Quote Originally Posted by Atelier-Bagur View Post
But how though? The art director and composer isnt in charge for creating and programming the actual gameplay content for FFXIV. It wasnt Soken's fault for why Variant and Criterion dungeons lacked substantial rewards, it wasnt the art director for why Island Sanctuary wasnt better implemented at launch, it wasnt the writing team for why the relic grind is lackluster.

You are blaming the wrong people for this.
"Video game art directors play a key role in every stage of the creation of a video game, from formulating concepts to supervising production. They work with 2D and 3D artists, animators, modelers, and other artistic staff to coordinate all the visual images used in a game. Video game art directors supervise both in-house and off-site staff, handle management issues, and oversee the entire artistic production process."

So the above is just a general purview of googling art directors. Now, Coders are usually not also designers in gaming companies, they just code things into the game. So therefore, if the art director is responsible for overseeing the glam designs that rewards will have, then the coder will take those designs and turn them into objects in game, using their designs as guidance.

So that's how if he was absent maybe not enough rewards were created for variant dungeons or the rewards themselves could be lackluster because the person at the top may have just let it slide.