FINAL FANTASY XIV Suggestive Changes II

[Keftenk]

Instead of posting a huge wall of text and possibly running into the issue of needing to make multiple posts, I put together a list of suggestions and concerns into one giant PDF file. This PDF attempts to shine light on most of the issues the game has been having and a lot of the issues that players are seeking to have addressed.

Take into consideration that not everyone will agree on some or many of these changes. I also didn't take the liberty of prioritizing these changes, I felt that as a player I have every right suggesting changes, but have no right nor actual say in how and when changes occur.

As for you TL;DR trolls, you don't have to click the link. No one is holding a gun to your head.

Keftenk's Extensive FINAL FANTASY XIV Suggested Change Log (4/26/11): http://www.notedls.com/SgstChgLog_42611.pdf
Tuesday, April 26th PDF Suggestive Change Log Size: 39 Pages - 3.00MB
Adobe Reader is required: http://get.adobe.com/reader/

[Hitoriki]

Good suggestions for the most part. No way in hell im reading a tenth of the whole thing though, so not really sure if SE would as well. Looks like the reps sometimes transmit some ideas and overall feedback but I would honestly be surprised If they would go over the entire thing. I hope they would at least acknowledge it though as it sums up most of what the game needs.

[Cairdeas]

2. Your patch notes need to be in much greater detail. The casual gamer might not notice that their patch downloads are
exceeding 300MB for a handful of changes, but any player that goes around your patch service to download at a respectable
rate notices that something isn’t being shown or told to us.
My understanding is that it’s just code and other elements in place for future content, the revamped battle system, etc. so we
aren’t downloading a 1GB patch come that release. However, it’s a bit strange and misleading exactly what is going on. Perhaps
this is more of an issue with Square Enix not being transparent enough, but then again, being too transparent can be a bad
thing. Treasures of Aht Urghan anyone?
Regardless, there have been a lot of ninja changes that don’t get published that are actually very notice able by the player. It
personally makes me question why these changes weren’t published. For instance, back a couple months ago the only NM’s
that could be Siphon MP’d was the Goblin and Dodore. Now, today you can Siphon MP all of them. Where was that change in
the patch notes, because honestly, that’s some pretty important information when it comes to MP management in those fights
(not so much now since the heavy nerfs).
Also, the amazing upkeep of the market wards, I can’t remember the last time those things have crashed. Why weren’t we
informed that you guys accomplished fixing this? Or how bout the more compliant and faster menu load times with the UI?
Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think it’s, I just like being as informed as possible. You obviously don’t need to share everything
with us, but some of these are pretty obvious that not sharing it with us only questions the team even further.

This is actually pretty easy to answer.

All of the systems in XIV are stuffed into packed and sometimes encrypted Modules called .dat and other files. One dat file can house an entire system module in game. For instance all of the information for Crafting as a Alchemist might be stuffed into one. All of the textures for the UI might be stuffed into one. Etc.

One of these files might be only 5mb one might be 100mb.

If a dat file is 100mb and contains an item that they modify the whole dat file has to be downloaded and overwritten. Not patched. The files are encrypted to a point.

So a 5mb worth of changes could still take 100mb because the change is stuffed inside an encrypted module.

also, no matter what client language you have set you have all 4 languages stuffed inside the dat files. Thats a lot of data.

[Keftenk]

Size wasn't really the bigger issue in that point. It's the ninja changes they don't comment on which are flat out obvious.

[Cairdeas]

Size wasn't really the bigger issue in that point. It's the ninja changes they don't comment on which are flat out obvious.

It might not have been an ninja edit and instead was a unintentional glitch that resolved on its own with an update.

Happens a lot in our Dev cycle at my office. We get someone calling in reporting a bug we look into it in the current dev cycles and its not there so we look at old cycles and it was resolved because we changed a bit of code somewhere else that prevented the glitch from ever happening and we never actually were attempting to repair the glitch.

[Razzle]

In respond to your Tab suggestion... when cycling through tabs in Inventory window (or any other menu) you can already change the direction - hold shift and press tab (just like in windows)

[AdvancedWind]

Please enlighten a non FFXI veteran: What exactly happened on Treasures of Aht Urghan because of "too much information"?

[Jericho]

I'm not going to lie... Reading "Fix this. Now.", in an, at-first-glance, constructive and well written documentation, turned me off to the rest of it. Best of luck to you.

[Impulse]

In respond to your Tab suggestion... when cycling through tabs in Inventory window (or any other menu) you can already change the direction - hold shift and press tab (just like in windows)

On gamepads, there are the triggers, or whichever buttons you set your CTRL [left] and ALT [right] macros to as well.

From what I read so far, there are some pretty solid ideas and points. I'll have to read through the rest while in between classes tomorrow.

[Picoman]

Very well presented and comprehensive in detail.
Sums up the forums quite accurately.
Im not too keen on the tone throughout.
Maybe change to a different point of view, rather than personal.
I think you should remove the 'Fix this Now' comment, just out of respect.
Translating this into Japanese will be expensive for you but would be a nice touch, especially if you plan to email it directly to Yoshi-P.
^^