End of the Year/New Year Greeting

[Camate]

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:

Happy New Year.

Last year I focused on gathering and listening to your opinions. This year, in addition to that, I would like to place more of an emphasis on keeping you informed about the vision of FFXI.

I'm sorry that this is somewhat abstract, but first, I'll be putting all of my energy into raising the satisfaction levels of all you adventuring in Vana'diel. Then I would like to adjust the difficulty of content and each their targets as well as modify features so that past adventurers can return to FFXI.

This year marks the release of Seekers of Adoulin and although I took a somewhat long winter break, I will be working at full speed toward its release at the end of March.

I'm looking forward to a good year with you all.

*Sorry that my New Year's greeting was late. I'll start posting a lot more from tomorrow onward.

Director Mizuki Ito:

Happy New Year.

Last year I spent a lot of time on Adoulin-related development and a full year has come to an end. We're currently in the midst of the final stretch finalizing Seekers of Adoulin.

The development team has a mountain of work this year as well, but as opposed to 2012 where the manpower wasn't being divided, this year we're working with Matsui to build a structure that allows us to better meet the feedback seen on the forums.

Everyone is working passionately on Seekers of Adoulin, so please look forward to a great year of FFXI.

Associate Director Yoji Fujito:

Happy New Year!

Since the middle of 2012, I started popping up a bit more around the forums. Thinking back, I think I might have been a bit too much of a tongue-in-the-cheek kind of character, but I hope you're all enjoying it.

In preparation for the release of Seekers of Adoulin, the entire development team is working extremely hard and even I, who is normally calm and composed, am running around as busy as a bee. For real!

This year we'll be developing new content and stories centered around Seekers of Adoulin, but we'll also be putting in all of our energy to tackle some of the outstanding issues as well. (Such as the PS2 blackout issue, as well as fishing and synergy revamps.)

We appreciate your continued patronage of FFXI this year as well!

[Michizane]

Can I take Yoji Fujito home with me and give them to my niece as a pet? She would love a baby chocobo. >.>;

[Mayoyama]

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

[xbobx]

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?

[Camate]

Hello!

I'd like to pass along the below response from Producer Akihiko Matsui in regards to acquiring new players.

Happy New Year!

I'm really happy that you are placing such an emphasis on increasing the satisfaction levels for current adventurers as well as looking to bring adventurers back.

However, I feel a bit uneasy that there was no mention of acquiring new players. Even though it's a 10 year old game, XI is still awesome and I’d love to see new adventurers coming in.

Sorry to worry you, but we're not giving up on acquiring new players.

From a task perspective, focusing on new players and adjusting low-level content is easier.

However, focusing on that would mean that adventurers playing now would have to wait quite a while to then address their needs. So we'd like to add and adjust high level elements. (This is the general principle, though there exceptions on an individual basis.)

Our main goal is to make FFXI fun for everyone currently playing, so that you can tell your friends who haven't played yet, or those that used to play, to join and play with you and that the game is much more fun now that it was before.

I believe that at this current point in time, this is the most important aspect for new player acquisition.

[FrankReynolds]

Hello!

I'd like to pass along the below response from Producer Akihiko Matsui in regards to acquiring new players.

However, focusing on that would mean that adventurers playing now would have to wait quite a while to then address their needs. So we'd like to add and adjust high level elements. (This is the general principle, though there exceptions on an individual basis.)

I believe that at this current point in time, this is the most important aspect for new player acquisition.

I think the best way to do this would be to bring on more staff so that you can do both. Instead of constantly deciding who / what to ignore.

[Zhronne]

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

[Kraggy]

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.

[xbobx]

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

Don't you mean after FFXIV fails and they need to reassign the programmers?

[Winrie]

Don't you mean after FFXIV fails and they need to reassign the programmers?

FFXIV in its alpha/Beta stages is more entertaining than XI. Just throwing that out there.