Are the developers of XIV out of touch?

[BillyKaplan]

Maybe it's a culture thing but at times he even seemed a little pissed off as he explained some of his answers.

It's all things he's well aware of and is asked constantly. At the same time, no matter how much he'd like to fix it, his hands are likely tied in many ways, especially since he needs to continue releasing content instead of rebuilding the game again. Being asked that over and over again when he can't do anything about it can't be a nice feeling.

[Penthea]

It's all things he's well aware of and is asked constantly. At the same time, no matter how much he'd like to fix it, his hands are likely tied in many ways, especially since he needs to continue releasing content instead of rebuilding the game again. Being asked that over and over again when he can't do anything about it can't be a nice feeling.

It goes both ways. He's sick of hearing the same questions and players are sick of the same answers.

As far as I know some of the fault lies with SE as they chose what questions to give to Yoshida. There may have been a lot of potentially very interesting questions with equally interesting answers that we have been deprived of. I'd say some of Yoshida's exasperation is that some SE staff made a poor choice with the list they gave him to answer.

[Cetonis]

Insert "legacy code is a real thing" post.

Servers and PCs and airplanes and other devices all over the world are riddled with over-complicated dumpster fires of code, held together with toothpicks and scotch tape in places that any programming team will rightly be mortified of touching at any point.

It happens with stuff way simpler than an MMO. You do what you can with it, but at the end of the day you're stuck with a lot of dumb problems until you can get the whole thing replaced. Quite frankly, it's probably taken an astounding amount of engineering creativity behind the scenes to get some of the things we have gotten so far.

There's nothing "out of touch" with being honest about the state that your game is in. The code is terrible. They admit it. But it's the reality they have to operate in.

The game is not getting rebuilt from scratch because that just doesn't make business sense - compare the ROI of "less complaints from FFXIV players" to doing any number of other things with those resources, including just making a new FF MMO instead for 2025 or some such.

The fact that a graphics engine update is theoretically feasible is good news, at least, but I bet there's no shortage of cynicism about that from the business end either.

[Enla]

It goes both ways. He's sick of hearing the same questions and players are sick of the same answers.

As far as I know some of the fault lies with SE as they chose what questions to give to Yoshida. There may have been a lot of potentially very interesting questions with equally interesting answers that we have been deprived of. I'd say some of Yoshida's exasperation is that some SE staff made a poor choice with the list they gave him to answer.

Frankly I feel bad for the man. He's stuck between a rock and a hard place with many of the improvements that are being asked for, as SE has neither the inclination nor the desire to put more of the money they're siphoning from 14 back into it's development. Yet because he's the public face of this game, he's often the one to catch the most flak and frankly I don't blame him or the players for being frustrated. The corporate exec's hold all the cards I'm afraid.

Now that isn't to say I don't have issues with Yoshi-P and his staff, but it's pretty clear he cares about this game and it's future. Whether or not he has the money to make meaningful improvements however is ultimately the question that needs to be asked.

[Draken]

I mean, I could care less about character options, I would be 100% ok if they removed all of em and added more things to actually do. For some reason a large vocal group of players on these forums seem to want this to be FFXIV- paper doll simulator and I just don’t get it.

[Skivvy]

I mean, I could care less about character options, I would be 100% ok if they removed all of em and added more things to actually do. For some reason a large vocal group of players on these forums seem to want this to be FFXIV- paper doll simulator and I just don’t get it.

No reason you can't have both? The character options are rather lacking, as is exciting content. I've played games that manage to do well in both, it's not like you have to pick one or the other.

[Berethos]

However, for what I played of it (vanilla/ bc) they weren't on content decline already by the point we're at. Look forward to 5.0 one dungeon, one fight for savage,

By BC, they were already experiencing 8+ months of content gaps after the last raid before the next expansion would launch (Sunwell launched in March 08, Wrath wouldn't launch until Nov 08), while adding less dungeons during each expansion than XIV is currently on track to add even with the scaled back 2-1-2-1 pattern (assuming 5 major patches like before, we are still on track to add more in one expansion than Blizzard has ever managed with any of WoW's patches).

You're right, they weren't at the the content decline point we are currently at - they were already below it.

[Elamys]

literally the dumbest reply Ive ever seen. Especially since SE is a multibillion company. Lol at your salt

It's a very common joke.

SE has tons of money but acts as though they only have the money of a small indie dev.

As far as this question of "why did they answer THOSE ONES" I guess what I'd have to say is that when asked what they would have thought the better questions to ask would have been, it's almost always stuff that you can't really answer in the Live Letter. What are the plans for upcoming classes, what are forthcoming changes in balance between jobs, discussion about possible exploits or botting, etc.

I don't think the devs are out of touch at all, in fact, I believe they're very in touch. Many of the features and things we have asked for make it into the game. Sometimes not in the way we envisioned, but they are definitely listening. But I think this game gets limited a lot by legacy code and the fact that SE seems to be reluctant to put the money the game makes back into it.

[Skivvy]

It's a very common joke.

SE has tons of money but acts as though they only have the money of a small indie dev.

To be fair, Square Enix was in a very bad spot financially prior to ARR. They've had ~4 years of success with this game, but that doesn't mean they're suddenly going to start tossing crazy money at every project or game.

[Berethos]

Hell, they're even porting the ENTIRE GAME over to UE4 because UE3 was holding the game back due to feedback in the west and the back and forth between the producer and the community.

A commendable effort...

But one that sounds significantly less impressive when you consider that it's from one version of the game's engine to a new version of the same engine, and much/most (and possibly all) of the work actually developing that engine was done by an entirely different company.