Quality > Quantity

[Shioban]

The developers had to balance their time, as a set-release window of at least two years and a new Americanised Development Schedule was implemented to make sure that with the 2.0 revisions, shit actually got done instead of leaving them to fuss over details like a main characters eye colour for 6 hours (this actually happened).

There are two obvious reasons for this;

Development Efficiency.

and

Average Market.

Development Efficieny, is obvious as you spend more time on finite details, the better the outcome, but the more time you've wasted getting that tree looking just right.

To pierce the Average Market things such as reducing the amount of objects on-screen, compressing textures, zoning off areas were all part of the initial design decisions for FFXIV:ARR, in that the game NEEDED to run for the average PC market (as well as the PS3), to do this compromises were made across all things.


Everything you have seen can be changed (to an extent) in the future (DX11 update will be pushing a lot of new features and better textures in).


Theoretically if PS3 support drops in the future, any further developments on the game could be substantially bigger, in that we could see bigger, grander and more detailed areas than we already have in-game, (possibly some new battle system (Fate-esque).

[Lithera]

There's been a dev response of a sort just not in the threads. There's a reason that ISP post got stickied. Yoshi-P acknowledged the lag in the Live Letter and asked that players continue to submit their ISP and system information as they are actively searching for solutions. You want a dev to come on the forums every day and reassure people that it's being worked on? Pat your head and say "There...There.."? I'd rather they focus on the problem as opposed to writing personalized "Im sorry" letters it seems everyone wants.