Glamour Catalog - This is Why We Can't Have Nice Things...

[Colorful]

I'm glad you said that Gunspec. I didn't get to watch the stream but I can understand that from a business point of view, the producer needs to prove that something is worth investing in before their boss will give it the go ahead. Servers are expensive. I don't even want to think about what the cost and involvement would be for a game as large as FFXIV (to say nothing of other MMOs), so it does seem like YoshiP and crew are trying to make do with what they have. I'm guessing there must be a significant difference in how patch items are called from the gamer versus clothing and gear, since they seem to have no problem adding 800+ items but insist that a catalog of sorts cannot be done. The armoire was a sort-of compromise but a weak one.

But like I said I'm glad you mentioned that since it kind of gives the fans an idea of where things are.

I can say I'm more than annoyed at this president of SE, not only is he actively restricting the development of FFXIV, but he is likely forcing them to increase the amount of money they make through the MogStation without the development team seeing any of that return from what I've been lead to believe. You know the company is a complete failure at management when they've not only gone bankrupt several times, but give their biggest money makers less freedom than Activision does.

They allow the FFXV team to take 10 years on a project, allowed them to take vacations and take pictures of food so they can waste more time on developing photo realistic food that will look garbage when the game is eventually released, but not give FFXIV a few more development members or better servers? Almost as bad as their NA division.

[Gunspec]

and take pictures of food so they can waste more time on developing photo realistic food that will look garbage when the game is eventually released

Ok, while the food thing, and the general time wasting that accompanies any game Nomura touches DOES bother me a lot, you've also got to admit that Square Enix is a huge company. Japanese game development, Western game development, Japanese publishing for Western games, and a truck load of merchandise for Japanese and American franchises, at any time they have hundreds of projects to consider investing in. For a guy like the SE President, as long as he doesn't see an easily understandable crisis (1.0 failure, NA server status at 2.0 launch) and the project is making a satisfactory amount of money, he isn't going to want to increase investment. SE could fund another wave of batman action figures, put a DLC story expansion on the new Deus Ex game, start work on a new 3DS game, or a ton of other things.

From management's perspective, our hobby is no more important than another dozen investment opportunities, and you can bet that someone on every other SE team is begging for more funding just as the FFXIV team is.

But yeah, that still doesn't explain the truckloads of wasted money going to Final Kingdom Fantasy Hearts Versus III-XV hallway simulator. Maybe the FFXV team should make some photo-realistic 3D renders of their budget over the last decade, and consider how their game will never be considered profitable.

[Xieveral]

Why couldn't SE let us hire on at least one additional retainer for free with the launch of Heavensward?

[tjw]

Why couldn't SE let us hire on at least one additional retainer for free with the launch of Heavensward?

Read the four posts right above yours.