Quote Originally Posted by Stormpeaks View Post
Yes, the bare minimum is done by the devs of this game. If you think otherwise, I dont know what to tell you.

From balance, to housing, to islands, everything is the bare minimum.
On one hand, he has a point, you know? Like, yeah some stuff ARE done with the absolute bare minimum such as race design (a lot of Hrothgar and Viera work is achieved through blatant cutting corners), job design (there are ways to translate Blue Mage into the game, it doesn't need to limit itself to the Learn mechanic as it isn't inherently its defining traits; using enemy skills is) and other features. Often those things are excused away with what's very clearly corporate bullsh**.

But a lot of it has its own justification, and unfortunately, corporate bull is something that permeates markets nowadays. You're bound to see it, and the fact that the game is still enjoyable, functional and the devs still care about player experience despite the rise in corporate bull is interesting. Half the time we wouldn't even have X feature had the fans not asked for it, and while it's not always done successfuly, they do at least try. Hrothgar was a race they wanted to implement, but Viera were asked for by fans. Yoshida admitted that Reaper was done with Western players in mind who kept asking for a scythe job. Blue Mage itself might not be the best thing in the universe for a lot of fans, but it's still there because the team heard people wanted something, went out of their way to do it through the vision they themselves interpreted of it.

Job Balance is its own can of worms, and a full revamp is in order. But it cannot happen mid-expansion, it's almost never how they've approached it. Housing has its issues, but the latest connundrum was technical rather than its design necessarily; it works as intended otherwise... the issue is that "what's intended" = "a system where someone will always lose", which isn't desirable. Housing's been reworked at least three times by now, and this raffle system is what we kept asking for years. As for the island, it looks and feels quite bare, yes, but given the amount of technicality inside it, it's normal for it to be bare. It's not a system they're wanting to focus on, it's just a side project. One that, hopefuly, they'll expand upon in the future. It's in its early stages, as was a lot of stuff in the game.

Quote Originally Posted by Atelier-Bagur View Post
Meanwhile the rest of the world who doesn't speak Japanese nor English wish for other games companies to do the same for them when it comes to live communication, yet where are the cries from the general public to cater for them?

Face it, your biased as heck.
On the other hand, "others have it worse" doesn't excuse issues this one company has. If the bar is so low, then OF COURSE other companies will be that bad. Keep in mind that the standard in the gaming industry at the moment is crunching. Just because "it's the standard" doesn't mean it's a good thing that we need to shut up and accept.

And lately, corporate bull has been running rampant in the game. And there needs to be as close to a balance as it's realistically possible; a true balance will never be achieved, the corporation always comes first, but there are ways to mitigate the impact. And unfortunately that's not what we're seeing. A lot in the game is being approached with a laissez-faire attitude, and it's quite noticeable. Especially when before they could provide content with better-assured quality. We've cut out so many things to accomodate and patch times are now a few months longer. And what we got were earless Hrothgar/Hrothgar ears with a weird texture around them, verifiable glitches that shouldn't get past QA, and underwhelming job balance. Something is up. As much as we might want to love the devs, we cannot deny something is off.