Happy New Year everyone! I hope everyone had an amazing holiday season and is ready to make 2013 into an awesome year. :)
While this might be just a tad late, I wanted to share Producer Akihiko Matsui’s end of the year greeting with you all.
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I'm glad he did that. I'm tired of those 'shounen' moment in manga/anime where a weak character suddenly gets a power boost just because they're avenging somebody i.e every anime ever.
I don't want to derail this too much, but maybe I can get an answer for this.
FFIV spoilers:
If that was the case with Edward, what was the thought process behind Edge?
Happy new year Matsui-san! May you have good fortune in the following year.
FFIV was one of my top 3 favorite Final Fantasy series of all times (yes I have played every one of them. I still have my NES cart of FF1 and the manual/box and strategy guide :3). I was really excited when I heard that you were going to take over leadership of FFXI many months ago. I know your main role in designing the original FFXI was in the design of the battle system, I am pleased that a member of the original crew still holds the lead developer post. I was saddened to see so many of FFXI's original developers go by the way side. I was really saddened when Koichi Ishii and Hironobu Sakaguchi left as well. =;_;=
You are one of the last people that were a part of the making of FFXI and that gives me hope. Also I was wondering, is Kenichi Iwao still working with SE? I know Iwao was responsible for much of FFXI's lore and storyline. Rumors said he was working on the storyline for the new FFXIV now. As writer of the of the first Resident Evil video game, he has much to offer to the storyline of the upcoming expansion. Will he be returning?
I know how hard it must feel to be tossed into a mess of code with complaints galore. I have hope you can bring FFXI back on track to the game that Ishii, Sakaguchi, and Tanaka envisioned. I know it is a large legacy and a tall order, but I wish you the best of luck. I also hope we as a community can come together and guide you to an end goal that players of all nationalities will enjoy and FFXI can be an example to all other MMOs of what a great game should be.
I think that your suggestion was a very good one. You avoided a cliche even though it cost Edward his power. Unless Edward had once been planned for the final party in FFIV, there were no endgame repercussions caused by this decision; just a more believable story.
edward's tragedy of losing his lady may certainly lead him to singing to soothe his heartbreak. all the better if it benefits the party. keen decision, i'd say. here's hoping you can discover the "edwards" of ffxi!
Maybe he will send some love to BRD in FFXI as tribute now. :3
Haha, technically Edge is the only real Edward there (Edward Geraldine). In any case, Edge was more of a hot head than Edward, who spent most of his time moping. Plus his ability list makes more sense for a super charge. How would it work with Edward Chris von Muir? "Edward learns sadder, more potent songs due to his deep grief."
Don't get me wrong. I like both Edwards in IV, but I'm glad one of them could serve as a frame of reference that not everyone who joins your party is destined for combat greatness. He really proves his political worth in The After Years, though.
Camate, tell your boss to get Ishii back ! We need our Seiken Densetsu fix.
Also thanks for translating Matsui awesome post. m(_ _)m
*SPOILER ALERT*
Lol... Edge didn't get a really huge power-up with those new spells he gets when facing Rubicante, I never really found any Ninjutsu at all to be that strong at all and just used him for his speed with physical attacks with the sole exception of resistant mobs like flans. He really wasn't a weakling to begin with.
Greetings everyone!
The development team has just returned to the office after their customary new year's celebration and a couple key members have a nice message to kick-off 2013.
Producer Akihiko Matsui:
Director Mizuki Ito:
Associate Director Yoji Fujito:
Can I take Yoji Fujito home with me and give them to my niece as a pet? She would love a baby chocobo. >.>;
Can you also (in amongst all the Adoulin stuff) please look back at not only all the stuff that was meant to be implemented last year (as per the timeline), but all the topics that the dev reps said would be looked into and never got heard from again?
I know I personally would love to hear Mr Matsui's answer to the upgraded COP/TOAU/WOTG rings threads that sounded like they were genuinely interested and may go ahead with it.. and then nothing for over a year.
Also the increase of meritable ws from 3 to 5... which has been brought up in countless threads
All you would have to do is look back through the dev rep's posts to be able to find several examples of these unanswered threads
What I would like to see is simple changes to be put through faster. My bet is adding the recycle trait to rangers like you said months ago would probably take a few hours to program and probably wouldn't need testing.
So, question is, why has it not been implemented yet?
I'm sure more staff will come after the release of FFXIV, and I'm sure even more if the sales of Seekers of Adoulin will be satisfying :)
In all honesty, XI will never attract any great number of new players, because old-style grind-fests which is what XI still largely is is not what 'new gamers' want.
Even after the 'dumbification' as some long time XI players refer to features like FOV/GOV etc., XI is still a group-centric mob grind, the quest system such as it is plays no part in character leveling and precious little in terms of character development: the entire trip 1-99 is about killing mobs, of the same few types, over and over and over again.
Players who love XI generally like game features which are the antithesis of 'modern' games: witness what Yoshi had to do to XIV to convert it from a poor XI-clone that Tanaka made it (and, to be honest like many XI players were demanding) into something he [Yoshi] thinks he can actually sell to gamers in the year 2013 .. we're not in the late '90s any more, MMO-wise, which is largely where XI is stuck.
Whether the upcoming expansion succeeds in pleasing current XI players or not, it will do little to nothing to gain many new players.
Bring a new player to an officer and ask him to play the game for 3 months w/o asking question or checking internet... if he meet "actual standard of the FFXI" and what "veteran players ask from a new player", I'd love to see him doing some missions w/o any "shared information" out there. I'm sure he would need like 1 whole year to be where I can put my mule in 1 month.
although i think i got the jist of what waldrich just said i am not wholey sure.
you are saying if you put a new player in the game with no outside information sources he would have no idea what to do?
That is what he is saying. This game is horrible when it comes to guidance. Missions hardly ever point you to what you need to do. Most rpgs at least say, go get iron ore. This game would say i want something and leave it at that.
"w/o asking questions or checking internet" some of basic stuff become a big achievement:
- I would love to see that guy getting sub job quest done.
- Having more than only 30 inventory spaces.
- Getting airship pass to Kazham.
- Getting Mog Locker unlocked.
- Getting Storage space.
- Finding the way to Xarcabard to do his LB Quest.
- Getting SMN leveled with all avatars! "Just messing"
The thing is you need to actually make your friend believe they'll enjoy the game 3~4 months after they first started playing.
You gotta ask your friend to not give up on doing nothing but running around and pressing "Attack".
I remember a mission for COP where there was no guidance from the last mission of what to do. checkin online of course i found that i needed to go to one of the zones near tavnazia and click a door which spawns a Detector mob. at no point was there any rationalization to do this. and further more a detector which was only seen in game in sky at that point was the mob it spawned?! to this day the only thing i could think of that would lead me here was i might have gotten 1-2 CSes there in the past. from the moment i spawned that thing i remembered thinkin WTF is wrong with this game, how would anyone figure this out without lookin online or even DAT mining. this is jsut an example of what we are talkin bout.