Translation Check Please!

[Molech]

I wouldn't say no one is going to play 14, did you see those huge pages of notes? I would go as far to say it will be better than 11 once they get out of the recoding/revamping and finally get a stable game going and not one thats in flux.

The question is, is the community going to be patient enough for that to happen?

[SpankWustler]

The post about Ranger seems to just be a really basic explanation about what Decoy Shot does and how it does that from back when the ability was newly born unto the test server. As usual, they explain stuff any idiot already knows like the effect of -enmity gear on enmity from damage dealt.

I think the overly long bit in the middle addresses why they decided to make Decoy Shot not function with weapon skills. I don't expect that reasoning would be any more comprehensible with the community team's extremely competent translation than Google's nonsensical translation, sadly.

There might be a useful tidbit buried somewhere in the minutia of the post, but I has a doubt.

[Rearden]

That fear also came from a time when FFXI was at its lowest in terms of "fun" and enjoyable content. WotG didn't offer much of anything in terms of endgame stuff and a lot of people were getting banned. (Salvage, gardening, random autobans) Debate the bannings if you want, but plenty of people who didn't deserve to be banned were and it caused fear in people who knew this.

Having XIV become what that was was something we didn't want. Excusing XIV's crappyness with that though is silly because it wasn't even a completed game and in fact all of those reasons we hated XI at the time are some of the reasons XIV sucks.

[Feynman]

Excusing XIV's crappyness with that though is silly because it wasn't even a completed game and in fact all of those reasons we hated XI at the time are some of the reasons XIV sucks.

Oh I'm not trying to use it as an excuse to defend FFXIV. I'm just saying I think there was a deliberate effort to NOT make it a sequel or spin off of XI.

[Raxiaz]

Wait, we got Tanaka back? The same guy who thought it'd be enticing to make desirable drops from monsters which spawn at max twice a week (that have other mobs that could spawn in place of them, no less) have a 0.08% drop rate which increases at the rate of +0.0001% per level of treasure hunter active on the monster at ToD??? When did this happen? Lemme guess, when the trials were made for 50 of an item from a headache-to-get-to monster to be turned in for 1 more damage on a weapon? Or was it when we got Voidwatch? I'm sorry, why did we get him back? Is it because he did a horrible job with FFXIV, one that was more bluntly obvious than FFXI's first 6 years?

I'm ashamed to be playing this game again. I expect to see unfathomable goals to be construed by SE and expected by them for the playerbase to hope to achieve.

Dead game in less than 5 years, guys.

[Mightyg]

So am I wrong to get from this thread that while the patch was good and all, what people want is actual new content and not just adjustments? More serious investment in the game?

[Greatguardian]

Pretty much. But telling that to the Com team and the Dev team isn't really going to do much of anything. You (general case) don't think Tanaka-san or any of the developers actually have the authority to hire additional personnel, do you?

The gaming industry is just that - an industry. The developers and staff don't choose what resources they can and can't put into the game. They are given resources and then told to go make miracles happen with them. I have little doubt that our Development staff is working overtime trying to do the work of a fulltime staff with only a skeleton crew, and things like the introduction of the Test server at this point in the game really point to how backed up their work queue must be.

The only people who can add development resources are the people holding the purse-strings over at SE corporate HQ. The problem is that there's no sure way to get them to do that. Business executives are not concerned with the quality of a product, they are concerned with making the product sell for the highest profit margin. If people continue to pay for a FFXI updated by an extremely overworked skeleton crew, then they will continue to overwork (and probably underpay, as is also common in the industry) that skeleton crew. If people stop paying for a FFXI updated by a skeleton crew, then they will probably just scrap whatever resources are left in the project entirely.

Essentially, if you want more development resources, then you'll have to convince Scrooge McDuck directly (as the Com team can't really pass things on to them) that reinvesting in this game is a good financial investment for reasons more palpable than "Better quality is good". The Com team and the Dev team? These are people who care about the quality of the game. They love the game so much that they are willing to put up with all this bullshit from their bosses and still work their asses off trying to develop this game with what they have available to them. The Exec staff and Finance dept? No. They really, absolutely, 100% do not give a shit about video games. They care about their bottom line and that's it.

And that bottom line? FFXI has been steadily losing subscribers for years, regardless of the quality of updates. Making more existing subscribers happy doesn't do anything for the bottom line if they are still unable to attract new customers. They never advertised in the EU or NA regions even when the game was brand new. Why would they try investing in broadening the userbase of their decade-old game now? It certainly doesn't help that FFXIV was such a hugely hyped flop, and you still have idiots like Adam Sessler who spend 30 minutes getting to level 8, get killed fighting a VT bunny in La Theine, and give the game a shit review on US TV because he can't believe he got killed by a bunny (hurrr durrrrrrrr /check function).

This game has very little exposure in the US and the EU compared to other MMOs, and the little exposure SE MMOs have had has been horrendous. As much as I would love to see additional resources devoted to this game, I just don't see how it would happen.

[Greatguardian]

He never left.

[Raxiaz]

I could've sworn FFXI had a change of producers or directors back in fall '10... switched like twice within 2 months didn't it?

[Neisan_Quetz]

Directors.