JP: Yoshi P should step down, FF14 is a sinking ship, in response to interview

[SongOfTheWind]

I entirely agree, though I think Square Enix has more of a say on the greenlight he gives than he does himself despite him being in that position. The franchise is owned by Square Enix and I'm more inclined to believe that the ones up there are the ones holding him by the collar, and if what he wishes to do goes against what they want to frontier, then he'll ultimately have to do as they say and not the other way around. The situation is similar but not precisely mirrored to Chris Metzen and his relationship with Blizzard Entertainment as it currently stands, hence my willingness to adhere to some level of restriction Yoshi P may have. I don't have all the facts, so I'm approaching it like so.

We can play this game of shifting responsibility up or down all we want, but I see no evidence it is needed or justified personally.
The only thing I believe might have been forced on the team from above is the whole graphical update. It is so ridiculous in its core idea and implementation that just screams “make shareholders happy” kind of bs to me. But even that is just pure speculation on my side.

[Zaniel]

We can play this game of shifting responsibility up or down all we want, but I see no evidence it is needed or justified personally.
The only thing I believe might have been forced on the team from above is the whole graphical update. It is so ridiculous in its core idea and implementation that just screams “make shareholders happy” kind of bs to me. But even that is just pure speculation on my side.

Yup, this is the same nonsense that people gave to excuse Blizzard's wreckage in managing WoW. Like somehow Bobby Kotick came down personally to write the script for Shadowlands to deliberate make it terrible.

Execs are worried about two things, release date and money. There is no shadowy executive who appears in the writing team's room and says "Look guys you should make the story complete ass and preferably nothing should make sense and be as boring as possible". This is entirely on the people who make the game.

[Catwho]

It hasn't faded from my memory that the president at Square Enix also tried to jump on the whatever-verse Zuckerberg was also putting stock into, so the lack of touch with reality makes me think it's Square Enix and whatever influence they can have over all of their products rather than jumping straight to the people they put in charge of overseeing certain projects.

Haha yeah, forgot the current president of SE is a total tech-bro believer. And that's why he was all gung ho about NFTs for a while there.

[Syln]

You know, even though i like to meme about him, i still have that nostalgic feeling when i see his face and overall have a positive opinion about Mr Naoki Yoshida.

That being said, the last 3 years showed me that i shouldn't trust in his judgement anymore, he is obviously overworked, overseeing too many project and ff14 has been suffering from this for years now.

Do I think he should step down though ? No and not because I hope he'll go back and focus on ff14 once again, it's probably not going to happen, but because this industry is filled with mediocre, spineless and clueless "professional" that are absolutely terrible at making long term business decision.

Obviously some peoples at Squeenix have a similar opinion seeing how they are stretching thin that man on different projects, i mean you wouldn't overworked one of your most valuable asset if you had decent alternative would you ? That would be very short sighted from them .... "just remembered they sold a few valuable western IP for almost nothing and reinvest the money in NFT"... ho ... hmm ...

[Archeron]

He isn't directing anything. This is the same man who delayed Endwalker over the final lines of dialogue in Ultima Thule, who is somehow satisfied with how Dawntrail came out.

Did he even read the script? Did he even play the story before it came out? Did he think we'd enjoy having Wuk Lamat shoved down our throat for the entirety of the MSQ? It seems to me like he's just absent from the development of XIV at this point, and the out of touch, laughable interviews he's been having only serves to highlight this. If he's overworked with 3 games at once, he needs to learn to say "No". When you put your name on your work, your reputation is on the line. I'd rather focus on one high quality product then push out 3 low quality cash grabs personally.

[CuteBucket]

Contrary to what many have said, Natsuko Ishikawa and Banri Oda were involved in Dawntrail and were not resigned to another game, in fact, they were promoted to the leaders of the entire writing team and had the final say in the story.

The more I look into this, the stranger it gets. Let's look at the writing credits for the previous expansions.

The writers credited for both A Realm Reborn and Heavensward are
Main Scenario Writer - Kazutoyo Maehiro
World Lore Creator - Banri Oda

Both Daichi Hiroi and Natsuko Ishikawa are credited in ARR and HW under "Game Content Designers" (which I take to mean people who wrote the side content stories and characters.) Oda has always been the worldbuilding/lore guy from the start. I don't know how much impact he had on the individual characters and the story beats for those two stories. Maybe some? Maybe not? I don't know. Maehiro was shifted after Heavensward to work on FFXVI and he is credited there as "Creative Director & Original Screenplay, though he still appeared in the "Special Thanks" section of the credits for most of the subsequent expansions.

Stormblood
Main Scenario Writers - Natsuko Ishikawa, Banri Oda
Lead Quest Designers - Toshiaki Suzuki, Banri Oda
This is the first time we see Oda in a Main Scenario writer role, and now we have Ishikawa joining the MSQ team. Hiroi is present under "Quest Designers" along with the first appearance of Tomohiro Kawasaki.

Shadowbringers
Main Scenario Writers - Banri Oda, Natsuko Ishikawa (don't know why their names were switched around in the source I'm looking up the credits for, but I don't think it matters)
Lead Quest Designer - Takashi Kudo
Hiroi and Kawasaki are also in the Quest Designers section, now with Megumi Onozuka in the credits there too.

Endwalker has
Lead Story Designers - Natsuko Ishikawa, Banri Oda
Lead Quest System Designer - Toshiaki Suzuki
Lead Quest Designer - Takashi Kudo
Hiroi, Kawasaki, and Onozuka are in Quest Designers once again.

And now we come to Dawntrail with
Lead Story Designer - Daichi Hiroi
Senior Story Designers - Natsuko Ishikawa, Banri Oda
Main Scenario Writers - Tomohiro Kawasaki, Megumi Onozuka
Lead Quest System Designers - Takeshi Tomioka, Toshiaki Suzuki
Lead Quest Designer - Takashi Kudo

"Senior Story Designer" is a new role that hasn't be used in all the past expansions. So...what does that role/position entail? What does it actually mean? We don't really know. They could very well be working on another project and also still overseeing some stuff in Dawntrail.

[CuteBucket]

Once again this just begs the question of why was Dawntrail's story so bad? Hiroi has been around since ARR, just like Ishikawa. I haven't liked everything he's done, but I quite liked some of it, and it had much more dark and complex themes than we got in DT. I haven't been a huge fan of Kawasaki's quests, but they were a stark contrast to the themes of DT, and Onozuka also wrote perfectly fine side content that didn't treat us all like idiots.

It's why I almost have to believe there is something else going on here than just "writers bad." That is a possible answer, but why this bad for all to see only now? I don't know what happened here. I've seen lots of people in other threads point to a boogeyman like Sweet Baby Inc, but they are not credited in the game at all, so I don't think it's them. Consulting firms are pretty normal in the industry anyway. But something strange happened here, that's for sure. This was a noticeable drop in story quality, and I don't understand why. It feels like it must be something outside of the writers that influenced the story in this way.

[sindriiisgaming]

Once again this just begs the question of why was Dawntrail's story so bad? Hiroi has been around since ARR, just like Ishikawa. I haven't liked everything he's done, but I quite liked some of it, and it had much more dark and complex themes than we got in DT. I haven't been a huge fan of Kawasaki's quests, but they were a stark contrast to the themes of DT, and Onozuka also wrote perfectly fine side content that didn't treat us all like idiots.

It's why I almost have to believe there is something else going on here than just "writers bad." That is a possible answer, but why this bad for all to see only now? I don't know what happened here. I've seen lots of people in other threads point to a boogeyman like Sweet Baby Inc, but they are not credited in the game at all, so I don't think it's them. Consulting firms are pretty normal in the industry anyway. But something strange happened here, that's for sure. This was a noticeable drop in story quality, and I don't understand why. It feels like it must be something outside of the writers that influenced the story in this way.

They had a vision for poochi that they thought ppl would like. They tried to tell an interesting character but they didn't put any real effort in. I'd say they were just tone deaf to how bad she'd be received. Even now yoshi thinks it's her lack iof confidence that's putting people off her, but it's her annoying personality and voice actor