Letter From the Producer LVII (Information on Hunts)Follow

There is a difference between being "physically impossible" and making a conscious choice to delay a feature. That's really the only issue I had with what you were saying and the conclusion you're trying to draw here. It's not that we disagree(though we may), it's that you've linked two things together which don't really have any relation.


This is kinda another reason this doesn't line up for me. They're monitoring wards. They're monitoring the economy. If you were to ask Yoshida how many players are currently subscribed to XIV, it probably wouldn't take him long to find out. If you were to ask how much gil the average player in XIV has, again; it's an answer you could expect in a relatively short period of time. If they want to maintain server structure stability, they can do that(as they did by implementing the steep cost with FC housing). You shouldn't even have to ask them how much of their population is interested in personal housing. It's been in the works long enough at this point that they could accommodate everyone with an active account for no gil cost at all.

We can speculate all day about their reasons for holding it back, but the logistical side of that equation could have been solved now for quite some time. I'm not saying that the game is dying, but the numbers have been tapering off for quite a while now and Yoshida has admitted that. The fact that they're monitoring all of these things so closely and for so long makes physical probability even less of an excuse.

That's part of the reason I never understood why they didn't just skip FC housing altogether in favor of personal. It's easier to make an estimate on how many players will want their own personal housing. As I said above, they have access to the number of players logging in regularly as well as access to how much gil these players have on average. Assume that every player will want personal housing, look at the average amount of gil players have now and are earning over a period of time(we've had almost a year now) and then set a price on housing that allows the target number(based on expected server strain) of players to access it immediately as others strive to earn enough to secure their own.

It was a mistake to short-change the server budget the first time. Probably could have been avoided with better planning of beta testing, open beta and the time frame they left themselves prior to launch, but that's easily forgiven. Eventually if you keep repeating the same mistakes though...

But at what point do you say "Ok, we expected x amount of players but we've exceeded that by y amount. We should probably explain to our customers that we were unprepared, apologize and then do our best to correct the issue"? Keep in mind, we're still talking about a game that had spent the prior 3 years trying to bring the game up to an acceptable level. Not certain what Wada's exact quote was, but it was something along the lines of 'saving the game to restore faith in the franchise'.

When you go from a game no one cares about to setting records for concurrent logins, SE corporate would have no problem lengthening the leash. You're basically telling me that you believe Yoshi couldn't go to corporate and ask for a larger budget touting the same records he was so happy to share with us to get that freedom. I just can't buy it man. I don't think SE is that stupid.

I wish I could share your confidence in that statement. However, there has been a litany of mistakes across the board in their decision making throughout their history.

Not to mention, even if this is possible that they have the budget, FFXI ran on fairly minimal requirements across the board. The matter of having advance server structure could very well be a new concept for the company at large. So stupid may be to strong of a word verses simply inexperienced. Remember, at peak, we've quadrupled FFXI's stable population.

I'm a fan of Square Enix, this much is as clear as day to anyone. They have more loyalty out of me than I've given to any other gaming company. But I don't put it past them to dunce on this one, or have some out-lining circumstance we don't know about that's tying their hands in some way. (Maybe the push for FFXV and KH3 has them strained on redistributing manpower within the company and they're already taxing their outsourcing budget.) Either way, I just strikes me that they haven't stepped up in some manner. The development cycle really does seem rushed and strained.

Edited, Jul 10th 2014 6:34pm by Hyrist

We're just talking about expanding something that's already in place. I'm sure there is more to it than just plugging a cable into a server and plugging that into the wall, but we're talking about something relatively small scale in comparison to those potential 2 million plus registrants. It's not like they couldn't first implement it as a test. Where are the test servers for XIV anyway?

Hey guys, we're delaying housing but we want to make absolutely sure everything is running smoothly. We're opening new plot servers for testing of features. We encourage everyone to participate so we can work out as many problems as possible before the final implementation. All those who participate will receive a [insert nifty furniture piece here]. Thank you for your time and cooperation and we look forward to seeing how you like personal housing. Yadda yadda...

Why not?

I'll definitely agree they need some tuning on top of pop options, as I said in another thread, but even as popularity wanes some once the new content rush subsides, I'd say it feeds into my since-launch belief the game really needed meaningful open world content. As an aside, even if SE does tweak stuff, I don't think they should call things a day in that respect, either. Right now, the process is basically a plan B toward dungeon gear (which are still subject to primary tome weekly caps). Crafting, FATEs, and a true 50 zone or two are still some things that need love, too.

That would be really cool, a dedicated zone where you needed to be at least ilvl 90 to not die, andand another where you needed a party of four ilvl 90 to simply get through the zone.