The new era of communication with the playerbase.

[Runespider]

Yeah. I must have been playing since last week only. You realise the ones who aren't jumping on the Tanaka-is-the-devil bandwagon are the ones that played this game before abyssea, and did proper endgame content. The ones who like content that was challenging and put up with shit drop rates because it meant more when you finally got shit. The ones who complain about Tanaka and his supposed return are either:
The ones who joined during abyssea, don't like the game returning to it's normal way, and are throwing a fit.
The ones who played before abyssea, but were completely casual players and didn't know anything about endgame.
The ones who played before abyssea, did a bit of sky and dynamis, and think that makes them pros on endgame, whilst really they still dont know anything about it.

I and most everyone else fearful of a return to old ways did every event possible, including 2am Einherjar(since events had to be set at times around other stuff and when most everyone else could participate), kings camps of 6-7 hours daily, Dynamis, Salvage, limbus etc. Done it all, so no it's not as you say at all. The ones that fear a return are mostly the ones that know how bad it actually used to be, I had all the best gear and honestly it just wasn't worth the horror they put you through to get it. You don't know how good this game is right now compared to what it used to be, being an endgamer meant having a 2nd job that you paid to do, having your week set out with mostly unrewarding timed events and the hell of finding shells that did runs you could attend to due to time problems.

Also Casual is not a dirty word anymore, FFXI playerbase is mostly all casual now. We have grown older with this game, most of us have jobs/families or other commitments and even the most hardcore of us can't go back to the old hellish/unrewarding ways. 2/3 years for one piece of (usually sidegrade) equipment just won't fly anymore, no matter how fun the event starts off as. I like Voidwatch atm but the nature of the drop system ensures we will all be doing it for many years to come, to the point we hate it and to the point the vast majority will give up on it.

The move to the kind of stuff we have been getting recently isn't to make the game more challenging, it's to make small amounts of content last for years. It's just being cheap with development time and very little else, don't fool yourself.

Since the announcement of FFXIV developpement, and before that even, we all noticed slowing down of updates, and stagnant content. Yes, eveyone noticed WoTG was not progressing at all. Took them what, 3 years to finish the storyline, and all they added is a few HNMs , variouc BCs ( shadow lord, campaing BC , ANNM , fey weapons), and WoE came only the update before the level cap 80 ( or at the same update.. dont remember). I thought that was because they mobilized all their resources to develop FFXIV. Then FFXIV came out and... wtf? FFXIV had no content either, guildleves suck ( too easy , too limited, unrewarding).

Most of the problems with FFXIV were down to bad decisions and most importantly, them trying to write an engine from scratch for it when they didn't have enough time or experience to do so. Vast majority of the dev time was eaten up on that stupidity, hence the state of that game upon release. If they actually leased an engine from another company like most other MMOs do it would of launched far better.

Abyssea era was a complete change in the entire way FFXI was run, drops that you could get with 90% chance? actual upgrades on equipment and weapons? Powerful and actually useful upgrades to JA/spells etc? Upgrading jobs instead of nerfing others? endgame open to all with no stupid time sinks? dev teams listening and actually reacting to players complaints? List goes on, the change was like black and white in comparision. I know they had to reign it back some but not to the level they seem to be, there has to be some kind of middle ground.

[Molech]

Lol people knew the patch was Tanaka's doing 12hrs after they opened the test server the first time before the patch rolled out. Tanaka might of always been around but Abyssea doesn't reek of Tanaka, it goes against all of his design choices.

[noodles355]

You don't know how good this game is right now compared to what it used to be,

Is that right old-timer? I did only start playing last week afterall.

ITT:
I've turned into a casual gamer.
Abyssea catered for casual gamer.
It's better for me now and so must also be better for everyone else too.

[Raxiaz]

Funny that FFXIV's v1.19 patch just released and it looks to be the most positive change in the history of that game - I can't believe I'm saying it, but I might have to fire up XIV again if they keep up with this direction in XI (cue the FFXI intentionally killing XI to make XIV succeed conspiracy theorists). There definitely seems to be a strong link to these horrible decisions and the return to prominence of the exiled XIV producer. Tanaka-san = the ultimate HNM. Since AV is now a much more winnable fight, he can serve as the new "impossible" Notorious Monster.

I'm not a brand new player, I've been here since 2004. I love Abyssea and it revitalized the game for me, like it did for many others. I am not willing to go backwards and deal with the bad aspects of the old days of FFXI yet again. I'm very worried about the future given the post-Abyssea content we've seen:

* Voidwatch is a disaster thanks to the garbage drop rates and loot distribution system, for mostly sidegrade gear at that
* WOE isn't much better, and the new changes hurt it for solo coin farming and as a good alternative for a lower requirement (and weaker weapon) alternative to get Empy WS.
* The requirements for 95 Empyrean/WOE weapon trials - brutal
* The revamped land kings system
* Scroll drops exclusively from HKCNMs

I'm not very excited to hear that future content might include things like additional Wyrms - in fact I'm very much dreading the return of the awful HNM systems of the past.

Neo Dynamis is about the only thing I'm enjoying right now outside of Abyssea, but really, I can't see too much of a point. Makes relics more obtainable, but for what? As an alternative to insane 95Empy requirements, so I can have a weapon to kill VW content and not get desired drops a little bit faster? I can see myself finishing up AFv3+2 gear for my jobs and losing any motivation to continue with FFXI unless something unexpected happens soon.

I couldn't have posted a better anti-Tanaka post, myself.

[Raxiaz]

Game was hard - Tanaka must have done it!!!!!!11
Game was easy - Tanaka must have been doing something else!!!!!!!!!1111
Game was hard again - Tanaka must be back!!!!!!!!!!1111111

Or like, maybe FFXI was always FFXI and Abyssea was an interlude to help everyone move up from 75 to 99. And now that transition is almost complete they're releasing more normal content again.

Nah, screw it. It couldn't have possibly been that. IT MUST BE THAT TANAKA WENT AWAY AND SO THE DEV TEAM WERE LET OUT OF THEIR JAIL CELLS AND ALOWED TO MAKE THE GAME FUN, AND NOW HE'S BACK AND THEY ARE LOCKED UP AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!! AHHHHHHHH!!!

The world is officially ending, the guy who never left is back, and he's destroying everything the real dev team worked so hard to build!!

Yeah. I must have been playing since last week only. You realise the ones who aren't jumping on the Tanaka-is-the-devil bandwagon are the ones that played this game before abyssea, and did proper endgame content. The ones who like content that was challenging and put up with shit drop rates because it meant more when you finally got shit. The ones who complain about Tanaka and his supposed return are either:
The ones who joined during abyssea, don't like the game returning to it's normal way, and are throwing a fit.
The ones who played before abyssea, but were completely casual players and didn't know anything about endgame.
The ones who played before abyssea, did a bit of sky and dynamis, and think that makes them pros on endgame, whilst really they still dont know anything about it.

I'm sorry, I never liked any of Tanaka's design choices. I've been playing since 2004 and I dreaded every single end-game event until abyssea launched. If Tanaka designed abyssea, then what the hell was he on when he designed it? You are quite literally the most pathetic poster I've seen on these boards aside from myself. :<

[Runespider]

http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/107271-Tanaka-Rage!

[noodles355]

I'm sorry, I never liked any of Tanaka's design choices. I've been playing since 2004 and I dreaded every single end-game event until abyssea launched.

Tanaka obviously had nothing to do with Abyssea. It's not like he was producer and on the team throughout all of abyssea or anything. Oh... wait.

You are quite literally the most pathetic poster I've seen on these boards aside from myself. :<

I'm pathetic? I'm sorry, pathetic is blaming the game going back in it's old direction on one guy who was here throughout the whole of the "new direction" that was abyssea. Pathetic is jumping on the bandwagon and blaming the new direction change on tanaka returning as director by getting your facts mixed up and not doing any research to realise that he was never director, he was producer, the directors changed, the producers didn't.

[Insaniac]

There is no way in hell Tanaka was calling any shots during the abyssea expansions. I would bet everything I own in the world on it. He was up to his furrowed eyebrows in ruining another game. Anyone who did anything in ffxi pre-abyssea should be able to tell the difference and most people were suspicious of his return to shot calling long before he made his heart crushing post on the forums. To me Tanaka is the mmo equivalent of the heartless CEO that sends jobs over seas to see stocks rise. He has 0 concern for the happiness of the games players and takes little to none of their feedback (ff14 beta and 8 years of ground kings say hi.) He just wants them to be stuck playing as long as possible no matter how little fun they are having. Watch how fast this game drops down to 5 servers after level 99 if the next few updates are as Tanakafied as this last one.

[Neisan_Quetz]

I can believe it, Before weakness staggers were figured out which once again, SE did nothing to tell players how they work, Drop rates for a lot of Abyssea gear is pretty god awful. My theory is they never expected people to figure out how the weakness staggering worked so quickly.

Atma of the apocalypse's infinite RR and 200k brews considering old habits, I can't defend.

[Vagrua]

I managed to dig up some information about the NA producer Yasu Kurosawa if anyone's interested. It's just a couple interview threads, but he is listed as FFXI's NA producer still even though I also found that he is working as the NA producer of FFXIV:

Interview threads:
http://www.1up.com/features/final-fantasy-xi-interview

http://na.square-enix.com/events/ffx...ranscript.html

FFXI producer proof:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_XI

FFXIV producer interview/proof:

http://massively.joystiq.com/2010/10...d-yasu-kurosa/