Quote Originally Posted by HyperiusUltima View Post
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.