weird QoL deficiencies like hats missing from two or three races?:

- Well if they voice acted every cutscene and quest, they don't have time and money to focus on other things and we would have less stuff to do in game (DESPITE the fact that we tend to receive the same exact things in cycles in every patch)
- "Well if they fix this / that / those the game might break and then we couldn't play and I don't like change and I wanna keep playing, the game is fine as it is "

Which would be good enough IF WE WERENT PAYING A MONTHLY FEE FOR THIS GAME. If it was free to play it could be a burning garbage pile for all I care, but I and many others are paying money for this while some FREE TO PLAY GAMES Get more effort put into them than this one is just infuriating and the lacks are made even more glaringly obvious now that there isn't a good story MSQ to blanket over their mistakes and PR shield them.

"But free to play games get their money by cash shops" well NEWSFLASH, so does FFXIV with it's cash shop that doesn't even have ACCOUNT SHARING for the items you bought between characters, forcing you to sometimes buy items twice if you want to do anything for your alts.
What did we get for that money? A whole lot of same, with a horrible story they rushed Endwalker for and stuck two expansions into one for some odd reason, with updated character faces, no character customization and low quality character bodies that still wear wooden clogs because they can't program their own character models to stand evenly on ground or whatever the excuse is. Chat bubbles that npc's have but somehow is mystical alchemical magical technology for the devs to implement on a toggle off/on system. Aaand we got like .. 30-40% of a graphical update they are doing for the next 5 years probably if not more? SO yeah, I 100% believe the conspiracy theory that the C-team was left working on the expansion, while the B and A team work on some project SE is pumping out on mobile or something. Maybe another FF7 remake or FF9 remake to cash in from nostalgia instead of innovating like they used to and rewarding their long term subscribers and fans with some full focus and quality. Look at the new writing teams credentials? One of them wrote a nurse dating simulator while the others wrote a story for a raid series or worked in another department.

[Archeron]

Look at the new writing teams credentials? One of them wrote a nurse dating simulator while the others wrote a story for a raid series or worked in another department.

Are those seriously the only credentials the new writers have? That's absolutely humiliating. I feel like any random RPer could be picked off the street and they would have given us a better MSQ storyline, and probably have done so for free. Oh how the standards have fallen.