Final Fantasy XIV is a game where the accountant is in the room.

[Red-thunder]

If Dragon Age: Veilguard is a game where HR is in the room...

then Final Fantasy XIV is a game where the accountant is in the room.

EVERY single game mechanic in this game is made in a way where you can obviously see the effects of cost optimization.

Take for instance: why are (high-end) raids so stale and why do they reuse the same patterns over and over again? People think the answer is because they want players to pick up the mechanics instantly. Sure. That's what Yoshi P tells you, which is half-true.

What they neglected to tell you is that a big reason they did this is that it makes the raids easier to balance and debug. Do you remember when there are bugs after bugs at the start of EW, like the housing lottery bugs, the login queue bug, and the TOP bugs? That's because they transferred a lot of their in-house QA elsewhere, and it allows CBU3 to slash production costs for FF14.

Another reason is that doing so allows them to use pre-existing code and animations, thereby allowing them to get away with only having two or three raid content designers, compared to WoW having far more.

Why is deep dungeon just the same concept with a new coat of paint every generation? HoH was barely changed from PotD. EO was barely changed from PotD. Once again, because it's far cheaper to do so.

Why is field content full of FATEs? Once again it's for the same reason.

Innovation is costly, and CBU3 intends to recycle the same ideas again and again until the end of this game's shelf life if they can get away with it.

A huge part of this is also because they cannot afford to hire more programmers. Many SE titles lean into their competitive advantage, which is visuals and graphics. Because they can afford to hire a lot of artists and writers, since there's a ton of them looking for jobs in Japan. Programmers? Much harder. Those would much rather emigrate and work in Silicon Valley. This is clearly reflected in FF14, where for too long we have dungeons that are spectacle over substance. Even in FF16, dungeons are still glorified corridors with next to no substance, especially when you compare it to dungeons from Western action RPGs like GoW: Ragnarok, where they fill dungeons with puzzles and nonlinearity.

This doesn't just affect gameplay content. It also affects job design. They have stated that simpler, homogenized jobs allow them to cut time spent on QA and balancing. And yet we still have results like Pictomancer dominating the caster role anyways, because they are not maintaining the same amount of time spent on QA and balancing, thereby increasing the quality of such balancing. They're just using it as a way to reduce the time spent on balancing to cut costs, so the balancing today in EW and DT is just as atrocious as the balancing in HW.



It's really ironic that the issues that delivered 1.0 are the same issues that plague this game today. It's probably not even out of malice, however. Square Enix is a struggling company and they have an extremely hard time finding talent. Therefore, they literally are incapable of making FF14 better than what it is right now. They have to cut costs from FF14 because of their disaster after disaster (in terms of sales): Forspoken, Marvel's Avengers, FF16, Babylon's Fall... At the same time they also cannot find any programming talent that can actually code up all the innovative content that is lacking in this game. So the only thing left to do is to rely on the writers and artists, hoping the spectacle and story can hide the lack of substance in this game. But even the story is now falling...

If you are hoping that they will divert resources back to FF14 or that they'll come up with better, diversified jobs, or come up with amazing improved combat encounters with brand new mechanics... Don't. Square Enix is not in a financial position to deliver any of that for the foreseeable future.

[Jeeqbit]

There is a problem somewhere in their team structure or decision-making, at least. Every time that Yoshi-P says something is "impossible" or "too hard", it's extremely suspicious.

Why is it suspicious? Because the whole point of a programmer is to make things that are impossible, possible. Making a 3D world with clouds and grass and flowers was impossible in the 1990s, yet programmers made it possible by thinking outside the box.

Now they come and say it's impossible, even when other games are doing it. There is a clear problem with that. It is the job of programmers and developers to make things possible. Every time they say it's not possible, I can think of a way to do it myself regardless of how much spaghetti code they have and regardless of the potential infrastructure challenges they have. Yoshi-P is being fed excuses by his team.

Do you remember when there are bugs after bugs at the start of EW, like the housing lottery bugs, the login queue bug, and the TOP bugs?

The bugs then coincided with the Covid lockdown in Japan so... it's been a lot better recently, like it used to be before EW. At the time we had lots of other bugs happen which was not normal, and it seemed pretty obvious why.

But also, those are not good examples:

• Ultimates are probably too hard for their QA team. The best they can do is use godmode.
• The housing issues did not become apparent until released to a very large set of players ie. more than their QA team of just 100 people.
• The login issues are also an example of something that isn't an issue except when lots of people are trying to login ie. more than their 100 QA.

Why is deep dungeon just the same concept with a new coat of paint every generation?

Tbh because people asked for a new deep dungeon. If they asked for a different content entirely it would be different. I think they noticed the problem with EO being the same and they said the one in Dawntrail will have differences.

They have stated that simpler, homogenized jobs allow them to cut time spent on QA and balancing.

I haven't seen them state that - it's just extremely obvious that this is the case, that's all.

[ryouma17]

as much as i hate blizzard i will admit that they understand that in order to make game you gotta throw money at it

FF14 could be the best MMO ever if square would just unclench their cheeks and throw more money at the game, if they spent more money to make the game good more people would sub which will make them more money i guess square has never heard the phrase "you gotta spend money to make money"

stop taking our subs and spending it on games like forspoken that no one wants

also dont take away our lead in order to make other games, FF14 suffered massively because yoshi p was off making FF16 which wasnt even that good

[Exmo]

I'll be honest I didn't read much of this bait but this part was hilarious.

Do you remember when there are bugs after bugs at the start of EW, like the housing lottery bugs, the login queue bug, and the TOP bugs?

Person thinks "bugs after bugs after bugs" means three bugs

[Red-thunder]

There is a problem somewhere in their team structure or decision-making, at least. Every time that Yoshi-P says something is "impossible" or "too hard", it's extremely suspicious.

Why is it suspicious? Because the whole point of a programmer is to make things that are impossible, possible. Making a 3D world with clouds and grass and flowers was impossible in the 1990s, yet programmers made it possible by thinking outside the box.

Now they come and say it's impossible, even when other games are doing it. There is a clear problem with that. It is the job of programmers and developers to make things possible. Every time they say it's not possible, I can think of a way to do it myself regardless of how much spaghetti code they have and regardless of the potential infrastructure challenges they have. Yoshi-P is being fed excuses by his team.

I mean the whole "this is impossible" spiel is clear nonsense with how often they have implemented things that they said was impossible years ago. Sometimes the excuses they give are obviously ridiculous to anyone with a modicum of production code experience. But I really have to wonder whether it's Yoshi P or his team gaslighting him so they can get away with working less.

With all the excuses they give about how their employees need to take a break now and then and their jokes about how they have to tell people not to work too much and to get holidays... it makes me wonder whether the team just doesn't care about meeting deliverables anymore.

Tbh because people asked for a new deep dungeon. If they asked for a different content entirely it would be different. I think they noticed the problem with EO being the same and they said the one in Dawntrail will have differences.

This is frankly a very poor excuse. In any other game or series, when people ask for new content or a new game, people expect some innovation and some differences. Not a carbon copy with two gimmicks that an intern can whip up in two hours (or maybe a day if it requires new assets, but I mean I've certainly seen no new gimmicks, like the magicites, that used new assets beyond maybe a few icons).

[Red-thunder]

as much as i hate blizzard i will admit that they understand that in order to make game you gotta throw money at it

FF14 could be the best MMO ever if square would just unclench their cheeks and throw more money at the game, if they spent more money to make the game good more people would sub which will make them more money i guess square has never heard the phrase "you gotta spend money to make money"

stop taking our subs and spending it on games like forspoken that no one wants

also dont take away our lead in order to make other games, FF14 suffered massively because yoshi p was off making FF16 which wasnt even that good

You can't expect much when this playerbase melted down over all the criticisms of them spending resources on FF16. Anyone who criticized that decision became a pariah.

It seems that their senior team has moved on to permanently working on new projects. Most of them have not returned after FF16 and are now just working on more unannounced projects.

[Absurdity]

I'll be honest I didn't read much of this bait but this part was hilarious.


Person thinks "bugs after bugs after bugs" means three bugs

Today in: person doesn't understand what examples are.


But let me add some more for you then.

· Warrior's SiO randomly healing for millions.
· Bard being unable to use any songs if another bard in the party already used them.
· A change to their netcode causing Ninja Mudras to ghost for everyone not on JP ping.
· Too many ability sounds going off at the same time just disabling all sounds until you restart the game (mostly an issue in frontlines).


TOP alone had several bugs.
·P3 aggro reset while the boss was untargetable, making it almost guaranteed to oneshot your healer.
·Hello World adding so many status effects at once that the game removed your own job and party buffs.
·A bug introduced with the release of Mount Rokkon where players in TOP would suddenly kill themselves when stepping in a tower after they had resolved looper.


Sure the thread is engagement bait but the fact that Endwalker had significantly more bugs than previous expansions remains.

[xbahax92]

Undeniably, they knew exactly what they were doing when they released the double dye system. Some gear still dyes horribly and some gear parts aren’t dyeable at all.

The system itself isn’t unwelcome, but it certainly boosts mog station sales. Needing twice the jet black or pure white dyes sure is an awful feeling. Especially with no meaningful way to obtain them ig.
And please, don’t suggest retainer venture coffers. They're just lootboxes.

So we can agree that they know how to make cash from FFXIV, but they don't know how to use it effectively.

[hydralus]

I generally agree, but I don't really know what you want anyone to do with this information aside from either keep complaining or unsub.

[Exmo]

Today in: person doesn't understand what examples are.


But let me add some more for you then.

· Warrior's SiO randomly healing for millions.
· Bard being unable to use any songs if another bard in the party already used them.
· A change to their netcode causing Ninja Mudras to ghost for everyone not on JP ping.
· Too many ability sounds going off at the same time just disabling all sounds until you restart the game (mostly an issue in frontlines).


TOP alone had several bugs.
·P3 aggro reset while the boss was untargetable, making it almost guaranteed to oneshot your healer.
·Hello World adding so many status effects at once that the game removed your own job and party buffs.
·A bug introduced with the release of Mount Rokkon where players in TOP would suddenly kill themselves when stepping in a tower after they had resolved looper.


Sure the thread is engagement bait but the fact that Endwalker had significantly more bugs than previous expansions remains.

"New software had bugs" is the fork found in kitchen of our times.