Newest interview (abyssea was a mistake?)

[Cream_Soda]

I was about ready to quit the game before Abyssea had come out. Been there done that, completed all my goals but a relic and didn't feel like finishing that (time/reward value, etc. I mean shit only one pair of Spharai on my sever was dealing more damage than I, lol)

Abyssea breathed some time back into my xi life and though I'm pretty much done w/ abyssea now and haven't played much since Mayish, VW certainly hasn't done a good job of bringing me back in. Hoping this lv 99 update will be able to do so.

[brayen]

I think that they consider it a failure becoz it create a content development block. That the abyssea content is so success that it is difficult to pull out something that is better than that. And certainly they didn't plan to make Abyssea the final content for FFXI, or they would have warp them beautifully and put them on the shelves.

Now, if you are a developer, seeing how successful abyssea is, can you make something better than Abyssea and get the players to move onto the new content?

There is tons you can do. This game has so many untapped areas and events it isnt even funny. VW was a disaster of an event. It is like the worse they could of done, it is everything bad that was in abyssea with the drop rates of ridills. They should of taken the time to implement something else with more direct rewards, somewhat like the whole dynamis event. But no they stuffed it with procs and added nearly nothing new to it. Honestly there is anything but lack of things you can do to keep things as entertaining at the very least on par with abyssea if you took some time and actually played the game a bit (which i suspect the dev team does not). The one leeway i will give however, is i do not know exactly how big the whole crew is and as such am not sure how much they can actually get done etc. otherwise however, there is really little excuse to consider abyssea impossible to outdo, at least as far as my opinion is concerned.

[Kimble]

Seriously though I knew Tanaka thought Abyssea was a mistake and was trying to punish us all for having the audacity to have fun in the world of torture that he created. I just never thought he would actually come out and say it. At what point do we accept that the plane we are on is being piloted by Gary Busey and start beating each other to death over the last 2 parachutes?

Tanaka didn't create anything. Hes the Producer. Not the Director.

[Vagrua]

At least with Abyssea you could make progress only playing 2-3 hours a day. With Voidwatch, you could spam an VNM 10 hours a day and still not obtain what you wanted. You also have to put up with people leaving making the entire alliance unable to continue.

People want to see progress when they do an event with the time they put into it. Maybe not 100% drop rates on everything, but after fighting something 20-30 times...you would expect something besides others getting what you were spamming for. Most the time the person that obtains the item can't even make use of it.

Horrible system imo.

[Spiritreaver]

Drain Samba, for a while (until they stopped that), but on gear (atma is pretty much gear) there were pet buffs - like the AMK hat, or the hat in Crawler's Nest (S) - before there was Abyssea.

Of course there were some items that buffed pets before Abyssea. I think what mellowy meant was that before Abyssea and its Atma, there was never a widespread system in play that actively buffed pets in the same manner players were.

And i actually agree with that sentiment.

[cidbahamut]

Ito addresses the problem as being another issue of balance. "Originally, Voidwatch was designed as content for an alliance of 18 players. If you go in with 18, there will actually be a higher rate of reward than any other content in FFXI." Essentially, what they have done with Voidwatch is instead of a system where players hash out which members lot which equipment, all players have a higher chance to get something -- it just might not be what they want each time. "Overall, it equals out to a system where you can freelot, but item drops are much lower," says Ito.

Unfortunately, such a system required the developers to disallow trading. As Ito explains, "For example, say each player gets 5 items. You have 5 items times 18 players and they can all trade freely. Now one player could collect 90 items. That's no good." The removal of the trading option was specifically in order to counter item hoarding. Every individual participating in the content has an equal chance to get items.

[Karbuncle]

Well, Maybe i should finish Mandau and then close my account. It looks like the game is going to hell again.

Right now, I'm at the stage where Voidwatch is still somewhat enjoyable, But this is only because i get to go on THF and i do my best to see how well i can DD against the "Real DD". Eventually that enthusiasm will die out when im 0/200 on Coruscanti or Toci's and the random pick up guy we shouted for gets his 3rd one.

The idea of this system was decent in planning, but they don't realize is that someone can only take a wonderful soul-crushing so many times before they finally give up.

You give people want they want too quickly? They'll run out of things to do and quit.
You give them 2k Synth mats for 150 Fights and no method of getting the drop outside of dumb luck? They'll quit because people can only take so much shit before they get fed up.

Either way, You're losing players, Its very hard to run an MMO and keep people interested. The reality is, they still have not found a middle ground, the closest they came to middle ground was Assaults.

Point System + Random Drops. Even if you don't appraise the item you want, You're saving up for Pln. Body, or Stoic Earring, etc. They need more systems like that.

They had such a perfect chance for this with Voidwatch... Voidwatch NPCs are suppose to be these NPCs who are there to kill Void-Walkers... Why can't they sell us Gear/Weapons specially designed to slay Void-Walkers? Or something, anything to spend our Cruor on other than upgrading our Atmacite (Which at best was a very obvious way of draining Cruor from the System...)

You know, "Voidwatch: Refresh+1" Ring, or "Voidwatch: Store TP+7 Regain+1" rings... Armor specific for voidwatch. I know assault specific armor kinda flopped, but lets be serious, its because it all sucked and too difficult to get. Being able to buy the armor specific to the event, expensive or not, with points earned in that event... So long as the armor was good... Would be a goal people can work for.

Anyway, I'm aware I'm rambling... I'm almost finished. I could stand Voidwatch if it wasn't literally dumb luck. There needs to be some progressive reward system with it. Give us a use for Cruor that we get outside of Buying stuff and selling them for Gil.

There should be some types of Weapons, Armor, Earrings ,Rings/etc to buy with points earned from Voidwatch, similar to how the Assault System worked. They could cost ~500,000 Cruor so long as they were a goal you could work for while collecting your Logs.

IDK, I think if people had a goal to accomplish while they did voidwatch, It would be more bearable to not get the drop they wanted.. again

Personally, I think it was dumb of SE To make the HQ and NQ Weapons drop from the NMs... the NQ weapons should have been purchased with ~1mil Cruor from the NPCs, and the HQ rare drops from NMs... You know what I mean? Can't get Coruscanti? Save up 1mil~2mil Cruor and buy Lux Plugio(w/e).

But no, they both drop from the same NM... Why? Perfect opportunity for Progressive Reward system (NQ Weapon) and dumb-luck Reward (HQ Weapon)... and they passed it up for the HURRRRRRR route.

Same for the Synth Mats for the NQ Bodies,could have been purchased with Cruor (Ala Einherjar Abj Armor mats)

They have the potential to create progressive rewarding goals, and random-rewarding goals, and they go the full-retard path every single time.

Thats the reason the game is dying. Its never a middle ground with them, Its either "Here's some Icecream" or "Prepare your anus"

[Afania]

Voidwatch sucks for casual players, it even sucks for hardcore players. The big issue is time vs reward ratio's, this is something SE really doesn't understand how to do. Trying to control it with low drop rates is the worst method possible, many other MMO's learned this lesson a long long time ago. Points systems tend to work the best in the long run, or semi-point systems / collectables like how emp armor seals / coins are done. What it should of been is that every VW fight gives you +points, and you can opt to trade enough of those in for the R/EX bodies and items. They would be expensive enough that you'd have to collect points for months to get, but you WOULD get it and you control the rate you get it at.

Although I do agree that a point reward system makes you feel better, but it also remove the excitement of "OMG IT DROPPED". Drop/luck based system offers surprise, when you're not expecting it to drop it dropped, and that makes things interesting. Point system you always know your progress, and sometimes it become kind of a grind and not very exciting.

IMO it's better to keep both, if that 1% dropped, you'll be happy for the rest of the week. If it doesn't, at least you get something that's nice. But removing luck based system entirely just makes things not as interesting and a pure grind. And that's why many old FFXI players are not happy with Abyssea, getting proc is easy with right jobs, getting drop is easy with proc, and there are no surprise when it drops because you're expecting it to drop already.

Or maybe can make one ex/rare drop after capped lights, but it may not be the one you need since ex/rare is came from random pool of 100 different items.

[Insaniac]

Tanaka didn't create anything. Hes the Producer. Not the Director.

What exactly do you think a producer does?

[wish12oz]

The stupidity of the dev team still amazes me.