Updates: FFXI and FFXIV, a comparison

[Betelgeuzah]

Ah. Like when they announced player-run companies. Or group-crafting (wedding cakes, rocket launchers). Or when they showed a riding chocobo in the first trailer (EA 2009).

Clearly they should not have shown chocobos.
Everybody knows they take 4+ years to implement.

I'm beginning to get your point.
Go on.

Announcing a feature =/= showing us concepts of said feature. They did announce their current plans back in the first producer's letter in January. They didn't speak of the concepts for obvious reasons, just like they didn't speak of the concepts for companies or wedding cakes.

If you want an example of them showing a concept which ended up not working in practice, you only need to look at the early pics released in famitsu and the official site. Direction and position affecting combat? Different attacks influencing combat? Several arrow types for Archer?

I'm sure all these features looked good on paper, yet none of it works like it should in-game. Their vision and the actual implementation is like night and day.

You can announce that you are working on these features- but if you also announce how you intend these features to work in practice, more often than not it'll come back to bite you in the ass.

Developers usually do not announce new games during the conseptual stage, and if they do, they only give details and footage on concrete content. There's a reason for this. SE went back to the drawing board, because the current game just outright does not work, and now they are getting to the stage when something concrete can be shown.