Let Producer Matsui Know How He Should Catch Up on 2 Years!

[Zhronne]

Hello Matsui-shishou, here are my ideas for the future of FFXI, and what you should be focusing on from now on, I'll try to keep it short but we all know I will fail.

1. Game Controller Support
   Since you are working on a new UI for FFXI, it would be fantastic if you could make the Game controller support better, maybe supporting "xinput" controllers (currently it only supports "dinput" ones) or putting an option that allows the game to use analogic shoulders as digital buttons. Can find more details and complaints from users in THIS and THIS posts.
2. In-game camera max-distance from character
   Currently there is a limit on how far away from your character you can "zoom out" the camera. This limit probably had a meaning back in 2002 when the game came out, but we're in 2012 now and it would be very nice if SE could slightly increase this limit. People already do this very easily through third party tools, it wouldn't be a hard work for SE to offer us the chance to do it in a legit way. Further info HERE
3. Merit Cap Increase
   Abyssea's way to do XP offered all of us the chance to level new jobs, get new merits etc. It was probably the right way to go, altough maybe abyssea "overdid it". Pretty soon most if not all player will have all the jobs they want to level capped at 99, same with merits. Since "lost xp while dying" hardly matter anymore like it did at 75, we're close to the point where people won't XP anymore. You need to keep adding stuff players can do with their XP/merits, that way they will always have motivation to keep getting merits. An example would be to raise the cap on merit WS, allow us to merit more.
   Add new categories of merits, raise the cap of merits in already existing categories, and things like this.
4. New Graphic Interface
   We know you guys are working on a new graphic interface, please do not forget about Gamepad users. Players using gamepad could still use a Mouse to set/place the windows, but then use Gamepad to navigate through them. Please do it! Even for the macros, we heard you want to make so there will be three basic macro options, the CTRL line, the ALT line (like we have now) and a third one. This wouldn't create any issues at all on gamepads. For example associate right trigger to CTRL line, the left trigger to ALT line, and both triggers for the new line.
   Just an example. What I'm really worried about is for you to make so the new interface won't be useable with a gamepad.
5. Experience Points balancement
   Abyssea-style Alliance XP was really nice, but it's getting boring after more than one year, and it keeps on promoting lazyness. Why don't you resurrect the concept of old 6-people experience parties?
   I know you can still do them nowadays, problem is that they are worse than Abyssea alliances from every point of view, and so there is no motivation.
   Please offer some motivation so that people will be able to do XP parties again with the new expansion, and watch out not to overdo it. I do not want new parties to "kill" abyssea-style XP. I just want them to be an additional viable option.
   Doing the same thing for a long time makes that thing boring, doesn't matter if it's about Abyssea PTs or normal PTs.
   Being able to choose what you do would create a bit of variation and make things less boring
6. Enmity Control
   We all know that in Abyssea these formulae were completely broken because of the very low "roof" at which enmity caps and several other issues I won't talk about.
   The Enmity balancement was based with lv75 numbers, and Abyssea killed all of this.
   You need to rework all the system, especially the Damage=>Enmity conversion formula, because that formula used to work with level75 values maybe, it certainly doesn't work with lv99 values.
   Also, could you consider making Tanking less "strange" compared to other MMOs? You can do this by adding special job traits to tank jobs or tank stances (see below), something more efficient than just a raw amount of enmity that won't ever be enough.
   I'm not asking to make so a Damage Dealer can never steal a Tank's hate, but it should be harder to do so than it is with the current state of the game.
   When a tank needs very very specific gear to do what he's supposed to do (tanking) you know something is wrong in the game. A tank in a MMO game should have all the basic necessary tools to perform his job. Better gear should make the job easier/more efficient, it shouldn't be something as absolutely necessary as it seems to be in FFXI's situation today.
7. FFXI and "stances"
   It's a very common concept in many MMOs to create variation among the same class/job.
   You have a certain stance, when you activate that you lose something and you gain something, pros and cons, making it a balanced and situational thing to change your playstyle and allow you to do different things in different situations.
   This is especially useful for classes/jobs who can do many things. Scholar for example, or Ninja.
   A concept similar to "stances" already exists in FFXI, many jobs have something similar.
   I think their balancement should be reevaluated though.
   More "balance" - to make a stance balanced you need to make so it gives you something and it takes away something, for some "stances" in FFXI this is not true and they offer only advantages.
   Also, they need to be more focused on the long time, and not short time buff.
   Good example of how stances should be implemented on this regard are: Afflatus Solace, Afflatus Misery, Composure, Light Arts, Dark Arts.
   Bad example? Yonin and Innin, or Footwork.
   Players need to CHOOSE when they want to play in a stance or another, the balance should come from what you gain and what you loose.
   You shouldn't be forced to refresh it every 3 minutes, and monsters shouldn't be able to dispel them.
8. Entertaining and challenging fights
   Please bring out again Fights against strong enemies that require a whole different range of strategies to be defeated.
   Examples from the past? King Behemoth, Chlevnik, Wyrm, Aspidochelone, Tiamat, Vrtra, Cerberus, Khimaira, Kirin, Seiryu, Suzaku, Jailer of Fortitude, Jailer of Prudence, Jailer of Love. All these mobs had very different abilities which required different strategies from the players willing to challenge them.
   The so called "zerg" strategies are annoying. It's good to have them when they're PART of what you do, they get boring when they are the ONLY thing to do.
   The same thing could be said about challenges which are un-original, unbalanced and frustrating, forcing players to resort to "cheap" strategies, like abusing/exploiting certain particularly strong job abilities like Perfect Defense and Embrava, to name a few.
   This is not a sign of a good battle planning from the development team, imho
9. Consolidation
   Currently, in my opinion, there is way too much situational gear in FFXI, creating several issues in players who have multiple jobs. There just is not enough inventory space, and it becomes easy to get "lost" between the sheer amount of gear all of us do own.
   "Consolidating" certain pieces of gear could be a nice way to save inventory space and make so a single piece can replace 2 or 3 old ones.
   A decent example of this is the recently added Chatoyant Staff.
   Can you please do something similar for other categories of items? Sea torques, Elemental Gorgets, Elemental Belts, Elemental Obis, etc.
   Would be like killing two birds with one stone.
   On one hand it would offer players motivation to collect all of them and not just a few.
   On the other hand it would allow them to save a lot of inventory and macro space, and have single items with the stats of many.
10. Weekly Forum Event
    Make so that once every week (or every month, or every 15 days) there is a special discussion where players can make ONE post and ask ONE question.
    One of this question is chosen every week and Developers will offer a detailed reply to that question.
    Like "How does the ability XXX really work?" or "How does the item XXX really affect the ability YYY?" or "What's the formula to calculate the amount of ....?"