Over the past decade, fans of the popular MMO Final Fantasy XIV have gotten used to a consistent patch cycle of every 3.5 months. In a recent livestream, however, Square Enix has revealed that they are now increasing this timespan to 4 months in order to add further polish and lessen the crunch time for the developers.
The game very much depended on the motivation of the developers over the past decade, and director Naoki Yoshida (aka Yoshi P) wants to focus on the health of his team and address issues where employees could feel overwhelmed with work. He acknowledged in the stream that there might have been periods where his team pushed themselves too hard, and hopes to maintain quality content by giving his team the necessary breaks and tools to succeed.
The additional two weeks will allow for one extra week of implementation and one for fine-tuning. One extra week will also be added for summer periods and the New Year’s holiday season to allow employees to focus on family or personal time.
The game has grown substantially over the years, adding quite a few additional jobs, races, and evergreen content. It was getting to the point that maintaining all of this extra content was not healthy within the same development cycle utilized over the past decade, and Yoshi P personally thanked fans for their understanding and commitment to the next ten years of Final Fantasy XIV.
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