I can almost guarantee you that was not his choice, he was likely forced to write it himself or have someone write it for him.

well it's nice to hear a company feeling humble

So he was forced to retire from the position too?

the game needs a complete revamp and after watching/reading reviews its going to take more then just fixing the menu's getting from A to B is boring and empty

Does no one test things at Square Enix? 

People are forced to retire all the time. 

I'm positive he was.  Judging purely by the state of FFXIV, I'm sure almost every one of those people were the type of people that head their heads in the sand, fingers in their ears, and believed they really had a good product and it would do well up until release. 

The fact that they had the audacity to release FFXIV in the state they did shows that they didn't care about the community in any way shape or form and just assumed people would eat it up because it's Final Fantasy.  I don't know if you played XIV but it really was just all around awful in almost every way imaginable. The fact that they released it completely unfinished was just icing on the shit-cake.

That isn't to say the game had some good ideas, but it's beyond obvious they didn't take into account what any other MMO did right and wrong.  They didn't even use FFXI as a base, they completely started from scratch and FFXIV is what happens when you do that.

I know I'm ranting here now, but FFXIV just does that to me.

Just thinking of something as simple as the UI and how utterly full of fail that was.  It's like someone on the team played a game in the late 90's and thought they should do something like that. 

Their first problem was that they released the PC version 6 months before they planned to release the PS3 version.  If you do that, you should probably assume people are going to want to use the mouse and keyboard.  Instead, they make the UI nearly unusable with the mouse and keyboard. 

Next, there was the input lag.  Everything you did had insane amount of lag which made the shitty menus nearly unusable.  Add onto that the menus were a confusing mess of near endless unorganized sub menus and you all of a sudden have a shitty UI that confuses everybody.

Luckily the game did have an action bar and a macro system but those are probably two of the bigger failures!  The action bar was a confusing mess that most people just thought it didn't work because it was one of the most unintuitive things ever created.  When paired with the input lag, it's no surprise people thought it didn't work.

And then the macro.  Fuck the macro system.  It worked in FFXI because it was still, what, 2003-2004?  Actually, the real sad thing is it was actually better in FFXI.  In FFXIV you have case sensitive text commends.  Jesus, it's 2010, we can do better than case sensitive.  These are already hard enough to enter but making it case sensitive is just a massive douche-bag move and a giant slap in the face.

And it doesn't stop there with the macros!  Next, you have confusing text commands that are explained nowhere, you have to go to external sources to learn them.  After learning the text commands you then have to type spell and item names, but you better know the syntax and names perfectly!  Sometimes things have quotes, sometimes they do not.  Sometimes things are abbreviated, some times they are not.  Sometimes extra parts (like plus 1) don't work, sometimes they do.

To still add to the fail, they give you infinite lines to type your macros but they only read the first 10 lines.  It doesn't tell you that everywhere.  So you can spend an hour writing a 30 line macro but it's going to process the first 10 lines.  That means I need to spread macros out which wouldn't be a big deal except a macro can't call a macro.

So now lets assume I want to change my class, that means I need to change my equipment and action bar.  Instead of just needing a single macro press, I have to have at least 4.  I need one macro to unequip all my actions (because you have to do that manually in macros), I need another macro to set my new actions, I need a macro to unequip my current equipment, and then I need another macro to equip my new quipment.  Furthermore, it's normal to have a good 15-20 pieces of gear and several action bars which means even more macros.

Ontop of all that, the macros are buggy as all Hell.  You'd think if I had to press four macro's in succession I could press them quickly.  No, that would be too easy.  I have to press a macro, wait about 5 seconds to wait for it to finish processing, and then move onto the next macro.  If I press the next macro too quickly, it will cause problems with that macro and the previous one or just not know I pressed that macro.

The sad thing is after all that above ranting, that is merely scratching the tip of only the UI problems alone.  I could go on for pages about the problems in the game. 

I hear you man I am very disappointed too. I thought FFXIII was disappointing, but at least I could say it was a ok/good game on some level. FFXIV is horrificly bad though and Square-Enix knows this now so we're seeing changes. The case sensitive text problem is one of the most R****** things I have ever seen, the auction house fiasco is also abysmal. Don't get me started on the copy paste environments, but thats one of the lesser problems haha. I have stopped playing it. I won't pick it up till I hear players praising the game.

I think the phrase "you can't polish a turd" may well apply to FFXIV.

I'm not convinced sending in a relief team to clean up all the mistakes will save the game any more than I'm convinced that even if it were possible, that the negative PR already attached to this title from both critical and user feedback can be overlooked or forgotten.

It is a poor reflection on a major developer when they allow such an important product to go on for as long as it did in the development pipeline without anyone noticing any of the blaring missteps that were uncovered the day the game was released. Or maybe they just didn't care. Either way, you just can't expect people to pay for something like that and you definitely can't expect them to keep subscribing to it.

Yeah, the whole macro system in general I just cannot figure out.  It's a case sensitive text-based unintuitive and inconsistent limiting system. 

Who thought that was a good idea and who greenlit that?

I mean really, how did they pitch that system?  They knew people in FFXI hated it and in general it's just bad.