Creative Studio 3 is working on multiple projects at once.

[Dante131]

Im not sure what im supposed to be getting out of this since all side content is returning for DT with a limited job on top.

Oh yes because limited jobs are so fun. Like once in 3 years for one week

[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.

[LittleArrow]

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.

I never said it was only a SE problem and other game developers don't do this. I said it is a classic SE move that has caused them to nearly destroy many of their brands on multiple occasions, and that's even going back when Sakaguchi was running the show. Promoting up isn't the problem, moving seasoned veterans off of projects to try to oversee other projects and/or overwhelming their more successful developers as if they're some golden goose with multiple projects has historically hurt the Final Fantasy brand. Has promotion/move veteran developers created great games in the SE company? Yes. Has that also nearly killed their brand multiple times? Yes. Is it proving to be successful to do with the XIV team? So far, it does not seem to be successful, imo.

I'm not talking about other companies. I'm talking about SE. Imo, this wasn't a good move for Dawntrail. I don't know the behind the scenes, and much of what I'm basing my opinion on is honestly assumptions from this thread and other trickles of news sources / interviews from the dev team. However, that's all any of us can do b/c none of us work at SE so far as I'm aware. Based on the comments Yoshi has made, it doesn't seem like he's playing this game and that's a huge problem. I know he admitted to not playing Island Sanctuary, and I think he also said he hasn't had time to do some of the raids. Not only Yoshi, but the story quality is far below what we've been given, so I can only assume that 1. the promoted lead designers / writers are too busy and are giving a lot of creative control to more amateur employees which has led to a really uneven product compared to past expansions, or 2. they're completely involved and have enough time to invest in oversight but have done a complete 180 in terms of quality and care to the stories that have come before. Sure there's always middle ground / grey area, but this is how I see it.

[Lazariah]

"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."

A small group of players? No. That's just a blatant lie, and I am not going to argue with you about it.

But the devs were wrong to make a race without the same functions available as the rest of the races, plain and simple. If they had done ANY market research or taken in player feedback about it they would have found that the amount of people who would not want that limitation OVERWHELMING. But they didn't do their homework. It's something I've notice a lot of game companies not doing these days and it's really sad to see things blow up in their face whne it was really predictable what would happen.

[LittleArrow]

"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."

A small group of players? No. That's just a blatant lie, and I am not going to argue with you about it.

But the devs were wrong to make a race without the same functions available as the rest of the races, plain and simple. If they had done ANY market research or taken in player feedback about it they would have found that the amount of people who would not want that limitation OVERWHELMING. But they didn't do their homework. It's something I've notice a lot of game companies not doing these days and it's really sad to see things blow up in their face whne it was really predictable what would happen.

Totally agree

Let's also just ignore the fact that Yoshi heavily criticized this sort of development when he took over 1.x and saw that the Miqote, Roegadyn, and Highlanders also weren't finished with having only one gender. Let's just ignore that Yoshi himself said it wasn't acceptable to cut corners on development and the fans deserved to have a full game, but you know, whatever I guess... we just forget and don't hold good ol' Yoshi to what he's said before.

[Jojoya]

A small group of players? No. That's just a blatant lie, and I am not going to argue with you about it.

It is not a lie. It is limited to some of the players who play Viera and Hrothgar.

What was the point of pushing the developers to add a race to the game that has unique head features if all you wanted to do was turn around and hide those features under headgear?

Have a little pride in the choice you made and show those features off instead.

[Nebelheim]

It is not a lie. It is limited to some of the players who play Viera and Hrothgar.

What was the point of pushing the developers to add a race to the game that has unique head features if all you wanted to do was turn around and hide those features under headgear?

Have a little pride in the choice you made and show those features off instead.

Viera and hrothgar are a feature of a game and they shouldn't be as limited as they are considering both races are considered to be full features of the game. Why should us hrothgar and viera players go without hats and not be able to use every hairstyle that's in the game. I don't get why people come up with so much excuses of why hrothgar and viera are so limited and think they should remain limited because supposedly "only a small portion of the players play those races" So we apparently don't have pride in playing the race we choose because we want more character customization and to have as much features as the other races. I don't see having lack of features the other races have as a benefit to players or wanting more hats and hairstyles as lacking pride.

[ronibosch]

It is not a lie. It is limited to some of the players who play Viera and Hrothgar.

What was the point of pushing the developers to add a race to the game that has unique head features if all you wanted to do was turn around and hide those features under headgear?

Have a little pride in the choice you made and show those features off instead.

The developers aren't being pushed to do anything they don't want to. I don't understand this argument that makes it seem like the customers are being selfish and overbearing for wanting two prominent races to have headgear. I'm sorry, but if I'm paying a monthly fee for a game I genuinely care about, I'm going to make a ruckus about something that affects me as a Viera/Hroth player.

(By the way, Hrothgar was Yoshi P's idea. He wanted a playable beast race. It was Viera that were asked for by the playerbase.) Thanks for the correction, LittleArrow!

Also, what do you have to say for the cash shop outfits that have headgear that doesn't appear on Viera and Hrothgar? Even if you want to make excuses for the devs, wouldn't you agree that paying additional real-life money for an incomplete outfit is absolutely ridiculous? I shouldn't have to use a Fantasia to have access to headgear I paid for.

[Willemdarke]

That is not the same thing. The developers did not create Viera and Hrothgar to have visible headgear. That was never in their plans.

Entirely false.
They were never marketed as such, they did include some on release and they've released more through the years (including hoods with holes for ears).
For those playing on PC, UNPAID modders have fixed virtually all headgear to work on these races IN THEIR FREE TIME, so don't go throwing out the budged/time excuse.

FF14 has paid expansions(1), a monthly fee(2), an extensive optional items shop (3) and an incentive to pay monthly for extra storage space/retainers, due to not increasing bag/glam slots in game (4).

It's not wild to ask for bog standard features included in every game ever with equippable gear.

WoW Tauren (among others), who have elongated animal heads, horns and giant neck humps have had working headgear since 2004.

If SE wanted, they could have paid nickels and dimes to use the aforementioned modders' work, but, of course those dimes are better spend on Takashi Kiryu's next NFT fad, garbage games like Forspoken and Avengers, or more live service slop like Foamstars - that's going free to play next month.

But sure, it's only been 3 expansions SE's been cutting corners from their only steadily profitable product. Sure splitting the team more will be fine and 8.0 will FINALLY be the good one.

[LittleArrow]

(By the way, Hrothgar was Yoshi P's idea. He wanted a playable beast race. It was Viera that were asked for by the playerbase.)

To go even deeper, this isn't the case either. Back in 1.x when Yoshi took over he sent us 1.x players a survey on the races WE wanted prioritized by the dev team. Of course the first set was to complete the missing genders which he commented on being a priority for him as well. The second highest voted race was Lupine, which he commented he knew he skewed b/c he put the example of Fran - we have been asking for Vieras for over 10yrs. He's known we've wanted Viera since 1.x in the style of Fran.

ANYONE arguing that this is too much for the dev team or we're asking too much has NO idea about the history of this game or the goals YOSHI HIMSELF SET FOR HIS TEAM AND EXPECTATIONS HE SET FOR US THE PLAYERS. The other top contenders were a beastial race and third was mixed races (half elezen half hyur etc). The results of added races is completely exemplified in the first races they added; Au'ra (this was supposed to be the beast race, but the dev team admitted in a fanfest I believe that the design got neutered and it didn't meet their expectation of 'beast' race - thus Hrothgar later) and Hilda's appearance (half elezen race).