Final Fantasy XIV is a game where the accountant is in the room.

[Basteala]

Oh okay. Yeah if you dislike the game then you should definitely unsub. I've always said that. In fact I think it's really weird if you don't like the game and are still subbed.

Edit: To go further on that, it's really silly when there are people who expect the devs to make insanely drastic changes to the game like it's a reasonable request. No, completely reworking the gameplay to include skill trees or tripling the content output is not a reasonable request and if you're waiting for something like that to happen I'm afraid you're not gonna make it. You've had 5 expansions to figure it out.

It's rarely the people who feel anger towards the game that unsub.

It's the people that feel apathy. Anger's just the last step before that.

[BoJumbles]

You can look at the credits of each expansion and compare the staff lol. A lot of the senior staff are not on recent credits.

If your argument is "where is your evidence of Square Enix saying publicly that they're milking their players while funding other projects" then nothing will satisfy you but it's obvious to anyone with a brain.

Staff cycling in and out isn't exactly sign of most of what you said in the OP. It's a potential indicator -- and fodder for speculation, as I said in my initial post.
For instance: members of staff might be able to request working on a different project, it may be based upon internal politics, or they might simply get assigned to a project and have to assume responsibility in perpetuity. I could speculate very strongly in any of these directions and probably find evidence that circumstantially supports my perspective.

As for what my "argument" is, it's twofold:
* That FFXIV is not nearly as staunchly budget-focused as you've represented it, at least in comparison to its contemporaries;
* That while it's safe to speculate regarding internal turmoil, it's irresponsible to speak as if you know for a fact what the internal issues and attitudes are.

I'm just saying, it might be prudent to be a bit more reserved with your conclusion.

[Sivante]

Staff cycling in and out isn't exactly sign of most of what you said in the OP. It's a potential indicator -- and fodder for speculation, as I said in my initial post.
For instance: members of staff might be able to request working on a different project, it may be based upon internal politics, or they might simply get assigned to a project and have to assume responsibility in perpetuity. I could speculate very strongly in any of these directions and probably find evidence that circumstantially supports my perspective.

As for what my "argument" is, it's twofold:
* That FFXIV is not nearly as staunchly budget-focused as you've represented it, at least in comparison to its contemporaries;
* That while it's safe to speculate regarding internal turmoil, it's irresponsible to speak as if you know for a fact what the internal issues and attitudes are.

I'm just saying, it might be prudent to be a bit more reserved with your conclusion.

10/10. Nailed it.

Not that I'm against these conclusions, but asserting them in absence of clarifying evidence may be short-sighted. Could very well be the case that all these things are true, but we should keep the conversation open to future information and remain ready to append our understanding as new details do or do not arrive.

[Auro_Seldaris]

"New software had bugs" is the fork found in kitchen of our times.

There were far less game-breaking bugs in prior expansions. So much so that I used to praise SE's in-house QA to anyone who would listen because they reliably delivered product with minimum experience-ruining bugs. I noticed a serious uptick in them during late Shadowbringers and into Endwalker, so I stopped giving that praise. Let's not forget the infamous bug where if you used a certain emote during one of the EW fights, you literally could not leave the boss arena. (Someone help me on that one I cant find a source for it)

How about Amon Ultimate?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eubQwMkM2Hg

But yes, just keep ignoring all the evidence presented to you because it doesn't fit your narrative.

[Exmo]

...

The older and bigger a body of software gets, the harder it gets to add to it and extend it without introducing bugs. In fact, it actually gets hugely more difficult to improve and maintain as time goes on.

If you were a software developer, you would know that already.

That said, Dawntrail haters tend to accuse others of what they themselves are most guilty of, so I expect you'll also ignore the fact that game development is one of the hardest industries for making software, and that minor bugs which get quickly fixed (yes, all the bugs listed in this thread have been minor) is hardly indicative of an ailing body.

[CuteBucket]

Yeah, yeah, I know, hater bait post by another Highlander Hyur man, but nevertheless, this did get me thinking about something I got talking about with some friends while we farmed old EX trials the other night.

I think part of why this game has a hard time hiring programmers for this game is due to the exclusive proprietary (and old) engine it uses. Whether they hire a programmer fresh out of school or a veteran with 20 years of coding experience, they are going to have to train them both for weeks to months on how to use and work with the system FFXIV runs in, which, if I recall, is the 1.0 engine stripped down and rebuilt, and *that* original engine was made for FFXIII, a game that released in late 2009 and was probably in development for at least a few years before that. In some ways, this game is running on the reanimated corpse of a engine that's probably been around in some fashion since the mid 00s. If you were a game dev looking for work, does that sound like your first choice of a system you'd want to work on? Not I. Sometimes I stop and think it's a miracle this game even functions at all.

Which is not to excuse any of this, mind, just theorize why some systems are as bizarre, janky, or abandoned as they are. I wouldn't be surprised at this point if, say, the dev that worked on some of the old content that hasn't seen updates in years doesn't even work at the company anymore, and no one even knows how to touch that corner of the code so they just shrugged and abandoned it.

A company like Nintendo also does lots of proprietary hardware and software (for better or worse...), but unlike Square Enix, they have the name cred and clout to do this and still hire talented people to work on their games. I just don't think SE has that kind of clout anymore. Maybe at one point in the late 90s/early 00s, but certainly not recently.

It's a bummer, because I feel like if this game had some stronger bones to build on than the duct tape and prayers of the retrofitted 1.0 engine, we could have a lot cooler things with this game. It is what it is, but I believe with more financial support and a better work culture that can attract high quality talent, SE could absolutely fix the problems and improve a lot of the jank with this game. But... [glances around at the state of the video game industry] yeah, that's never gonna happen, that's not instant money for the board and shareholders.

[Exmo]

A company like Nintendo also does lots of proprietary hardware and software (for better or worse...), but unlike Square Enix, they have the name cred and clout to do this and still hire talented people to work on their games. I just don't think SE has that kind of clout anymore. Maybe at one point in the late 90s/early 00s, but certainly not recently.

Just on this side point, SE has a net worth of about $5 billion, Nintendo has a net worth of about $88 billion. At that scale I don't think differences in their staff/hiring options much comes down to brand name.

[CuteBucket]

Just on this side point, SE has a net worth of about $5 billion, Nintendo has a net worth of about $88 billion. At that scale I don't think differences in their staff/hiring options much comes down to brand name.

Yeah, that's another factor for sure. The size and money behind the company is part of the clout that can let Nintendo get away with the exclusive licenses and proprietary hardware and software over using more industry standard stuff. I also wouldn't be surprised if Nintendo paid its workers more on average than SE, though that's purely speculation. Point being, the weird SE exclusive engine the game uses probably isn't doing it any favors, but unless they drop another moon on Eorzea and make 3.0, we're stuck with it.

[Exmo]

Yeah, that's another factor for sure. The size and money behind the company is part of the clout that can let Nintendo get away with the exclusive licenses and proprietary hardware and software over using more industry standard stuff. I also wouldn't be surprised if Nintendo paid its workers more on average than SE, though that's purely speculation. Point being, the weird SE exclusive engine the game uses probably isn't doing it any favors, but unless they drop another moon on Eorzea and make 3.0, we're stuck with it.

Totally agreed. I think this will be the defining factor for the mobile game - different engine, a clean slate, 10 years worth of design lessons and vision up front, all allowing it to showcase features quicker and more easily than base game ARR.

[Jeeqbit]

part of why this game has a hard time hiring programmers for this game is due to the exclusive proprietary (and old) engine it uses. Whether they hire a programmer fresh out of school or a veteran with 20 years of coding experience, they are going to have to train them both for weeks to months on how to use and work with the system FFXIV runs in

While true, a programmer has to adapt to a new codebase whatever company they happen to join. From experience, it can take a lot of time to get familiar with a codebase. You have to learn the structure of the code like the structure of the Square Enix building so you don't bump into walls.

This is why object-oriented programming is so much preferred. It can make it extremely quick to learn and understand the code if everything is in a logical location. Code in C is the worst because random functions can be littered all over the place, with no real logic to it, and that can cause it to take over a month to get your head around it.

It's likely that a new programmer may struggle to understand why a previous programmer did it a certain way, and not be sure how to approach changing it without knocking the stack of cards down, so to speak. Apparently this is the case with the Armoire (which was pretty obvious given how abandoned it's been but I think they confirmed this was done by a different programmer that doesn't work on it now).

Another good example is linkshells and cross-world linkshells. They avoided making a single change to linkshells in the entire time the game has been around, then made an entirely separate UI for CWLS instead of adapting regular linkshells to have cross-world functionality. This is suspicious and seems an obvious case of them not wanting to touch the linkshell code.

A big reason for the graphics overhaul though was so their other developers (like creatives) can use more modern technology for models, textures and animations.

if I recall, is the 1.0 engine stripped down and rebuilt

It's not the 1.0 engine (see my signature). They got rid of that entirely and heavily adapted their new engine, which was meant for a single player game, to work for an MMORPG. As far as I can tell, they reused the FF14 engine (or the one it's based on) for FF16.