Regarding that Finaland Interview...

[Kirsten_Rev]

I remember an interview where he stated that FF14 now has every system in the game that are mandatory in the MMO business (like housing, the glamour wardrobe) and that they now can focus on other things and I was really sitting there and wondering how they can be fine with having systems in the game that are there but far away from standards. When F2P games have better housing, better storage for glamour and more shouldnt one try to get at least on that level? Having them in the game in a medicore way does not imo mean that they are done with it but honestly it sounded like they are fine with the way they are implemented..no matter how bad this will be in the future with more and more glamour, less space and systems that need to be changed again and again.

Honestly, sometimes I wonder whether it's a lack of investment, or a lack of expertise. Obviously SE knows that better platforms are possible, but it could be they don't think they have the skill necessary to match what other games have done. They are a console company, after all - FFXI and FFXIV are literally the only two games they've developed with significant online components. Compare this to Blizzard, who has been learning since the 90s with multiple different types of titles.

Hard to say. I do agree with you though, that SE is playing a risky game by not investing the resources necessary to maintain XIV's AAA status. It's a particularly odd development considering XIV's rocky launch and subsequent rebirth: this very game demonstrated clearly that proper investment of resources pays off. They seem to have forgotten the lesson awfully fast.

The responses shouldn't surprise anyone. That glamour issue has been around since 2.0. It isn't really hidden that they take the older pieces and recycle them in such a way to allow it to be gathered for glamour later. And that isn't really much of a problem -either- because it saves them the dev time to use on other things.

All well and good, if we actually saw the results of this increased dev time. Personally, I haven't seen any benefits. I also haven't seen much in the way of recycling; it's not like they're slowly introducing old tank or melee gear sets to casters. We get more than enough Glamours, it's just that many people feel we don't get enough variety. They could save even more development time if they'd just aim to create more truly unique looks.

As for the apartment he is sort of right on point. People should be weighing if they really need a house if they can have an apartment. A lot of people are asking for instanced housing and it already exists.. right there. Granted, they could do with expanding the sizes or making them upgradable. I would kill for a large penthouse suite to have. I would never want to buy a large in that case. Otherwise, why have a house if you arent going to use it? If you are going to use it later, are you actually going to keep using it, or are you just going to have it sitting there without anything? xD

He's right on point if you accept the premise of his argument, which is that the housing system we have now was the only sensible choice to make. If you accept that, yeah, sure, the demo system makes sense, as does the differentiation between apartments and houses.

The problem of course is that the premise is ridiculous. SE never needed to build Wards at all, and doing so proved to be a tremendously stupid decision that created far more problems than it was worth. This is why Yoshi-P's answers come off as disingenuous to many players: he's whitewashing some major mistakes that were made under his watch, in order to make subsequent unpopular decisions seem less objectionable.

I'd also point out that even had SE wanted to pursue the idea of Wards, there was a way to do it well. Had they put fewer houses in the Wards but increased the size, and restricted purchase to FCs, we'd have kept the neighborhood feel. Couple this with an intentionally-designed character housing system (individual instanced housing that was expandable, featured gardens, etc.), and everything's kosher. But SE didn't do this: they released Wards without a single thought paid to the infrastructure demands, tacked on apartments as an afterthought, and then started trying to explain away their actions by acting as if their original sin in the game wasn't a foregone conclusion. It's shameful, and it's a shame that players still fall for the song and dance.