Dear Dev Team: Feedback from Chinese server

[Swallow193]

Hi Dev teams,

I'm one of the managers of SNDA's Chinese FFXIV official forum.
Recently we're recieving a good amount of negative feedbacks about the cancelling of levelsync in low level instances, and I felt as it might help if we can get official reply over there for CHN players, just as how you directly answer NA/EU/JPN players on lodestone forum.

Before I start, let me quickly explain why I'm doing this over here. I wish I had some other ways to request for your reply, however when I came up with the idea, the Chief forum manager (and of course also an employee of SNDA) told me to do this so...
Also, I'm better using Japanese so If necessary, I can report all these in by Japanese. Only reason I'm in English Forum is because I have my own playing community in Japanese server, and I don't want to screw it up by revealing my nationality and letting other Japanese player know about it.
And I understand that Chinese SNDA employees might have already sent you the feedbacks for further development of the system, however as I said in above, I wish if we had those quick direct reply from dev team so.

Currently on Chinese Forum, players are mainly arguing about these problems:

1. You can't get XP if the level difference exceeds 11.
An amount of new players (alongside old players that're trying to level a new class e.g. Rogue) is arguing about their main EXP source being gone from the game. Players that have newly started the game argue that leveling up is hard having the dungeon EXP gone. Besides, it’s no fun playing the early part of the game because the main PvE content of FFXIV are various dungeons, however current dungeons are just queue 1 hour + 5 min of you standing at the start line and wait till lvl50 char just solo through everything. Absolutely no challenge, no fun, and also no gain besides few gils players get from low level dungeon monsters and few gears that might not even be yours. Other than that is just continuously 6 Guildleves per day and F.A.T.E. farm, which just works negatively on player's attitude, and also breaks the purpose of having low level dungeon as the main XP source of low level players since patch 2.1.
Chinese official have announced that players may use Party Finder to make a similar-leveled PT (Which is what we currently prefer in official forum), however the problem is that most of the new players don't even know the existence of PT Finder. And besides, it breaks the original purpose of having Duty Finder as easy matchmaker.

2. Awkward situation of 15, 15, 16, 31.
This is about the situation of having the party-comp on the title. It is not going to make the raiding particular fast (especially if that lvl31 is a healer or a tank) but it is still going to take away all the exp, and all the time players have spent on queueing. Besides, it will make the raiding harder because the chance of Tank losing aggro is lot higher, and some dungeon mobs&Bosses may still heavily damage DPS players that are 11 levels above the required level.

3. Monsters not reacting to High level players.
I believe this is rather just an overlook of dev team, and more so a moral problem of players. Situation is: Dungeon monsters won't react to the players that are way above monster's level. Problem is, some lvl50s will just ignore these mobs on the way and straight run to boss rooms, slay all the bosses and quit the raid after "beating" it, not even bothering the chests that dropped. The lo-level players (particularly new players that don't rly know the game mechanism) are stuck at the entrance of dungeons, not gaining EXP nor getting any gils or dungeon drops because they cannot run/fight through the mobs by themselves.
Again, I understand this is more so a moral issue of high lvl players, but it is a problem that is taking place pretty frequently, so I think some mechanism change has to be done right there.

4. Can we have a selection so we can choose if we want to levelsync or not?
This is just another major feedback besides the players that are arguing to bring back the levelsync, suggesting to add a selection on duty finder so they don't match with over-leveled characters, or to match up with players that agree to receive the level sync, just like the Language selection on the Duty finder.

Four points above are currently the most discussed/argued issues on Chinese forum.
I believe that good amounts of high-level players are enjoying this change, however those who enjoys won't bother wasting their time coming to forum and talk about it, and... you know, we can't just keep on telling complainers that "we are collecting feedbacks so please wait for further information"...
Again, I understand that dev team might have already received official feedback from SNDA, however I wish I can receive a quick direct message from dev team and share it with the players on Chinese form, just as you do on Lodestone Forum.
My main duty on Chinese forum is to translate various Japanese/English information into Chinese, so if you are willing to reply, you can just reply it in JPN/ENG and I'll translate it by myself and post it on CHN forum.

Sincerely

[Cutie_McSnuggles]

I hope level sync is never removed from our servers.

[Ooshima]

Why did they remove level sync for low level dungeons oh dear

[Swallow193]

There are pros tho.
For example, have you ever felt sick when you tried to farm Sastasha for lv15 unique gear for Glammering? Or even sick of Brayflox for those three sets of gears?
And you still recieve daily roulette reward so it is efficient if you only run one dungeon per day.
Also, it just purely speeds you up once you reach to level 40.

However currently the cons are too huge that we see more argument rather than supporting on official forum so...

[Cutie_McSnuggles]

Personally I'm not a fan of any of the 'pros'. If you don't want to run a dungeon the real way, then why are you running it at all?

Don't take that to mean I don't like speed runs though. I LOVE speed runs. But there is a HUGE difference between speed running and face rolling. (By the way, that also means tighten up ilevel sync!)

[Ooshima]

There are pros tho.
For example, have you ever felt sick when you tried to farm Sastasha for lv15 unique gear for Glammering? Or even sick of Brayflox for those three sets of gears?
And you still recieve daily roulette reward so it is efficient if you only run one dungeon per day.
Also, it just purely speeds you up once you reach to level 40.

However currently the cons are too huge that we see more argument rather than supporting on official forum so...

That's true, but I suspect it might be because the Chinese are charged in play time basis instead of a monthly subscription.

Out side the Chinese market, everyone is complaining dungeons are too easy, where those dungeons not under the Expert Roulette listing are all level-synced down to IL110 to prevent players from steamrolling it.

An exact opposite of what SE did for the Chinese market.

[Swallow193]

That's true, but I suspect it might be because the Chinese are charged in play time basis instead of a monthly subscription.

Ahh, about that, we recently changed into a selectable way of either Time Basis or Monthly Subscription as a result of user feedbacks.
If you play over 148hrs, then it will be cheaper with monthly subscription, and most of the players are doing monthly subscription currently =D

I don't rly know that many details, however I think the market price and charge price is mainly decided by CHN SNDA, not by SE.
Although I gotta say even I felt it was rude when my chiefs decided to publish this game as time basis MMO......

But yes the system change or game mechanism change is decided by SE.
I believe Mr.Yoshida had his own idea when he decided to do this, and I believe they understand more about MMO management than me a forum management member,
so let me keep my personal comment for this system :3

[Ooshima]

Ahh, about that, we recently changed into a selectable way of either Time Basis or Monthly Subscription as a result of user feedbacks.
If you play over 148hrs, then it will be cheaper with monthly subscription, and most of the players are doing monthly subscription currently =D

I don't rly know that many details, however I think the market price and charge price is mainly decided by CHN SNDA, not by SE.
Although I gotta say even I felt it was rude when my chiefs decided to publish this game as time basis MMO......

It is, and probably a root cause of all the problems you have raised.

Because it started as a time basis subscription it makes a lot of people feel compelled to rush. Because every minute wasted is money wasted, and you get a lot of bad attitudes flying around. People probably wouldn't even chat/interact because every minute of chit chat feels like being charged as well.

I know it sounds funny because over here I am paying a monthly subscription regardless I play 1hr a day or 10hrs a day. But at the very least we felt less compelled to rush things, and since we've already paid that monthly subscription, a lot of us doesn't mind to just long in and have a chat or help out with others rather than always on the rush.

Changing to full monthly subscription and the same level sync enforcement as us would probably be beneficial to your side as well.

[Swallow193]

It is, and probably a root cause of all the problems you have raised.

We did talk about that amongst the forum-manage team, however its not like we can make a company decide how they want to manage their product so......
Although, thank you for the concern on a foregin server =)

[elemental10]

I thought that the Chinese servers are directly handled by the counterparts of SE over there? The same thing happened to another game, a MOBA, who had several items removed from the game because the publisher deemed them as "inapporpiate."

If it is.... I don't think SE can do anything about it if the chinese publishers wants to do it.