Final Fantasy XIV - Kiwi Free Company

[Pigeon Enthusiast]

I mean, that then begs the quesion: who else? I know Squeenix has a full time team on FF7R, and another on a Dragon Quest(?) thing and various assorted remakes they seem to be churning out. Do they have anymore studios?

there is, I gather, 5 separate "Business Units" which are basically separate studios inside SE

I would guess it'd probably be CBU1 once they wrap up the 7R trilogy - they're "traditionally" the mainline FF studio and a new mainline FF game would be what I would expect them to get once they finish up their commitment to the 7 remakes

CBU2 is the Nier/DQ/other non-FF properties studio, and they're busy with DQ XII atm - the FF15 team went here when they shut down that studio, but I doubt they're getting their hands on another mainline game

CBU3 is, well, the XIV team

and 4 and 5 do mostly mobile stuff IIRC

 

[Tanner Glass]

I mean, that then begs the quesion: who else? I know Squeenix has a full time team on FF7R, and another on a Dragon Quest(?) thing and various assorted remakes they seem to be churning out. Do they have anymore studios?

If I had to guess, it would be CBU1 depending on how far into FF7 Remake 3 they are - but I'd wager that Square isn't scared to actually figure it out before going into production on it. It was a very long time between 15 and 16.

A big tell is going to be the FF Fanfest - if anything major gets announced there. If FFXIV gets more than the usual "next expansion, two new jobs, new location, 12 new raid fights, repeat..." then it'll be a sign that CBU3 is being tasked with "fixing" FFXIV. If not, then they're doing something but I doubt it'll be FF17. They can also remaster a lot more FF Games as well.

It's also going to depend on what Square thinks FF17 should actually look like. They've been chasing the whole idea of "turn based combat is over" since FF12 (ish) but it can't have gone unnotice that turn based combat is actually insanely popular with Baldur's Gate 3 and Clair Obscur being many people's GOTY where as people do not care all that much about FF16, 15, and 13. It may turn into a thing where they need to build a team for it instead of just giving it to an existing unit and hoping for the best, kind of what happened for FFXIV Patch 2.0.

 

[Troon Whisperer]

CBU1 also has KH4 brewing in the background. CBU3 is still also working on that DQ MMO, so if they'd put that into maintenance mode they'd have a bunch of developers to move across to XIV but that'll never happen.

 

[Rion]

From a business perspective, it makes sense for them to just let it blow over. Companies that let the 16-22 era cancel-culture blow over reaped similar... not 'rewards' so much as 'nothing actually happening.'

A lot of the companies dropping people are dropping the equivalent of village idiots, in an economy where labor grossly outnumbers jobs (again). It's easy for them to replace unskilled workers, and it's generally a net-boon for them to be seen as taking an easy moral win in exchange for a few NEETs raging online about them firing personified refuse.

But the number of people who play FF14, crossed with the number who know who Kate is, crossed with the number who know she posts on Bluesky, crossed with the number who care about the assassination... is relatively slim, to the point where the company would draw more attention if it did something than if it just let it roll over. Not to mention - they'd have to find a replacement for a lead: it's not as easy to just slot a new one in.

That said, I wouldn't say this has necessarily gone unnoticed. Kate was a lead on the worst-performing expansion that hemorrhaged subscribers. Her input almost certainly brought on the US VA studio, which is directly responsible for one of the biggest complaints of the expansion (WL's awful performance). Each QA issue with silly, obvious translation mistakes and typos falls directly on her head. Even from a purely corporate perspective, this is someone I would have an eye towards shuffling into a useless position and replacing.

I think its notable that Wuk's most infamous line got a re-recording expedited and put into the game for 7.1, it was meme'd on hard enough that SE actually went back and tried to fix some of it. I've never seen the XIV team do that before so on some level they're aware. It definitely felt like they were trying to downplay this character into 7.2 and 7.3 as well, Seeing Wuk esentially pass out from hitting a wall too hard was something I didn't expect as well.

I feel like SE as a company is too proud and full of themselves to ever publicly fire any of their employees over things like this, they'd probably prefer to shuffle them elsewhere and keep it completely quiet.

 

[Übertroon]

I feel like SE as a company is too proud and full of themselves to ever publicly fire any of their employees over things like this, they'd probably prefer to shuffle them elsewhere and keep it completely quiet.

I need Kate Cwynar to be fired for promoting purging the right wing in America right before a political assassination so I can go back to english voices

 

[Frosted Snowflakes]

A little worrisome if Kate is 100% Koji's replacement in terms of role/responsibilities.

I need Kate Cwynar to be fired for promoting purging the right wing in America right before a political assassination so I can go back to english voices

Speaking of Kate Cwynar, did you know that her Bluesky account is suspended for not only disrespecting the assassination of Charlie Kirk, but encouraging people to hide evidence?


A reminder of her toxic posts before the ban.

 

[Baguette Child]

Speaking of Kate Cwynar, did you know that her Bluesky account is suspended for not only disrespecting the assassination of Charlie Kirk, but encouraging people to hide evidence?

I will laugh so hard if this ends up being what kills bluesky. Even their little libshit social media service is scared of the deranged posts they've been making about it.

 

[Rion]

I will laugh so hard if this ends up being what kills bluesky. Even their little libshit social media service is scared of the deranged posts they've been making about it.

Bluesky dying to a purity spiral from the left was inevitable. Theres already a new fork being made called Northsky, and Kate's account said she was moving there. I already thought bluesky's engagement numbers seemed pathetically small so I don't know how its going to survive fracturing further like this.

Hopefully we get to see more deranged shit from Kate on that site and she eventually gets fired for it.

 

[Tanner Glass]

I think its notable that Wuk's most infamous line got a re-recording expedited and put into the game for 7.1, it was meme'd on hard enough that SE actually went back and tried to fix some of it. I've never seen the XIV team do that before so on some level they're aware. It definitely felt like they were trying to downplay this character into 7.2 and 7.3 as well, Seeing Wuk esentially pass out from hitting a wall too hard was something I didn't expect as well.

I feel like SE as a company is too proud and full of themselves to ever publicly fire any of their employees over things like this, they'd probably prefer to shuffle them elsewhere and keep it completely quiet.

Japanese companies do "quiet firing" where literally they just stop giving an employee things to do until they get bored and quit. Not sure if it would work on an American like Kate, who would think it's the best thing to ever happen to them.

Wuk is getting downplayed hard but it's also fairly normal for the 7.0 story to get downplayed in the ramp for x.1, x.2 until the next x.0 and repeats. She's was always going to get put into the "last expansion" barn along with Hein, Ameryic, Lyse, etc.

 

[Smug Chuckler]

Yeah they made promo art for the last holiday event with Wuk and his friends in it, but in the end we got some kid from La Noscea looking for her parents.

 

[Rion]

Yeah they made promo art for the last holiday event with Wuk and his friends in it, but in the end we got some kid from La Noscea looking for her parents.

Almost every single event from dawntrail this time has had misleading artwork featuring Scions and such.
Moonfire faire's featured Estinien, Little ladies day featured Minfilia and Thancred.

 

[Not your Buddy Holly]

I think its notable that Wuk's most infamous line got a re-recording expedited and put into the game for 7.1

Funny thing is that a bunch of lines actually got fixed in 7.1, but Wuk's infamous SPHEEEEEEEEEEEENE was just perfect storm of how shit the read was and how shit the character is.

A reminder of her toxic posts before the ban.

How do you look at that and not realize she is NOT good for the game what so ever. A simple light screening would've sniffed her out as a political agitator and activist, and putting her in a position of power will not improve the game what so ever, even more so if she does help with lore like Koji did.

Yeah they made promo art for the last holiday event with Wuk and his friends in it, but in the end we got some kid from La Noscea looking for her parents.

Almost every single event from dawntrail this time has had misleading artwork featuring Scions and such.
Moonfire faire's featured Estinien, Little ladies day featured Minfilia and Thancred.

they announced in a live stream that they've rescinded the policy of not putting MSQ characters into the event art.

 

[Ditch Ridiculous]

Japanese companies do "quiet firing" where literally they just stop giving an employee things to do until they get bored and quit. Not sure if it would work on an American like Kate, who would think it's the best thing to ever happen to them.

I've read about this before, and it would actually suck for a terminally-online leftist like her. You're basically assigned to sit in an empty room, with no phone, no PC, no TV etc, not even reading material, and either given some menial task to do like shredding old documents or stuffing envelopes, or just told to wait quietly, and they'll come get you if they need you.

Imagine being that type of person, and being left alone with your thoughts for 8+ hours a day.

 

[Well Intentioned]

Seeing Wuk esentially pass out from hitting a wall too hard was something I didn't expect as well.

That whole sequence really felt like the player's involvement was shoehorned in and the scene was chopped up to hell and back, especially with the way Yoshi P was making such a big deal about it in recent interviews.

It honestly feels like that scene was meant to be Wuk doing some sort of 'noble' sacrifice (or, more likely, a Y'Shtola-tier fakeout death moment) and we were supposed to be all upset that this character we all totally loved (...retch, gag...) might be dead. Remember Haurchefant and how everyone teared up? Remember when Wuk Lamat jumped through a hole in reality and got Monty Python stomped by Speen and was totally fine? Remember how Dawntrail has no fucking internal logic or consistency?

Speaking of Kate Cwynar, did you know that her Bluesky account is suspended for not only disrespecting the assassination of Charlie Kirk, but encouraging people to hide evidence

This was posted in the Community thread, IIRC.

I'm still not seeing what was so objectionable re: the Charlie Kirk shit unless there was something from her that I missed.

Funny thing is that a bunch of lines actually got fixed in 7.1, but Wuk's infamous SPHEEEEEEEEEEEENE was just perfect storm of how shit the read was and how shit the character is.

Do you know of any off the top of your head? The only lines I recall getting fixed was Wuk Lamat naming the wrong region as the home of the giants (which IIRC, was quietly hotfixed prior to 7.1) and the 'Speen lissen to mi' line.

I keep saying this, but whatever nonsense political opinions Kate has should be icing on the cake to her getting let go. Dawntrail was just filled with so many mistakes. It's not the fact that mistakes were made -- projects of that size absolutely mean we're going to see some made -- it's that they are so fucking consistent and numerous that's the problem.

That Kate is still there, though, means she's part of the 8.0 team, as production on that has to have started by now.

 

[Not your Buddy Holly]

Do you know of any off the top of your head?

This is going back a year but few things I can remember was that Thancred's VA didn't voice him for a quite a while and had other projects so when he went back to the Thancred voice it was really rough (right around Gulool's death where it was the roughest at) and Y'shtola's VA was pregnant at the time of her recording lines for Dawntrail and was recording her lines from her home, which is why she sounded off (also was right around Gulool's death where you could hear it.)

Edit: Not Gulool's death, the fucking planning at the palace to invade the bubble.

 

[Tanner Glass]

I keep saying this, but whatever nonsense political opinions Kate has should be icing on the cake to her getting let go. Dawntrail was just filled with so many mistakes. It's not the fact that mistakes were made -- projects of that size absolutely mean we're going to see some made -- it's that they are so fucking consistent and numerous that's the problem.

To be fair to Kate (yuck) - but Dawntrail has a lot of problems above and beyond the translation/VA work. It also has inherited a lot of problems from Shadowbringers/Endwalker and while the Endwalker team clearly wanted to put a lot of effort into ending an arc, they really didn't put any effort into starting one.

Dawntrail has problems in pretty much every area of the game. Kate should certainly go, but honestly if CBU3 starts spiraling for more than the next one or two expansions - the removals should be much higher up the org chart. I'd even (if I were Square) start finding a Yoshi-P replacement in case you need one in 2-4 years.

 

[Rion]

To be fair to Kate (yuck) - but Dawntrail has a lot of problems above and beyond the translation/VA work. It also has inherited a lot of problems from Shadowbringers/Endwalker and while the Endwalker team clearly wanted to put a lot of effort into ending an arc, they really didn't put any effort into starting one.

Dawntrail has problems in pretty much every area of the game. Kate should certainly go, but honestly if CBU3 starts spiraling for more than the next one or two expansions - the removals should be much higher up the org chart. I'd even (if I were Square) start finding a Yoshi-P replacement in case you need one in 2-4 years.

I honestly wonder if the game can take another Dawntrail, the player statistics we have available aren't painting a pretty picture, and we've well exceeded the usual mid expansion player drops.
The kind of damage Dawntrail did to this game isn't the kind of damage that can be undone easily, people have already raged and are for the most part bored talking about it, most players stopped caring and stopped being invested in the game's world, and XIV relies on that a lot as its actual game content patches more often than not come up lacking.

The game's chance to save itself is now through 8.0, and so far nothing Square Enix has been doing has really bolstered any confidence, fumbling the bag so hard on Occult Crescent was a lot of player's last straw.

 

[Frosted Snowflakes]

That Kate is still there, though, means she's part of the 8.0 team, as production on that has to have started by now.

You know what else is there? Simps like ItsLucasKim, defending Kate.

 

[Tanner Glass]

The kind of damage Dawntrail did to this game isn't the kind of damage that can be undone easily, people have already raged and are for the most part bored talking about it, most players stopped caring and stopped being invested in the game's world, and XIV relies on that a lot as its actual game content patches more often than not come up lacking.

I would go so far as to not just throw it all on Dawntrail's feet either. The game has had glaring issues that people were willing to overlook for pretty much it's entire life.

Class Design has been wildly inconsistent the entire time. PLD having Flash as their AoE, MCH being ass nearly forever, the constant class changes to PLD, BRD, DRK, SCH, and pretty much every class being constantly "fucked with" is just something they've never figured out. Every patch is the patch that's going to "figure it out" and then it's just +10 POT here, +15 POT here and done deal. Class differences within roles are really small and generally come down to one or two signature abilities (like WAR's Bloodwhetting or WHM's Holy) and they basically gave up on Class Lore in Shadowbringers. Nearly every class having a 2m cooldown is very boring but also feels like it's carved in fucking stone over at Square.

Gear design and implementation are also really really bad with the main innovation being "No more Belt Slot". Relics are the worst offenders because they take so much effort and are deliberately gated to not be useful in raids - there's literally 0 reason to not have the final step do something. The gear disparity is massive from early patch to late patch for virtually no reason and all of the gating in gearing feel pointless unless you're actively raiding (and even then, the Tomestone gating feels pointless). All of this for very minor stat upgrades that math out to fractional percentage points.

Leveling is generally very boring and constantly having the classes get "fucked around with" as you level makes a lot of the experience feel very inconsistent. MSQDR still existing is insane.

Crafting and Gathering classes have no soul or identity (except FSH) and have had basically 0 innovation in 10 years. Just a fairly boring and mainly automated grind that you still need to repeat (and equip) 8 times over. Having gear tied to a single Crafting class is a colossal waste of time and effort and I have no idea why they still do it on 50%+ of the scrip gear or why they still have such a boring scrip system in the first place.

The majority of the game (and patches) are largely just "go here, talk to X, go to Y, talk to Z" and repeat for a few hours with a token fight vs a single random mob being thrown in for good measure. It all leads up to a single dungeon and/or trial that always drops the same level of gear (which is always worse then every other source of gear). While some of the writing and concepts are cool, they very often meander and waste time.

And PVP is well, PVP.

Dawntrail obviously didn't fix anything (and actively made some of it worse) but it's main crime is being bad enough to look at the game and think "has it always just been this way?". For me it did, at least.

 

[Rion]

I can agree with that, Dawntrail definitely broke the rose tinted glasses for a lot of players and made people feel how formulaic this game really is. (even if Kate screeches its not)
For me the thing that Dawntrail really made me realize is just how dull new skill additions have been to jobs since Shadowbringers.
At lv 70, Dark Knight gets its signature defensive that defines its playstyle.
At lv 80, it gets a button you press every 2 minutes for damage
At lv 90, it gets a button you can press every 60s, but it holds two charges so might as well only press it every 2 minutes for damage
At Lv 100, it got a button you can press every 2 minutes for damge

And basically every job follows this trend, doesn't really feel like they grow anymore. Feels like a majority of them cap out at Stormblood/Shadowbringers and anything added after is just pure fluff.
I'm not interested in Live letters or Fanfests because I know whats going to be in them, you can predict with nearly 100% accuracy what this game is going to do, because its done it all before and just repackages the same content in the same way. The MSQ just made people look the other way on a lot of core issues, and Dawntrail shattered the illusion. I don't think that can really be rebuilt.