Why does everything take so long?

[TonyMontana]

This is me doing a side project between work and school. Aside from setting up the lamp server, I put in less than two hours to making an auction house. I have the database and queries done, services halfway there and user interface barely started

Bravo to you, someone like me has no idea how long stuff like this takes and I just accept that it "takes a lot of time" you are proving it doesnt. SE needs to get their act together. SE hire some people like this guy and lets get a game going that is fun!

[Suirieko]

This is me doing a side project between work and school. Aside from setting up the lamp server, I put in less than two hours to making an auction house. I have the database and queries done, services halfway there and user interface barely started

That's bull. All it's been so far is only the database shell, Keep in mind there's multiple servers, so you're going to have to make one for each server, then on top of that the UI, the player interaction with it, and programming each and every single item into the AH, not to mention dealing with how some items stack with 99 or 999 and so on, then there's organizing the items into each category.

Then you have to perform the internal QA and stress testing before you could put it out to public. Anyone, and I mean anyone that has even a smallest experience with software development, let alone IT field would know that you just can't make these things in 5 hours, let alone a day, hell let alone a week.

Which brings up one thing:

Although I can't prove it to you, it took me 5 hours to set up this server, which included assembling the hardware, installing LAMP, accounts, services, etc.

So you say it took you 5 hours to setup one server. Great. There's 18 server. 18 * 5, so that's 90 hours of work just the hardware alone. Say you'll copy and paste the database and all the whole nine yard of software development into each of the 18 'AH servers' for FFXIV. Great, then you have to make sure that it is working perfectly fine and operational, and I do mean perfectly fine. If there's one glitch, you have to go back and fix it, and test it again. it's a vicious cycle.

Then bare in mind that this is just ONE project of the whole FFXIV project to work on. There's still Airships, there's still chocobo, there's still content, and more quests, and more classes, the list just goes on, and on, and on.

And you have to consider this: You already got the Market ward, which is functioning just as well as an Auction House functions, so you have to ask yourself, and the team this: is it even worth doing the auction house, when you already got something that does the same job already in place, only that it needs to be more optimized? I mean sure, the whole thing sucked at one point, but now it actually works and it is actually functional that people can actually use it efficiently. There's still problem with it. IE: it crashes and resets, and we don't want that obviously so there's work in that, so put that against a WHOLE new, nearly redundant feature, which is going to further delay other, higher priority project.

Ok thats fine BUT if SE CAN do a functioning AH in 1 week WHY THE HELL DONT WE HAVE IT YET??!!

Because it's not even possible, and even if it is, it's completely redundant and a waste of time to focus when anyone can agree that SE have more important and pressing matters to work on.

* * *

Now keep in mind that this is coming from someone who is studying on Information Technology and Computer Science, including programming.

[Phrozen]

They're redesigning the game, that won't be done quickly. They already stated they won't introduce content till they get the foundation fixed. Increase sizes = better display of detail which is basically adding in groundwork for the future, as they again mentioned. It takes longer to redesign a game than it does to create one initially.

They aren't investigating how to implement jump/an AH, they're investigating if it's even worthwhile to implement. The Market Ward search is the same basic search system AHs uses.

Since you feel you can come up with an AH schematics in less than a day, create the outline, create the code, setup a server and give us access to a virtual one so we can play with it to see how a "day's work" pan out.

Go.

anything else you would like to add?

[Jennestia]

anything else you would like to add?

About? I already seen he posted his outline, which is all it is, there's no actual functionality to it yet so I can't actually play with the emulation.

[Corrderio]

^ This

10char

[TonyMontana]

It's been 6 months since the game was released, and ~3 months since the new developer lead has come in, and the game's development still moving at a snail's pace.

Monster redesigns involved increased size, when most complaints were that they had boring designs.

Combat effect redesigns involved, again, increased size of the effects, when most complaints were that the effects were boring and too similar to one another.

The devs are still investigating how to implement jump/AH, and their effects. Really? You can come up with a workable database schema for an AH in less than a day, and the queries and services to add or remove entries in less than an hour. Why is this taking so long?

There have been NO new levequests introduced, and the side quests that were introduced are extremely basic, light on lore, and few in number. Is anyone even writing lore for this game?

Devs still investigating map collision for getting hung up on ledges?

Market Ward search is still elementary and not flexible. Seeking items is still extremely difficult to work with.

Why does everything take so long? What's taking up all the dev's time?

100% agree.

[Neogohan1]

I blame the fact that they just had an earthquake just under a month ago. And now they've got coblyns running round due to the radiation. Relax, they need some time to repair their tools, and they're taking slightly longer cause they have to check out each market ward and find cheapest prices for their repair mats!

[Kallera]

Server load,
Transactions between players,
Verifying inventory when putting up something to sell,
Sales history,
Deleting the market zones,
Putting in npcs for ah counter,
Defect tracking,
Redefining the retainer bazaar system,
Removing all instances of market ward from the script,
Does it work with dev team's vision?
Does it provide a sense of community?
If not, can they work around it?
What about rmt?
What about ah bots?
Inflation?
Users putting it up for 1 gil and then getting ticked off?
DR measures,
is Item duping possible?,
And...what about the menders ward?

[Verecund]

This is what happens when you try to release a game on a half-developed engine.

[Jennestia]

This is what happens when you try to release a game on a half-developed engine.

Crystal Tools wasn't half developed as FFXIII had so little flaws compared to XIV -- XIV in itself wasn't finished.