Creative Studio 3 is working on multiple projects at once.

[Jojoya]

Do you all just work on one thing at your jobs? It's like you guys have no concept of what working is like.

That honestly would depend on what someone does for a living and the size of the company. The more employees a company has, the more likely jobs will focus on one task.

I bet they totally hired more developers to take on these extra projects, right?

Or they hired more developers they put on FFXIV while moving the proven veteran employees off FFXiV to the new projects. Take your pick.

I have no idea what things are like over at SE but I suspect they're very nervous having most of their eggs in a single sturdy basket and they're trying to get more sturdy baskets made. Are you going to trust a novice weaver to make those new baskets or are you going to put them on maintaining the existing sturdy baskets while the experienced master weavers start making those new baskets?

Not that I think that's the correct approach here but that's how business tends to work - move your best people to the departments that need the most help and hope the systems they established still work with the new employees.

I could've sworn they recently talked about having some staff issues by not having as many people as they'd like

I haven't heard anything about staffing issues.

What I remember is YoshiP saying of course he'd like a bigger budget to work with for FFXIV so he could hire some more developers and work on things that have been perpetually on the back burner because they don't have enough developers to handle all the different content they want to be part of the game.

Is the development team sufficient in size for what they do add? It's very possible. Most player feedback is dislike for choices made and not for content feeling unfinished. No matter what some think, more staff does not mean better quality (unless that staff is specifically for quality control and have the power to force content to be remade).

Any "they can do multiple things at once" is negated by the.. how many years of lack of Viera and Hrot hats now? They still have a graphical update to complete too. Lack.of.polish.

That is not the same thing. The developers did not create Viera and Hrothgar to have visible headgear. That was never in their plans. They did not have staff assigned to create it or time budgeted for it.

It was a small group of players who decided that visible headgear was mandatory and to please them, related tasks have to be rushed or put on the back burner like the graphical update since those tasks are going to be using some of the same team members.

If there's a lack of polish on the graphics update, blame the Viera/Hrothgar headgear ragers that feel what they want is more important than other things that affect all players.

This is very much an occasion where I wish the developers had told the vocal minority "tough" instead of trying to squeeze accommodating them into the work scheduling.

Quick reminder that they also added ~1,5months to the patch cycle by now. Imagine if they invested that time into xiv instead.
People can cope all they want, but this low effort game is in maintenance mode.

You have no clue what maintenance mode is.

Regardless, the state of the game clearly is not bothering you since you're still subscribed to the game.

Classic Square Enix. What? There's a team that is absolutely magic together and created a game that will not only stand the test of time, but be a favorite piece of media for generations??? QUICK! DISBAND THEM AND PROMOTE THEM SO THEY NO LONGER DO THE THING THEY WERE SO GOOD AT AND INSTEAD GIVE IT TO A BUNCH OF RANDOM AMATEURS THAT HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THEY'RE DOING AND LET THEM TOTALLY MESS UP THE ENTIRE BRAND!!!

That's classic business operations. Don't try to make it out as a SE problem when it's a problem in nearly all businesses larger than mom and pop outfits.