Aren't holiday quests a waste of development time and effort right now?

[Abriael]

I guarantee you that none of the game's critics would say a thing if no holiday events occurred.

You are very fast to guarantee things that don't depend on you.

They aren't trolls.

*choughs*

They will easily admit that holiday events are a waste of developers' time. People who think this game has poor quality are REASONABLE players, guys. They aren't nuts.

Some are, some aren't. When I read people that feel "insulted" by the presence of the aggro icon, it definitely doesn't help the impression you're trying to give.

Will they criticize the slow pace of the repairs? Of course they will. We don't have a single major content overhaul yet, and things we do have are being redone again. The agro icon epitomizes the ineffectual repair process. You know what, the message in beta that informed you the mob was aware of your presence was the best system they've come up with. The indication in BETA. 6 months later they're dicking around with what the new icons look like and what colors the mob names should be.

The Desert Peiste is aware of your presence. Miss that notification? You die. They didn't need to fix ****. But that's a whole other different mess they're in.

Actually, I know plenty of MMORPGs that change icons and colors past release, even WAY past release. Why? Simply because development is an ongoing process, and new ideas that come up past release normally aren't discarded telling "you should have come up with this in beta!".
Active development doesn't just mean fixing what's not working properly, it also means coming up with new additions, and obviously the two things will be done in paralel.

Development teams are made of different people, with different specializations, and different areas of expertise. The people whose areas of expertise doesn't involve them in the fixing process still go to work, and still produce results. Those results will be implemented into the game as soon as they're ready. There's no realistic reason to put them off until the rest is fixed just because someone (with no idea of how game development works) will bitch.

lol you have a lot to learn about Square Enix speak. If you were familiar with this company and this team, you'd know that the holiday event is probably 60% of the 70% of 1.17, and the remaining 30% in 1.17a is a laundry list of more meaningless bug fixes and maybe some team sp tweaking.

Watch. You'll see.

Ah, the old trite doomsaying...

[Peregrine]

You are very fast to guarantee things that don't depend on you..

A testament to the predictability of people. Same reason I can tell you to just watch. Pay attention to your environment over years, and you too can speak for the trees.

It's a bluff. They have off-suits and no faces.

Humor me. What do you THINK "1.17 patch will be in preparation for upcoming PVE content."

PREPARATION for UPCOMING...what do you think that means? Seriously, how many SE content descriptions have you all even read to be thinking that even means anything?