FFXIV plans out their patches for the expansions, is the WoW team lacking in this area? Maybe they have the general idea, but not a strong enough structure.
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The often cited full on parallel production of years of content that the hardcore copium huffers still cite always irks me. As somone that has alot of experience in project work and knows that "we work on it years in advance" actually means someone brainstormed it 2 years ago and noted down 3 lines of ideas in a word document on the shared disk of the office. The idea, especially after SL, that Blizzard does substantial work on future patches seems utterly laughable to me. Just look at the 9.1 reveal at Blizzconline. They practically had nothing and showed up with a "my dog ate my homework" face, while showing the tiniest corner of Korthia with the 3 models they had already finished. They same can be seen with their extreme itterative approach to new system that also clearly show no one actually planned them ahead. Last week you also cited the whole story thing with Denathrius. I just don't buy it.
I mean Shadowbringers and Endwalker pretty much started rolling as soon as you met Elidibus and the Warriors of Darkness, if that doesn't explain preemptive years of planning i don't know what will
There is a certain sadness to the way WoW relegates older expansion content vs how games like FFXIV (RuneScape to a lesser extent though it doesn’t have expansions) do it. I got into WoW late, around MoP, And I never once throughout the entire leveling process felt like I was actually experiencing any of the expansions that had defined the genre and that I was so excited to play. They were completely rushed and kneecapped experiences with just the loading screen art changing occasionally. It was really underwhelming and didn’t stick with me. Logged out during WoD in my garrison and felt no attachment to ever come back. No investment, because I hadn’t actually played World of Warcraft, just some weird abridged version whereas I got into FFXIV right at 2.0, and no matter when you get into it, you’ll have roughly the same experience as me start to finish. That’s a good thing.
I thought Covid happened in 2019 and hasn't been going on since MoP.
What does waterfall mean? Project management sounds super interesting and the longer I'm in the creative field the more I appreciate it
Blizzard has been all over the place for awhile now. So when covid hit they had no plan in place. When it comes to final fantasy 14 they knew what direction they wanted to go so when covid hit them they could adjust much faster and still manage to get out their expansion.
seems like they continue to fall on their own sword of bad decisions in game design while NOT listening to the player base, again and again, even with ripcord pulling without a CLEAR apology for being WRONG, and upcoming legion content and dumbass decision for mage tower for 2 weeks?!
Wow had a Budget for patches?. dont look like it
Difference between FFXIV and WoW is the foundation. FFXIV's foundation is rock effing solid right now. Pretty much every feature they have works well enough. Sure some features are left behind (squadrons, companions, chocobo racing) while others need some love (PvP) to jumpstart back into action. But what is there just works. Even the features that recieive less attention, they just work regardless! And Squenix can afford themselves to ignore older features in favor of developping newer ones (like Ishgard restoration and Island sanctuary).
Meanwhile Blizzard is smashing new parts on to their house while half of it is sinking in the sand. Sure they have solid features as well (raiding, M+ and PvP) but at the cost of 80% of the game. And while they yell "No, no!! Ignore that, look, at the new flashy bathroom we've added!!" plank crashes next of them to the ground
Bullet point narratives. They have an idea of what they want, but no concept of how best to get there… then they change and adjust things as the player base responds. They've been doing that for some time… they demonize player feedback, but are overly sensitive to criticism at the same time.
I felt that very strongly in BFA when they realized that the player base as a whole wasn't very excited at the prospect of the Horde and Alliance war, especially off the backs of us banding together in Legion. I always stated that it felt as if the cutscenes for BFA were disorganized and we were seeing events happen out of order because they last minute pivoted to focus on Old Gods and Naga.
I think they had planned to only hint towards that being the next "big" thing, but decided to make it a main feature last second… but they couldn't abandon Sylvanas entirely because they had made it such a big focus… I also feel like that is why she feels so disjointed in Shadowlands now… they heard everyone criticize that Sylvanas felt… off… and decided to go with redemption instead of the "Garrosh 2.0" that everyone informed them that she was.
seeing as how WoW is stagnant and stuck in 2008, Roblox is yearssssssss ahead of wow.
Years ahead? Yoshida leap frogged WoW using a jet pack fueled with Antimatter.
It’s funny how you ask why blizzard seemed to be hit by COVID so much harder than square after discussing what is clearly the largest reason ffxiv could handle Covid and WoW couldn’t. Yoshi P is damn good at his job and his team went into Covid with the roadmap for shadowbringers patches pretty much laid out for them. Because they had everything planned already they could spend their time mostly developing, and because so much of ffxiv’s content is modular, they could make cuts in ways that weren’t noticeable. For example, shadowbringers is the only expansion in 14 to not add hard mode dungeons, they delayed a planned ultimate to after endwalker, they only put out 1 pvp glam set when every prior expansion put out at least 2. Bozja was built off of mostly preexisting assets and systems and seams to have had a possible final chapter cut.
Of course it’s also important to consider that blizzard has lost a lot of senior staff due to the ongoing controversy and the effects that probably had on various levels of development would be equally as massive.
Final Fantasy is built upon a solid foundation, and has a passionate Lead Designer who plays games, and understands games must be fun.
Blizzard smashes its foundation of sand every expansion, and tries to rebuild taking up the majority of its development time. They don't play their own game, period. Uberus personified.
It's ironic that it took 1.0 for Square to realise they needed to change. Whereas Blizzard have done the same in reverse, had a great game and with each expansion become ever closer to 1.0
Money is not the issue when it comes to creative projects like this. It's all to do with leadership and proper team managment, which many companies lack in general. This is how you get insane amounts of money being poured into nothing. If Yoshi-p has convinced me of anything throughout his interviews, it's that he is incredibly good at managing his team and keeping themon track.
Their patch cycle has been extremely consistent over the years and if anything happens they let the players know. They also get released with minimal problems and don't require free work from the players on the PTR to fix mistakes they should have seen coming.
Now WOW does have snappier "balance" changes but honestly that doesn't seem to matter that much anymore either.
9:28 – I dunno dude, just ask any of the upper management for that I'm sure they can hook you up with any of their existing kit in the ladies toilets 😛
The overall direction of FFXIV's story has been quite clear since the plan of the Ascians has been set since at least ARR. Mainly I'm talking about The Rejoining, which has been a term that has only been explained in ShB even though the Ascians have been using it since the beginning.
why the freak is endwalker so damn far away?
Yoshi-P and team probably has 7.0 mapped out by now. He came out and said 6-9 months ago that 6.1 onward is for the new story arc.
WoW patches may be bigger but take the same time as 2 FF patches. So, they are actually pretty much the same in cadence but FF adds a bigger variety of content.
The FFXIV team and the WoW team aren't even in the same century
FF14 had their 5.3 Patch heavily delayed by the COVID situation. By heavily delayed I mean 2.5 months after which they resumed their normal content schedule (excluding the 5.55 Ultimate release as Ultimates needed heavy in-person testing)
I mean, WoW is basically designed as a mobile game. Pump out content to fit into limited time events to capitalize on Engagement and FOMO with no real need to worry about how they will impact the game in the longer term.
Quality wise it's no contest.
Quantity wise, I have no idea where the notion a FINAL FANTASY XIV patch has less content than a WOW patch came from, because it's 200% wrong.
FINAL FANTASY XIV has LOADS more content.
Story Content is Content.
Doman Reconstruction is content.
New Triple Triad Cards is content.
2 different than last year seasonal events each patch is content.
Gold Saucer is content.
Mahjong is content.
Blue Mage is content.
HILDIBRAND is content.
Solo Duties are content.
Housing decoration is content.
Crafting is content.
Beast Tribe Quests are content.
Relic Grinds are content.
Custom deliveries are content.
Ocean Fishing is content.
Doman refugee quests is content.
As much as EXTREMES, Alliance Raids, Dungeons, Savages, and Ultimates are content.
And the magic thing is that ALL these content are not deletable content.
They are there forever, VALID forever.
They are ADDITIONAL.
Unlike WOW's.
The difference in the quantity of content is HUGE.
In quality it's light years though.
All Shadowlands has told me as a player who thought about trying wow.
Is that WoW cannot listen/understand its community.
And that they cannot react fast enough to meet demand anymore.
Cause it's looking like unless there has been a major issue. The days of going 3 + months with no content for on going games is done.
Every live service game seems too be learning this lesson. Players just won't spend their money on six months of no content unless you have an expansion coming or something horrible has happened behind the scenes and are openly talking about it.
That second one is dependent on situations though.
Is FFXIV years ahead of wow?
Nah just WoW is years behind.
I mean, blizzard is in California, which along with New York had the strictest Covid guidelines. But that doesn't justify what's been going on.
Blizzard not doing well with covid when the rest of the world is dealing with the same problems.. its no excuse they showed poor leadership and support for its staff
We have the GODDESS of storytelling, Natsuko Ishikawa on full-time at square now through Endwalker. I have full faith the story is in great hands for a while to come.
FF let me actually enjoy my time doing ANYTHING.
I seriously enjoyed just fishing yesterday. Just chilling and catching some fish.
Day before I was raiding.
Next time I play I think I’m going to gather all day and stock up for crafting.
Also, the community mood is good. Interaction between people in good moods makes your day better.
Wow was born and grew in the cesspool of anger and rage.
Wow has a path that is the only path. FF is full of paths to everywhere with whatever job you want that day.
In everything but graphics.
FF seems to be planning the expansion, WoW just seems to be planning for the next financial quarter declaration
I think the final episode of Battlestar Galactica was great, but the entire rest of the last season really showed that neither the Cylons or the writers ever had any plan for how to end it. You can't even blame the writer's strike on that. If Ronald D Moore was half the showrunner that Ira Steven Behr was, he'd have had all the major story beats planned ahead of time.
I still wanna know if 7.0 would have launched on 7/23/23, because that would have meant they had it planned 7 years in advance. Those gobbies be wilin.
Square-Enix seems so much more professional than Blizzard. Just look at experiencing the story and lore for the first time as a new player. In FF14 it's all strung together in a coherent, logical, linear saga. In WoW it's a broken, haphazard, disorganized clusterf–k, full of weird time skips as well as pieces of important lore that are straight up missing.
Admittedly Chromie Time does help with the disorganized lore somewhat, but you don't experience the old endgame properly in WoW like you do in FF14.
The more you think about the problems about WoW the more you realize that it just boils down to the work environment they have. I mean, how can you focus down, fix, and develop your game when all those sexual harassment shit is happening around, or worse, TO you.
It's pretty simple really. FFXIV knows what it is. It can make things within its own rule set which it already knows players will enjoy. More of the awesome story, more tie ins to the established lore, more amazing boss fights with interesting mechanics which are also familiar to players in some ways, improvements or slight changes to jobs which don't take away the original feel (unless it's a rework) of the job, amazing (and we know it will be amazing because of the track record) new music, fun new glamour for us to collect, etc. It's the same formula that works and has worked. Players know to be excited for the new expansion, because the chances of it being something terrible that they weren't expecting, or being let down at all are so low that they aren't even worth considering really.
That would be a yes.
Years? FFXIV is pissing out of a galactic star ship’s air lock on to the primordial soup that is WoW.
main thing why i feel SE wasn't hit as hard is given how the Japanese culture is with health and such. i mean they always have worn masks when they are sick. here you have to twist someone's arm to or make it a law
Yes
when it comes to planning and patches, FFXIV devs said they plan more than an expansion ahead and have so since HW's success. I love that for them because we get a lot of nuance in story that is rippled over time instead of forcibly dropped on us each patch. Also, talking to WoW friends, it's crazy that WoW is just now in patch 9.1.5 and FFXIV, in that same timespan has had patch 5.2 up to this patch 6.0 expansion launch.
Planning and being able to form a whole schedule, years in advance, gives everyone time to understand what they're getting into and I appreciate it
You know your story is flying by the seat of your pants when Kingdom Hearts has more planning than you.