It's past time to expand the dev team

[anhaato]

With the massive playerbase boom of last year resulting in a huge increase in profits from the game, it's about time that they put that money to use and started hiring more people to work on the game. As the playerbase continues to grow, there will be a lot more people anticipating each form of content, to where even the small minority of high end ultimate raiders is no longer truly "small" in the grand scheme of things. The game is estimated to have had 3 million active players this month, and even if ultimate raiders are within the range of 1-5% of the playerbase, that's still a LOT of people. This extends down to all forms of content.

This game does a great job with its content for the most part, but those of us who played between Stormblood and Shadowbringers, even before the pandemic hit, were noticing a decrease in overall content. We know now that they were diverting resources to other future content in the game that we saw in Bozja or will be seeing soon in Island Sanctuary, but as the game and its profitability stands now, I want to know that they're using those funds to ensure they don't have to reach that dilemma again. I truly hope the dev team can reach the point where trade-off of cutting "expendable" content that "not a lot of people do" in favor of using those dev resources on something else becomes a thing of the past.

[TaleraRistain]

As a software engineer, I can tell you that is a fantasy world that will never happen. It doesn't matter how big your dev team is. Something is going to get cut somewhere, whether due to feasibility, changing priorities, or financial decisions above your head.

[anhaato]

As a software engineer, I can tell you that is a fantasy world that will never happen. It doesn't matter how big your dev team is. Something is going to get cut somewhere, whether due to feasibility, changing priorities, or financial decisions above your head.

Sure. But as it stands now they're already making huge promises. Island sanctuary, data center visit, a new deep dungeon, glamour expansion, and apparently they're also talking about not 2 but 3 ultimates. That's a LOT of work, and if they intend to deliver, then they're going to need a lot more help than they do now.

[Larirawiel]

As a software developer i can tell you: if you add more people to a software project then it will slow down the development process.


Cheers

[TaleraRistain]

As a software developer i can tell you: if you add more people to a software project then it will slow down the development process.


Cheers

LOL, that too

[Denji]

tbh "dev team" is more than just programmer. there's voice actors, artists, 3D modelers, animators, advertisement, social media management, and like 500 people whose job is basically just tataru.

do we need more coders? probably not. more concept artists? no. but we definitely could use some 3d modelers to come in and fix a bunch of jank and we could use voice actors and have certain animations either fixed, improved or even added.

[anhaato]

As a software developer i can tell you: if you add more people to a software project then it will slow down the development process.


Cheers

Honestly don't care about a longer wait if the content is better.

[Larirawiel]

Honestly don't care about a longer wait if the content is better.

Then you need more content creators and not developers. And yes, some content needs more love like PvP. Or they could overhaul the current content with sharper textures and better shaders etc.


cheers

[Breakbeat]

...even the small minority of high end ultimate raiders is no longer truly "small" in the grand scheme of things. The game is estimated to have had 3 million active players this month, and even if ultimate raiders are within the range of 1-5% of the playerbase, that's still a LOT of people.

The individual number of people isn't important. It's the percentage that's important, and you've laid out that data right there. I agree with your estimates.

If the playerbase is 100 folks, you cater to the 96.
If the playerbase is a million folks, you cater to the 960,000.
If the playerbase is a billion folks, you cater to the 960,000,000.

Catering to the minority doesn't become easier or more desirable (from a business standpoint) as the player base expands. Remember, for every 100 people that come onboard, your goal is to appease 96 of them. It doesn't matter if 100 new people come onboard once, twice, a hundred times or eight million times; for every 100 there are 96 to please, and four that simply will remain unsatisfied.

Pleasing 95% or more of your audience with any form of subjective entertainment is an admirable accomplishment. Aiming to please more than that becomes an exercise in futility. Line up 100 folks that have seen 'Citizen Kane', and at least five will tell you it wasn't all that great despite its place in film history. That's OK, that's life, and you can't please everyone.

I'm not disagreeing with your point; more content is always better in a general sense. The only thing I disagree with is that the increased resources from the increased player base would be best used to appease some ~3% of players. It'd be better to make the ninety-seven folks happy instead of the three.

"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Or the one." -- Mr. Spock

Yeah I am that much of a nerd that I just quoted Spock. Life goals and such and such. LOL.

[elioaiko]

tbh "dev team" is more than just programmer. there's voice actors, artists, 3D modelers, animators, advertisement, social media management, and like 500 people whose job is basically just tataru.

do we need more coders? probably not. more concept artists? no. but we definitely could use some 3d modelers to come in and fix a bunch of jank and we could use voice actors and have certain animations either fixed, improved or even added.

Hard agree, the game's success could be even bigger if they have more budget (this is up to SE since the dev team can't control how much they have to spend) on cleaning up the assets and working on making old work for current races and even clipping.

Entry work like making gear fit on all the races shouldn't be too difficult for an intern, newcomer even if they only worked on one race while someone is in charge of another.

The main dev team should be focused on working on the intensive parts of the game like combat design and new content.

I get that bigger doesn't translate to "better" but personally I don't think that the team spreading themselves so thin is healthy and even they need RNR.

On top of that, I honestly think the dev team could use some new eyes and opinions on balance changes.

Creativity be exhausted with how much they do on a day to day basis.

This is not to say that they're bad just that with a company as big as SE and how much money XIV brings (that they siphon for other projects) you'd think that they would at least give more budget for the dev team to expand.

It's not about throw more people at it so we can get more content, but rather, keep up the quality so the dev team doesn't pass out from exhaustion.