I solved the problem with this game.

[MitsukiKimura]

I rather not see Square Enix fall under the shackles of greed. It's one of the few companies that I'm happy to throw my money at for all Yoshi P and the development team has done even if everything isn't 100% perfect but what game is? Things may take time but that's worth the wait. I rather pay for a subscription than have to throw my money into, weapon upgrade chances, items to upgrade gear, etc. Plenty of games have done this and I end up walking away from it. Forcing it's employees to work faster and harder will only ruin the passion for the game/company if you try to throw money at it. Let them work at their own pace, we're all human in the end. Feel free to make suggestions but you aren't going to get anywhere if you demand things by throwing money at it.

[YojimboM]

I just came here to say that I think it's funny that the OP thinks that SE even considers amounts of money like "400k/300k/50k" as anything more than a drop in the bucket. SE is a multi-billion dollar company. They don't implement something because their budget team has done a projection of the expense and estimated profit of that project and told the dev team no. It's not because they don't have the money to do it, it's because they don't think it will generate as much revenue as a different endeavor would (i.e. something that keeps people subscribed or attracts new players). Time is the currency that SE is working with, not money. They want stuff that will turn out quarterly profits by their deadlines.

[Catwho]

I mean maybe... but they'd have to DO it first. So basically building a third iteration of the game from nothing. It's not like you can just push a button and transition everything from one game engine to another. I wish it worked like that.. it'd be very nice.

My office is in the process of upgrading our system from the development tool of Grails 2.0 to Grails 4.0. That project meant we took six months off from new feature development. During those six months, our clients are getting NOTHING but emergency hot fixes on the old system. Granted, we're significantly smaller than SE is, but that was only upgrading a version, not transitioning development from one system to another. Six months just for that.

They're more likely to build a new MMO on a new system than they are to upgrade XIV again.

As for where our Mogstation money goes - I believe they said it gets put into equipment and facilities upgrades? Like the EU data center when it split from Montreal, and when the NA data center moved from Montreal to California. Data center moves like that cost a lot of money, but they're also the easiest thing to outsource to third party contractors.

[Kazrah]

Time is the currency that SE is working with, not money. They want stuff that will turn out quarterly profits by their deadlines.

That's why I feel a better question to players would be asking how long they would want to see content delayed if it meant more requested features would be put in. The problem with that though is there would ultimately result in lower profits since players would rather have some content released quicker rather than more content released later if they had to maintain a subscription.