Opinion: The Development Team should revert to Q&A for Livestreams

[HyperiusUltima]

To the OP, what are you actually expecting to get?

At minimum a modicum of response when we've been asking questions into the void with years and years of feedback when X, Y, or Z is going to get fixed. There's numerous things, but they've grown passive since Shadowbringers with Jobs, then Endwalker with content and story.

It is absolutely to give feedback properly with the right framing. Starting a topic with the title 'The Dev Team are incompetent', with the post starting with how they have messed up massively and how this isn't what they wanted, before even giving the feedback comes across very aggressive. People, for better or for worse, tend to ignore others who try to just 'bully' others to get their point across.

If this is targeted at me, I understand - but I'm mainly pointing out what they did to get to this point in the first post. The Media Tour before was meant to show what new jobs can do, along with the new job gauges they added in Stormblood. Happens every time before Fanfest. In general, it was not well-received for White Mage and when people bashed it, they shut down the information pipeline in Preliminary and left it for Full, leaving players in the dark to speculate. Giving feedback before the patch is out at tells them "Hey, you should fix this because XYZ is an issue." whether that be how DRG was still a linchpin in Ranged DPS back then, how bad MCH has it currently, or just in general how jobs feel.

This isn't bullying - it's noting the past so they can learn how they got to this point. Also, this title wasn't about the Dev Team being incompetent, hence it's an opinion. Asking for why we're giving feedback is simple: We're trying to make the game better. In this topic's case it's to try and get them to see they need to talk with us and communicate by answering our questions best they can. Sometimes, people can be passionate about something and still care - even if it sounds hostile over the internet.

Even if both forms of feedback say the same thing, you are more likely to act on the more polite feedback than the more aggressive one. That is just human nature.

Being polite can only get you so far if you aren't heard. If I recall correctly, being ignored is extremely rude - especially if we've been patient for extremely lengthy periods of time and conveyed multiple forms of feedback, both positive, negative, aggressive, and polite. That's where we are now with them suddenly throwing up a Q&A that we didn't ask for because of the backlash from recent content.

[Jeeqbit]

The fact that they're stretching out their team too far is a problem since it's usually better to have a good team stick together rather than have them spread out since they know each very well.

There are a range of factors there. They want to allow them to do other roles to avoid burnout. Sometimes this could be something as drastic as being completely reassigned to other departments like FF7R or just as simple as a different role within FF14 development or CBU3.

One thing I am sure of is that when CBU3 are specifically working on multiple projects, they still are "together" as in they can talk and oversee what eachother are doing. Some of the ones working on other projects are credited as Supervisors of FF14 or vice versa and that would be challenging if they had no contact.

What's more, they probably have very good ideas since they were the first people to work on the game.

Arguably, new people are the ones more likely to have fresh ideas. That's probably why some of the most successful TV shows cycled writers every episode, and is likely why FF14 attempted the same with Dawntrail. Occasionally there is an episode that isn't so good, but in the grand scheme of things, the varied writers allow each one to come with at least 6 months of built up ideas if not years.

I don't really like how they're advertising all this merch and what-not every livestream.

If you had a brand and people approached you wanting to use your brand to make money in exchange for a cut, wouldn't you agree to it? According to Yoshi-P, a lot of people who play FFXIV have risen through the ranks of various companies and want to use the FFXIV branding on their products. I think a good example is things like custom mouses and keyboards, or dresses. I really doubt SE went out of their way to get that sort of stuff produced. But a dress company could conceivably try to contact popular brands to create limited edition events to get loads of sales. Even crossovers like Fall Guys stemmed from them contacting SE, not the other way around.

Outside of Japan at least, the ones going round trying to do merch collabs will be the many merch and marketing hires I saw over the years on their recruitment page. But I always feel like what they are mostly doing is the collabs with regional shops in exchange for recolored mounts.

In terms of making merch on the SE store, I have to point out that FFXIV players are profiting off FFXIV handmade merch on Etsy like crazy. It's only fair for SE to make a tiny, miniscule percentage of that profit themselves from the SE store merch, which is very likely just a drop in the ocean of what players are making collectively through their own art and merch that they have no permission for.

If anything they should probably stop the merch lines and start working on improving the game itself since it's ridiculous otherwise to try and sell merch when the game is doing so badly as it is.

I don't understand this logic at all. The people handling this are not the developers. They are merch and marketing teams, mostly located oversees from Japan, in NA and EU countries. And almost certainly they outsource the creation of that merch to companies with the expertise to actually make it.

It stands to reason that if you want better development it isn't going to be hurt by it getting more revenue from sources like this.

[HyperiusUltima]

*snip*

Why's the money going to other games then? If we buy XIV Merch off their store, it should benefit XIV. However, this has been proven to NOT be the case since SE wants to use XIV to make other games when it is currently failing. This is what caused Destiny 2 to fail - cannibalizing budget from the mainline because it already was a huge success, and eventually drawing it out to the point of failure. This is how live services die.

I'd say they can continue the merch lines otherwise if that branding would actually provide the team budget for XIV, but as long as it continues to do so with other games, they can cut it off and focus on using that money for things that are more important. As for the people who make XIV merch on Etsy...that's fan-made and isn't under SE's control - an entirely different market compared to what the XIV Store provides, so I don't know why that was mentioned here.

In regards to new people having fresh ideas, they haven't panned out for now what it is the length on an expansion if we're counting post-patch Endwalker, which was where the writing began to fall off. Cycling writers is not bad, but when you have the same writing quality going through from then to now, it's bad bad. It's a surprise they haven't added anyone to the Combat Team in recent years since Jobs have been altered by the same people who are juggling 23 different jobs - and it's important they get more people to handle it so the work load isn't so heavy. It'd improve quality of life as well across the board if they can get more on that team for Combat if we're talking about injecting fresh ideas.

[Hallarem]

You don't put guys who have written nurse-dating visual novels in charge of a storybased MMO MSQ just for the sake of "cycling writers". This isn't a sitcom Jeeqbit, nor an episodic tv show.
It was a blunder to include these new writers in without proper oversight and moving a decent writer off to overseeing this, unless they specifically requested to be moved off the project.
The quality has clearly taken a downtrend, and whether it was a purposeful Japanese company duty shuffle to try and JAM people into places they have no idea about or to "learn on the job" is extremy unprofessional in any company that wants to keep a quality product going. You take ideas from interns, you dont put them in CHARGE of your whole projects throughline sellpoint. WHich is the MSQ.

I can honestly just pray that they learned their lesson with this for 8.0. I was already worried when they were talking about their own "system" where they can check their own story / lore if they forget something.
But I am a 100% sure with the blunders, worldbuilding being tossed in the can and their own lore being mishandled that over half of these new writers dont probably know what has even happened in the game so far, let alone any lore. Dawntrail seemed like an experiment, they have said as much "See what sticks" YOU DONT EXPERIMENT WITH STORY, that just tells me you didnt have a damned plan to begin with. You experiment with gameplay, which they HAVENT done, as the formula just keeps repeating and repeating. I keep saying that they think they are COCA COLA they aren't, they are a damned MMO and MMO's need to innovate and break the mold constantly in some ways. CHANGE FOR THE SAKE OF CHANGE sometimes needs to happen, they have broken over half of Yoshi-P's holy bible that he so proudly powerpointed out with his bulletpoints, what's one more rule in "change for the sake of change" gonna damage anymore.

8.0 needs to be a splash with experiments, fresh ideas, solid story and transparency in their plans. Or else this downhill will just keep going steeper until this game will be left with drones who just log in to afk in Limsa.

[Jeeqbit]

Why's the money going to other games then? If we buy XIV Merch off their store, it should benefit XIV. However, this has been proven to NOT be the case since SE wants to use XIV to make other games when it is currently failing. This is what caused Destiny 2 to fail - cannibalizing budget from the mainline because it already was a huge success, and eventually drawing it out to the point of failure. This is how live services die.

I'd say they can continue the merch lines otherwise if that branding would actually provide the team budget for XIV, but as long as it continues to do so with other games, they can cut it off and focus on using that money for things that are more important. As for the people who make XIV merch on Etsy...that's fan-made and isn't under SE's control - an entirely different market compared to what the XIV Store provides, so I don't know why that was mentioned here.

I'm not commenting on whether that money should or should not go to FFXIV. I'm just saying there's no harm in it because at worst, it has no effect on development and at best it funds it.

Another factor is that players seem to want it, otherwise they wouldn't buy it, would they? I mean, I don't buy any of it, but clearly there are players that want to buy that stuff or they wouldn't bother. So can we say that they "shouldn't" do this when there are people - possibly even who visit this forum - who have bought some of that stuff? Can we say they are wrong because they like plush or want to visit Eorzea Cafe while in Japan? I wouldn't do these things but I respect that not everyone is like me.

It's a surprise they haven't added anyone to the Combat Team in recent years since Jobs have been altered by the same people who are juggling 23 different jobs - and it's important they get more people to handle it so the work load isn't so heavy.

I tried doing the maths for that and when you consider they have 2 and a half years for those 23 different jobs, you realize that is a lot of time. Also, a lot of people praised PvP job design. I don't know if that's a different team? It might not even be.

You don't put guys who have written nurse-dating visual novels in charge of a storybased MMO MSQ just for the sake of "cycling writers".

I would have to assume they didn't see their work history the same way, because as you said there's no way you'd throw someone in charge of a very prestigious story when you're not reasonably convinced that their previous work is good.

What they think in retrospect I don't know, because there are a lot of other factors that could have affected the story in significant ways, such as initial plot being made into a storyboard and into a playscript (for the acting/scenes to base off), presentation and localization.

This isn't a sitcom Jeeqbit, nor an episodic tv show.

It's not episodic but to a certain extent that could be sort of the new approach on a patch and expansion basis when you consider Endwalker patches being a self-contained story that's been essentially forgotten already. Sure it made use of existing lore but episodic shows do that. Maybe all this was an attempt to try out making it more episodic that clearly hasn't worked out (I'm sure they are aware it hasn't).

I can honestly just pray that they learned their lesson with this for 8.0.

Hopefully. I feel like they have to have got the message on it by now if they are going to, so we'll see.

I was already worried when they were talking about their own "system" where they can check their own story / lore if they forget something.

I don't actually blame them for that because sometimes people who wrote quests or lore will simply have left the company or retired.

It's also possible they just forgot. I've done all the sidequests on release and I try to imagine talking as these characters, and it's honestly difficult to remember the voice and flow of these characters 10 years later - sometimes I have to open the quest journal and re-read the quest summaries or watch the cutscenes again. It makes sense that they'd have to do the same when revisiting a job quest NPC from 10 years ago, for example, so they can talk like a pirate or a scholar again and suit back into that character's frame of mind. I've seen actors that have to do that sort of thing when resuming roles too.

[Mawlzy]

You don't put guys who have written nurse-dating visual novels in charge of a storybased MMO MSQ just for the sake of "cycling writers".

I would have to assume they didn't see their work history the same way, because as you said there's no way you'd throw someone in charge of a very prestigious story when you're not reasonably convinced that their previous work is good.

I think the issue here is that the previous work may have been the most dazzling nurse-dating visual novel ever to find its way onto the screens of... er... people who like that sort of thing, but it's hardly the expertise one would seek out for FFXIV.

Unless they had some plans for Y'shtola that subsequently got sidelined.

[Kozh]

In terms of making merch on the SE store, I have to point out that FFXIV players are profiting off FFXIV handmade merch on Etsy like crazy. It's only fair for SE to make a tiny, miniscule percentage of that profit themselves from the SE store merch, which is very likely just a drop in the ocean of what players are making collectively through their own art and merch that they have no permission for.

Oh no... that poor indie game dev...

Man, if only their merch don't cost an arm and a leg, maybe they can profit more...


Sarcasm aside, I don't mind ff14 merch being advertised at PLL, but it's the way they handled it that irks me. The length of time they wasted to talk about merchs keep getting longer and longer. We don't need to spend that much time talking about the twins earing, do we? Just notify us about the new product, show the link to online store at the end of PLL, done.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

[...]Just notify us about the new product, show the link to online store at the end of PLL, done.

They gotta make sure there's as little window as possible to talk about the job gameplay, yanno... The lesser, the better. :P

[NanaWiloh]

Part of me wants to blame Square Enix, since I'm pretty sure all this is through the company and Yoshida's acting within the lines somewhat. The fact that they're stretching out their team too far is a problem since it's usually better to have a good team stick together rather than have them spread out since they know each very well. What's more, they probably have very good ideas since they were the first people to work on the game. Bringing in new ideas isn't anything new though, but I don't really like how they're advertising all this merch and what-not every livestream.

Heck, it almost makes the FF16 Allegations sound true in this regard when the team is stretched on so many different projects to the point XIV, their cash cow, suffers for it.

If anything they should probably stop the merch lines and start working on improving the game itself since it's ridiculous otherwise to try and sell merch when the game is doing so badly as it is.

SE has been doing the crap of pulling developers off one project and putting them else where since FF13. They don't seem too care how much the act hinders a project so long as the project the team was moved too gets done. FF15(FF13 VS) and KH3 were all victims of SE moving developers around to other projects. SE wont give Yoshi the money and man power he needs to work on 14 and develop other games without having one be hindered. In my opinion feels like SE wants their Development teams to suffer as much as possible..

[Rithy255]

I don't think they will, maybe dawntrail will be a wake up call that they need to actually listen to feedback (of course they shouldn't just listen to everything, a lot of people asked for 2 minute bursts only and look how that turnt out).

Honestly this game will likely carry down it's current path as it's what's safest, taking no risks is what they've been doing for years now even if they steadily lose players to them it's better then taking any risks for a potentially more successful game.