The new era of communication with the playerbase.

[Runespider]

That didn't last long did it?

There is no more worthwhile communication, the game is being forceably moved back in the direction almost nobody wants it to go. Posts are ignored aside from what they want to answer (back to old old ways, only answer the stupid easy stuff or reply marginally ontopic with the things the devs replied to the JP players), most importantly there are genuine concerns and hatred for the new direction the game is going (as well as the serious lack of work going into updates we pay for) and these things are being ignored.

Era of communication under Tanaka = over, "you get what I say you get and I don't care if you like it or not". Or as what ruined FFXIV "I know better than you do what's good for an MMO, now shut up and play it."

All I see from FFXI from the last 2 updates is "someone" trying to take the game back in time and ignoring how much the playerbase has changed and the outrage about it. Most players don't want old FFXI anymore and ignoring us is not the best way to cointinue to make FFXI viable, please don't let this continue to the point where 12 months where someone is fired from another FF title due to running it into the ground.

It's ok to add 18 player content, it's not ok to make the drop system so stupid to artificially lengthen repeat kills to the level that everybody hates it. It's also ok to have serious endgame again but you can't ignore the more casual playerbase that FFXI has (which makes up the vast majority of paying subscribers and which came back for Abyssea, do we want to lose them all again?). It's ok to have rarer drops but not to this level of rare and not on items almost everyone wants given how easy it is to level things now (again an artifical time sink in place of actual content). It's ok to try make FFXI more profitable but it's not ok to cut back so hard that you starve the dev team and we get almost nothing of value from the updates that have already been cut back in number per year.

So yeah, less about 99 or 100 and more about the actual serious concerns players have with this game before you strangle the life out of the only profitable MMO the company is likely to have for the next 5-6 years (at best).

[noodles355]

I'm curious if the Japanese playerbase are as unhappy with the Dev team as the english playerbase appears.

[Urteil]

It lasted until a certain someone came back, who whenever you mention their name your thread gets deleted.

So honestly since he-who-will-not-be-named returned at the helm, I suppose its stupid that we are acting surprised.

[Mirage]

dear runespider
ilu

[noodles355]

It lasted until a certain someone came back

I thought that Tanaka was always the producer?

[Monchat]

There was an annoucement after the visons abyssea release IIRC where he annouced moving to work 100% on FFXIV ( he was working on both until then), or was it reight after the FFXIV alpha? A few months later the game is released and people everywhere say it sucks, while 11 is getting abyssea, considered by many teh best updates ever. 4 months later he is dismissed and leaves 14, 14 get 11's producer and it finally slowly gets fixed ( 1 year worth of regular update didn't suffice to fix Tanaka's work apparently). Yup, this guy seriously thought the 10k people per server in 14 would check each day the bazaars of the 9999 other players. 1 year after release, tanak comes back to 11 secretely, FF11 gets voidwatch, ff14 gets materias.

[svengalis]

I'm sure voidwatch was in the planning way before he returned. It just kinda sucks though because its not in abyssea. In abyssea we are gods, outside abyssea we are just normal men. I want more abyssea content.

[xbobx]

Tanaka related to someone high up or have a large percentage of stock? In any other company he would have been fired by now. Or put in the mail room.. Is ffxi considered the mail room now?

[Vold]

What all of this Tanaka stuff reminds me of, is the typical conspiracy theorist. "hmmm. Tanaka was on FFXIV. We got Abyssea. He was banished back to FFXI and we got Voidwatch. Ah-ha! It makes sense." Right. That would make sense, except Tanaka has been the PRODUCER OF FFXI ALL THIS TIME. HE NEVER LEFT. To my knowledge. Tell me who the producer was. Tell me who got fired to let Tanaka back in. You can't, because no one was fired. Because the job of producer isn't a difficult job. Tanaka only got axed from 14 because he was also the director(which is infinitely the more important job) and obviously he guessed wrong at what people wanted. They even have a NA producer for the game last I checked. I'm not sure what his job is or even remember his name much because he's sort of one of the forgotten ones, but he's there. So hold on to your seats when I say this, Tanaka said YES to Abyssea. OMG. The reports from hell are coming in. It's frozen over!


If Tanaka is guilty of anything, it's trying to design 14 for everyone. When you tack on the Final Fantasy name you instantly restrict your player base to FF fans only. They should have stuck with Rature or something else with different elements from FF and it would have been much better off, but that is opinions for another day and place. You want someone to blame? Blame Ito. Or SE in general. Personally, I understand that Abyssea was an add on, without reservations, and as such it required high drop rates. Everyone was going to be doing Abyssea for certain. To have a crappy drop rate would cause severe congestion issues. Really, that's all it was. That's not to say I've excused them for Voidwatch. I'm just saying, understand the situation before you play the role of critic.

[Malamasala]

It is a bit random when they listen. I'm still amazed they adjusted shock squall when they could have done their usual "working as intended, go away" solution.

The problem is that they managed to make the game fun with abyssea, then decided that fun was yesterdays news and we should return to boring.