Subscription should be to improve FF, not just make other games.

[NaoSen]

If the live letter was given without context you'd swear it was a two person studio's first game that took on too ambitious a project.

The mention of cost being why Forked Tower didn't get a normal mode, all the apologies for things that should have been caught in QA made me feel that not only is FF low priority to SE, it's literally leeching off FOMO and player good will, seeing how far they can get, how little they can spend.

I don't pay my sub so that the majority of it can be used to fund other projects.
SE would earn way more money if they could actually keep people subscribed by actually spending money on their game.

I'd near quit FF a few times in the past, never has SE made it so easy to just walk away.

[Johners]

Square Enix aren't exactly unique in using some of the profits from an MMO (or live service games in general) to fund other parts of their business. Blizzard have done this with World of Warcraft. Activision with Call of Duty. EA with FIFA (and sports games in general). You can absolutely strike the right balance in keeping their forever games healthy while also providing different experiences under the same banner. I personally believe that Square Enix largely do this right anyway. There are questionable design decisions with parts of patch 7.2 but equally they've provided a ton of great content. Not to mention the QoL updates, graphics overhaul included, have made the game feel much fresher. The communication sucks though, they really need to improve this.

[Jeeqbit]

Cost meant "development cost", not "financial cost". Which is another way of saying Yoshi-P didn't put it in the development roadmap and that it was a management/decision issue. Obviously SE has plenty of funds, they are even hiring.

[Kranel_San]

Cost meant "development cost", not "financial cost". Which is another way of saying Yoshi-P didn't put it in the development roadmap and that it was a management/decision issue. Obviously SE has plenty of funds, they are even hiring.

And development cost is based on? Regardless of how much you try to come up with an excuse, all things boil down to Financial cost. The resource used to fund manpower, maintain and develop infrastructure, and construct plans based on its availability.

[PercibelTheren]

Cost meant "development cost", not "financial cost". Which is another way of saying Yoshi-P didn't put it in the development roadmap and that it was a management/decision issue. Obviously SE has plenty of funds, they are even hiring.

Well, then they should be because the FFXIV team is constantly complaining about lack of manpower. Unless that's just an excuse.

[0blivion]

i love seeing people like OP who apparently have never played an FF game other than FFXIV
it's SO goofy

[Mawlzy]

i love seeing people like OP who apparently have never played an FF game other than FFXIV
it's SO goofy

Explain "goofy" plz. It's likely common for the influx of players during the COVID spike.

I suspect this may have something to do with the drop in sub count, incidentally. Like all the excitement about this "Prishe" isn't going to resonate with players who are not FF fans, who simply see an AR that has no apparent thematic link to the rest of the story.

I guess the positive take for SE is that this may create a fairly stable floor for the player count when the non-FF fans leave, but it's a bit of a gamble IMO.

[ZenoDiogenes]

If the live letter was given without context you'd swear it was a two person studio's first game that took on too ambitious a project.

The mention of cost being why Forked Tower didn't get a normal mode, all the apologies for things that should have been caught in QA made me feel that not only is FF low priority to SE, it's literally leeching off FOMO and player good will, seeing how far they can get, how little they can spend.

I don't pay my sub so that the majority of it can be used to fund other projects.
SE would earn way more money if they could actually keep people subscribed by actually spending money on their game.

I'd near quit FF a few times in the past, never has SE made it so easy to just walk away.

I mean at least bundle all other games on a "Game Pass" that comes with the subscription, if you reallocate money to other projects.
Basically everyone who plays xiv and buys other SE games pays double.

[NaoSen]

Cost meant "development cost", not "financial cost". Which is another way of saying Yoshi-P didn't put it in the development roadmap and that it was a management/decision issue. Obviously SE has plenty of funds, they are even hiring.

Everything boils down to money at the end, lets assume they are operating at 90% capacity to just keep the game at this current pace, that means that they have not been allocated enough resources (Developers, Artists, Designers etc...) to give the game what it needs. I hope that their hiring frees up resources to remain on FFXIV not to replace ones that are leaving, that is what we'll only know long term.

i love seeing people like OP who apparently have never played an FF game other than FFXIV
it's SO goofy

This is actually my first FF game, I'm curious as to what the tell is and goofy about it ?

I mean at least bundle all other games on a "Game Pass" that comes with the subscription, if you reallocate money to other projects.
Basically everyone who plays xiv and buys other SE games pays double.

I mean the quality of output at the moment basically rivals (at best) games with no sub and have a store, cash store, standard sub, large playerbase, what we get does not justify the revenue.

[0blivion]

This is actually my first FF game, I'm curious as to what the tell is and goofy about it ?

Nobody who has played more than one FF would refer to FFXIV as "FF" because that's misleading - SE does use FFXIV money to improve FF... Just not FFXIV. That's why we can get Tactics Remaster (a CBU3 game), FFVIIR (not CBU3 but eats a fuckton of the budget), assorted FF-related mobage (one is FFVII and I think they killed most of the rest).

So yeah, what you want is SE reinvesting FFXIV sub money into FFXIV - and I agree with that! But it's my pet peeve when people think FF is a shorthand for FFXIV in this context x)

e/: The reason why SE can't find developers is that their process involves crazy code debt and bad legacy systems - no fresh blood will deal with this.