Newest interview (abyssea was a mistake?)

**Theytak** · 12-05-2011 04:17 PM

The biggest, most glaring thing I've taken away from reading that rage-inducing interview is that the devs don't care at all about our feedback. They know we don't like the way they design stuff, but rather than designing stuff that we like, or even trying to come to a compromise, they pretty much flat out said "We know you guys feel this way, but we disagree. End of story. Your opinions hold no weight."

It's made even worse by the farce of this Official Forum. They think they can placate us by hiring someone like camate or gildrein to come in and tell us they care, and to give them our feed back, but they aren't actually going to listen to the feedback about anything other than glitches or bugs. It's not only insulting to the players, but it's totally unfair to the people who have to act as middlemen, because it's effectively trying to direct the blame away from the devs.

Honestly, I'm surprised this thread hasn't already been locked and deleted and swept under the rug. Lord forbid the players not be happy that the devs out and out said they don't intend to listen to our feedback.

**SpankWustler** · 12-05-2011 04:26 PM

Originally Posted by Karbuncle

They have the potential to create progressive rewarding goals, and random-rewarding goals, and they go the full-retard path every single time.

Thats the reason the game is dying. Its never a middle ground with them, Its either "Here's some Icecream" or "Prepare your anus"

It's a long post so I just quoted this bit, but I agree with the sentiment. I really enjoyed systems like Limbus and Einherjar that mixed constant and random rewards in some way. I guess Dynamis worked this way too in the past, except the Relic Armor could be more of a gag gift than a reward in most cases.

Point systems and currencies leave players with a feeling they've gotten something, even if the ideal thingy didn't drop.

More than anything, though, I think variety is important. If Abyssea is the new Assault (super-casual all-around, almost all rewards come from accumulating smaller stuff) and Voidwatch is the new Salvage (relatively challenging gameplay with brutal drop rates, rewards depends on something more random than a lightning strike lottery), will there be enough variety in between?

Sometimes people want ice cream. Sometimes people want to prepare their anuses. Sometimes people want to prepare their anuses for ice cream.

**Theytak** · 12-05-2011 04:42 PM

Originally Posted by SpankWustler

Sometimes people want ice cream. Sometimes people want to prepare their anuses. Sometimes people want to prepare their anuses for ice cream.

I haven't laughed that hard in a long time. Can I have your babies?

**Arcon** · 12-05-2011 04:58 PM

I'm amazed at the negativity in here. I cannot comprehend it. Does anyone but me realize that this is all makeshift content? The only mistake the development team made is not raising the level cap to 99 instantly. They knew people were impatient, and they wanted something to hold them over, hence the tumor known as Abyssea was created. And VW is the same thing, at least for now, just makeshift content until we get to 99. Sure, people will still do it, especially higher chapters, but how can you complain about something that's not even out yet? I very rarely get emotionally upset on these forums, but this is starting to grind my shit, the amount of bitching about literally nothing is mind-boggling.

Fact: Abyssea was a bad business decision. It wasn't fit for FFXI (it's not fit for any MMORPG). It was short-lived by design and it changed player mentalitiy drastically (at least of those people who didn't quit), which is highly incompatible with the the previous game, and the way the game is currently returning to. If they want to please people, they'd have to shell out similar content regularly, which means a massive investment on their part to keep the playerbase satisfied, something they don't have the resources to do. They realized that, hence what they said in that interview. Why they didn't realize it sooner is anyone's guess.

Fact: They can't keep Abyssea-like content up for any prolonged period. And that is for two reasons: firstly, they don't have the resources to shell out a middle-tier expansion every three months. Secondly, game elements would lose even more value than they already did with Abyssea. Why did all events die out? Because Abyssea-tier gear made them obsolete. Now everyone complains about sidegrade gear with Voidwatch, imagine what would happen if they increased the gear value significantly. Do you really want STR+50, DEX+50, AGI+50, Haste+25% on one piece of armor? Because at the rate they were upgraded in Abyssea it wouldn't take long to get there. So what happens with old events? Release Relic armor +10? Nyzul Armor +53? Whatever the solution would be (theoretically, because in reality there is none) it would involve introducing massive amounts of generic content, until every aspect of the game is the same, otherwise the development team would have absolutely no way to control it all. And then people would come on the forums and bitch about how generic everything is and why there's no new content, no new storyline and new areas, etc.

Fact: The old FFXI was good. You may disagree, but your opinion means jack shit, because I'm not talking about whether or not you liked it, but about whether or not it kept the players satisfied and playing (and paying), and that it did. FFXI was a thriving MMORPG for the better part of a decade, before Abyssea was introduced. Now let's look at the character progression from that era: how long did it take you to get full relic gear for your jobs? Unless you've been part of the endgame scene for several years, I'm pretty sure you still don't have it for most your jobs (unless you've been spamming Newdyna recently). How long did it take you to get a relic weapon? Normal people didn't get one. Period. How long did it take you to get Captain rank? How long to get Ebody, Mbody, some Homam or Nashira gear, hell even sea access? There was a time when you actually had to ask people whether or not they had sea access. And the process of getting that took months or even years for some people.

But the point is, they were still playing, more so than they are today. You may look back in retrospect and say how stupid it was, how much better and easier everything is now, but people still don't seem to realize that better for you doesn't mean better for the game. I already said before, the trick to any MMORPG is finding the balance between slow and steady progress and player satisfaction. If it's too slow, people will quit. If it's too fast, the development team won't be able to keep up and the game will just race faster to its own end. Abyssea was way too fast. Not only was the development team not able to keep up, but now everyone knows what fast and easy gameplay is, and they don't wanna go back.

I'm not by any means saying new content is perfect. There are some issues with VW, but concerns have been made, let's wait to see if they fucking adjust it before bashing the entire future concept of the development team. Frankly, from what I've read in here, I'll be happy if they piss you off enough to quit, because I can't imagine myself playing with people like you around bitching about everything new that will be released.

Originally Posted by Amador

At least Abyssea allowed for actual full on LS participation.

Now it's just: "Oh hey, my shout. Bye guys got to go do Voidwatch with random strangers, that may or may not wipe"

What? If you brought more than three people to any Abyssea fight they were just standing around not doing a god damn thing. If you call "letting other people leech EXP and drops" LS friendly, then we have completely different definitions. And most VW is still done on a LS basis, using shouts to fill up missing spots.

The rest I agree with, I don't think anyone (but the development team) will argue the drop system's flaws.

Originally Posted by Kimble

Tanaka didn't create anything. Hes the Producer. Not the Director.

Right, because the producer doesn't have the final word in absolutely everything. What do you think producers do? Sit there with a dried thumb up their ass and yell at the people under him? Did you read the quoted part the OP posted, saying that Tanaka was dedicated to and involved in FFXI the entire time? Go back to trying to be smart elsewhere.

**Airget** · 12-05-2011 05:13 PM

Abyssea was a fun concept but with the way it was executed made all previous content pretty much worthless. When you have things like dynamis, limbus, sky, sea, besieged, campaign, assaults, MMM, BCNM, ENM, ZNM, Pankration, etc drop gear that isn't worth the time/reward aspect why bother doing it when Abyssea can offer you more and you have the ability to alter your stats to make things easier. A game that use to be about all the above had turned into FFXI "Abyssea" once it was released, sure people would still hunt the King HNMS and such but with the time behind it, the newer generation of players didn't want to take the time to have to wait when in abyssea the longest you may have to wait is 15-30 mins, and that's only with a few mob types. They even made it easier when they added extra ??? to the zone to help alleviate the crowding. So in that sense I could see how it was a failure.

Before Abyssea came out all the above events were being done and people were enjoying it, people still cared about campaign and they worked hard to obtain the Shadowlord fight to gain his gear. Then of course abyssea came and the campaign land pretty much became a wasteland that no one wanted to do because it's xp factor just didn't equal to the efforts put into it.

While people may love abyssea for it's xp potential and such I think that perhaps if they had reduced it and made it an area based purely on obtaining gear/items with atmas it may have fared better in the department of balance. But they can't just get rid of it now so they have to work around it which is why the changes of FoV and GoV were made and introduced.

Abyssea pretty much summed up everything in XI into one singular event. I think that's the best way to put it. When you do that, sure it's fun but after a while you realize that you just destroyed everything else around you in creating this concept. From the developer's side I can see why they can see abyssea as a mistake. They should have implemented it with that in mind, but they never considered the balance of obtaining time as well as how players would manage to build lights at such a rate to give them a nearly limitless time in abyssea. But of course you can't just take it away now or else they would lose a lot of players if one day they just decided to balance it to a point where it was on par with the gains of other events rather then being purely superior.

Overall though I'd say they have been doing a good job slowly but surely they have drawn people out of abyssea and into the older events. The simple changes to dynamis make it a lot more friendly to attempt and a lot less stressful in terms of having to go through the same exact schedule just to fight the bosses and such.

Though with Voidwatch I do see issues, the loot system is a lot to be desired while sure you can get a lot of loot even if they are including the junk loot it just comes down to the same issue as in XIV Ifrit fight. You could fight 40 times and never see what you want, or you might see an item 1/20 times but you friend wants it yet you can't give it to them. Then there's the "luck" one may have in obtaining the loot you've tried 50 times on their first try. It's a disheartening event for those who show dedication and try hard when a person can just swoop in and get lucky, it doesn't really spell out balance.

Perhaps in the aspect of voidwatch the easiest concept I can figure is what if say you get a rare/ex you don't want, you have the option to give it back to the void and increase your reward rate based on the rarity of said item. At least then said item won't go to waste and you won't feel like you've wasted your time since you used it to increase your reward rate for next time. I think something as simple as this could help with people who get something they don't want and have nothing they can do with it. Since I can understand that giving it to others is a hard concept since everyone has a different reward rate based on the lights they raised I think the best method would be to send back said items.

**Meyi** · 12-05-2011 05:19 PM