A Message to Our English-speaking Community

[Akihiko_Matsui]

Matsui here.

First off, I want to say thank you very much for the positive comments made in the "Mr. Matsui" thread! I'm sorry that I haven't been able to respond directly to it.

Though we have the English reps running the ship around here, all of the discussions that take place on the English forum gets shared with both me and the other developers, and we take all of your comments into consideration when implementing new content and making adjustments.

Reading all of your posts, we get the feeling that there are a lot of you who are enjoying the various challenges and this is very encouraging for us on the development team to read.

We will continue to implement content that poses a good challenge, as well as content that can be enjoyed by a wide range of players.

Please continue to submit your feedback and hold even more discussions about the game.
Thank you very much.

[OmnysValefor]

With respect, your response embodies something voiced a lot around here. Something you yourself addressed when you replied here (translated), via Camate.

Something we eagerly desire on many issues is a reply. Silence on many topics doesn't tell us whether you're considering changes or just ignoring them.

We ask you about things like:

Red mage specific spells
Enmity adjustments
Wildskeeper popularity vs the increasing difficulty

(This is not to ask for the difficulty to increase, but that as the skill of those attending decreases, along with the desire/capability to come on useful jobs, the difficulty increases greatly.)

and several other things that I imagine Camate has made you aware of.

After all that, the topic that gets addressed is the topic praising you for a job well done which, I'm sorry, is not the consensus around here.

An example would be this thread, which started out similarly, and then people--including myself--left feedback.

[Anjou]

Not only that, but what about Campaign? Literally every week the map stays at numbers that point to Fiat Lux never getting accessed again.



Seriously can something be done to not see things like this anymore? At least with Besieged and whatnot there were always people in need of imperial standing for things like teleporting through runic portals, but with campaign battle, there's nothing else to it...the people who want to try to get to Fiat Lux won't ever get to do it.

[Duelle]

Something we eagerly desire on many issues is a reply. Silence on many topics doesn't tell us whether you're considering changes or just ignoring them.

We ask you about things like:

Red mage melee and specific spells
Enmity adjustments

Fixed.....

[Karbuncle]

I have to admit, You guys are seriously making me embarrassed to breath the same air as you. I do my fair share of complaining, I know i do, but a lot of complaints i see around here, hell I've made them myself sometimes half-serious that pretty much the only feedback is taken from JP posts and we just get the translations of their answers.

But, The fact is This man, who I'll believe, Is coming in to say he listens to all languages. Just because he or the dev team don't respond to every single little complain doesn't mean they're not doing their job. Plenty of adjustments have been made off the feedback here, and just cause its not what you want or it didnt effect you doesn't mean It didn't happen.

Oh, and segue into this reminder to some of you, just because you think its important doesn't mean anyone else wants. I can imagine that Thief's Knife adjustments and SMN not sucking should be the center of the world but it doesn't make it true, neither does pretending anyone cares about RDM or Campaign.

Stuffs coming on a priority basis and 10 people bickering back and forth on the 2 Campaign topics a month doesn't mean its an epidemic at the heart of dropping subscriptions. Personally I wouldn't object to a Adjustment to Campaign but I don't think its in catastrophic need of priority, and for the twist? I've created some of those Campaign threads myself and supported all/most of them. Mind blowing right?

chill out. for serious.

Sternness aside. Thank you Mr Matsui for taking the time to make this post, It means a lot to many of us, and even though the haters gunna hate, i assure you most of us understand your message and appreciate acknowledging our sometimes petty complaints.

Edit: And for examples of them listening to even small complaints. Two recent examples. RDM being added to more daggers, and THF to more Marksmanship weapons. Despoil Pools for new mobs was also added due to suggestions (or coincidentally).

[Fusionx]

Current feelings about XI vs XIV aside- Matsui is doing his job much better than his predecessor. Never mind the fact that he's also been juggling XIV's battle system while also being the Producer of FFXI. The game is seeing radical changes at this time and I think the way Matsui is keeping in contact with the playerbase is great.

You know how many posts Tanaka made on the forums? You could count them on one hand. ONE hand.

[Umichi]

Thank you for replying! I hope in the future things get easier and I hope you keep bringing content and making adjustments when you see neccesary .

I was going to post something negatively about Diefact, but then I took a Stone VI to the knee.

[Hayward]

It's good to know that Mr. Matsui does read the forums. At the very least it shows we can commend these issues to the developers' minds, if nothing else. With XIV unofficially starting tomorrow for those who bought in early, this should free up some staff to shore up XI's more pressing issues.

[Demon6324236]

Now, as for my real opinion on everything said here... I still like Matsui's direction with a few things, and hate others. Upgrading gear in the way he did, totally disagree in every possible way, changes he made to some events, Delve's reward system, these are good things. But in the end, my largest issue is still not addressed, he tends to focus on things which not a lot of people seem to have an issue with, while at the same time, ignoring, or at least not addressing, much larger and wide spread issues. Also, he seems to ignore, or again, not address, many past issues, though some of this is coming up now, UI, Cait Sigh & Atomos, but many other things like RDM specific spells, DRK Fast Cast, and other things which were on the board before he even came in. If he could implement all past things that were talked about, or at least tell us flat out they will not happen, it would at least be addressing them in some manner. Someone like myself who enjoyed Meeble Burrows may still be waiting for the update to add KIs to reduce the wait time, to implement the Rolandberry zone, and so on. But, for now, still no word on that content, at all, since when it was first talked about.



I hope you read this Matsui, I really do. Please, work on some older things. I know Adoulin is new, and fresh, but please, go back, make old content matter, add on what was previously announced, make it worth doing. Adoulin has a lot to offer right now, but you keep stepping on your own toes, you make an event like Skirmish, but you outclass everything in it with gear from Delve, and a few months later, you outclass everything in Delve with more gear from Skirmish, even the gear that is 6 levels higher gets beaten by gear from Skirmish! If you keep adding content in this way, it will seriously make players like myself stop playing, I used to love working to get gear that would last some time, that would stay good, but now it feels like every update my gear is no longer the best, I restart working on something completely different.

Let me give you an example, last month, Bokwus Gloves were the best Enfeebling Magic Accuracy hands in the entire game for RDM. The only way for them to be, would be to get them to rank 15 on augments. I spent a lot of Plasm, took my time to get them up. Now, you introduced some new hands, Hagondes Cuffs, naturally, these are already better than my Bokwus Gloves, even at rank 15, the Cuffs win without augments at all. This kind of thing makes me quite angry, I worked hard on those Gloves, I put a lot of time and effort into them. In the end, my effort was belittled by the fact they were so quickly outdated, beaten by something easier to get, and much, much better in the end.

There are old pieces of content like Meeble Burrows which people enjoyed, but as it stands, it seems like if you even implemented it now that its rewards would be either much to weak to matter, or so strong they would make everything else look bad. I would love for you to work on some of this old content, and old ideas you said you would implement, but at the same time, they need to be done well. Since the expansion has come out, you have done well, but you have made fatal flaws at the same time. You should not make better gear every single update for every single thing practically. Some things need to be long term pieces of gear that work well for a long time, and have some stability in their place at the top. As your going now, your item level system does not even work properly. You created the new Skirmish gear to be on the same level as that of the Delve gear. At the same time, many of the augments are so powerful that it makes Delve gear look like its 10~20 levels behind! We have things like a Magic Attack Bonus head piece with 40 Magic Attack Bonus on it, Delve had a head with, at most, 13, the same kind of thing can be seen through all of the mage pieces of gear, I would assume melee as well, though I have not paid attention to them really.

As I said, I hope you read this, this game is about to take a large hit when FFXIV hits I think, and unless you can keep people here, it will only get worse. If enough of my friends leave for FFXIV, I probably will as well, and I will be but another domino in the chain, my leaving will cause others to leave, who cause others. If this game pulls people back, or if you can do things to keep them here, that will not happen, but everything is in your hands. I know it must be hard to do your job, I can not expect it to be easy, but I can expect you to listen, understand, and do everything you can to do it well. You have done well so far, but there are things lacking, some errors have been made, and unless you fix the issues we have with the largest, most wide spread problems, you could very well see this game come to an end, or at very least, see the amount of people playing this game dwindle to the point it becomes nothing more than a ghost of its former self. I wish you best of luck Matsui, I really hope this game stays alive, that you can use the feedback we give to truly make it a better game, but as it stands now, unless some large changes are made to create a balance between what FFXI was, and what you have transformed it into, I fear that despite your efforts, this game is going to crumble around us all.

[Zarchery]

This is what I get from this particular thread...

Matsui: "Thanks for your kind words. I'm glad you're enjoying the game!"
Several different players: "I'm not enjoying the game! You're ignoring my personal preference so you are a failure!"