The new era of communication with the playerbase.

[Anza]

They aren't even trying to have a transition period it's just right back to old ways now. Tanaka, back in charge!

Funny that FFXIV's v1.19 patch just released and it looks to be the most positive change in the history of that game - I can't believe I'm saying it, but I might have to fire up XIV again if they keep up with this direction in XI (cue the FFXI intentionally killing XI to make XIV succeed conspiracy theorists). There definitely seems to be a strong link to these horrible decisions and the return to prominence of the exiled XIV producer. Tanaka-san = the ultimate HNM. Since AV is now a much more winnable fight, he can serve as the new "impossible" Notorious Monster.

I'm not a brand new player, I've been here since 2004. I love Abyssea and it revitalized the game for me, like it did for many others. I am not willing to go backwards and deal with the bad aspects of the old days of FFXI yet again. I'm very worried about the future given the post-Abyssea content we've seen:

* Voidwatch is a disaster thanks to the garbage drop rates and loot distribution system, for mostly sidegrade gear at that
* WOE isn't much better, and the new changes hurt it for solo coin farming and as a good alternative for a lower requirement (and weaker weapon) alternative to get Empy WS.
* The requirements for 95 Empyrean/WOE weapon trials - brutal
* The revamped land kings system
* Scroll drops exclusively from HKCNMs

I'm not very excited to hear that future content might include things like additional Wyrms - in fact I'm very much dreading the return of the awful HNM systems of the past.

Neo Dynamis is about the only thing I'm enjoying right now outside of Abyssea, but really, I can't see too much of a point. Makes relics more obtainable, but for what? As an alternative to insane 95Empy requirements, so I can have a weapon to kill VW content and not get desired drops a little bit faster? I can see myself finishing up AFv3+2 gear for my jobs and losing any motivation to continue with FFXI unless something unexpected happens soon.

[Runespider]

If they mess up XI I'm not rewarding them be playing XIV, If they mess this game up I'm done with them for good.

Whatever comes of FFXIV you can guarantee in the years to come they will treat it's userbase as badly as they treat the XI userbase now.

[Staren]

There's no reasonable limit to how long between you posting and them responding. Its been almost a month since I posted the mythic thread have had several responses and ideas come out of it. But what do we hear? Nerfs to war, th 9 is in fact less potent than th10, bst updates, pup updates, sch updates, tra la la we're deciding on what capped level should be in the end tee hee which only the JPs seemed to care about. I do think SE is trying to drop support for this game. Maybe we should oblige them and all stop paying for xi next month. See how they'd do with no revenue whatsoever from 11 to bolster their losses from 14. Tanaka if he is truly behind all of this is a waste of air. Their lolmythic update doesnt help my faith in the game too "Yo dawgs we heard you're having a hard time on mythics...so we're not going to fix any of the facets for the mythic for at least 8 months where if you were working on them diligently yourself you'd be done by the anyways /trollface" They're pissing on us and trying to call it rain and I'm getting sick of being pissed on.

[Pawkeshup]

It's not surprising. They needed us to stay in game until they got FFXIV into working condition to sell to uninformed console owners, and now that it's coming, in they step with the stick to beat us away from the game.

It's fine, there's plenty of content left I haven't done. I'll just do that and see what happens.

[Return1]

I disagree with almost all the pissy whining in this thread, but I gotta wonder;

What's going to happen when the console version of FFXIV fails at launch as well? Can SE even survive that? they've been pumping money into this ftp mmo Hindenburg of theirs for a while now right? So what happens if the game flops for the second time? Are we gonna see another name tacked on to Square Enix?

FFXI is their biggest source of income, if they had half a brain cell between all of them present in SE, they'd pour some more TLC over it.

[noodles355]

They aren't even trying to have a transition period it's just right back to old ways now. Tanaka, back in charge!

Get a clue. Tanaka was always the producer. He was the producer before abyssea, he was the producer during abyssea, he is still the producer now. Why are you jumping on the anti-tanaka bandwagon without actually doing any research whatsoever? Having done as much as wiki FFXI would have shown you that the directors have recently changed but Tanaka was always the producer. You're just slandering the man because you're too dense to do any sort of research and see that he's not the one you should be attacking.

Once again it's absolutely appalling that despite it being posted multiple times accross multiple threads that TANAKA WAS ALWAYS THE PRODUCER you still get people saying "They got tanaka back in charge that's why the game is going so badly!!!!!". Get a god-damn clue.

[Juri_Licious]

Why are people complaining when they got what they wanted with Abyssea?

I also don't see how the updates they've been doing is neglecting the game.
They added tons of stuff with that update. Maybe you guys should try playing other P2P MMO's where they ACTUALLY don't do anything and complain than.

[Runespider]

Get a clue. Tanaka was always the producer. He was the producer before abyssea, he was the producer during abyssea, he is still the producer now. Why are you jumping on the anti-tanaka bandwagon without actually doing any research whatsoever? Having done as much as wiki FFXI would have shown you that the directors have recently changed but Tanaka was always the producer. You're just slandering the man because you're too dense to do any sort of research and see that he's not the one you should be attacking.

Once again it's absolutely appalling that despite it being posted multiple times accross multiple threads that TANAKA WAS ALWAYS THE PRODUCER you still get people saying "They got tanaka back in charge that's why the game is going so badly!!!!!". Get a god-damn clue.

Do you REALLY think the job these people do is so minor that they can work full time on 2 games at once (a year or two before release with publicity events etc no less), really? They never officially moved him over (because there was no need to, it's a PR thing to have his name attached to this game lol) but it was obvious to anyone with any intelligence that someone else had to take over his role on FFXI in his abscense working on FFXIV. Now that he was very openly FIRED from FFXIV (to the joy of that games playerbase) and has had time to have an influence you are seriously telling me that you can't see Tananka rubbed all over these updates and nerfs lately?

Did you just start playing last week or something? Cause I can tell you I and many others have been playing long enough to know that the abyssea era was without his influence and now he is fully back on this game it reeks of his content design again. He does things a very specific way and the entire Abyssea time was obviously someone else, and the last 2 updates were Tanaka all over. Anyone that did endgame before Abyssea knows how Tanaka does things, it's incredibly obvious there was a change there. This is the guy that not only created horrors like kings and sandworm/DI but refused to change them forever, no matter how much the endgamers begged for it. (cause it was cheap as dirt content that kept people busy forever).

He has not been working on FFXI (at least not properly, maybe minor imput) for a few years and now he is. Just because it never reflected that change officially does not change how obvious that fact is, for most anyway.

The whole thing with him is the influence, for instance on making sure the events last as long as humanly possible with dreadful drop rates etc. He would never just give you a spell, he would put it in a low drop rate BCNM or make it come from a HNM or something, during abyssea times you just bought the damn things from an NPC cause they were more concerned with adding lots of new content.

[noodles355]

Game was hard - Tanaka must have done it!!!!!!11
Game was easy - Tanaka must have been doing something else!!!!!!!!!1111
Game was hard again - Tanaka must be back!!!!!!!!!!1111111

Or like, maybe FFXI was always FFXI and Abyssea was an interlude to help everyone move up from 75 to 99. And now that transition is almost complete they're releasing more normal content again.

Nah, screw it. It couldn't have possibly been that. IT MUST BE THAT TANAKA WENT AWAY AND SO THE DEV TEAM WERE LET OUT OF THEIR JAIL CELLS AND ALOWED TO MAKE THE GAME FUN, AND NOW HE'S BACK AND THEY ARE LOCKED UP AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!! AHHHHHHHH!!!

The world is officially ending, the guy who never left is back, and he's destroying everything the real dev team worked so hard to build!!

Yeah. I must have been playing since last week only. You realise the ones who aren't jumping on the Tanaka-is-the-devil bandwagon are the ones that played this game before abyssea, and did proper endgame content. The ones who like content that was challenging and put up with shit drop rates because it meant more when you finally got shit. The ones who complain about Tanaka and his supposed return are either:
The ones who joined during abyssea, don't like the game returning to it's normal way, and are throwing a fit.
The ones who played before abyssea, but were completely casual players and didn't know anything about endgame.
The ones who played before abyssea, did a bit of sky and dynamis, and think that makes them pros on endgame, whilst really they still dont know anything about it.

[Monchat]

Do you REALLY think the job these people do is so minor that they can work full time on 2 games at once (a year or two before release with publicity events etc no less), really?

Since the announcement of FFXIV developpement, and before that even, we all noticed slowing down of updates, and stagnant content. Yes, eveyone noticed WoTG was not progressing at all. Took them what, 3 years to finish the storyline, and all they added is a few HNMs , variouc BCs ( shadow lord, campaing BC , ANNM , fey weapons), and WoE came only the update before the level cap 80 ( or at the same update.. dont remember). I thought that was because they mobilized all their resources to develop FFXIV. Then FFXIV came out and... wtf? FFXIV had no content either, guildleves suck ( too easy , too limited, unrewarding).