How come CBU3 does not have a Side-Developer Team?

[Kaliesto]

and what I mean by that a group that works and releases content while waiting for major patches?

They can do like -

Side Quest Dungeons

Side Quest Stories that the main team does not have time for (there was a lot of cut content or unrealized ideas that didn't make it during each major expansion, and especially during Stormblood).

Build more PVP zones or new PVP Modes

Misc. Stuff
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I think its clear to me the main team is on this one train they cannot get out of concerning the MSQ and their other tasks, and I know people been complaining about 4-5 month window releases.

They really need a side-team.

Least from my observation over the years.

[Hallarem]

Its all speculation for now, aside from possible leaks or translations about their situation. MY NEXT TAKES ARE SPECULATION TOO, but:

Western dev hiring which would probably benefit them greatly (hot take, but true) buuuut, apparently they are struggling from lack of new hires locally and they do this cute japanese thing of promoting everyone who is competent into managerial roles where they oversee stuff instead of getting mainly down to the nitty gritty.
That and depending on how traditional japanese SE is, and hearing multiple sources saying that foreigners dont want to be anywhere neaaaaar japanese companies while they live there due to the rigid and traditional, sometimes inefficient and backbreaking company culture. And you'd have to know how to program and speak japanese, AND be qualified.

THAT and they are in Yoshi P's words "attacking with us with several projects" so its very much a Square Enix wide umbrella now instead of him focusing on just FFXIV. Fantasia (the whatever game that came out) mobile game and I'm guessing.. a few others? Perhaps a whole new remake, prolly 9 (Wooooo...).

So on top of lack of hiring, I think they are stretched thin too. But again, all speculation, but at the same time with the rushed nature of Endwalker and the oddball that is Dawntrail (so far), the proof is slowly starting to be there. Oh and the hats, lets not forget the hats. Never forget the hats and keep reminding them that a bunch of modders apparently can outwork them. And clipping and perfecting is hardly an excuse when their own gear currently clips with a lot of races or is just a travesty like some armor on femhrot.

[Jeeqbit]

It depends how you think of it.

They do develop the next expansion alongside patch content. The bulk of that work begins after the .3 patch, but before that they are figuring out the story, developing a story board, etc. In that sense, it would seem they probably have to split their team up. Although if you observe the mobs in each dungeon carefully, you will notice they often knock two heads with one stone - the mobs in the latest expert dungeon are often later seen in the expansion, sometimes even as important NPCs or bosses or open world mobs.

They do split their developers into teams that handle specific things as well. Obviously concept art, UI, programming, story design, level design, QA, etc.

Now if they created an entirely separate team (in the sense of, we have CBU3, so a CBU4 could work on it?), there is the potential for inefficiency with people having to be on the individual teams like concept art, level design, and so on, that would repeat jobs that could be done by CBU3 without much hassle.

They do actually outsource to a lot of companies and you can see this in the credits (part of the reason for covid delays was waiting for texture delivery and stuff like that, because the companies they paid were not working). So they could just outsource side development teams.

[Daralii]

THAT and they are in Yoshi P's words "attacking with us with several projects" so its very much a Square Enix wide umbrella now instead of him focusing on just FFXIV. Fantasia (the whatever game that came out) mobile game and I'm guessing.. a few others? Perhaps a whole new remake, prolly 9 (Wooooo...).

I think the 9 remake was being done by a different creative studio and got scrapped, but most of what I've read about that keeps contradicting itself.

[Kaliesto]

FF9 Remake is a bit of mystery, I know there was like this Family Friendly FF9 Animation that was in the works but that silently dropped I think.

[Exmo]

I'm most cases with corporate software development, you can't just throw more developers into a project and get a better product faster. There's a sweet spot in team sizes and project division that typically favors smaller numbers. Plus game development is an especially taxing domain.

My rough understanding of Japanese software development is that teams silo hard and cross-team interaction is very rigid and internally regulated. So adding a whole other mini studio internally to work on stuff on the side on the same project could end up being counter-productive. (I'm speculating a lot about how they organize internally here.)

[Kuroka]

The problem is you cant just add devs to one thing and expect it being faster, kitchen and too many cooks etc etc... yes. BUT having a separate side team that does the 2nd ex dungeon, bonus trials like Hildy (with maybe 1 senior watching em) and side stuff or PVP maps etc would help surely - even the "braindead" adaptation of gear could be made by random devs as well.

You cant have too many cooks do one dish, but you can can have many cooks cook many dishes.

[Exmo]

The problem is you cant just add devs to one thing and expect it being faster, kitchen and too many cooks etc etc... yes. BUT having a separate side team that does the 2nd ex dungeon, bonus trials like Hildy (with maybe 1 senior watching em) and side stuff or PVP maps etc would help surely - even the "braindead" adaptation of gear could be made by random devs as well.

You cant have too many cooks do one dish, but you can can have many cooks cook many dishes.

Agreed. I'm not saying the existing team can't expand, just that it's not a clean cut and straight forward matter. For example, creating a small team that works on tasks outside the main loop is reasonable, but their progress likely requires additional management, more cross-team meetings, super clear documentation and super early design choices, etc. And either that mini team has to be furnished with it's own environmental artists and coders (and a UI designer, and a character artist, and a visual effects artist, and a character and objects modeler, and an audio designer and engineer, and whoever else) or they'll constantly need to siphon these resources away from the main team, causing slowdown for the "main" content.

Giving them the task of de-spaghettifing some code, or doing some other internal maintenance that will help in the long run, that's likely more easily doable. (I imagine this was how we got trust dungeons added retrospectively to ARR and onwards during EW development cycle.) But anything that results in what most players consider "content" requires input from across multiple disciplines, which is not easy to create or manage.

[TaleraRistain]

More than likely they do have different teams working on different things all for the patch. Yoshi-P mentioned somewhere recently that I recall reading that he was going to start doing his checks in February for the 7.2 content. That's means they have to have their pieces done and ready for review and modification by that point. Which means this secondary team would have even less time and Yoshi-P would have even less time for review. And the main team would also have to worry about how the alternate team's code is going to interact with the code they're working on. This is why software teams have release windows. At my work, we can hotfix something if there's a bug or there's a small change a customer wants that we have done in the past. But new features and major bug fixes are always on a release schedule and we've fully tested them as much as we can before releasing to production.

[Jeeqbit]

I recall reading that he was going to start doing his checks in February for the 7.2 content.

He also said they are currently working on 7.3 and they have a good idea of what they are doing after that and even in 8.0.

It works the same for SE as at your work. They are putting 7.2 through a few months of testing.