Time, Budget, Manpower, and Scope

[Vatom]

I have plenty of ideas, but I think this thread lacks the introductory scope to give my post a full field, so I'm going to post a separate thread on it and take my time.

Then I look forward to the more petulant members of the community attacking me like piranha for discussing it all.

Yeah that's always the battle. Stay factual and open minded and maybe you will have people agree

[plasmacutter]

Here's a fact, Yoshi P already said more money won't help, yet its the main take of this thread so far. He cites the reason as lack of talent. This is supported somewhat given that the positions they had open a year ago for level designer and scenario writer are still open. Either the talent isn't there, or SE isn't paying enough, we cannot know. The game is in the latter part of its life cycle. If there's any potential efficiency to be eeked out of the development team, players cannot possibly know how to manifest it since, you know, we aren't on it and we don't know the specifics of their engine.

If creativity is what's needed, they should re-open the feedback forum and have the community post and rate ideas.
Dedicate a couple mod staff to deduplication by moving posts into established topics when merited.

[Turtledeluxe]

If creativity is what's needed, they should re-open the feedback forum and have the community post and rate ideas.
Dedicate a couple mod staff to deduplication by moving posts into established topics when merited.

High quality writing takes talented writers. Mods who need to filter quality ideas need to be able to discern what merits quality. All of that sounds like things they do not have according to Yoshi P i.e leaders in the field who are willing to work on their team.

He also also cites promotions as a factor and what that may be telling us is that this custom is perhaps not what is best for creative output.

I will also say, if what I have seen on social media reflects their general internal attitude, this dev team confuses effort eith results, which is an inherent reject of "work smarter not harder". It is an A for effort mentality. So not only do we need a new engine, perhaps you need an entirely new team and culture.

[Raikai]

Between Yoshi P's own statements as far as his programming history and the very long/frequent maintenance you suffer, it is a very strong indicator there was a lack of forethought/optimization when they first designed their architecture.

And no amount of money will help if its as bad as I suspect. You just need a new game.

Do we need a new game? Of course, beyond the obvious infrastructure limitations, I'm afraid they just don't have the proper mindset for meaningful experimentation...

It's kinda symptomatic that FF 16 has some lingering "design philosophy" issues from this game too, despite being a brand new structure.

[Supersnow845]

I'm sorry?

For some reason people who never learned writing techniques beyond grade 2 think that anything remotely esoteric in writing is AI

so EM dashes are AI, semi colons are AI, run on sentences are AI

[Moqi]

Here's a fact, Yoshi P already said more money won't help, yet its the main take of this thread so far. He cites the reason as lack of talent. This is supported somewhat given that the positions they had open a year ago for level designer and scenario writer are still open. Either the talent isn't there, or SE isn't paying enough, we cannot know.

Have they tried looking beyond Japanese people who only speak Japanese...?

[Hallarem]

Have they tried looking beyond Japanese people who only speak Japanese...?

They can't. Because they demand you understand japanese and speak it. Which makes sense as its a JP company, but at the same time they COULD outsource some tasks to another team, pay them and see what happens. To fix specific issues. They are reaching the point of nothing to lose.

[plasmacutter]

Let's not pretend the talent pool is too thin given the collective layoffs in the tech sector, gaming included, have accumulated to 60% of headcount.

[Kahnha]

TBH Idk why they spent extra resources on the Oceanian server people there complaining about not being able to que for mandatory content like CT. Dynamis is in the same situation it takes longer to get into content so end up going to primal or crystal. Even the graphics update that was basically just 2x sizing the textures could have put those resources into making more housing wards, or improving the environment for the DCs.

maybe even spending into improving the game engine itself that would clear so much of the issues on how the game feels but eh we'll see :3

[Halivel]

TBH Idk why they spent extra resources on the Oceanian server people there complaining about not being able to que for mandatory content like CT. Dynamis is in the same situation it takes longer to get into content so end up going to primal or crystal. Even the graphics update that was basically just 2x sizing the textures could have put those resources into making more housing wards, or improving the environment for the DCs.

maybe even spending into improving the game engine itself that would clear so much of the issues on how the game feels but eh we'll see :3

They spent resources on OCE DC because people asked for one for almost a decade. The issue with any new servers, however, is that people are always reluctant to mover over, as majority of them have established FCs and connections where they currently are. Which shouldn't be as much of an issue with FF14, that has server travel infrastructure, but people still cling to the servers they're on.

They spent resources on Dynamis because people, surprise-surprise, were asking for it, as other DCs are overpopulated. Same issue happens however, because no one actually wants to move over. As result, with both OCE and Dynamis, it will take a relatively significant amount of time to fill them with players, either new or old.

They spent resources on graphic update because... oh yes, people asked for it to happen, for years.

Now that all that is done, people are suddenly "you should have spent those resources elsewhere".

Point of the day is, I guess, is that there's no win, and people will be never happy regardless of what devs do.