Time, Budget, Manpower, and Scope

[ty_taurus]

Lately, there’s been more and more discussion and comments revolving around the topic of FFXIV’s development cycle, how patches went from typically being 112 days apart to 126 days leading into EW and quickly up to 133 days which is now the standard. Yoshi P has tried to open up about the challenges the team has faced with budget and the lack of talent available for expanding the team—challenges that play a large role in the glacial pace of FFXIV’s development.

I am, in part, sympathetic to issues of budget and manpower. These are issues that are generally outside of a team’s direct control and are more than likely above Yoshi P’s authority, or that of anyone on the team. And I strongly believe in the importance of healthy work-life balance for all involved. It’s neither healthy for the team, nor the long-term health of a game to overwork everyone. Having said all that, however, the reality is that the quality of the game still needs to stand on its own, and FFXIV exists in a highly competitive market. There are other live service games capable of producing fully voiced main story quests, new bosses and combat challenges, new explorable regions filled with rewards, seasonal events with also voiced stories and a variety of different activities, and more in the span of as little as 6 weeks. FFXIV may not have the resources to produce content like this, but it still needs to compete with other games that do. One question that I’d like to pose to Yoshi P if I could would be: “How do you plan on competing with those games?”

My belief is that FFXIV needs to develop a philosophy of ‘work smarter, not harder.’ This game is roughly 12 years old, yet when I look at the game’s extensive list of backlog content beyond the MSQ, I see dozens of examples of ‘one-and-done’ type content, content that has long since been abandoned, and content made to be experienced once and never again. If FFXIV is going to thrive on a slow-burn development cycle, I don’t think this is the type of content they should be investing in. Rather, this game needs incredibly strong and creative design ideas that have the power to last. This doesn’t specifically mean rewards worth grinding, but more importantly content that feels fun and exciting to play over and over—content that isn’t the same every time.

It’s not so much that the time between patches is too long but rather that the balance of downtime given vs time worth spending is off, and that needs to change or FFXIV will likely continue to decline. With the right design ideas, it’s entirely within their ability to produce a better balance with content that offers more value per hour of manpower, and may even allow the team to shave down a week or so from the development cycle if the quality of the work is strong enough. But that’s also far easier said than done. Yoshi P and the development team have a big challenge to overcome, and the question is whether or not they are up to the task. I highly doubt a few hours of creature collecting with Beastmaster for a series of one-and-done challenges in the twilight hour of DT is going to suffice.

[Larirawiel]

These "challenges" are not real challenges but self inflicted problems caused by a completely incompetent management. All problems which FF14 has are solvable with more money. If they do not have enough money then because the management threw it out of the window. Nobody wanted a game like Forspoken, which cost them over 75 millions USD. Then there are very questionable decisions, they made for FF14. Why is this game still based on DirectX 11? Microsoft discontinued this API in January 2013(!) and talked openly about it. They knew, that this API is dead and they did nothing. And you can assume, that the rest of the FF14 infrastructure is equally outdated. And now they complain, that they do not find any game developers for such an ancient sh*t? Seriously?

They will have to invest a serious amount of ressources into the game, otherwise the competition will eat them up. The technical residue is huge compared to other games.


Cheers

[Turtledeluxe]

Between Yoshi P's own statements as far as his programming history and the very long/frequent maintenance you suffer, it is a very strong indicator there was a lack of forethought/optimization when they first designed their architecture.

And no amount of money will help if its as bad as I suspect. You just need a new game.

[Kranel_San]

Between Yoshi P's own statements as far as his programming history and the very long/frequent maintenance you suffer, it is a very strong indicator there was a lack of forethought/optimization when they first designed their architecture.

And no amount of money will help if its as bad as I suspect. You just need a new game.

A new game that'd have an outdated infrastructure in about 10 years later? Whether you like it or not, WoW is a prime example of an old game based on an older engine but has skilled devs (Tech-wise) that managed to keep it in a better shape than FFXIV, even though the latter came out almost 10 years after the release of the former.

It's not a game issue. It's a dev & management issue that needs to be addressed.

[Gurgeh]

I get this, but I note in particular the "work smarter not harder". However, I really feel that it is EXACTLY this philosophy that was the one constant and central tenant of their design philosophy, and that they have practiced this a great deal, and it is what more than anything else got them into this mess in the first place.

Balance 12-16 jobs for highend?
If we jusy homogenise all those jobs into being like each other well then now we only have to balance 4-6 jobs!

Create solo mode l dungeons and ai NPCs?
Well if we just sand down every piece of variety, then we can keep the AI simple and keep reusing that code!

Devlop impressive savage fights and deliver on time?
Well if we focus our efforts on the savage, we can then just just chop bits off and throw out the normals with whatever time is left over.

Voice over MSQ?
Well if we just write a skelton story, get that scripted, and call it done, we can get the actors done asap, and we can then just pad it out with unvoiced filler scenes at the last minute, that has no plot development and ruins pacing. Bollocks like "fetch quests and here is how we farm".

Really, the only way for them out of this situation is to stop cutting corners, invest their way out of it, and realise that only more, is REALLY more.

Its great they are trying to address the challenge in the game, but I really fear for them if they are again saying, "how can we do this on the cheap?"
Because it's almost profound universal truth, a mathematical cosmological systemic inevitability, that any such approach MUST structurally systemically TEND towards simplification/reduction and homogenisation.
And now we will have everyone spoken to but no-one really really happy.

Simplification is great.
OVER simplification is all too easy a mistake to mistake, and it is always harmful, and left uncorrected always fatal to outcomes.
Simplify the solution if you can, but NEVER simplify the problem. Understand the problem more succinctly, sure, but never change-simplify the problem. Or you will only ever have achieved solving some OTHER problem. The original problem will remain, even if a new form.

[Turtledeluxe]

A new game that'd have an outdated infrastructure in about 10 years later? Whether you like it or not, WoW is a prime example of an old game based on an older engine but has skilled devs (Tech-wise) that managed to keep it in a better shape than FFXIV, even though the latter came out almost 10 years after the release of the former.

It's not a game issue. It's a dev & management issue that needs to be addressed.

How many years does it need to be before you accept that this it not happening under this game director? How much more maintenance?

All the things you are talking about that require hellish workloads are clearly not worth it to this publisher/developer.
.

Also you may be comparing apples and oranges. Wow's architecture may have been bad, but not quite as bad. And no the time difference would not matter depending on certain factors, it would be a design choice issue. Previous job listings I have seen involve for example C++ and SQL. Well those aren't new are they? It is a design choice issue most likely, combined with the lack of desire you are pointing out.

[Jeeqbit]

M dashes. Looks like an AI rewrote the post.

Why is this game still based on DirectX 11? Microsoft discontinued this API in January 2013(!) and talked openly about it. They knew, that this API is dead and they did nothing. And you can assume, that the rest of the FF14 infrastructure is equally outdated.

If you look it up, DX12 is significantly more work for developers and usually they don't need its features so a lot of games just don't bother with it. DX11 is easier to work with and causes less problems.

In general though, there are a lot of problems that there shouldn't be, especially given the number of employees they have. It doesn't make a lot of sense.

[Exmo]

2.0 was made frantically with little opportunity to plan for a 10+ year future. Everything after had to be built on that foundation. It's a game problem first and foremost. Some players are tired of hearing but it's still true.

[ty_taurus]

M dashes. Looks like an AI rewrote the post.

I'm sorry?

[Turtledeluxe]

2.0 was made frantically with little opportunity to plan for a 10+ year future. Everything after had to be built on that foundation. It's a game problem first and foremost. Some players are tired of hearing but it's still true.

Exactly. Were any of its known competitors like World of Warcraft or Guild Wars 2 made under the same conditions? I don't think so and what a coincidence that both of them outperform XIV in this way.