How much is the game held back by technical constraints?

[DPZ2]

The manpower is an issue because they refuse to hire anyone outside of Japan and potential employees are short because of this.

It's a practical limitation, not a refusal. Even Blizzard Entertainment requires English proficiency for core development roles. Or are you suggesting that a developer who can neither read nor speak English proficiently would be totally welcome as a core developer?

It certainly limits the pool of developers, but it is a requirement because the company is Japanese. Square Enix still hires non-developers extensively in other countries without that requirement (and has hired developers through support of other game studios as necessary)

The budget is an issue because square takes the game's profits and doesn't put it back into the game, not because the game doesn't make money (it does).

This is applicable to most every MMORPG run by a company with multiple areas of corporate investment. WoW revenues, as an example, supported other Blizzard titles over the years.

The deadlines they have to meet are super strict, they have to put out x amount of content so they can't just divert their coders to dig through old systems and remake them.

"Remaking systems in a smarter way" may seem appealing but the time and cost for recreating the current game using what would essentially be a new game engine are impractical at best. Incremental changes, such as the current graphic changes to the game, alongside regularly scheduled patch cycles, are simpler than creating what would essentially be another game entirely.

[Kelg]

It's a practical limitation, not a refusal. Even Blizzard Entertainment requires English proficiency for core development roles. Or are you suggesting that a developer who can neither read nor speak English proficiently would be totally welcome as a core developer?

It certainly limits the pool of developers, but it is a requirement because the company is Japanese. Square Enix still hires non-developers extensively in other countries without that requirement (and has hired developers through support of other game studios as necessary)



This is applicable to most every MMORPG run by a company with multiple areas of corporate investment. WoW revenues, as an example, supported other Blizzard titles over the years.



"Remaking systems in a smarter way" may seem appealing but the time and cost for recreating the current game using what would essentially be a new game engine are impractical at best. Incremental changes, such as the current graphic changes to the game, alongside regularly scheduled patch cycles, are simpler than creating what would essentially be another game entirely.

No, it's reasonable to expect someone to speak Japanese to be hired by onto their team, but they do not hire people who can speak Japanese as a secondary language from other countries. They literally only hire Japanese employees, and would not hire bilingual NA developers and artists who can also speak Japanese. There is a massive difference there. You can see this because on they constantly put out hiring x and y over in Japan, but never put it here. The only people over here they hire are localizers and support staff, and there are plenty of programmers and artists who love video games, and Japanese rpgs who have learned Japanese and would love to work for square.