General concerns with the Devs content philosophy

[Takamorisan]

I agree about the concern, but it ain't Designer Philosophy, its more financial administration. FFXIV team can do so much with the limited funding that SE hands to them. Sadly FFXIV gains and profits don't return 100% to the game production, its used to fund other SE projects. If 50% returned to FFXIV, the team would be huge.

[CorbinDallas]

I agree about the concern, but it ain't Designer Philosophy, its more financial administration. FFXIV team can do so much with the limited funding that SE hands to them. Sadly FFXIV gains and profits don't return 100% to the game production, its used to fund other SE projects. If 50% returned to FFXIV, the team would be huge.

It isn't a money problem, but a staff problem. They've gone on record to say this a number of times, that the reason they can't do everything they want to is that they require sufficiently talented staff members with enough experience to maintain 14's quality bar, which isn't the easiest thing to do.

A good example of this is how they hired some new battle content designers, and they were specifically the reason we had an expansion (Stormblood) full of super lengthy phase transitions in the majority of trials, which the majority disliked. It took them nearly 2 years to break this pattern with Seiryu's release, with Yoshi himself commenting on the fact in a Fan Fest Q+A while promoting Shadowbringers.

Throwing more money and staff at a problem doesn't fix anything, it's a heavy handed approach a lot of places employ, which usually only serves to harm the overall product.

[Takamorisan]

It isn't a money problem, but a staff problem. They've gone on record to say this a number of times, that the reason they can't do everything they want to is that they require sufficiently talented staff members with enough experience to maintain 14's quality bar, which isn't the easiest thing to do.

A good example of this is how they hired some new battle content designers, and they were specifically the reason we had an expansion (Stormblood) full of super lengthy phase transitions in the majority of trials, which the majority disliked. It took them nearly 2 years to break this pattern with Seiryu's release, with Yoshi himself commenting on the fact in a Fan Fest Q+A while promoting Shadowbringers.

Throwing more money and staff at a problem doesn't fix anything, it's a heavy handed approach a lot of places employ, which usually only serves to harm the overall product.

I agree partially with you, but still they are missing staff for basic operations like, animation, art team for extra character customization (see Viera and Hrothgar they had to do work off hours to manage to get at least basic headgears), improving overall textures and so on.
FFXIV is a well managed product with their budget, but they could use more finances. Not FF7 remake levels of money but some extra is required to expand quality.

[Arkfrost]

FFXIV is a well managed product with their budget, but they could use more finances.

I can absolutely sign this. FF XIV deserves much more love, but greed apparently doesn't allow making good things better

[Kaethra]

It isn't a money problem, but a staff problem. They've gone on record to say this a number of times, that the reason they can't do everything they want to is that they require sufficiently talented staff members with enough experience to maintain 14's quality bar, which isn't the easiest thing to do.

A good example of this is how they hired some new battle content designers, and they were specifically the reason we had an expansion (Stormblood) full of super lengthy phase transitions in the majority of trials, which the majority disliked. It took them nearly 2 years to break this pattern with Seiryu's release, with Yoshi himself commenting on the fact in a Fan Fest Q+A while promoting Shadowbringers.

Throwing more money and staff at a problem doesn't fix anything, it's a heavy handed approach a lot of places employ, which usually only serves to harm the overall product.

I'm going to be honest here. SE likes to deflect mistakes instead of taking responsibility for them. FFXIV is a touchy subject for them due to the fumble that was 1.0. Therefor they like to say they have issues making certain things happen, that quite frankly don't make much sense. We'll start with your example.

So they claim that it was a new staff that caused a issue with design philosophy of the trial fights. That is extremely problematic. No company allows new hires to dictate philosophy. Lets look at another Japanese company for comparison. Nintendo has a design philosophy for its Super Mario games. In fact they've recently given out that philosophy in their new Super Mario Maker 2 game. Its a lengthy 'class' on how to make levels by that philosophy. They had that philosophy for nearly 40 years. Which means they have designers and level makers who follow a philosophy that is older than they are.

What I am saying here, is do NOT give SE a pass when they say they have shortages here, or limitations there. Do a little research on the subject, and ask people who have experience in those fields. As best you can anyway.

They've done this with several other subjects such as Housing, Character options, glamour options, and various other materials. One thing that is in common with all those things mentioned is they are all small (under 1KB in size) additions to the database. But they claim adding a few hundred bytes to a character load would tax the servers too much. That sort of dishonesty is pretty much wrong. Either some head coder is blowing smoke up an ignorant producer's rear, or they are being dishonest to the players directly.