Let Producer Matsui Know How He Should Catch Up on 2 Years!

[Lokithor]

Add fire weather to more zones. In the zones that currently do get fire weather, remove the seasonal dependency so that the zone will get that rate of weather all year. In zones that have volcanos, make fire weather extremely common.

[Godofgods]

Give everyone who didn't get an Ark Scythe an Ark Scythe

I've been trying over a year to get them to help the taru's out with no luck. So i have a feeling that wont be on their list of things to do either.

[Kyte]

I realize that WHM is a job that doesn't particularly need help, but I think Afflatus Misery could use some adjustment. Right now it's not really ever worth using over Solace (except for a quick Esuna), even if you are meleeing. The best way to go about this would be to change how the damage-taken is calculated, either making it go off the highest individual hit (and not simply most recent) or by just having it add up damage taken, up to a cap. The latter would be preferable.

[Diasetsu]

I understand that new 2 hour abilities are currently being worked on and tweaked, but I am more curious if perhaps the original Monk 2 hour Hundred Fists could be looked at. Over the years Haste has become more prevalent for all jobs in FFXI. At one time Hundred Fists was a decent 2 hour, but with it being so easy to cap delay reduction, it has become kind of a useless ability. Furthermore hand-to-hand skill's addition to damage aside, a bare fist Level 1 Monk using Hundred Fists gets 5.4 Tactical Points per hit, while a level 99 Monk would only get 4.6 per hit. Attack Speed stays the same while TP gain decreases, meaning this particular 2 hour gets worse because of Martial Arts traits.

I have 2 possible suggestions to make this 2 hour useful again:

A) Remove Dual-Wield and Martial Arts from the delay reduction cap. This would change things drastically for all game play and perhaps unbalance certain jobs however.

B) Make Hundred Fists cap delay reduction as it already does, but make it supersede Martial Arts traits. Not only would this make the 2 hour of equal power from level 1-99, but it would also give Monks a reason to use it. If I currently cap delay at level 99 with no 2 hour, why use Hundred Fists. But if Hundred Fists acted as if I had 0 Martial Arts traits while still capping delay, I would use it very often.

[Tamarsamar]

Before this thread closes, there are a few more things I'd like to say:

Allow Mission BCs to be repeated at leisure. Include a "once every Earth day" timer if you must, but I know that there are several people who have done mission fights that were over before they finished clicking through the opening cutscene (most egregiously the 5-2 Nation Mission fight) that would, now at the pinnacle of their limit-shattering power, like to face these former threats for themselves, at their own pace, but are prohibited from doing so (well, without changing Nations, in the case of the 5-2 fight). Furthermore, allow Adventuring Fellows to participate in Mission BCs, because (barring bad coding) that will not break anything that hasn't been broken in half already . . .

Additionally, if one wishes to recap all of their past achievements, one must pay backsideloads of time hauling their backsides ping-ponging all over the planet, trading random junk to out-of-the-way Goblin Footprints (again most egregiously, the Goblin Footprints located in the Spires of each Crag). This is patently ridiculous, as players should be allowed to recall all these memories from the comfort of their Mog Houses. I don't care if you do it in the form of a Mog Photo Album or whatever, but it should be obvious why such a feature should be required.


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Finally, in case the very contents of this thread haven't made it obvious enough, Producer Matsui should know that "catching up" on 2 years isn't nearly as important as staying current with the playerbase trends of today, and even tomorrow! FFXI just had its 10th Anniversary. We should be through with looking at the past, and start setting our sights on Vana'diel's future.

Thank you, very much, for your time.

[Keyln]

I just want to add in for added emphasis.

Gear sets in macros.

[Belmonts]

Mr. Akihiko Matsui,

Please implement Japanese Character Input (IME) on Non-Japanese clients, has been asked for years and at least, on PC, is not hard to do.

Thank you very much.

[Ritsuka]

A lot of these post SE already answered their question's along time ago but i don't have the time to answer them all so I'm not going to try lol. I'll just put in my 2 cents what I'd like to see

1) I would like to see more bullet's for cor

2) Maybe a level cap of 70 for aby so people would have to maybe level their job (prob just book burn then >.>)

3) Final Fantasy 14 got Battle Chocobo's would be cool if we could do that and maybe use our choco's in battle.
let us get gear for our choco's too.

4) We should get the scroll of rebirth for our whitemage's. (Lets you raise with out having a weak stat kinda like ninja's 2hr move)

[Theytak]

I've put off replying to this tread for a while so that I could put some serious time into thinking up my response. I realize this will cost me in terms of "likes" which apparently affect the weight of our posts in this thread, but I feel that what I'm going to point out, regardless of how many times it may have already been said by others, is fairly important.

I also want to apologize to the community reps for the constant and sometimes unnecessary length of my posts in feedback discussions, though I realize that more often than not, they likely get summarized before being translated. However, while brevity is not one of my strengths, my points are always intended to be important.

In response to what it is that I want, I have many things I want to say, but I feel that the things that need to be said are more important. Our enjoyment of the game as a community is far, far more important to me than my own petty wants, so what I really, sincerely want is for the devs to be made aware of the following issues, and to get some real, in depth feed back on them.

Before I even cover issues with the game itself, I have several points that concern these forums, the dev's attitude, and the playerbase as a whole.

- I absolutely understand that translation from English to Japanese is not remotely easy, both in terms of language and cultural differences. I also understand that there are only so many Community reps, and they only have so much time in a day to devote to the translation effort. I think we're all very grateful for the work they do, and I, personally, having nothing but respect for them, especially given some of the inanity they have to put up with. These folks deserve a lot more love than we give them.

- That said, the difference in feedback we, the English speaking community, get from the dev team, compared to the Japanese players, is really quite infuriating. There have been many times where the English speaking community has been ignored or brushed off with not apparent reason, only to find out after the fact that the Japanese players disagreed with us, and we weren't informed. There is an obvious schism between the English and Japanese players in terms of how most of the jobs should be played, what type of gear should be used (the most starkly different of which is corsair), how various types of content should be handled, and what the issues are, or are not.

It is absolutely unacceptable that we know that the current status quo always favors the JP players, so much that we consider any issue that we know the JP players disagree with us about to be worth giving up on, because we will absolutely never win. I realize that the community reps are responsible for communicating what the dev team says, but honestly, we need to know what the JP players are thinking, too, and not just when the devs respond to random questions by them and quote them directly.

- In continuation of that, I would like to also point out how absolutely different the amount of information we receive, and the JP players receive is. Very often, it feels like our feed back is utterly ignored and pointless, because it simply isn't easy to translate effectively. I don't know how exactly the reps go about translating issues, whether they try to go as word for word as possible without going insane, or if they summarize and remove the very frequent anger or frustration we try to make clear, so I don't know how aware the devs are of the fact that most of their responses come across as if they're treating us like uneducated children, and how absolutely outrageous that is.

- Many of us have been playing this game for nearly or over a decade, and have an incredible amount of knowledge about the game. This knowledge, unfortunately, is very rarely shown by the devs. This is most clearly demonstrated in the very apparent difference in understanding of how the devs think the game should be played, and how we actually play it. Often, reasons for or against something will be given as "but because you can do a number of other things, we have no intention of changing it" or other such infuriatingly vague nonsense. Do the devs not understand that most of the time, the hyper-situational things they cite are absolutely never done by anyone ever?

- In fact, there are many, many issues that are completely glossed over by the devs as though "you'll figure it out, we don't need to tell you." This is unbelievably annoying. For example, whenever a version update includes new synergy recipes, you line them out, give their level range, and their ingredients. However, you've never once done that for crafting. Instead we just get "new synthesis recipes have been added." I understand that when you want to add secret stuff, you will, that's fine, but this is a matter similar to the blue magic issue. Remember that for years, you would list out every single new spell given for every single job, and then blue mage would get "new blue magic spells have been added." and nothing more. You changed that. We want you to tell us this sort of stuff. Give us numbers. Give us math. We appreciate math. It's an integral part of how our community functions.

- If I were to include a less serious issue here, but something I personally desire, it would simply be that at least one of the devs (not a representative, an actual member of the dev team) either admit to being fluent in English and beginning to read and post on our boards, or learn enough English to be able to fluently read and reply to our boards. This would go a long way towards improving our opinion of the dev team and how aggravating the situation can get.

- Honestly, in all, I just want to see more in depth information from the devs. We've almost completely unraveled most of the game mechanics, and the devs need to acknowledge this. Stop telling us "This new ability increases your damage." "This will make you attack faster" and "This will greatly enhance your performance" and start telling us "This new ability increases your attack by x%" "this will give you x amount of job-ability haste" "this ability should greatly enhance your performance by increasing (whatever specific parameters it increases) and decreasing (whatever specific parameters it decreases)."

- It would also be greatly appreciated if the devs stopped acting like we simply don't understand something when we claim that their idea won't work. We understand how things work very well, and simply giving us vague, maybesortakinda answers is condescending. A very clear example of this; "What does tactical processor do?" got such a vague, unintelligible answer that for the most part, we still have no idea what the hell it does, we just gave up trying to figure it out. We got something akin to "it decreases decision making time for the various decisions the automaton AI makes" without telling us what in the world those decisions are, given that there is absolutely no apparent difference in what it does with and without the tactical processor.

Now, to speak towards the game itself;

- As many people have already and repeatedly asserted, the enmity system needs to be completely overhauled. This system simply has not scaled properly since the level cap was lifted. I've completely lost any interest in playing my pld, because maintaining hate control is utterly impossible.

- Also very frequently pointed out, inventory is perpetually an issue. Every time you give us more space, it takes less than a week for us to be right back to where we were. The reason for this stems from the absolutely absurd amount of utterly specific gear that more and more frequently worth using, as well as the large number of items that cannot stack, or have very small stacks, for nor no apparent reason.

- I understand that you think the incredibly weak juice/au lait effects would be overpowered some how, if they could stack, but that is simply not the case. The same is true for medicines, at least playermade ones. Potions and Ethers are pitifully weak, rather annoying to make, and completely impractical to use because they don't stack. I understand that some things shouldn't be stackable, but these very minor healing items? Those aren't included in there, no matter what you may have convinced yourself of.

- When you're creating new NMs for us to fight, please, please, please get rid of the "Give it a thousand instant KO TP moves. That makes it hard, right?" mindset. Every single fight that's been added post abyssea can be, or has to be, done via heavily melee zerging with Perfect Defense or Fanatics/fools drinks. That's not difficult. That's obnoxious. One or two fights like that is fine. Every single one for the last 2 years? That's not fine. Give us dynamic fights, where the NM might have one or two annoying TP moves, or maybe a one time per fight KILLYOUALL move that can be avoided if you do it right, but the focus of the fight is that it takes time and intelligence to win, not having a dozen well geared melees mindlessly beating on it to kill it before one of it's numerous alliance killing moves goes off.

Some fights need to favor magical/ranged damage, some fights need to favor physical damage, some fights need to favor a balance. Some fights should be nothing more than an endurance brawl, hammering away at the monster and trying to out last it (read: not an 18 hour endurance brawl, but if a mob has a particularly good drop, that drops with some degree of regularity, but takes a good hour or two to kill, purely because it has a lot of HP/defense? That's fine.) However, a very, very, very small number of fights can rely on luck, but luck should not play more than a minor factor in most fights, as opposed to the huge factor it plays in every fight.

- Related, the issue of drop rates. The more annoying a fight is, the more difficult it is, the better the drop rate should be. a 1-5% drop rate on a fight that most people can solo in their sleep, while incredibly annoying, is fine. a 1-5% drop rate on a fight that requires 18+ people in incredible gear and a good 30-60 minutes of focus is absolute unacceptable. Further, putting all the effort into claiming/popping and killing a particularly nasty NM should absolutely never result in "nothing of value dropped..." Not one single time. That's insulting, demoralizing, and utterly pointless.

- Finally, and perhaps one of the biggest things: To each individual member of the dev team: Do any of you actually play this game in your free time? Not as a dev, or as a GM, but as a regular player. As far as we can tell, none of you do, and that is very apparent in your decision making and stated priorities.

As for what's left, these are all minor or unimportant things I would personally enjoy seeing:

- A minor, but very long standing annoyance; HQ material items. I could, for example, save a good deal of money by making my own tortillas, rather than simply buying them. However, because of the level my cooking is at, more than Tortillas, I'll get Tortillas Buenos, which are absolutely useless. It makes absolutely no sense that just because I got a lucky HQ proc on my buffalo jerky or my stone cheese that I suddenly can't use it in the same recipes. Do you have any intention to correct this glaringly ancient issue, other than the 80k GP rings? It makes no sense that just because I've turned out Bison Jerky instead of Buffalo, my chef skills are suddenly to little to know how to chop it up and stick it in Carbonara... This doesn't affect just chefs, either, though cooking has the most numerous cases.

- Tell us, once and for all, whether there is any difference between the four animators aside from the Dex and the HP/MP on the animator +1. In depth, if there is.

- Be honest with this one, was giving puppetmaster throwing skill, but no ability to use throwing weapons, while giving blue mage throwing weapons but no throwing skill, simply a mistake on someone's part that you've been to embarrassed to correct? If not, what in the world went into that decision, and do you have any intention to change that situation in any way? I'd love an answer to that.

- Bacon. Not gimmicky bacon like the cheese sandwich (which does nothing worth while and is obnoxious to make). I mean honest to goodness Bacon that does something awesome that does justice to the delicious taste of bacon. For example, Crispy Dragon Bacon (HQ: Meaty Dragon Bacon) could give a moderate increase to attack/r.atk, double attack, and store TP, but be annoying to make.

[Hashmalum]

Hello, Producer Matsui. I hope you are in good health and haven't exhausted yourself already with all this reading you promised to do! I would suggest that if this sort of request for feedback, with a promise of all replies being translated and read, were normal instead of a special occasion, maybe there'd be less of a backlog of requests? Now, on to my main concerns. I'll try to keep this short, but I'm afraid it's still a lot.

First of all, we understand that FFXI is a very large and complex game, and development team time is limited. So, why not let us do some of the work for you? I don't mean necessarily 3D modeling, or story writing, but what about crowdsourcing requests for specific information? For example, a while ago you rejected revisiting the 15 minute NM ??? pop timers and making them shorter, because there were so many of them. Why not ask us to compile a list of every force pop NM ??? in the game, organized by zone and with the exact object ID number from the .DAT files (which we know how to read)? In order for us to do that, as well as to give proper feedback on other matters, please be as detailed as possible in your responses to us. Instead of saying things like "it would upset the balance", tell us what the scenarios are that you are worried about, so we can either argue our case or modify our requests. Or ask us for things like the exact .DAT file names that contain an issue of some sort.

Second of all, there have been a couple of quality of playing experience issues which have plagued the game for the duration of its existence that should be taken care of. One of them is the amount of time we spend in transition from one zone to another. This is especially harsh on those of us who use secondary characters for storage purposes--to send an item to our main character, we zone in to our mog house (with zone delay), log out, log in on the storage character (with zone in delay), leave the mog house (with zone delay), send the item, enter the mog house (with zone delay), log in on our main (with zone in delay), pick up the item from the delivery box, and finally leave the mog house (with zone delay). That's half a dozen or so long delays. Why so long? The client is downloading the same data over and over and over again: the character data, linkshell, maps, inventory, spells, job abilities and traits, the location of green-named NPCs and objects 90% of whom never move. This data should all be cached client-side. I know the consoles might not have the room to spare, but at least the PC should not be so handicapped.

The other longstanding issue is the issue of "phantom interrupts". You move into position, stop moving, ready a ranged attack or spell, and see it fail. You get the message "You move and interrupt your aim." But you didn't move! I suspect this happens when the packets arrive out of order. Even a 16-bit sequential number assigned to each packet would allow out-of-order packets to be detected and ignored when appropriate (that is, when they would move you in mid-spellcast or mid-aim).

Third of all, as a Red Mage, I welcome the recent changes to enfeebling magic, but they don't go far enough. Monsters like mantids, iron giants, Shinryu, and so on whose ordinary attacks are actually special moves make Slow and Paralyze useless. In addition, monster TP abilities have been getting more and more powerful, and are used more and more frequently. For the enfeebling role to be relevant again, we must have spells to help control the TP ability menace. Whether it is Amnesia, "Paramnesia" (Paralyze for special abilities), Plague, a sort of Addle or Slow for special abilties, Inhibit TP, Max TP Down, Confusion so the monster's special moves might hit itself, or even an ability to make a monster forget the last special ability it used for a little while, we need something.

I play this game as much for the story as much for anything else, and so I would dearly love to see any new spells and new abilities you create be earned by questing with the kind of storytelling that Square-Enix is famous for. I was disappointed to see things like Metor just being given out as random rewards from high level content. I did and enjoyed the quest chains that resulted in Warp II and Sleepga II and want to see more content like that.

Speaking of earned abilities, I'd like to see more "monster only" NM abilities be made available to players in some fashion, one suitably challenging of course. I mean things like multiple pets at a time like certain NM Beastmasters, or multiple elemental summons at a time like certain NM Summoners, or Utsusemi clones like certain NM Ninjas, or a Cosmic Elucidation skillchain like Tenzen's.

I'd also like to see more content like Trials of the Magians or the Einherjar therion ichor system that let you gradually work towards your goal, rather than relying on luck or money. In fact, both could use more content. What about adding some elemental shields that even non-Paladins can use, or some useful level 90+ ichor gear?

Finally, with content such as the hated 1500 Heavy Metal Plate trial, the RMT vermin have been given new life. And the new Nyzul Isle content has brought a new surge of cheating. The honest players want to see this sort of thing smashed flat. Never give up the fight against the RMT, both buyers and sellers. Never give up the fight against Nyzul Isle cheaters. I'm hoping to see many bans in the future.

There's more I'd like to ask for, lots more, but I won't burden you with it now. You're so busy already so I'll make my requests through the usual channels instead. Good luck and take care!