Disaster in the Darkhold

[Jennestia]

While I admire your constant attempts to paint SE in a glorious light

No, there's just no reason to be constantly pessimistic and cynical for absolutely no reason about everything they do when anyone who actually takes a second to think about the situation will know that it's pretty common for MMO designers to "reuse" content, especially if their MMO switches hands either managerial or company wise.

So although it is new to most players, it was not newly created. And since my point was that SE doesn't seem to be developing much new content, then I feel my point still stands.

This is assuming you have info that no one else has -- 2007 - 2009 in FFXI had almost zero content updates due to XIV's production, however right as it finished, we started to get a lot of content in quick succession and 2010/rest of 2011 is having a ton of additions, stuff that you can't just do in a week and call it a day -- it clearly has been in production for some time, and as said, XI's crew is small, especially given how SE is pushing to get XIV off the ground, this is why I say understaffing has nothing to do with it, it has everything to do with how they need to fix this game rather than expand it, and using stuff that was already present is a good way to do both.

[Betelgeuzah]

While I admire your constant attempts to paint SE in a glorious light, the sad fact is that this is not newly-developed content. The fact remains that these areas were in the game since open beta. So although it is new to most players, it was not newly created. And since my point was that SE doesn't seem to be developing much new content, then I feel my point still stands.

They may have reimagined pre-existing assets, but obviously nothing was created from scratch. Most of it was reused and makes one wonder if the FFXIV team is understaffed in that particular department at the moment.

I'm not necessarily saying they are understaffed, it just makes one wonder, you know?

It seems you are confused as to how the game was and is developed.

Vanilla areas have been developed pre-release. Even if they are currently not available, the assets are ready and waiting for content to be added to them. They have developed the games like this since vanilla XI. The only difference here is that regions currently inaccessible are not necessarily in the .dats like in XI, because they can make us download them through patches.

Further, as soon as the vanilla or an expansion is released, work begins on the next expansion immediately or soon afterwards. The area asset team is always one expansion ahead while the rest of the crew fills the current areas with content.

Now whether the area team is working on an expansion or the zone redesign (latter most likely), the fact remains that they are developing for far ahead in time. There may be few team members making up new assets for the dungeons, and someone working on environment collision, but the rest of the area asset team is hard at work on things in the far (hopefully not so far) future.

Just to give you some perspective, though, a proper redesign of areas requires as much work as a full-blown expansion pack. Not exactly, but close enough, depending on the scale of changes. Whether its an expansion or redesign we won't see them before the end of the year, and when we do, we'll get everything.

Lastly, if they make you download a new area that doesn't mean it has been created recently. It's an area from pre-release with slight adjustments unless there is an expansion or redesign.

[Spellstar]

While I admire your constant attempts to paint SE in a glorious light, the sad fact is that this is not newly-developed content. The fact remains that these areas were in the game since open beta. So although it is new to most players, it was not newly created. And since my point was that SE doesn't seem to be developing much new content, then I feel my point still stands.

They may have reimagined pre-existing assets, but obviously nothing was created from scratch. Most of it was reused and makes one wonder if the FFXIV team is understaffed in that particular department at the moment.

I'm not necessarily saying they are understaffed, it just makes one wonder, you know?

ANY mmo reuses character models, re-skins existing assets and can take content designed long ago and introduce it into the current game. ANY MMO.

MMO's are massive worlds, if you expect an MMO to create totally new art and geometry assets every patch, for huge areas then you do not know much about game design.

This is not an indication of A:Understaffing or B:Under-funding - its simply a fact of life where SOLID game content takes a LONG TIME to produce, but subscribers expect regular updates.Its a plane and simple fact of game development and it does not mean that SE aren't investing in the dev team for this particular MMO.

Go back to games 101 and come back to the conversation when you are better informed little one.

[GabbaGabba]

While I admire your constant attempts to paint SE in a glorious light, the sad fact is that this is not newly-developed content. The fact remains that these areas were in the game since open beta. So although it is new to most players, it was not newly created. And since my point was that SE doesn't seem to be developing much new content, then I feel my point still stands.

They may have reimagined pre-existing assets, but obviously nothing was created from scratch. Most of it was reused and makes one wonder if the FFXIV team is understaffed in that particular department at the moment.

I'm not necessarily saying they are understaffed, it just makes one wonder, you know?

so what difference does it make that its been in the game since release? if no one ever datamined, then you wouldn't have known that.

and how do u know that they aren't working on other content thats not in the .dats yet?

and you said nothing was created from scratch...guess what, it was. way before this game was released, it was created from scratch. if u wanna wait another year for them to design and create a dungeon from scratch, just because, then i dont know what to tell u.

[TirionCrey]

While I admire your constant attempts to paint SE in a glorious light, the sad fact is that this is not newly-developed content. The fact remains that these areas were in the game since open beta. So although it is new to most players, it was not newly created. And since my point was that SE doesn't seem to be developing much new content, then I feel my point still stands.

They may have reimagined pre-existing assets, but obviously nothing was created from scratch. Most of it was reused and makes one wonder if the FFXIV team is understaffed in that particular department at the moment.

I'm not necessarily saying they are understaffed, it just makes one wonder, you know?

And the godfather of MMO, WoW, reuses their old skins to "make new content" all the time...Firelands anyone? Oh right, looks like Sartharion, or wait...Molten Core anyone?

So you are only gonna "approve" new content, if its developed from scratch, otherwise its them being lazy? Get over yourself...

You know, I understand your points and everything, but why the UI is still a mess and why progress is seemingly slow, that I do not understand.

Are you a game dev? If not, how could you possibly understand it ever? Wow takes almost 6-8months to create ONE stupid raid zone...so what do people expect? FFXIV has prolly like half if not less the size of WoW dev team...

[Arcell]

But the fact that they are reusing stuff in the game since Tanaka's leadership, suggesting a lack of development (probably because of understaffing),

I don't quite understand this particular complaint though. Most of the stuff aside from the monsters we haven't seen in the actual game yet. Whether or not it's in the .dats doesn't really matter because it was never used for anything. Now it's being used for something, it still takes time to implement. Sure not as much time from designing from the ground up but why not use files that already exist but aren't implemented?

[Chardrizard]

You'd think most ppl in this forum knows how game development works? Lol, some of then even has a syndrome where they thought all of their ideas might save the this game and the future of MMOs, things that they disliked are total abomination! C'mon now lmao.

[giftforce]

You'd think most ppl in this forum knows how game development works? Lol, some of then even has a syndrome where they thought all of their ideas might save the this game and the future of MMOs, things that they disliked are total abomination! C'mon now lmao.

Who are you even talking at?

[Alise]

I m ready for this!

[Gidonoidon_Sur]

Ya'll need some more hobbies.