Quote Originally Posted by Jynx View Post
snip
Which is why I have always blamed the Company as a whole. I observe everything in those 5 years, not just the Team & it's Development Cycle.

PR for XIV 1.0 was a total mess and misleading (hype). This would mainly focus on Tanaka (Producer, face of the game, past history of success & accomplishments) the perfect model to use, Legal/PR/Community teams as well as Upper Management.

2 examples:
- "We learned so much from XI as a whole and the limitations it had." (XIV brought us limitations, limit of characters on screen being one of biggest)
- E3 2009: "The game will be released in 2010, with a 3 month beta prior to release"(roadmap was in place, Cataclysm wasn't leaked or rumored.)

The other issues of the 5 year period, you somewhat touched on Jynx. The foundation of the game. It's core was a mess and filled with bugs. Toss content aside.

The design perspective over these 5 years on core elements.
- Fatigue system
- UI & server structure issues (coding)
- Class decisions (Exp: GLA shield stance mechanic)
- Crafting system and it's absurd recipes. (Consumable ammo, tied in with Class Decision, before the recipes were changed. 3 crafting classes required to make it entirely, with multiple steps within each.)
- Market Ward system
- 1K polygons and 150 lines of shader code into a flowerpot.

You combine everything together within the project, it was a mess. Add in everything else going on at SE at the time, chaos. Add in the decision to go gold on it's current build with so much feedback against it's current build with a patch it later attitude, a calamity.

Details, inner workings of SE, who did what. Who cares, the Company failed.