Interim Report – Sorry to keep you all waiting!

[Kriegsgott]

Greetings!
I have a couple follow-up comments from Producer Akihiko Matsui.

does this mean you guys consider finally a Campaign UPDATE?!

(listen more to playing people right? good luck with checking all the Campaign threads then....)

[Seyomeyo]

Now why did we have to throw in anything about Haste when the community is already addled and exhausted?

[Mefuki]

Still, the absolutely most essential and important part of such a system is:
The point items MUST be the same as the items that drop off the monster
You haven't actually improved the system by cutting off the upper tail of the distribution until this is the case.

This. This. This.

Meebles got close but the point reward items are different then the ones you get as drops. This is not a new idea. 6 years ago when I started, people were asking the devs about making the game keep track of kills on Leaping Lizzy and the like until, eventually, they would gain a reward. They'd be able to cooperate with other players for a shared goal, a strikingly uncommon thing in a PvE game such as this. I'd hoped Hunts would be the answer for that but we all know how that turned out.

[Dreamin]

A lot of what ppl has said already has a lot of merits so not going to repeat what many has said. However, a few things that if at all possible to please pass on over to the producer:

1. Please don't just answer the JP forum's questions and concerns. I understands that he's JP and probably does not read the English forum unless it's through the translation/community rep team. But this keeps the JP favoritism bias in many english speaking player's mind going. If he is really serious about making an effort into listening to what ALL the players are saying, he needs to rotate/balance answering questions from ALL the variou regions. Maybe based on percentage of players from the region or something.

2. Before you were to develop NEW content, you need to first FIXED what are broken. Yes, I know that people trends to think we can do a parallel tracks in development. However, the fact of the matter is that with everything such as battle system, enmity system, job (ja/spells/weapons/ws/etc) all together forming the basis of the game mechanics, it will be extremely difficult to develop new content/system that relies on current systems which would then be broken when these current systems are changed/fixed. So, STOP doing the new stuff and FIXED the critical problems NOW. This is a major undertaking and should be given the highest priorities and resources. Everything else, things like new UI, play-as-mobs, new expansion (yes I said even the new expansion) can all be shelved until the fundamental systems are fixed.

[Doombringer]

i'm definitely hungry for more concrete details about how the devs plan to actually deal with these things, but still; it's reassuring to see that these major issues have landed.

cautiously optimistic.

[Camiie]

Regarding the Roadmap

I apologize for the delays with the currently released roadmap. There are two reasons for this.

The first reason is that since the schedule was released before the announcement of Seekers of Adoulin, the effects of the development load for the expansion were much larger than anticipated.

The second reason is that the hours needed to work on and discuss all of the forum topics was much greater than we anticipated.

While we looked into a revised version of the roadmap to release, instead of redoing everything that was up until March 2013, we feel it's necessary to take time to build out a proper development plan from next year on, starting with redefining development plans and then deciding on the practical work content so that we do not disappoint all of you.

It's hard for me to ask this, as we've already caused everyone to worry and be inconvenienced, but please give us a bit more time.

Instead of asking for us to be more patient and accept excuses, I suggest that you acquire more/better manpower and resources and implement better management strategies. (Sound familiar?)

Understanding the Current Situation

I have been reading over what everyone thinks, not only from all of the posts made on the forum, but from players' blogs, Twitter, and other sources.

For example, there's the concern with content and that the necessary content is not reaching the necessary people.

When thinking about the amount of content made thus far, it's not that the amount of content is skimpy by any means; however, I believe a contributing factor for this concern is that a lot of older content requires more than a party, but it has become quite difficult for a lot of players to do things with full parties these days.

I think the problem is that you're trying to squeeze relevance out of content many of us were done with and tired of years ago. I did HNM, Sky, Dynamis, Sea, Limbus, Einherjar, Salvage, Nyzul Isle, ZNM, VNM, and Campaign BCNMs each many many times. I ran the proverbial table on a lot of it until you shoehorned in things like augmented abjuration gear and relic armor +2. As a player who's been here so long it's almost embarrassing, I'd like to see the focus on truly new events and let the past stay in the past.

Currently, due to the fact that there's a lack of low-difficulty and casual content, a majority of players are focusing on high-difficulty content, and there has been a lot of feedback that even though they log in they can't do what they want (nothing to do). Also affecting this is that things have become more complicated since adjustments have been made to drop rates and item stats.

Well, the dev team had some really fantastic content that fit the needs of the casual player perfectly, but it was deemed a failure and abandoned. I shudder to think what casual content they would produce they they'd consider "successful." I imagine the rewards would be less than useless and not at all aesthetically pleasing since just anyone could do it.

Development Plans

With all that said, to make it easy to understand, we will be redefining and deciding on themes for the below points:

Content structure
Jobs overall
How to add stats to items
How to hand out rewards


I'd personally like to see players that are below level 99 reach level 99 quickly (we will be looking into whether we can make adjustments so that the level 95 limit quest can be completed solo), and for players that have reached level 99, I’d like to create separate elements such as solo, group, casual, hardcore, and provide game play after defining themes for new elements and adjusted elements.

It's necessary to make adjustments to increase the win/success rate for content that has already been played out by the top groups so that players that come later can catch-up.

For example, strengthening players through job adjustments or the addition of gear may work, but another good method is to directly lower the difficulty of content. Of course this is all on the basis that we provide another challenge and even better rewards for the top groups.

The way WoW does it, if I'm not mistaken, is by the gradual enhancement of an instance-wide player buff and enemy debuff over a series of weeks or months after a raid is released. They also have "Normal" and "Heroic(Hard)" modes from the outset with corresponding gear for each mode as well as 10-man and 25 man versions of raids. One doesn't have to purchase items from a shady guy behind a building in the woods to make a boss weaker. They just choose to fight the "Normal" version and accept "Normal" level rewards. Simple, no?

Also, in regards to existing content, we will be redefining the number of people required, the level spread, and reward difficulty, and look into making adjustments to fit the needs of the current Vana'diel.
(I feel it would be best to work on the paths to these various types of content for adventurers that are coming back after a long break.)

It's definitely better to adjust content to the community you have than expect the community to somehow adjust itself to your content.

In regards to item stats, this is a crucial growth element as you cannot level up past level 99. It's necessary to release items with stronger and really good stats in the future. For how you receive items, as many of you have requested on the forums, I'd like to have a point system in place for when you miss out on a reward that has its drop rate set low due to difficulty adjustments.

Thank goodness for this. Many of us have been asking for this for so long. Heck, while they weren't exactly what you're talking about here (which is even better), you've had very well received points systems in the past. I thought it was a bit silly that you'd gotten away from them, especially since you created content that would have been served very well by having points available (WoE and VW). It was nice to see the idea return with Meeble Burrows.

Additionally, there are a number of things that need to be decided such as aspects of battle that are not balanced up to level 99. For example, I believe the workings of the entire enmity system needs adjustment and the problem of TP given to enemies is an important issue to look into.

So, you want to make it where people won't yell at the front-line fighters for actually being front-line fighters? If so, more power to you. I always hated it when I wasn't allowed to fight for fear of TP-feed. I know people want varying strategies, but having the melee classes all have to sit on their thumbs is one I can do without.

[Mefuki]

I ran the proverbial table on a lot of it until you shoehorned in things like augmented abjuration gear and relic armor +2. As a player who's been here so long it's almost embarrassing, I'd like to see the focus on truly new events and let the past stay in the past.

Part of the issue came with all of the people complaining when they announce the level cap increase about their gear being obsoleted.

[MarkovChain]

All I want to say to Akihiko_Matsui is : please read the complaints of the census and adjust most of them without waiting more months (what's the point of this ?).

*There is NO reason for mythics to be set at such a high level difficulty (and artificial difficulty : einherjar points when nobody does einherjar anymore, alexandrite whene nobody has been doing salvage for 3 years). Salvage bosses should be dropping a pouch 100% and solo entry should be allowed for both salvage and assault (if needed make us consume 3 permits if solo). I'd like to point out that all mythics have been mathed out recenly, and they all suck, so there is no problem of unbalance.

* People have been complaining for dumb luck factor, so ajust this for stuff like nyzul (the event sucks as many have pointed out, and the nerf of embrava is going to make it even dumber).

* Legion needs to be added better drops to motivate people to build alliance to farm it. There has been suggestions about riftcinder/dross or metal plate. You can think of plenty of things (marrows..).


For nyzul all you have to do is change the random floor jump now (instead of next VU). Are you guys aware that it's nearly impossible to test a party event on the test server anyway ? For legion it's just adding stuff to the pool, this doesn't seem to hard of a work. And for salvage, it's already possible on the test server for NyzulII so it's probably easy. This will require you maybe 5 minutes of work and the reward is giving people stuff to do while answering the concern they expressed in the census.

[Corey]

all of my like to Sapphire's post

[Tennotsukai]

Please, don't start up any haste nerfs.