What's makes an MMORPG fun? - 4Gamer chats with the Producers of FFXI, FFXIV, and DQX

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Originally Posted by Kluya15

Noticed you failed to mention anything about playing with friends or free company members. No matter how great an MMO is, you'll be miserable playing alone all the time. Half the reason my fc members and I play is just to play together and have a great time. I can make any MMO look horrible by picking out it's faults, but it's an MMO, it's about community and teamwork. And not pointing this to you, but it's also interesting how the majority of people who claim they are bored, are the ones pumping in 12 hours a day. NO game is going to prevent burn-out at that rate.

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We can have all the fun we want with our fc and friends but you still need the game to be refreshing and challenging to keep players from leaving for other games. If the content is cycle like the previous 6 months, I doubt there will be any community or teamwork left to enjoy.

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Originally Posted by Nekodar

BST, NIN, SAM, DRK and BLU were all added in expansion and were not part of the original release iirc.

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I did not know that bst and drk were part of the zilart expansion. I started shortly after the NA ps2 release; hence is why I cannot imagine playing XI without the aforementioned jobs. I originally stated that XIV is not the game for me; atm. However, things may change in the future.

I'm pretty sure that BST and DRK were in FFXI at release (JP release).

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Originally Posted by Gilthas

I'm pretty sure that BST and DRK were in FFXI at release (JP release).

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Ah, ok, ty.

Thanks for translating it! :3

This is good stuff, Thanks!

He seems annoyed with negative comments but really should think of it as a good thing because it means the game still has lots of room for improvement.

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Originally Posted by Inosaska

He seems annoyed with negative comments but really should think of it as a good thing because it means the game still has lots of room for improvement.

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Lots of room for improvement is a huge understatement. He did say he likes some of the criticism, but after thinking about it, I have to 100% disagree with Yoshi here, my opinion, they don't want to hear anything from us, simply because they make it as difficult as they can for players to give even important input. First there is the RMT problem, they were able to let us click a name and blacklist, but even WoW has an option when you click on the name, you can blacklist, or blacklist and report as spam, it can't be that hard to work in, instead, we have to blacklist to keep our annoyance down, then to report them, instead of a simple mouse click, like it should be, we have to go through some backwoods reporting system. There is also the filters that XI had that this game could easily implement, why is this still the way it is? Another thing is simple bug reports, I understand some may be tied to cpu specs and all that jazz, but I found a simple one that had nothing to do with specs, it was simply the timer for Bio wasn't showing up on enemy bars while raging strikes was active, I wanted to help, but after going to the bug report forum where the information they "need" is everything just short of blood type and mother's maiden name, I just simply put what the issue was, they don't need my pc specs for that. It sat there for a day or two, then was moved to insufficient information thread, so they have someone looking at it, can't that person say, hey this isn't a hardware problem, this is on our end, we don't need all that information, so let's pass this on and see if it can get fixed, nope, straight to we don't care if it isn't right, because you, the people that pay to play this game, didn't do enough work to let us, the people supposedly being paid to work on this game, know what the issue is. If you look at the accepted bugs versus the ones rejected to the insufficient information thread, it is almost 1:1 on the English forums, meaning, half of the issues we report, they ignore, because we didn't do enough work for them. So it is no surprise to me that they are on interviews saying they need more positive feedback to draw in more players, why have the marketing department you pay to do it, when you can just expect the people paying to play to take care of it for you, then you can blame them for not doing enough to help draw people into the game, so they can make a better game for themselves.

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Originally Posted by Mcshiggs

lots of unstructured text

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By ignoring the template that they ask you to use when submitting bug reports, you're essentially asking that your report be ignored.
It's not that much to ask for to fill it out...

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Originally Posted by Nekodar

By ignoring the template that they ask you to use when submitting bug reports, you're essentially asking that your report be ignored.
It's not that much to ask for to fill it out...

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If this was a beta, I would agree, but maybe that is the problem, maybe they are still treating like this is the beta version, it sure feels like it with all the broken content in the game. I rarely play summoner, I don't care if it gets fixed or not, I pay to play, not pay to work, I found a bug, I told them, the fact that it is ignored because I "didn't inform them properly" makes me think they really don't care, so I won't even attempt to report any other bugs I come across. Had it been a graphical issue, I would have gone on with all my specs and whatnot, but the bug had nothing to do with my pc specs, so my bug report didn't include my pc specs.

Sort of makes sense if we just forget the game ever had an official release, Everquest Next Landmark charged for guaranteed alpha spots, this could just be like they are charging us for guaranteed beta spots. In a lot of ways it is like the beta phases we had last year, many people play just a short time each week, or phase, they have a weekly server stress test, which fails horribly, every Monday. Many systems like chocobo companions, housing, free companies, ready check, and duty finder are still in their infancy and need a lot of work before they are "officially" released. It really isn't that bad if you just pretend 2.everthing is a beta test, and the first expansion as the real release of this game.

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Originally Posted by Mcshiggs

Lots of room for improvement is a huge understatement....

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That is part of the reason why I translated the interview (btw, thanks for the comments everyone :D). It's to demonstrate the challenges of running a game like this. Everybody has their own expectations when it comes to paying for the game they expect to get (and rightfully so). People expect the devs to fix or change something they're not happy about, which is fine in itself. The frustration comes when people expect the devs to do it a specific way.

What players needs to understand is that their "suggested solutions" does not always actually solve the problem (like Saito-san said). Take the b-list problem you mentioned in your post as an example. Could they have added a "block and auto report" feature to the game? Sure they can. But what happens if this is abused and people end up flooding the reporting system with tons of accidental or intentional false reports (because they dislike someone)? The devs will then need to sift through these false alarms to get to the legitimate reports, which wastes valuable time and ultimately probably make it even slower for them to deal with the real gil spammers. On top of that, if they end up banning some of the players named in the false reports, they'll have to deal with grievances from those players too, which is all extra work.

Now, you might say "but I won't abuse the system", but there's no way we can say the same for everyone else (just look at vote kick).

The same could be said for many other issues that people bring up. Everyone who complains about an issue usually say something along the lines of "it's such a simple problem that could be solved easily". And that may very well be true. But a lot of people seems to imagine that when the devs fix something, they do it as one giant mass of programmers and engineers, rolling around squishing bugs. The reality, obviously, is that a lot of times only 1 or 2 person is responsible or able to fix the specific problem that you have. And if this person is only able to deal with 20 bugs a day, then they're going to deal with the ones that are 1. most serious and 2. with the most complete information.

I may be sounding like a white knight, but this is the reality of running a commercial service where resource such as manpower and time is (always) finite. I hoped the interview was able to shed some light on this and ultimately help people become at least somewhat more understanding when their demands and reports are not being responded to the way they hoped. It's not because they don't care, it's because they have a lot more to consider than most people imagine when dealing with these things.

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Originally Posted by Nekodar

BST, NIN, SAM, DRK and BLU were all added in expansion and were not part of the original release iirc.

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Ppl mix up standard jobs, advanced jobs, and expansion jobs all the time. It can be very confusing.

FFXI Standard unlocked jobs: White Mage, Black Mage, Red Mage, Thief, Warrior, Monk
FFXI Standard locked advanced jobs: Paladin, Dark Knight, Beastmaster, Bard, Ranger

Rise of Zilart: Ninja, Samurai, Dragoon
Summoner<(Didn't require RoZ expansion, added in update for JP client at RoZ release)
Treasures of Aht Urhgan: Corsair, Blue Mage, Puppetmaster
Wings of the Goddess: Scholar, Dancer
Seekers of Adoulin: Geomancer, Rune Fencer

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Originally Posted by Arkista

Thanks for posting.

Yoshida:
You'd have people like Aoki-san, who is the head of the world design team in DQX, almost not showing up at work at all so we'd end up having meetings with him in Norath (the EQ game world) instead.

lol. Good old days to skip school or work to play a video game.

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I have a friend who, when FF7 came out here and he was able to buy it, called in sick to school for three days until he'd finished it XD
(If I'd have tried something like that, my mum would have kicked me out of the house and towards school before I could even come up with a better excuse... ^^; )

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Originally Posted by Kluya15

Noticed you failed to mention anything about playing with friends or free company members.

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I had friends, they quit, I made more, they quit, until eventually my overall demeaner towards new ones caused people to not want to be my friend. I got tired of it.

The main issue with a game like this, is that there isn't very much for friends to have interaction with you on. And when you do it's content, e.g. raids, which cause stress, and theres always that one thorn in the bush that ruins everyones experience (even if I am that thorn to some people). in games like FFXI... I made so many memories... And all of them are based around things people considered "Inconvienient" in that game. Like having to get high level help to escort you to jeuno. Or having to hunt down a white mage for a teleport to dem to go exp in the dunes. Or dieing in the middle of no where with a home point thousands of miles away and needing a raise. Or accidentally casting Aeroga on a fly in gusgen mines and agroing/linking the ENTIRE MINE and running for our lives out the front door. And then there was endgame, competing with 4 linkshell's thf's to pull pop trash to get items to make the stuff we needed to spawn the gods etc. All of those connections and aspects are just non existent in this game, and as such it feels empty and barren, no matter how much content they have.

In my eyes the entire world of eorzea is just a background picture that surves to purpose, they literally could just move the duty finder to the login client and have yuo pop in and out of stuff without loading eorzea...

The thing about some of the things people considered "Roadblocks" to fun, in the end forced people to cooperate and overcome their hurdles.

With all the hurdles and "anoying" features removed, much like in the cell-phone age we are more distant than ever. Making things more convient isn't always the answer.

Yoshida worked at Hudson!!?? I gotta check the Bomberman credits now! <3

I'm happy Yoshida San said this:

"Yoshida:
Yes. Of course, we don't want to turn our backs on players who play a lot. We have players who play a lot, and players who can only play a bit, and many other customers each with their own play style. What we tried to do is to launch with something that we feel was "the best choice that appeals to everyone". Beginning with patch 2.2, we will try to include more contents for those customers who tell us "I want to spend more time playing" and "we want to see more useless/trivial things". We do want to have something to address both of those needs. But these kind of intentions can sometimes be difficult to get across to our players."

Bring on open world content.

An interesting read, thanks for the post :)

This was a very good read. Thank you for translating and posting this.

a pretty good read, as far as feedback, there will always be the haters who will spout shit about one feature or another, and there will always be demographics who will feel that they are left out. You can't please everyone because everyone has different views of what makes a good game.

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Originally Posted by Recaldy

Yoshida worked at Hudson!!?? I gotta check the Bomberman credits now! <3

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He worked on Bomberman 64: The Second Attack. :)

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Originally Posted by EmiliM

Yoshida:
But on the other hand, for those people where FFXIV is their first exposure to MMO gaming, they would go "so this is what a MMO is like!" and feel perfectly normal about it. Being able to simply pick and choose what to play through instances is what I think helped these new players ease into the game.

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I didn't get to finish reading all of it as I have to go to work in mere minutes but I really had to reply to this~
FF14 was not my first MMO but I had a similar feeling anyways my first time playing SWTOR (which I somewhat left for FF14 because I'm not a star wars person just tried it lol) and FF14 :3
I transitioned from older games that did not really use instances (or very few), lacked many features compared to FF14/SWTOR that I am really grateful for despite what the community likes to say. I love open world and open world interactivity, but I am still happy for instances. Coming from games where people were expected to share things and/or kill each other for things was not fun for me. KSing, spot hogging by farmers or jerks, guilds hogging world bosses/raids, players left out of content just because they weren't in big time guilds (beyond just raids but dungeons as well, late game was horrible in the games I played), and so many endless other problems makes FF14 a dream to me in terms of MMOs. I feel very comfortable in FF14 and love it very much. The comparison to a game like FF14 to games I played is like night and day. I love having an instance to me and my parties self without worrying another party will come through and just KS/Push us out while harassing us with name calling. I like the no open world pvp which ruined my experiences in SWTOR an past games (though I take responsibility for joining an open world pvp server to be with my wife who was introducing me to the game. Still, reminds me why I hate it lol). I feel like I can enjoy ALL content I pay for rather than enjoy only the content catered to draining your wallet (P2W I believe the term is). I like that EVERYTHING in the game can be accomplished with work and effort. Not something that only pays off literally potentially YEARS later. And no, there are games so horrible it can literally take years to gear one character if you don't spend lots and LOTS of time and real money. What I am trying to say is, thanks for making a game that's very, VERY fun to play and I plan to be here for years just as I have played other games for years before moving on because of the horrible features and in-game community z.z.
As a casual gamer who prolly still spends too much time on games, I find this to be the best MMO out there and I absolutely adore it <3

This just the classical problem of a modern game. When the developer tries to please everyone nobody gets really attached to the game meaning not getting a serious playerbase at the long run. And just like this "PK would sit well in todays world" bs. Games like Dark Souls does thing just the opposite way of the mainstream gaming industry, supporting the hardcore players, setting these hurdles for gamers to overcome etc., main point being: "We do what we want, and not what the majority wants" and that's why it's so successful. I really hope more games like it. Just like someone be4 commented that removing of these "hurdles" doesn't mean a better game/experience. Most of the time it just means more dull and less colorful experience.

That being said, does any1 here know some kind of hardcore MMO "a la" Souls series, which has a decent playerbase?

Just had to went my steam off.

*craws back to playing FFXIV.

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Originally Posted by elBravado

This just the classical problem of a modern game. When the developer tries to please everyone nobody gets really attached to the game meaning not getting a serious playerbase at the long run. And just like this "PK would sit well in todays world" bs. Games like Dark Souls does thing just the opposite way of the mainstream gaming industry, supporting the hardcore players, setting these hurdles for gamers to overcome etc., main point being: "We do what we want, and not what the majority wants" and that's why it's so successful. I really hope more games like it. Just like someone be4 commented that removing of these "hurdles" doesn't mean a better game/experience. Most of the time it just means more dull and less colorful experience.


That being said, does any1 here know some kind of hardcore MMO "a la" Souls series, which has a decent playerbase?

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Dark Souls is successful for it's satirical approach to the current gaming industry - it's something that I can respect for its persistence (considering its essentially the descendant of King's Field, which saw its first release back in 1994), but do not personally enjoy.

In response to your inquiry with regards to a hardcore MMO - I wouldn't count on it. "Wizardry Online" attempted to employ the particular formula in an MMO that you seek (permanent death - you actually lose your character upon dying, open world PvP, etc), but in late January it was announced that they were shutting down their servers at the end of July this year.

MMOs require a ton of income and a decent playerbase. What's viable may not always be unique, and what's unique is often not what's viable. So there's an awkward space of making sure you can present your unique concepts to the players, but also finding a way to retain enough players to pay for maintenance, staff, advertising, etc...

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Originally Posted by Sheer

He worked on Bomberman 64: The Second Attack. :)

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You checked? I haven't but thanks. I need to actualy play and beat it. <3ed the first one. :3

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Originally Posted by Recaldy

You checked? I haven't but thanks. I need to actualy play and beat it. <3ed the first one. :3

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I have! I've looked into what titles Yoshi-P had worked on before many months ago; I just double checked to make sure, and yes, it was Bomberman 64: The Second Attack. Here's Yoshi-P's wiki page as a source.

I feel like posting positive things all of a sudden!