What is going on with Square Enix and the 14 team?

[Liam_Harper]

As I've mentioned before, the devs are terrible at resource management. They've poured resources into niche content or content that lasts 10 minutes, neglect to pour resources into areas that need it and tend to stretch themselves far too thin. They take on projects that are unsustainable in the long run and stubbornly stick to them, housing Wards instead of instanced housing, 2+ classes per expansion, 2 races in a single expansion for example.

They have plenty of staff on the credits, yet somehow certain areas of the game are in dire need of extra staff. The STF for tackling bots, class designers, gear designers, qualified QA testers and so on. We have unqualified staff doing these jobs on their spare time and Yoshida poking his nose into literally everything and trying to do a million things at once that he's not qualified for.

The result is the devs have been working flat out with overtime the last few years and get less and less done while continually having to trim things. They really need to step back, assign some more staff to share the load and revaluate where to place their priorities. It would be healthier for them and the game.

[SturmChurro]

As I've mentioned before, the devs are terrible at resource management. They've poured resources into niche content or content that lasts 10 minutes, neglect to pour resources into areas that need it and tend to stretch themselves far too thin. (...) 2 races in a single expansion for example.

Pretty much what I'd guess as well. They allocated resources to the initial release state of viera/hrothgar - the vastly more limited state of viera/hrothgar - which wouldn't have had an effect on their patch release schedule. No hairs, no headgear, etc.. Then they started fitting some headgear to viera/hrothgar, then Covid hit. I'm not going to pretend Covid didn't have an impact, it did, but issues like these were prevalent prior to Covid. They then release male viera. I do believe Yoshida when he has said how much it costs to maintain these races.

However, In the end, it was their decision to include them, and this game has become extremely successful. The players of viera/hrothgar deserve better.

[Nethereal]

It's nice to see all these new faces on the forums.

Sadly it took such lack of quality control and wombo combos from the dev team for it to come about.

I'll probably unsubscribe after I finish this next ultimate, as long as it comes out in working order.

[Lihtleita]

a shame the housing bug happened in what is otherwise a banger of a .1 patch.

[Rhysati]

I really don't understand : some people don't like the game for years and they keep playing it ? Why are you still here? Just to suffer ?

You are not the first to ask this question, nor will you be the last. And yet it still remains a poor one. People offering complaint and feedback do not hate the game. They enjoy it and want it to be better.

I'm sorry that those like yourself seem to think that someone must praise every and all aspects of something or else they should leave...but that isn't how the world works. Otherwise, I would ask you why you are on the forums since you apparently find issues with this very thread. Why are you here? Just to suffer?

[Lustre]

a shame the housing bug happened in what is otherwise a banger of a .1 patch.

Banger? Losing 90% of my pvp toolkit? removal/changing of skills nobody asked for? Devaluing past rewards and efforts? Time-forced event to force players into a mode (that people previously only did because they thought it was a limited one) that'll be dead in 6 months, not to mention the bugs and balancing. A MSQ of "more of the same", garlemald in its entirety getting shafted in a side quest, a broken housing system. Not sure what makes this patch a "banger", we must value different things. /shrug

[Rulakir]

Well, I haven't been playing for years, I bought the game in September '21 and was able to play through start to finish (6.0) without any down time. My criticisms would be:

Story: Great until EW, which I disliked for multiple reasons but OP doesn't want this to degenerate into a lore discussion. I'll just say that the 'finale' ruined a lot of the positivity I used to have and has made me skeptical of the story going forward, particularly because it feels like I'm not ethically on the same page as the writers and that's a rather concerning issue going into a "conflict of values" arc.

Housing: I genuinely don't understand what the problem with offering instanced housing is when I've played several other MMOs (Rift, Wildstar, ESO, etc.) that had it extensively for all players. Neighborhoods seem a cute idea on the surface and I can somewhat understand Yoshi-P's affection for them, but at some point you have to recognize that they don't work for the playerbase as a whole. Regardless of individual feelings, it's still content that not every player can participate in (others have already gone over apartments vs. houses) due to some bizarre limited supply in a video game. (Also going to note that one of the biggest requested features for WoW players is housing, so I imagine a decent portion of the exodus who shifted to FFXIV were hoping to finally have something Blizzard refuses to provide only to be disappointed by the neighborhood system.)

Additionally, I think the "grandfathering" in is BS and anyone who owns entire wards should be forced to pick one house and be reimbursed for the others. It's ridiculous they allow this when there's a supply and demand issue. Disclaimer: I opted not to get a house because I don't want to be forced to sub every other month to keep it, so I don't have a horse in this race but I can still see the glaring issues with it.

Glamours: Something else that other MMOs, in some cases older than FFXIV, manage to do without the same limitations. I'm no programmer, but if expanding upon the system they have is going to be too taxing then maybe they need to just start over with a different system. I particularly don't understand the armoire, which accepts very little of what I've acquired in my 7 months of gameplay (I think I have 6 pieces of gear I've been able to put into it). Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems like pointless storage that should just be removed and added/merged to the glamour dresser.

Viera & Hrothgar: I feel for you, I do. I don't think they should've added new races if they were just going to half-ass them, they would've been better off expanding upon character creation options for existing races. When I saw these two compared to Miqo'te, for example, particularly with how animated and expressive their ear animations are while Viera's don't move and Hrothgar's can just be cut off it was both sad and absurd.

Jobs: I'll be frank, as an altoholic used to having to switch characters due to Blizzard breaking classes every expansion/major patch WoW, just being able to switch jobs if my previous one is under performing is an upgrade. I generally stay out of those discussions because they're not anything that effects me to a deleterious extent, especially not as a casual player.

Conclusion: The only things I've seen I'm looking forward to are the game becoming more solo friendly and the addition of 1-4 player challenge dungeons. My disappointment with the story is the biggest factor in my potentially quitting or taking a break at this point, which is unfortunate because I thought I'd found a new 'home' after WoW. While I enjoy other parts of the game, I can't overlook my character being made complicit in crimes against mankind.

[IdowhatIwant]

I've largely tried to stay away from Ex and Savage, mainly because I don't really like the design philosophy around encounters. But that backstory aside. I got roped into this fight on Friday, prior to that I was actually freighted by how the overextended the emphasis was on the difficulty of the fight, but I was actually surprised to not only learn it hits weaker than normal mode, but the encounter itself felt like half a fight... That was probably my only disappointing moment of the patch, personally

That is disappointing, I was looking forward to trying this out but work hours have prevented me from having time to bother with it. In the end it's just a mount grind I will probably do later if it is as bad as yall are saying. At least the 24man is good from what I have heard.

If nothing else perhaps we should be thankful for the housing bug helping to force them to look at the feedback on here that is, seemingly, routinely ignored in favor of reddit and twitter.

I think it was more the fact that there was about 3 or 4 pages of threads posted on the bug report section when it started.

Anyways. Maybe with the housing situation the devs will take a bit more into account. I can't exactly say 6.1 has been bad. Pvp needs adjustments but thats a given. I have no complaints about the new raids other than I wish the boss voices were a bit higher. Msq was a ok to me

With the housing bug, as well as some other issues. I think this may have been one of the worst patches as most don't come with this many problems. A major disappointment to me for the MSQ was we were told back in ShB that 6.1 would introduce a new character that would be our traveling partner, but I guess they rewrote that or something. The moment I had to go get the scions again I was angry, I get it, we had to have the scions for the trust system single player mode, but they could have done better I think.

I wonder what the reason to dedicate so many Fc house wards over personal housing was?

I think that is a better approach than previous housing releases where FCs get there run of the mill first and players get the left overs. Also in many cases a FC getting a house benefits more players than a personal house. There are also less wards in the new district which would mean more wards are likely to come.

It's a lot more divisive because to most people it's either the best or the worst. Previous expansion stories were either universally meh or universally good. But here, the very nature of the story makes it much more difficult to have a measured position.

I did not like EW but I think I expected too much from the story after ShB. I loved ShB but I went into ShB assuming it was going to be terrible. Perspective going in makes a big difference as well.

But that's the point that many refugees doesn't understand, Square Enix is a multi-billion dollar company, but each project operates like a company itself and has a budget based on their expected profit.

That is how almost every game development company work. I think refugees understand that most people play more than 1 video game in there lives.

totally disagree with you on that one. dont get me wrong i like being able to throw my whole ass into one game for fun but anything you do over and over or spend countless hours on tends to feel more like chores and less fun and can even be borderline unhealthy. people shouldnt be criticized for being truthful and say its ok to take breaks from a specific game though its weird to see it from the company itself rather then them try to milk people for all its worth.

It's okay to take breaks yes. But when the question being asked is related to lack of content and the answer is take a break... That is not a very good answer from my point of view.

[Jandor]

Someone hasn't been on Reddit or Twitter today, then.

Nope, that's why I asked you to let me know

a shame the housing bug happened in what is otherwise a banger of a .1 patch.

Yeah, patch seems pretty good to me to be honest, housing bug aside (although, damn... that is one hell of a bug.)

[Atelier-Bagur]

Nope, that's why I asked you to let me know



Yeah, patch seems pretty good to me to be honest, housing bug aside (although, damn... that is one hell of a bug.)

I mean people also seem to forget that we have yet to receieve the entirety of the 6.1 patch content.