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

[KernCadfan]

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...

[lolnotacat]

It's a common part of the lifecycle for a lot of games. You invest heavily to get the game established, then get it into a cruise control mode where you can start cutting corners to save on development time/money.

I'm sure XIV makes a good wad of cash and has a pretty healthy playerbase, but I imagine if things don't turn around they'll slowly bleed players until they hit a trust thermocline.

https://every.to/p/breaching-the-tru...sk-in-business

[KernCadfan]

Giving that blog post a read makes me think that SE needs to course correct more swiftly than they may anticipate... and that is worrisome...

[Kohashi]

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...

For the exact same reason why hard-working people hardly ever get promoted. They bring a lot of money for the company with minimal or 0 investment which means a huge win for them.

[Carin-Eri]

For the exact same reason why hard-working people hardly ever get promoted. They bring a lot of money for the company with minimal or 0 investment which means a huge win for them.

Exactly.

In fact, It's actually worse than that.

Whilst can only 'talk' in terms of my own experience, it goes beyond "hard-working people hardly ever getting promoted" in this day and age. In my workplace it has become commonplace for a member of staff retiring/moving to another job/leaving for some reason being replaced by someone of a lower pay grade. For example, our Band 4 medical secretary retired recently. They were replaced with a Band 3 medical secretary who is, for all intents and purposes, doing the same job as the person they replaced but being paid rather a lot less for it.
And that's if they bother replacing the person who left at all. Because they'll often find a reason/excuse not to, and distribute the workload of the person who left amongst the remaining staff. It is utterly dishonest and lacks any demonstrative value whatsoever since it utterly destroys staff morale, but the numbers sure look good on paper and in the end, keeping the bean-counters happy is, sadly, always the highest priority.

And needless to say, the money saved from said employee leaving never finds it's way back into the bank account of the service itself.

[Kohashi]

Exactly.

In fact, It's actually worse than that.

Whilst can only 'talk' in terms of my own experience, it goes beyond "hard-working people hardly ever getting promoted" in this day and age. In my workplace it has become commonplace for a member of staff retiring/moving to another job/leaving for some reason being replaced by someone of a lower pay grade. For example, our Band 4 medical secretary retired recently. They were replaced with a Band 3 medical secretary who is, for all intents and purposes, doing the same job as the person they replaced but being paid rather a lot less for it.
And that's if they bother replacing the person who left at all. Because they'll often find a reason/excuse not to, and distribute the workload of the person who left amongst the remaining staff. It is utterly dishonest and lacks any demonstrative value whatsoever since it utterly destroys staff morale, but the numbers sure look good on paper and in the end, keeping the bean-counters happy is, sadly, always the highest priority.

And needless to say, the money saved from said employee leaving never finds it's way back into the bank account of the service itself.

It's a very widespread tactic to prioritize short-term gains.

You can see it in the workplace or games because ultimately companies aim for profit. They prefer to exploit momentarily gains for a short time while using people who desperately need money or fun or to evade reality (if we talk about games).

If people would stand up and not allow that to happen, the story would be vastly different but the world has no shortage of the poor, naive, and desperate.

[zztoluca]

You have to see it from the bean counters perspective.

If they can extract infinite money from XIV with out reinvesting more than they already do, why invest?
They are making money hand over fist plugging the holes of failed projects they develop and then some.

Time will tell if history is to repeat.

[ThaCa]

They got so used to success after launching Endwalker that they expected Dawntrail to be easy autopilot slam dunk of success too.

[Hallarem]

Its dreadful, but even from the depths of my ire for what the game has become. From cutting stories into toddler level shonen anime and pacing them horribly.
To repeating the same kind of gameplay, not improving their QoL.

(Even removing pillars was a rush job and can only be done in one type of layout of house. Instead of just giving us the option to remove pillars in in the other types.) Speaking of housing, the housing system to build is still toddler level, forcing people to glitch on both console and pc to get good looking houses. Or use black magic on pc.

I STILL think the true test will be 8.0. THEN if we get the same cycle of gameplay, the same story designed for anime-tweens (hell even disney is more mature at this point.)
I think its safe to say they are so high up their own rear that they cant see the sky for what it is and the game is cashing out to support stupid remakes and more.

[Roda]

They got so used to success after launching Endwalker that they expected Dawntrail to be easy autopilot slam dunk of success too.

I remember watching the WoW exodus happen with dread.

Not for fear of any influx of "outsiders", but because of how likely it was for SE to mistake WoW's catastrophic pants soiling for their own success despite the game's design already groaning under the weight of its numerous problems at the time.

We are a full expansion behind the "oh crud we need to innovate" moment.