7.1 - More Wuk Lamat

[ovIm]

Personally disappointed. I guess the mass feedback about her didn't go very far.

Keep your expectations realistic. As much as I disliked the Wuk Lamat centric writing in 7.0, I would assume they can implement changes at 7.3 the earliest, really. Square's development cycle is too long.

Even if every single player in FF14 hated Wuk Lamat, Square would not have been able to course correct that quickly.

[ZephyrMenodora]

Keep your expectations realistic. As much as I disliked the Wuk Lamat centric writing in 7.0, and even if every single player in FF14 hated Wuk Lamat, I would assume they can implement changes at 7.3 the earliest, really. Square's development cycle is too long.

Yes I guess I really don't understand their dev cycle and what the extra 1 to 2 months per patch is for. In my mind the MSQ in a .X patch is like, an hour worth of writing? I am not sure why it can't be rewritten in 4 to 5 months. Even if the re-write was just having another character stand in for Wuk.

[ovIm]

Yes I guess I really don't understand their dev cycle and what the extra 1 to 2 months per patch is for. In my mind the MSQ in a .X patch is like, an hour worth of writing? I am not sure why it can't be rewritten in 4 to 5 months. Even if the re-write was just having another character stand in for Wuk.

Consider this - a patch we play has most likely been in development for at least since the release of the last patch, if not longer. Lots of feedback gathered in $current_patch would not be implementable in $next_patch, unless it is really small adjustments (say, potency numbers).

[Raven2014]

Keep your expectations realistic. As much as I disliked the Wuk Lamat centric writing in 7.0, I would assume they can implement changes at 7.3 the earliest, really. Square's development cycle is too long.

Even if every single player in FF14 hated Wuk Lamat, Square would not have been able to course correct that quickly.

I would disagree with this assessment if Yoshi's and his team are the same people from 8-10 years ago. Or if FF14 still command the respect of a flagship tittle it used to have. Don't forget:

- 1.0 version shut down on November 2012
- 2.0 was launched in August 2013 - 11 months later.

Even if we pad in another 3-5 months to assume the 2.0 developement had begun prior to 1.0 shut down. That's still ~15month for them to create a 40-60h of content that was packed in the 2.0 launch.

So the notion of 4-5 months is too short for them to change what would be ~1h of MSQ because it's an unreasonable and impossible task ... yeah I don't buy it. Even if they only work HALF as hard as they did during the 2.0 launch cycle, changing the MSQ content of DT shouldn't be anything resemblance an impossible task.

But given the current energy and effort being invested into the game these days ... yeah, what you say would be a fair assessment. I don't think they're ignoring the feedback, but to be clear: they don't change it not because they're unable to. It's simple because they probably believe they don't need to or don't want to.

[Midare]

Even if we pad in another 3-5 months to assume the 2.0 developement had begun prior to 1.0 shut down. That's still ~15month for them to create a 40-60h of content that was packed in the 2.0 launch.

So the notion of 4-5 months is too short for them to change what would be ~1h of MSQ because it's an unreasonable and impossible task ... yeah I don't buy it. Even if they only work HALF as hard as they did during the 2.0 launch cycle, changing the MSQ content of DT shouldn't be anything resemblance an impossible task..

There's one major difference that I'm thinking of here though.

He and whatever team he had with him back then, came in already knowing that 1.0 was a dumpster fire they had to put out. With DT, they didn't know Poochie was going to be a disaster until people who finished MSQ started sending in feedback.

You could also argue that the blemishes (Or one blemish, a massive one) in the story should have been obvious enough if they did play through it as they say they do and should have prepared accordingly, alas, if that had been the case, then we would have had a delay in DT and we didn't.

But I personally think that arguing whether or not we should or should not be getting her back in 7.1, it's rather pointless. She's gonna be there, it was mostly expected... might as well keep the feedback coming and get through it.

[VerdeLuck]

There's one major difference that I'm thinking of here though.

He and whatever team he had with him back then, came in already knowing that 1.0 was a dumpster fire they had to put out. With DT, they didn't know Poochie was going to be a disaster until people who finished MSQ started sending in feedback.

You could also argue that the blemishes (Or one blemish, a massive one) in the story should have been obvious enough if they did play through it as they say they do and should have prepared accordingly, alas, if that had been the case, then we would have had a delay in DT and we didn't.

But I personally think that arguing whether or not we should or should not be getting her back in 7.1, it's rather pointless. She's gonna be there, it was mostly expected... might as well keep the feedback coming and get through it.

There were threads on here complaining since 6.5, we knew for a long time before Dawntrail there were issues. At that time people were told to wait and that DT would be better than the patch quests. In fact whenever people have issues with this game it goes in a cycle
-Just wait for the next patch, they can't do anything now, why give feedback about this when they probably already fixed this
-The patch is too soon to make any changes, what do you want them to do? Delay it? (we are here right now)
-The patch just came out give it some time to grow on you
-The x.1 isn't out yet
-The x.5 isn't even out yet wait till then before you give feedback
and then see the top.

Just a never ending cycle of people trying to shut down any negative feedback of the game by saying we just need to wait another 4 months and Yoshi-P will fix it.

[Raven2014]

There's one major difference that I'm thinking of here though.

He and whatever team he had with him back then, came in already knowing that 1.0 was a dumpster fire they had to put out. With DT, they didn't know Poochie was going to be a disaster until people who finished MSQ started sending in feedback.

He was brought in to save 1.0, and in the first year he came in that's what he did. It's not until when 1.0 stop being a dumpster fire that the team was split to start developing 2.0.

And if you look at the pattern in the last 2-3 years you would see my point with how the handle the AST remade (promised at the beginning of 6.0 for 6.3, then delayed to 7.0) or Viera's hat which has been "on the table" for about 4 years at this point. Ask yourself, do they really need a whole 2.5 years to come out with the AST change? Should it really take them 4+ years at this point to adapt hat to viera? My point is: they know these issue, the acknowledge it, and if FF14 is still as important to them as it was before, if Yoshi and his team is still invested in the game ... those issue would still be fixed in a blink of an eyes. Time is not an issue here, commitment on the hand ...

But I personally think that arguing whether or not we should or should not be getting her back in 7.1, it's rather pointless. She's gonna be there, it was mostly expected... might as well keep the feedback coming and get through it.

Oh I don't disagree, like you said I think most people fully expect nothing much will change in 7.1 or even 7.3 because given the energy you see them invested in the game, it's folly to expect anything more.

My previous post simply to point out that the reason we won't see meaningful changes any time soon not because it's an impossible task, but because the team simply don't have the agency to carry out the task.

[ovIm]

I would disagree with this assessment if Yoshi's and his team are the same people from 8-10 years ago. Or if FF14 still command the respect of a flagship tittle it used to have. Don't forget:

- 1.0 version shut down on November 2012
- 2.0 was launched in August 2013 - 11 months later.

Even if we pad in another 3-5 months to assume the 2.0 developement had begun prior to 1.0 shut down. That's still ~15month for them to create a 40-60h of content that was packed in the 2.0 launch.

So the notion of 4-5 months is too short for them to change what would be ~1h of MSQ because it's an unreasonable and impossible task ... yeah I don't buy it. Even if they only work HALF as hard as they did during the 2.0 launch cycle, changing the MSQ content of DT shouldn't be anything resemblance an impossible task.

But given the current energy and effort being invested into the game these days ... yeah, what you say would be a fair assessment. I don't think they're ignoring the feedback, but to be clear: they don't change it not because they're unable to. It's simple because they probably believe they don't need to or don't want to.

There is something to consider here though, in terms of software development cycles:

While yes, the rewrite did happen quickly, this was before the project started being as cyclical as it is now. Once the ball for the 3-monthly (now 4-monthly) patch got rolling, CBU3 has trapped themselves in their development structure just how they trapped class design with the 120s burst stencil. Additionally, the teams most likely have changed, and they are far less flexible now than they were during the 2.0 development.

As for the last portion of your statement, I do agree. Feels like they have gotten complacent with the current position of FF14 on the market. Yoshi-PR's response is very much damage control, trying to paint what we will get in a good light pre-emptively. I wonder if we get another "what character said how many lines" for 7.1 MS, and how that will look.

[Jeeqbit]

I would disagree with this assessment if Yoshi's and his team are the same people from 8-10 years ago.

A lot of them actually started moving away during Heavensward and Stormblood. They began just overseeing and training new staff to work on Stormblood onwards, while the rest of them were working on FF16. Yes, they were doing FF16 that long ago, contrary to all who believe they only did this during Endwalker. FF16 was more or less complete by Endwalker and its team largely disbanded during Endwalker leaving a smaller team to make the DLC.

Even if we pad in another 3-5 months to assume the 2.0 developement had begun prior to 1.0 shut down. That's still ~15month for them to create a 40-60h of content that was packed in the 2.0 launch.

That's a wholly unfair comparison:

• They got their best staff from across Square Enix to suspend their other projects to frantically adapt their new engine (meant for Single Player games) to work for an MMORPG.
• They had so many staff working on it that they worked on 2.0 while still making patches for 1.0. In a way they kept up this habit by making patches for expansions while working on the next expansion.
• Yoshi-P kept a spreadsheet of how long they took to do tasks that accounted even for bathroom breaks and mathematically optimized it so they could remake the game in just 2 years (it normally took longer to make a good game, especially an MMORPG). This wasn't healthy for his team (most likely why after 10 years he decided to increase the gap between patches).
• They reused a lot of assets and salvaged lore and designs. Let's be honest - this is what made it possible to finish ARR as quickly as they did. Things like the Twelve were designed going back to 2005. Many of the ARR dungeons, textures, models, area concepts, characters and feature inspirations were salvaged from 1.0.

[Iscah]

Again, you should've told the "past of Zoraal Ja" in the actual story, not the follow up for more of a resonance. This is a case of literally "Who asked" it's too late to flesh him out now in the story.

Lots of people have asked. I think it's one of the biggest common comments on Dawntrail that I've seen: Zoraal Ja needed more context, and yes it should have been given in the 7.0 storyline, but it wasn't – so better late than never.

As for the larger theme of the thread here... whether players like her or not, Wuk Lamat is an important person in the space where the story is currently operating, and I would much rather see her participation brought to a logical conclusion than swept away prematurely in response to complaints.