Quote Originally Posted by lolnotacat View Post
I work in gaming and have seen shit like this on both ends of the product. I have two guesses.

1. Things were changed partway through production. Executives, consultants, etc... meddled by saying something (everything?) needed to change and this is what we got. I kind of lean a bit more towards this explanation because there's the backbone for an actual story and clear progress, but it feels like its guts were ripped out and replaced with lots of pointless filler.

Edit: Also, the fact that only the story is dogwater makes me think this is the case. If resources were spread too thin, encounter design, job design, etc... likely would've been garbage as well but those were OK (though PCT was overtuned).

2. Resources weren't available and CBS3 was spread too thin. CBS3 has said they're working on multiple games, and Yoshi-P's attention has been split with the production of XVI. Between him delegating to other people, and resources directed elsewhere, this may have been the best they should push out.

It's also possible it's some combination of the two.
A lot of folks dont realize this, but they mentioned it a few times now a decent portion of the FFXIV dev team had new leads come in with Dawntrail with old leads simply supervising or moving onto other projects (Current rumors of FF17 and FF9 remake.)