So what exactly is driving the developers to keep going?

[Nezerius]

No one remembers when they screwed thousands of week 1 raiders off because they delayed EW for 2 weeks?

No one remembers it, because that never happened.

Savage didn't open up until a month after release, and the date at which it'd open was revealed when they announced the 2 week delay.

[Absurdity]

No one remembers it, because that never happened.

Savage didn't open up until a month after release, and the date at which it'd open was revealed when they announced the 2 week delay.

Yeah, Endwalker release is very unlikely to have screwed anyone over.
What might have done so is the decision to delay savage by a week in 6.2, iirc that information came rather late.

[Carin-Eri]

Yes, of course they are burned out, why else do you think we got Endwalker.

And those strict schedules? They have broken them all the time since Shadowbringers. You can no longer rely on the "schedule" if you want to take time off for week 1 prog. No one remembers when they screwed thousands of week 1 raiders off because they delayed EW for 2 weeks?

Exactly how is this state of affairs admirable? We're no longer in Stormblood when patch cadence was actually speedy and predictable.

Whilst I'm not one of those White Knights who'll jump at any chance of defending SE, I will say that this isn't a fair assessment.

A certain pandemic had a very significant role in delaying (if not outright stopping) just about everything for everyone at the time.

[Asari5]

they also seem to have personal influence on what project they want to work... which is a big thing in motivation

[Nezerius]

Yeah, Endwalker release is very unlikely to have screwed anyone over.
What might have done so is the decision to delay savage by a week in 6.2, iirc that information came rather late.

Info on delaying Abyssos Savage by 1 week had a similar time frame. This was revealed on the 1st of July, during the first preview of 6.2. The patch released on the 23rd of August.

[Tint]

This is Yoshi P's dream come true of living the rockstar life he never was able to because he is a video game nerd instead of a cool kid with an electric guitar.

Have you seen his outfits? The jewelry? Jetting around the world, staying on big stages with thousands of fans.

This man will keep the show running.

[Jeeqbit]

Been curious about this since I would think after 10 years of this game that the devs would get burned out eventually, and Endwalker being like the peak of what they wanted which is the end of a story arc.

It's been discussed in the backstage interviews series and Yoshi-P has talked about this a lot of times and this is how he solves it.

1. Not overworking themselves (see the increased breaks between patches of 2 extra weeks plus holidays).
2. They are not allowed to overwork themselves (Yoshi-P stamps his foot and forces them to take a break sometimes when they don't want to, so they don't burnout or feel overwhelmed).
3. Switching roles around (different people working on different types of content each patch such as different raid designers or story writers).
4. Opportunity for any of them to switch units or games that they are working on if they get burned out of this game.
5. The passion, excitement and support of the community helps drive them.

assuming their team members have been mostly the same unless they shifted devs around at times.

It's changed a lot. They slowly trained new staff over the years and slowly some of them went to work for other companies, other Square Enix departments, or FF16. The most well known to have moved to FF16 is Koji Fox!

It made me curious about something else as well, let say during Stormblood that Endwalker was actually being made aside from Shadowbringers at the time. Does his team actually plan a lot of things out way ahead of time and thus why they can meet Patch Deadlines so easily like that?

They have a rough idea of the plot 2 expansions ahead. In fact let me prove it to you.

1. In ARR patches, Doman Refugees arrive to setup Stormblood.
2. In Heavensward patches, the Warriors of Darkness arrive to setup Shadowbringers.
3. In Stormblood patches, we have a lot of Garlean activity and Alphinaud travels to Garlemald. We were told plans changed, but it seems 6.0 was originally going to be a Garlean expansion and Endwalker was going to be 7.0. We did still visit Garlemald too.
4. Arguably, we see Elidibus on the Moon many times prior to Endwalker.

But there is more. Watch this Heavensward cutscene and see how it predicts the plot of the expansions up through Endwalker, including how Zodiark is bound on the moon.

They start thinking about the next expansion after the last one. They start working on a new expansion after the .3 patch. This is obvious for many reasons, but they also casually mention it sometimes that they are about to get very busy. Shortly after the .4 patch, we then see an initial trailer. We have been shown their development system in presentations a lot of times. They start working on models something like 8 months before, where they present the idea to concept artists and then the artists give it to the people who make models and it goes from there. So just think for a moment how many months in advance every item, object or character could have been going through development for.

They usually have a patch ready months in advance. For example, when 5.0 released we were told that 5.1 was already ready! But they waited months to release it. They spend those months having Quality Assurance test it for bugs and reduce the bugs from thousands to under one hundred and we are told some of the remaining ones in the "Known Issues" section.

Because if so they know how to keep secrets.

They investigate and sue anyone that doesn't (and have done in the past). They don't put information in the patch files that gives away future patches usually, although you can usually predict a lot of story events anyway if you think about them and see what references from real life and other FF games they are using. Obviously all the trial bosses this expansion were predicted for example.

[TheDecay]

No one remembers it, because that never happened.

Savage didn't open up until a month after release, and the date at which it'd open was revealed when they announced the 2 week delay.

What a blatant lie. Raiders form statics based on the understanding that the first Savage tier releases 4 weeks after expansion launch. The sudden delay in Endwalker moved Savage deep into holiday season when many people aren't available to raid. This caused many statics to quickly need to replace members and many players needed to find new statics. I'm shocked people have the memory of a goldfish.

Not to mention - the first raid tier was a disaster in terms of stability. The moment someone disconnects, you can say goodbye to your prog night.

You should try not to write fake news like that in the future, particularly seeing as you have not even cleared Asphodelos until July, so you have zero knowledge of what occurred in week 1 of the raid tier.

[Ranaku]

Yikes, sorry I said anything.

Don't mind Titanmen, he is on his edgy alt again after screaming into the void how much he loves the game. Better than his pride month alt tho!

[Fawkes]

It made me curious about something else as well, let say during Stormblood that Endwalker was actually being made aside from Shadowbringers at the time. Does his team actually plan a lot of things out way ahead of time and thus why they can meet Patch Deadlines so easily like that?

Because if so they know how to keep secrets.

I'm pretty sure the plan for after Stormblood was always to go straight to Garlemald next, but then Yoshi-P decided on a whim to make Shadowbringers instead.

Also I think in some pre-expansion talks they mentioned what percent of the new maps were done at that time. I'm pretty sure they're always just working on the next thing and not anything further down the line.