Newest interview (abyssea was a mistake?)

[Neisan_Quetz]

Because it's impossible to finish pretty much everything you want from there. Or care to work on at least.

[Aarahs]

But Abyssea is so amazing! You can get your gear so quickly with minimal drama and XP so quickly! And it's the best gear for each job! Why would you ever want to do something else in the game?

[Greatguardian]

The best gear for each job part is probably the problem.

The Development Bros have never been very good at balancing sidegrade/upgrade gear from multiple events. A body piece from 2003 is still the best in the game, wut.

[Aarahs]

As opposed to WoW where every time they raise the level cap everything before is obsolete? No thanks.

[Sharnak]

If you people like Abyssea so much, then stay there. No one is forcing you to move to other content. Are you aware of what the term 'optional' means?

Just one question - So you glad and fun with VWNM or WoE so much now?

I always feel fail with ppl who catch on wrong spot on topics.
Topic is not about Abyssea itself but it's about how Producer feel about the way of FFXI form now. So you love to see gamble NM, which you need spend days-years to repeat keep doing it for just some item that it's not even goddy? becuse it's just you bad luck enough to not get it? because it all or none.

You really blind with hate that not feeling the dirction of FFXI now heading? And I say everytime i post that i'm not Abby defender, All content have good and bad spot, I just stand on the center and decide it form what happing in the overview of system not just form hate or love. What i want only can "FUN!" form playing game. not tortune form play it.

And again if you think about it "Quit it" Is not choice. It's just last thing you will do if you have no other else ways to do. I prefer to play this game well, why i play it for almost 8 years, I just hope it's can stay fun not just bring more tortune content for player in the bad time. And no any of developer really listen to what player ask. Just "It's not balance" "It's not possible", "It's beyond the limit", "It's will too easy", All word just cover one fact that Developer don't want to push more manpower to maintain this game and not even want to listen to player ask, so they just use most easy choice to develop conent, Put some new NM make it harder to get something then ppl will keep follow it like a dongky follow the carrot on fishrod. You just walk follow it not even can taste a bit of it. Until they satify on your work. Is that the content you want to see?

I really donno how long you play this game, how far you go, I play every content in this game. I must say I never found what content is bring me boring so fast like lastest VWNM and WoE. Even the bad abby that you name, I still fun with it for year. not just month.

So last word, If you like both of them so much I pardon you form my opp.

PS. I may want some gear form VWNM WoE But i nv find it's fun to play it., Even now I still feel fun to play sky with ppl even i not want anything form it.

[macross]

I just don't like how brew cost was lowered to 200k, that ruined everything.

It's fine to be gods with atma, just make the monsters harder and more challenging to go along with the stronger buffs you get. Nothing was really hard, that's the mistake. Should have added more rani type difficulty stuff.

As for VW difficulty, you can easily kill the nms low man, your drops just suffer.

[Sparthos]

Did you only read that sentence of the post? Because right after that I went on to defend said points. I keep up an argumentative discussion and attack you personally at the same time. And ad hominem attacks aren't pointless. People point out other people's ad hominem attacks to assume immediate superiority in an argument, which, in itself is actually an ad hominem attack. However, our discussion is largely about a matter of opinion, not a matter of fact. Many of the things we claim none of us can actually confirm, like what the development team thinks. Theoretically you could be right. Theoretically they could be a secret subsect of the Illuminati trying to dominate a part of the world (the JMMORPG-playing part). I cannot absolutely deny that. But in matters of opinion, attacking someone's credibility and exposing flaws in their personality is exactly what shows the extent of their judgement. I'm saying you're a conspiracy nut, and I'm telling you why. Because every example you give, you use it to describe malicious intent by the developers. Not once did you assume otherwise, or even see why it's out of their realm of influence. That means you're trying to put them in one box that fits your mentality, which means you're more likely to read the same pattern into different situations. Which means, you're reasoning is flawed. Which means you can't be believed when you say this bullshit. Booyah.

Someones accusing me of not reading when I clearly stated in my last post that the possibility is completely open to me that the devs are bound by cultural or personal limitations that lead to the sheer volume of incompetent/poorly thought out decisions?

Seems like you want to peg me as a fringe lunatic when the reality is that I don't really think the devs are cackling in their offices when they develop content but with the decisions made they might as well do it because it reflects upon the playerbase as yet again SE going against the desires of the customers rather than coming to a compromise.

No, you state your interpretation of the truth. You don't just state what's wrong and that the development team didn't do anything about it (which is often false, as in the matter of Salvage and kings, for example, both of which got adjusted despite what you claim), but you go one step further and declare it to be malicious intent on their part:

In my world how quick you respond to an issue is where you score the points. SE doesn't get applauded for 'fixing' Salvage years after the fact (the initial cell chest was NOT a fix, that had to be put in) or finally making Kings poppable after the gear had finally become irrelevant due to Abyssean loot. They had the heads up for years both events packed terrible drop rates and intense cheating yet it was allowed to stay.

On the Kings decision I'm sticking to my guns that pride is why that system lasted as long as it did. I recall when people on BG really thought if they gave the devs a roadmap to fixing kings that they'd implement it yet they laughed it off when the idea was finally floated to them. How many fanfest questions about kings does it take to figure out something is wrong? Tanaka's outburst during the initial stages of XIV also give us some insight into his method of developing content - namely that he backs his ideas to a fault. Gonna claim incompetence again? The devs aren't deaf, dumb or blind which is what it would have taken to ignore all of the warning signs and concerns put forth by players on BG (through Bercus and ElmerthePointy), by fanfest participants and forum goers on the 'community' platforms.

Incompetence can take you far, but not that far I'm afraid.

Retort: They saw one of the most competitive "events" with a large player involvement with many sought-after items and though since it's so well camped, maybe people wanted more of it? Hint: Many people still do. Current king adjustments have been widely criticized and several threads about adding new world spawns were already created. It is something that many people actually want. Maybe not the casual majority, but that's why none of that was required. Dark Ixion didn't drop anything that couldn't be sold, same as the NMs from the Sandworm's Doomvoid areas.

You realize that many of the pro-Kings individuals were the ones willing to do anything to get that claim right? People in situations similar to my own were willing to use every underhanded tactic in order to one-up the competition and well into the period that these mobs were relevant, the cheating had become so blatant and the griefing so obvious that these styles of events should have been nipped in the bud, not intensified after years of opposition. SE often ignores the wishes of the yet on the subject of Kings they miraculously bent a knee to the will of the base? Cmon.

When $1500 bots were being sold just to beat people to a virtual dragon in a virtual tree, someone at SE should have made the connection that the content they were designing was pro-cheating, pro-RMT, anti-fair play and completely flew in the face of the TOS. I mean seriously - you could freakin' spook Dark Ixion so easily that it was almost as if the monster was intentionally designed to create griefing episodes. Sandworm would often not pop, drop nothing (despite having a 6hour window) and had issues using Doomvoid (MMM related or not). These mobs were designed years after the first two batches of world spawns and no one caught that before release?

I'm not saying it helped with the botting aspect, of course it didn't. World spawns will always be susceptible to botting. But people still want to do it, because some people like having to stand ready and wait for up to three hours for a NM to pop. As ridiculous as that may sound to you, who are you to deny them that?

World spawns fly in the face of the terms of service, especially when they are given the prominence the previous batches were which also happens to be the only way the world spawns become successful. Saw anyone caring about Jormungand? Tzee Xicu the Manifest? Hydra? Vrtra? Why? Because the drops sucked.

So you've got a choice here. Develop an HNM with good loot and it becomes camped, botted and turns into Aery 3: The Revenge or you create an HNM with soso/bad loot and it will fail on release because no one cares to waste the time. Seems like the logical decision is to move on from world spawns and onto more balanced ways of presenting content. I get it, most of the base gets it so why shouldn't SE have gotten it? They have more available data and more importantly the means to make changes.

First of all, I already mentioned that kings and HNMs in general had flaws. I explicitely excluded it from the things about oldXI I was talking about several times (like, at the very beginning of my previous post). I'm not sure why you're still going on about those. Especially because you're wrong. Because, secondly, why should they eradicate it when clearly many people didn't want that? You want to impose your opinion of gameplay on others so badly that you're looking for a scapegoat when it doesn't happen, or when the development team doesn't share your opinion. I'm not a psychologist, but it seems to influence quite a bit of your personality. You assume your opinion is better than other people's. It's why you extrapolate these ideas from certain aspects of the game and exaggerate them to a point that they have no connections to reality. Like when you said that "Abyssea was universally lauded", which is completely untrue. You see some people agreeing with you, and you make it a factual statement. This would also nicely explain your paranoia.

Lol. Kings should have been eradicated because it was... *drumroll* damaging the game as a whole. The people enjoying it aren't going to want it to end (they're profiting afterall) but SE should have be the one to realize that the whole game was suffering due to the method of designing everything as a sidegrade to kings gear which also happened to be the hotbed of cheating and RMT behavior. They basically allowed cheaters to be #1 while fair play was relegated to second or third sting gear that was often more difficult to obtain than sitting with the bots on in Aery.

Again I said "Point systems are universally lauded", not Abyssea and I'm willing to bet the Mog House on that.

Perfect example. No one asked for MP adjustments, yet that is what we get. You used this as an example to retort my statement that the developers wouldn't deliberately and maliciously try to frustrate their paying customerbase. How do you know that? How do you know they're not just stupid and don't get it? They saw people bitching about it, so they thought they'll adjust it, and the result was less than spectacular. They could have done this for any reason. They could have done it because they all play Impact casting DRKs. They could have done it, because none of them plays DRK and they assume MP plays a vital role to the job. They could have done this because they realize perfectly well that that's not what people asked for, but simply didn't want to give Scythe a great WS, but instead wanted people to use this situationally, when they're low on MP and actually need it.

Again with the incompetence excuses? How SE perceives DRK is irrelevant to the situation presented to them from the playerbase (NA and JP alike). Entropy needed a boost because it comes too close to being Guillotine/Insurgency with regards to damage was the complaint. If you pried further, DRKs would also tell you that the MP replenishment effect is 'fine' but really makes no sense since casting on DRK is largely ceremonial rather than crucial to the class. Your comments on SE playing DRK in those unorthodox methods would only further my repeatedly made point that they don't play the game and development is done in a vacuum.

That's an embarrassing concession no?

It is my suspicion that if SE had boosted Entropy damage-wise (or made Entropy more potent from test launch) that the MP replenishment issue would have been praised rather than bashed but yet again, SE completely blew it with regards to public relations by releasing a subpar WS and then rubbing salt into the wound by making MP replenishment the sole reason why anyone would use it. Did I mention the INT modifier is just laughable given every other class gets modifiers on-par with the theme of the class?

Then you're a hypocrite. Painting them evil in absolutely every post, saying they don't care about players, they willingly push botting and RMT behaviour, yet you wanna be friends with them? Unless you admit being part of the botting/RMT group, that hardly makes sense.

How does it not make sense? The developers could be great people off the clock and so I see to draw a distinction between criticizing their often baffling job behavior from their personal lives. Unlike the likes of Starcade, I don't think they're inherently evil or desire personal harm to befall them and yes, given the chance I'd shake hands, take pics and chum it up with the devs.

It still wouldn't change my opinion of them as developers for FFXI. It's not hypocrisy, not even close.

[Sparthos]

Oh and since this is a thread on Voidwatch, I'll leave my opinion on how I believe Voidwatch should have been presented. Make no mistake, I don't expect this to ever come to fruition nor do I believe I have all the facts.

SE could have simply created a point system with some amazing reward (make it glow for added obsession) tied to having an assload of points and that would have successfully created a bottleneck sufficient enough for the devs to work on future version updates. If they wanted to make it even more attractive to people, Heavy Metal could also be purchasable with these points and thus turn what is pretty much an unpopular event into something everyone w/could benefit from.

Something like a point spread of:
Dominion point style Armor (w/augments) - Low
Scroll that returns you to Voidwatch NPCs - Low
Some useful Voidwatch KI - Low
Heavy Metal - Low
Dominion point style Weapon (w/augments) - Medium
Heavy Metal Pouch - Medium
Staff/Club/Earring that returns you to Voidwatch NPCs - Medium
Some Rare Gear piece - High
Glowy weapon 1 - Extremely High
Glowy armor 1 - Extremely High
The monsters HQ drop (like Pil's Toci's Harness or Voidwrought's Radiant Mail) - Extremely High
One piece of a ??? Badass set - Highest (<< here's where you squeeze out the grind)

Those ores and logs wouldn't be half as bad if you know beating a few Pil would get you that much closer to finishing the 1500 plates or getting to another goal. The low drop Toci's wouldn't even be so bad if you had a better carrot on that stick to keep you going. You could also spread the points based on region to promote doing different runs to accumulate points in different regions.

The issue of leaders seizing loot would also vanish with everyone receiving their own points.

[Nynja]

I guess some people just like playing with themselves and this is who SE is catering to. Final Fantasy XI is becoming more of an offline game that we're paying for. @Nynja I'm not saying your wrong playing the way you do, But whatever happened to /shouting or making/joining a linkshell why ya "Need" so many accounts?

Because if you want something done right, you do it yourself. I've seen the people who resort to shouts for help...theres a reason they're still shouting for help and I've got my stuff done.

Though I have shouted for certain things...it wasnt help. Doing seals NM's and I only need 1...first I ask in LS if anyone is interested in any that I'm not lotting, then I shout to see if I can reduce the waste. But help...no lol.

[Aarahs]

Just one question - So you glad and fun with VWNM or WoE so much now?

Yes, actually. I do like VWNM and WoE. It's much better than abyssea where 90% of the time I need to turn away from the mob so we can proc. However, I haven't done a ton of those fights yet due to two things; first, I'm a casual player and only have about 4 hours a day I can play. Second, I'm a completionist. I will go through everything until I get all of it I want. Just to give you an example, I'm currently working on dynamis. I'm 96/120 on all relic gear and plan to complete my collection. I also am still working on Nyzul and only about 8/20 on those weapons. When I finish that, I'll move on to captain rank. I could go on, but typing on a phone is a pain.

I will happily grind my way through WoE and VW until I get everything I want. I simply haven't gotten to it yet outside of my linkshell events. Easy gear is easy gear and, as this thread has proven wonderfully, once gear has become easy enough to obtain, you might get excluded if for some reason you don't have it. That's something happening in WoW. They call it gearscore.