(NOT) Double Bayld Campaign?

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Originally Posted by Malphius

No hyperbole brother. Just the truth as I see it.

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I don't see how you not liking the features/content/etc means that they're "unprofessional." The two things have virtually nothing to do with eachother. Like the content or not, I'd hardly call them being unprofessional.

You act in response to this thread as if all the campaigns have been broke, but it's really only this one. I don't recall any other campaign being majorly broken. I do agree to some extent about the repetitiveness/reuse of content but if you ask me they're merely working with the resources they've been given. To call it unprofessional is an insult to the small number of people working on it doing the best they can.

Rings: You could only get 1 of the all the other mission rings before so I don't see how this is any different. The only real problem with it I see is the exorbitant cost if you want to get a different one (300k bayld to get a new ring).

Like I said. There are some fair points in what you have to say but I think you were being overly rude about it.

"I don't see how you not liking the features/content/etc means that they're "unprofessional." The two things have virtually nothing to do with eachother. Like the content or not, I'd hardly call them being unprofessional."

Dude, almost every update something is broken. Weaponskills not functioning properly, summoning magic isn't functioning properly, game crashes when you check this certain item, they're always behind their own time table. Either you don't pay attention or you don't care. Like you said there isn't many developers left on the game but I still pay the same amount I have since the game came out around 03 and there was a full team. Secondly I said I applaud the single person left on the dev "team" for doing the best they can. I'm not sure how I insulted them by giving them a complement but then the honest truth. My comments are directed towards the decision makers and managers at SE.

"I do agree to some extent about the repetitiveness/reuse of content but if you ask me they're merely working with the resources they've been given."

They aren't being given enough resources by SE we agree. This in and of itself is unprofessional. This is why MY resources will no longer be going to SE. New and original content then you can have my $$$ back. Till then i'll be funding another company.

"Like I said. There are some fair points in what you have to say but I think you were being overly rude about it."

I'm polite in 90% of my other posts. If I want to be rude every now and then that's okay and sometimes a smack to the back of the head is more effective than asking politely to be paid attention to. You guys are too apologetic for SE as it is. Demand better.

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This in and of itself is unprofessional.

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I think you misunderstand what "unprofessional" really means. Unprofessional would be something like the CEO or some other staff member coming on here and saying "you are all a bunch of silly people and HA HA I'm awesome and you're not." THAT's unprofessional. Weak business / design decisions is not by itself unprofessional. being intentionally destructive or negligent would also fall in that category but I don't really see any evidence of malice or willful disregard.

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You guys are too apologetic for SE as it is. Demand better.

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It's not being apologetic. You can express your opinion in a civil manner without being "apologetic". Being firm but not being rude. That gets you paid more attention to than blurting out an uncontrolled rant. And I say this from experience working directly with a game studio dev team and forum community. The man who stands firm but speaks plainly is listened to much more than the man who yells and screams.

(You should be aware, that part of the reason for recycling some content is the existence of the PS2 version, which has limited disk space, memory, etc, which necessitates reusing assets to some degree in order to fit within the confines of the console's limitations. Should they terminate PS2 support? Absolutely. But consider from a business standpoint that they have customers using that system who might not play anymore if support for it was dropped- They can't do this until they are certain the loss from doing so is outweighed by the loss from not doing it)

I want my thread back, this banter has nothing to do with a broken campaign. There is too much butt hurt here.!

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Originally Posted by Roja323

I want my thread back, this banter has nothing to do with a broken campaign. There is too much butt hurt here.!

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Thatt'l be $7.50. <3

You've already gotten an official response on the matter though.

"I think you misunderstand what "unprofessional" really means. Unprofessional would be something like the CEO or some other staff member coming on here and saying "you are all a bunch of silly people and HA HA I'm awesome and you're not." THAT's unprofessional. Weak business / design decisions is not by itself unprofessional. being intentionally destructive or negligent would also fall in that category but I don't really see any evidence of malice or willful disregard."

I think you have a preconceived notion of what unprofessional is and while your example is applicable it's not the limit. Merriam defines it as "lacking or showing a lack of expert skill". Consistent regular updates full of bugs and misappropriation of funds and resources are by definition unprofessional.

I don't know why you bring PS2 support into this. We all know they should have dropped support for it ages ago. We're on PS4 now. If they would quit self imposing a limit they would have been able to develop a better product and thus retain more subscribers. It just further shows the incompetence in management.

"Being firm but not being rude. That gets you paid more attention to than blurting out an uncontrolled rant. And I say this from experience working directly with a game studio dev team and forum community. The man who stands firm but speaks plainly is listened to much more than the man who yells and screams."

On the contrary. I've been very controlled. If I said what I really think i'd have been banned. As far as your experience goes and the man who stands firm and speaks plainly...well we can see where years of that have led. Also you're very engaged with me so i'd have to say that's not true. Clearly my "smack to the head" got some attention. This board has a well deserved reputation in the community. That's not a statement target at you. It's just a generality. Polite people rarely get their way and SE doesn't need you to be the tone police for them. They have mods that can address that.

Is there something wrong with your quote button?

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Consistent regular updates full of bugs and misappropriation of funds and resources are by definition unprofessional.

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No, it doesn't because pretty much every piece of software consistently has bugs or defects in it somewhere- Are all software developers unprofessional then?. You have no evidence of "misappropriation of funds" either (which also doesn't mean what you apparently think it means). Misappropriation of funds would be something like people redirecting money from whatever it was allocated for to something else without following proper proceedures. SE can technically spend its income however it wants, that doesn't automatically make every dollar used for something other than making you happy "misappropriation." That generally describes a criminal activity, unless you're a member of the US Congress. :p I'm sure you'll try to counter this with the dictionary card, but what matters is how the phrase is actually used in practice, not the literal definition.

But you don't have access to SE's budget ledgers, balance sheets, etc so you really have no basis to make such an accusation because you have no idea how their income from this game is allocated. As long as their ledger looks something like: "Income: ####### - ¥ Server costs: ###### - ¥ Labor costs: ###### ¥ = Net Income" and not something like: "Income: ###### ¥ - porn anime in the break room: ####### ¥ - personal vacation to Dubai: ####### ¥ = Net Income" then everything is fine in this area.

When you have a small team trying to modify and manage a huge piece of software, mistakes are bound to happen. Even the biggest software developers in the world make mistakes and put bugs in their software. If those bugs don't get fixed, then yes, there's a failing there that could be called unprofessionalism- Though it's most likely the internal QA where you'd peg it not the engineers.

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It just further shows the incompetence in management.

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Please show me your cost-benefit analysis and your certification as a professional financial advisor to corporations. Odds are they've done these and determined that the likely benefit vs the cost is not feasable, as much as we all definitely want something like this to happen. They probably think based on their analysis that it would not bring in enough new/returning customers to be worth the expense. Only if a CBA determined that it was beneficial and they ignored it would there be incompetence at work.

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. Also you're very engaged with me so i'd have to say that's not true. Clearly my "smack to the head" got some attention.

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Well that depends. If you were seeking to start an argument or just being an attention monger (for lack of a more appropriate term) then yes, I'd agree. But smacking the head hasn't provoked (nor is it likely to provoke) an SE response, because like any smart company, they are more likely to respond to someone being civil rather than stamping their foot and running for the door. As soon as I stop responding, this thread will be pretty much dead. >.>

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

Is there something wrong with your quote button?

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I clicked "like" just for this.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

You have no evidence of "misappropriation of funds" either (which also doesn't mean what you apparently think it means). Misappropriation of funds would be something like people redirecting money from whatever it was allocated for to something else without following proper proceedures. SE can technically spend its income however it wants, that doesn't automatically make every dollar used for something other than making you happy "misappropriation." That generally describes a criminal activity, unless you're a member of the US Congress. :p

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I think technically they are misrepresenting where the funds are being sent. Although anyone who follows this game should have figured it out and has no one to blame but themselves at this point. I could see where the misappropriation term could loosely apply. Most people assume that when they pay for an online service, a certain amount is spent on upkeep and improvements and the rest is profit. However, in the case of FFXI, it seems like almost all of the money is going elsewhere and the service is degrading as a result. For me, it hasn't gotten to the point where I won't pay for the game any more, but I certainly won't be buying into any of their other franchises or recommending them to friends.

I think we all can agree that whatever problems this game has have very little to do with the staff maintaining it and almost everything to do with corporate management at this point. It was probably not like that in the beginning, but it certainly has become that way.

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I think technically they are misrepresenting where the funds are being sent. Although anyone who follows this game should have figured it out and has no one to blame but themselves at this point. I could see where the misappropriation term could loosely apply. Most people assume that when they pay for an online service, a certain amount is spent on upkeep and improvements and the rest is profit. However, in the case of FFXI, it seems like almost all of the money is going elsewhere and the service is degrading as a result. For me, it hasn't gotten to the point where I won't pay for the game any more, but I certainly won't be buying into any of their other franchises or recommending them to friends.

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Like with any business, SE is perfectly entitle to keep some profits for its business. The only way to prove misappropriation here would be to show something like they are paying the workers involved with this project to work on a different one instead. On that balance sheet, everything after labor (developers making things for this game) and server costs for this game is profit that they are perfectly legally free to use how they please. In order to increase the allocation for this game, you'd have to do a cost benefit analysis that shows using the after-current-costs profit to expand the team and update the game would be worth the amount of additional income it would likely provide- for each new developer they add to the project, they'd have to expect a gain in subscribers at least equal to how much they'd be paying that person each month. It's just basic business.

I think you'd have to show that they're taking people off the project or otherwise cutting costs beyond what would reasonably be considered necessary for the game to be financially solvent to accuse them of misappropriation. I'm not even sure that we actually know how many people are currently involved with the project though.

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I think we all can agree that whatever problems this game has have very little to do with the staff maintaining it and almost everything to do with corporate management at this point. It was probably not like that in the beginning, but it certainly has become that way.

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Though we can express our opinions and make casual observations, we really don't have the information necessary to solidly make these kinds of accusations. I'm not speaking for or against here to be clear: I'm just saying we don't really have the information necessary to make those kind of accusations- not commenting on whether or not they are truly valid.

I don't need to use the quote button. The fact that you'd rather debate semantics, form etiquette and come up with excuses for SE is telling. I expected no less from the OF. You didn't let me down. Please cite a developer that has bugs in every single update that affect the functionality of the software? You can't. I love that I prove to you using the DICTIONARY what unprofessional means and you still say it doesn't mean that. Sure they're not unprofessional then. They're just terrible, terrible, terrible programmers with absolutely no care about quality. Better? This isn't some free to play game. They aren't donating their time. I don't have to be grateful.

"But you don't have access to SE's budget ledgers, balance sheets, etc so you really have no basis to make such an accusation because you have no idea how their income from this game is allocated"

Well I can make a general estimate. Assuming 17 servers with 2000 active accounts each at $13 a month for 1 year is $5,304,000. I don't know about you, but I certainly don't think the game is receiving $5mil quality updates. Not even close. Misappropriation or misallocation or poor distribution of resources to general incompetence. Call it what you want. The money customers are paying isn't being reinvested into the game. They've figured out they can give the bare minimum and a loyal army of fan boys will line up to defend them.

"When you have a small team trying to modify and manage"

The game is well funded. There isn't a reason to have small teams.