Time, Budget, Manpower, and Scope

[plasmacutter]

Let's not pretend the talent pool is too thin given the collective layoffs in the tech sector, gaming included, have accumulated to 60% of headcount.

[Valence]

Have they tried looking beyond Japanese people who only speak Japanese...?

The idea that Japan, one of the world leading countries in the game industry, doesn't have talents but the rest of the world has is a running gag to me. Kinda patronizing though.

[Turtledeluxe]

Do we need a new game? Of course, beyond the obvious infrastructure limitations, I'm afraid they just don't have the proper mindset for meaningful experimentation...

It's kinda symptomatic that FF 16 has some lingering "design philosophy" issues from this game too, despite being a brand new structure.

To clarify, to remedy the issues with efficacy i.e no maintenance, quicker updates, etc which the OP highlighted in their post, yes I am assuming what is holding them back is the way things were designed on day 1. On top of that as new elements are chained in over time, it may make it even more complex to do what seems like a simple task i.e expanding the housing item limit. It depends on how they wrote that to begin with. A whole new game with a new engine would be ideal, if this current architecture is so problematic, which it must be given all the downtime.

But two or more things can be true at once. They also may need new management, new workers, etc in an environment where the pool is too thin. Granted this is another situation for which they are partially responsible. Expecting all team members to intimately know Japanese for example is unrealistic in this day and age imho.

Another element I have not yet mentioned but could be a factor is that their standard is simply wrong. There could be an obsession with credentials holding them back i.e. missing out on the next Ishikawa or something This is especially possible given budgets are likely tight and SE has higher risk aversion than normal I assume. But if it as Yoshi P says and many beloved devs like Ishikawa are being promoted and have less time to create (his words not mine) risk could be quite necessary.

After all credentials gave us DT...

[Hallarem]

Have they tried looking beyond Japanese people who only speak Japanese...?

They can't. Because they demand you understand japanese and speak it. Which makes sense as its a JP company, but at the same time they COULD outsource some tasks to another team, pay them and see what happens. To fix specific issues. They are reaching the point of nothing to lose.

[Moqi]

They can't. Because they demand you understand japanese and speak it. Which makes sense as its a JP company, but at the same time they COULD outsource some tasks to another team, pay them and see what happens. To fix specific issues. They are reaching the point of nothing to lose.

They won't*. If they wanna act like a small indie company with no international audience, appeal or resources, that's on them.

[Kahnha]

TBH Idk why they spent extra resources on the Oceanian server people there complaining about not being able to que for mandatory content like CT. Dynamis is in the same situation it takes longer to get into content so end up going to primal or crystal. Even the graphics update that was basically just 2x sizing the textures could have put those resources into making more housing wards, or improving the environment for the DCs.

maybe even spending into improving the game engine itself that would clear so much of the issues on how the game feels but eh we'll see :3

[Halivel]

TBH Idk why they spent extra resources on the Oceanian server people there complaining about not being able to que for mandatory content like CT. Dynamis is in the same situation it takes longer to get into content so end up going to primal or crystal. Even the graphics update that was basically just 2x sizing the textures could have put those resources into making more housing wards, or improving the environment for the DCs.

maybe even spending into improving the game engine itself that would clear so much of the issues on how the game feels but eh we'll see :3

They spent resources on OCE DC because people asked for one for almost a decade. The issue with any new servers, however, is that people are always reluctant to mover over, as majority of them have established FCs and connections where they currently are. Which shouldn't be as much of an issue with FF14, that has server travel infrastructure, but people still cling to the servers they're on.

They spent resources on Dynamis because people, surprise-surprise, were asking for it, as other DCs are overpopulated. Same issue happens however, because no one actually wants to move over. As result, with both OCE and Dynamis, it will take a relatively significant amount of time to fill them with players, either new or old.

They spent resources on graphic update because... oh yes, people asked for it to happen, for years.

Now that all that is done, people are suddenly "you should have spent those resources elsewhere".

Point of the day is, I guess, is that there's no win, and people will be never happy regardless of what devs do.

[plasmacutter]

They spent resources on OCE DC because people asked for one for almost a decade. The issue with any new servers, however, is that people are always reluctant to mover over, as majority of them have established FCs and connections where they currently are. Which shouldn't be as much of an issue with FF14, that has server travel infrastructure, but people still cling to the servers they're on.

They spent resources on Dynamis because people, surprise-surprise, were asking for it, as other DCs are overpopulated. Same issue happens however, because no one actually wants to move over. As result, with both OCE and Dynamis, it will take a relatively significant amount of time to fill them with players, either new or old.

They spent resources on graphic update because... oh yes, people asked for it to happen, for years.

Now that all that is done, people are suddenly "you should have spent those resources elsewhere".

Point of the day is, I guess, is that there's no win, and people will be never happy regardless of what devs do.

Every region should have unified party finder.

This is not hard to do, I'll explain how:

1 - people queue up
2 - the system makes a match
3 - the system determines the datacenter where the majority are located
4 - the system spends 45-60 seconds transferring people to a "staging" server in the correct datacenter
5 - the system loads them into dungeon.

This greatly reduces overall stress on congested datacenters and load balances stress with more agility.
It could actually save them hardware costs, because right now a LOT of people just camp on Aether while Party Finder empties on primal, and especially crystal and dynamis.

[Halivel]

Every region should have unified party finder.

This is not hard to do, I'll explain how:

1 - people queue up
2 - the system makes a match
3 - the system determines the datacenter where the majority are located
4 - the system spends 45-60 seconds transferring people to a "staging" server in the correct datacenter
5 - the system loads them into dungeon.

This greatly reduces overall stress on congested datacenters and load balances stress with more agility.
It could actually save them hardware costs, because right now a LOT of people just camp on Aether while Party Finder empties on primal, and especially crystal and dynamis.

This I agree with, they should do something like that.

I can understand the reluctance to make cross-region queues for "ping and culture" reasons, but in-region ones should be totally fine. And OCE should be probably queued with JP, as that's where the majority of their players seemed to be prior to DC creation.

[Absurdity]

Even the graphics update that was basically just 2x sizing the textures could have put those resources into making more housing wards, or improving the environment for the DCs.

The graphics update did quite a bit more besides the obvious texture upgrades, unfortunately it's something most people won't even notice.
Hands and feet models were updated to no longer be square blocks.

All head meshes were completely remade with a uniform texture layout, roughly 50% more polygons and about 50 extra bones for better facial animations.
For example the new faces actually have tongues that can be animated while the old faces just had a static mesh rigged to the lower jaw, they just haven't really made much use of them so far.