If FFXIV is their most profitable product, why is the game so mistreated?

[Sated]

I'd like to see them introduce the long-term content sooner.
If we had either the relic weapon grind or something like island sanctuary in the x.1 patches then people who only play FFXIV will have more to do earlier in the patch cycle.

Otherwise I'm not sure how it's being mistreated?
This currently feels like a good work/life balance not just for the devs but for players as well.

[CaptainLagbeard]

Problem is that by their neglect and mistreatment they've made it so that it's no longer their most profitable product... Their mobile gachas likely make more money than XIV does.

[BabyYoda]

If throwing money at developing the game isn't a solution then why throwing money to ads is?

It is like the game doesn't like veteran and try to get new generation of players that has way less likely to follow +1000 hour story

[GinzoKazama]

Honest question, and honest thought that has been rolling around in my mind. I see it so often here on the forums, and in chats, but is FFXIV really the most profitable game SE has? If that's true, why does it have so few people working on the project? Why do we have such long content and patch cycles?

I love FFXIV (flaws aside, all MMORPG's have flaws). Nothing will ever be perfect, and I both acknowledge and even concede that is the proper way that work/life balance works. I certainly don't want the dev team to melt in their respective corners from overworking... but seriously, I must ask myself as a player why this supposed cash cow is floundering under the weight of its own struggles if it's truly as strong a contender as we, the player base, hope it is...

Are we just drinking the cool-aid? Or, is it truly the cash cow, left to be over-milked and under-fed, and we should be royally rioting at the drip feed of content?

It's a fair question, because if it's not the cash cow, I can forgive so much more reguarding the patch cycle. I can forgive so much more about the job-related nurfing and gutting, and the way content seems to be rehashed with the standard trash-pack/boss formula in instanced content. I can forgive the minor gripes I had with DT's MSQ (I mostly liked it, aside from a few little things), but I could forgive those things if this game is not the cash cow...

If it truly is the cash cow though, the thing that is indeed funding other investments and other games, then we need to truly think about what that means for FFXIV as a whole when it ends up getting so little love and attention from potential development staff...

This has been rolling around in my mind for a while... and i'm not sure what to think about it...

Short answer is that XIVs profits are subsidizing other games and if I am not mistaken quite a few of their other ventures have not done well as they had wanted, such as FF16. There's a longer answer I am sure, but that its in a nutshell. They're using XIV to prop up other poor investments.

[Hyperia]

If this was an aircraft, they are ignoring their instruments (all of us warning them) as they have been calling out stall warning, sink rate, artificial horizon (8 ball) pointing down.

They are looking through the windows at night and in the clouds, not paying attention to how bad things are getting.

The hard deck is approaching fast…

[Rueby]

If this was an aircraft, they are ignoring their instruments (all of us warning them) as they have been calling out stall warning, sink rate, artificial horizon (8 ball) pointing down.

They are looking through the windows at night and in the clouds, not paying attention to how bad things are getting.

The hard deck is approaching fast…

WOOP WOOP Terrain Terrain Pull Up Pull Up WOOP WOOP...

[Swordsman]

Shoot, I'd take the aircraft analogy even further and say that SE accidentally entered a spin and is having trouble applying any of the proper spin recovery techniques. They only have so much time to figure it out before it's too late.

[JimCasey_RF6]

Shoot, I'd take the aircraft analogy even further and say that SE accidentally entered a spin and is having trouble applying any of the proper spin recovery techniques. They only have so much time to figure it out before it's too late.

Judging from the numerous episodes of air crash investigation I've seen, it's already far too late for the devs to avoid a catastrophe if the situation is so bad that their aircraft has already entered a spin. I don't personally think the situation is quite that dire, yet, but I agree with what someone else mentioned about them ignoring their instruments. I'm sure a lot of other players are losing trust in our pilots, too.

[Swordsman]

Judging from the numerous episodes of air crash investigation I've seen, it's already far too late for the devs to avoid a catastrophe if the situation is so bad that their aircraft has already entered a spin. I don't personally think the situation is quite that dire, yet, but I agree with what someone else mentioned about them ignoring their instruments. I'm sure a lot of other players are losing trust in our pilots, too.

Depends on the plane. A small plane like a cessna 172 can easily recover from a spin with little altitude lost. Instructor students at our local academy routinely enter spins from power-off stalls and then are tasked with recovering from the spin (spin training for instructors is required by the FAA). A large passenger jet on the hand can have a very difficult time recovering from a spin because of their aerodynamics, the tendency to lose altitude a lot quicker, and instrument meteorological conditions causing the pilot to be disoriented.

[lolnotacat]

Depends on the plane. A small plane like a cessna 172 can easily recover from a spin with little altitude lost. Instructor students at our local academy routinely enter spins from power-off stalls and then are tasked with recovering from the spin (spin training for instructors is required by the FAA). A large passenger jet on the hand can have a very difficult time recovering from a spin because of their aerodynamics, the tendency to lose altitude a lot quicker, and instrument meteorological conditions causing the pilot to be disoriented.

Since we're having fun with airplane crashing analogies, I think SE is like a 737 with a bad air speed sensor. They're interpreting the data (feedback) they get wrong which caused them to pull up, lose airspeed, and stall (ShB and EW).

I imagine that it's because a lot of the feedback is going through multiple filters. Everything from the US has to be translated, well, we know who is in charge of translation and localization, and how much she'll push back on feedback she disagrees with. But everything also has to also go through the suits and bean counters. Having worked in games myself for nearly a decade, one thing I can say with certainty is the people who make decisions based solely on "X input = Y output" do not care about the longevity of the product, just making next quarter goals.