Squadrons are a let down for now

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Originally Posted by Fyce

You are literally asking for them to completly change the way this game is being developed.

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This is unture. They have released fully fleshed out content before, multiple times. It is however few and far between but it's not unrealistic to expect the systems to be satisfactorily finished before launch. Your free to want them to half-bake them all but I'm not.

Opinions eh?

the hyperbolic use of white knight was a response your hyperbolic use of never happy customer (I am happy with the product and just because I request certain things does not mean I damn the thing)

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Originally Posted by Yurimi

stuff

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While the Ui is certainly similar we lack the knowledge of their actual use. Wow garrison missions problem were that they made everything obsolete and also were mandatory if you were a raider.
For now we know nothing of what we can do with them once they reach lvl cap and probably even they cannot see a real use for the squadrons as the reason they wanted to implement this was covered by the unsynched mode.
Personally I would rather wait and see but honestly SE for now have shown that they are willingly to update things around one way or the other so I can easily give them credit unlike another company who just forgets things around

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Originally Posted by RLofOBFL

I'd rather have half today & half in 3 month than all of it at once in a year.

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The problem with this is they do not focus on finishing the content in 3 months. SE adds more random crap that is half done, look at Diadem -half done, only fixes so far have been nerfs.

I'd much rather have their vision of a feature be completed before release, with minor adjustments or minor additions as time goes on.

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Originally Posted by Jynx

They have released fully fleshed out content before, multiple times.

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I never said otherwise. But you already gave me a list of rhetorical questions making a point about how SE is bad at releasing "finished" content. So you already know that their habit is more to release little features here and there without going too deep or making game changing stuff. Exceptions aren't the rule.
Platoon management is a little feature that will be expanded later on, but they give us the base for that since it's ready. Exactly like things we've had for the past 3 years.

Giving small bits and improving them later is their primary way of developing new kind of content, and you know that. It allows them to experiment faster while giving a constant stream of content, which is clearly what allowed the game to be popular to a type of players that don't like the way other MMO do stuff (looking at WoW primarily).

I really don't know why people look surprised with platoons while they're exactly like dozen of features we've had before. They've been doing that for years.
Yet, people seems to just suddenly realize that. What's next? People being surprised that this game has a holy trinity in it? "Breaking news".
That's my biggest issue with these complaints.

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Originally Posted by IceWing

SE adds more random crap that is half done, look at Diadem -half done, only fixes so far have been nerfs.

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There's absolutly no evidence whatsoever that Diadem and other features alike woul've been better if they took 6 more months to produce. In fact, they may very well have become even more disappointing. I prefer failure over little bits of content rather than big "fully fleshed" ones.

Look at Gordias, for example. While it wasn't a brand new feature, it was their first attempt at making raid content with that formula. This new raid came with the expansion, and probably took a lot of time to be developed. But in the end, it almost completly destroyed the raiding scene as a whole. The Gold Saucer is another example, meant to be a very big addition to the game with Triple Triad, Chocobo races, minigames, woohoo!... Guess how that turned out to be: an empty hall only populated during events, with chocobo racing being a huge waste, triple triad being dissapointing for a lot of people (also heavily impacted by cheaters during tournaments), and so on. We could talk about PvP too, but I think I already made my point clear enough.

In short terms: the bigger the feature is, the bigger the potential disappointment becomes.

I keep sending my Lancer squads out and they always come back with Floor Tiles.

I don't get it.

And here I thought I was the one being pessimistic. You seem clearly entrenched in wanting content to be only half baked so it doesn't dissapoint too much.

I've always been a fan of them actually fully developing content before releasing it even if it falls on it's face. All the things you have listed as failures, failed due to SE's lack of reaction to feedback. I get it they are a big company with lots of oversight but that's something they need to work on if they want to be able to operate in todays gaming market where people expect decisive reactions from their game makers. Blizzard set the benchmark for community reaction and interaction.

SE has been very good with constant updates, but they cling to their clandestine silence from way back in the XI days. At least back then when content was planned and released it was fully formed due to the larger patch cycle not giving them a chance to half release much stuff.

"Well we decided to release featureless grids followed by a boss battle on a flat circle for your next expert roulette to take for the next 6 months, but don't worry, the locales are being worked on in a future patch!"(you wouldn't accept it there why accept it here?)

SE is free to make whatever content for their game, but the audience is free to call them out for making it half baked and lacking in desired features.

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Originally Posted by Balipu

Really guys? This is the second thread complaining about a feature that isn't even out yet. What is this? MMO Champion?

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personally i don't care anymore how this squadron thing comes out, but i will just point out that the reason other people are complaining is because they are paying for the game monthly like all of us and if you're not getting (or going to get) what you're paying for, i think it'll justify expressing your concerns

but if this was a free to play MMO and you never paid a single cent on it's cash shop, then yeah - but it's not ^^

Look at this way, they're introducing it in phases getting the foundations for the system in, rather than launching it then having to rework later. Each phase builds on the last and they can use feedback to work on it so that the end result is better.

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Originally Posted by Jynx

I've always been a fan of them actually fully developing content before releasing it even if it falls on it's face.

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Well, that makes no sense. It takes more time develop, which takes away ressources for other potential features. It will also leave an unhealable scar that people will still talk about for years. On top of that, the devs will be even more shy about releasing new features in the future.
I don't see any benefits in all that. The only possible upside, if when they release a very big feature which turns out to be successful. You may be thinking that it's worth the risk, but not everyone shares that opinion. Far from it, in fact.

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Originally Posted by Jynx

I get it they are a big company with lots of oversight but that's something they need to work on if they want to be able to operate in todays gaming market where people expect decisive reactions from their game makers. Blizzard set the benchmark for community reaction and interaction.

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Wh...What? How have you missed all the people here talking about how Garrisons were shit, and yet were a very important feature since it was mandatory. WoW has the reputation of having both extremes in terms of awesome content and extremely shitty one. FFXIV choose not to have these extremes, but more like a constant stream of "good enough" content. And that's why people stay, because FFXIV is predictable.

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Originally Posted by Jynx

All the things you have listed as failures, failed due to SE's lack of reaction to feedback.

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Well, yes. That's the point. How can you gather feedback on features you haven't even released yet? You can't, unless you do some PTR shenanigans that the devs don't want to do because of very legitimate reasons. Besides, regarding Alexander in my examples, Midas was clearly an improvement over Gordias, and Creator has high chances of being even better. And that's mostly due to the feedback on the first released parts. If they were to develop the whole 12 fights of the raid in one go, this couldn't be possible.
It's because Alexander wasn't released in its integrality that they were able to change their vision for the rest of it, according to player's needs and raiding meta. If you don't see how beneficial that was, I think I'll just stop arguing at this point.

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Originally Posted by Jynx

SE has been very good with constant updates, but they cling to their clandestine silence from way back in the XI days. At least back then when content was planned and released it was fully formed due to the larger patch cycle not giving them a chance to half release much stuff.

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Okay but, why do you even care? If you don't like the content now, then just wait 6 more months or whatever time they need to implements the other parts, and give it a try then. What's the difference in being able to play the first part of it now and the rest later, or having to wait nobody knows how long to play the "full thing"? Are you afraid to spoil yourself or being bored of that feature before they could implement the rest? If that's the case, then that's completly on you. Besides, if you prefer the second option, you deny players who might enjoy the content there is now to experience it.
So, yeah, if you only wanted to go with your platoon to do whatever boring dungeon with NPCs, then just wait like you'dve waited if they didn't released anything. How hard is that? In the meantime, people who like the management aspect of it can play with it. Everyone's happy.

the big question really is *is this content half baked or what they really wanted*

while they did say hey we wanna let players do stuff with them eventually that doesn't say when or if it will even actually happen.

it's like saying hey we are adding platoons and we have cool ideas that we want to eventually do, but we aren't atm.

we as players set our own expectations based on our own personal biases.

Saying that we shouldn't complain until we've tried it isn't much of a defense considering they've explained the whole process in 5 slides..and included a step for "wait".
step 2 even looks like a cutscene, so it'll probably be handled like the chocobo training, where you click an item to give away to do it. I'll be surprised if it isn't.

Because It looks like retainers and the chocobo companion, but worse on both ends.

Anyone calling this process "enjoying the management aspect" is out of their mind, imo. There is no management involved other than "am i giving them exp now, or not now?" No way to even put your team in actual combat, let alone test their behaviors. I'm not certain if there is personality or even personalizing, said squadron. I hope if we take them out to a dungeon they'll be a little more sociable than the typical df outing.

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Originally Posted by Kallera

Saying that we shouldn't complain until we've tried it isn't much of a defense considering they've explained the whole process in 5 slides..and included a step for "wait".
step 2 even looks like a cutscene, so it'll probably be handled like the chocobo training, where you click an item to give away to do it. I'll be surprised if it isn't.

Because It looks like retainers and the chocobo companion, but worse on both ends.

Anyone calling this process "enjoying the management aspect" is out of their mind, imo. There is no management involved other than "am i giving them exp now, or not now?" No way to even put your team in actual combat, let alone test their behaviors. I'm not certain if there is personality or even personalizing, said squadron. I hope if we take them out to a dungeon they'll be a little more sociable than the typical df outing.

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No NPC will ever have personality like WoW's Blook from garrison missions who every time he walks past me goes "Hail Blook beater." in aknowledgement of my besting them in combat. Long live Blook ; ;

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Originally Posted by Lulu89

It like you ppl want the crap at 100% day ONE.. GIVE THEM TIME TO TEST IT AND FIX BUG! Everyone shud know by now that SE will never give us something @ 100% day one. -_- just be happy we get it at all and move on for now.

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It should be tested and bug free before it is launched.

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Originally Posted by Fyce

Okay but, why do you even care?

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Why do you even care about what I care about?

To be honest I do care because placing content out peace meal like this effects how it's developed as a whole unit, leaving far more room for error and sloppy design.

Christ take housing as a perfect example of how releasing something half done, and then working on the second part afterwards can be a disaster of epic proportions instead of having fully tested, specked, and vetted content to release.

Housing has suffered from years of abuse from the developers. They started out half-baked with only Free Company housing and promised that they would work on a separate extension of the system for personal users.

Great right? In your mind it was perfect they released the content to us as soon as they could so we could get our hands on it. The reality of the situation would rear it's ugly head a few months down the line. Work on the separate housing system had gone radio silent and people were getting frustrated at the lack of communication, the developers in what can only be seen as a fit of panic decided instead of continuing to work on the individual housing system until it was ready to just flip the switch allowing individual players to purchase what was already a few premium paces of land set aside for Free Companies.

Chaos ensues.

• Players can no longer purchase any housing due to limited slots
• Crowded servers become home to shady practices selling homes
• Demolition of inactive players implemented and then placed on hiatus several times
• Developers work on expanding the current ward system instead of resolving the issue and for years fail to meet player expectation or demand, failing to understand the issue with one player being able to own several homes.
• Apartment complexes finally added after an enormous span of time from the initial release of housing and even then on some servers will be possibly unable to meet player demand.

I could go on but due to this whole charade of development, so much time has been sunk into trying to bandaid the housing system that it wouldn't be a hard reach to assume many developer hours were wasted that could have been put forward on other game systems or more unique systems for the housing systems interaction with players and companies.

A huge waste of potential just because they released the content early and gave up on their secondary expansion of the content. This...this is why it's not always a good idea to just "Release what's ready".

You don't have to agree with me but that's my take on the situation, and it's backed by events that actually took place within this game within the past few years.

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I do understand your want for "Something" rather than seeing nothing, but to me the real art and accomplishment in something like game development comes from being proud enough of your work to release it when it's done.

Hopefully it won't be a fail like diadem

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Originally Posted by Derio

Hopefully it won't be a fail like diadem

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Diadem didn't "fail," it just was the framework for the next part of it in the next major patch so they could finish it and add more content to it. :rolleyes:

Give them a chance to finish their content.

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Originally Posted by Cidel

Diadem didn't "fail," it just was the framework for the next part of it in the next major patch so they could finish it and add more content to it. :rolleyes:

Give them a chance to finish their content.

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I'm getting tired of them feeding me their tip of their girth, just give me the whole thing of content in my mouth.

I don't see how anything is a let down for anyone yet considering that the content hasn't even released yet. how can you pass judgement on an unreleased system that surely won't even come to its full fruition until several patches after its release? If I were a dev on this game, I'd probably quit the industry based on the entitlement of most of the players here. If you're going to hate everything, at least have the common decency to bitch about it after its release.

Let's assume for a minute that they *did* wait until everything was done and polished before releasing it.

You'd hear:
"Why wouldn't you let us try it a little first and then give you some constructive feedback on how to make it better?"

This is, in essence, large-scale testing that can't be done between developers.

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Originally Posted by Stormfur

Let's assume for a minute that they *did* wait until everything was done and polished before releasing it.

You'd hear:
"Why wouldn't you let us try it a little first and then give you some constructive feedback on how to make it better?"

This is, in essence, large-scale testing that can't be done between developers.

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There are test servers for a reason. These kind of systems can be simulated. When you release something on such a large scale, there is no room for using your players as guinea pigs. Either you deliver, or the feature fails.

You want player input? You release information about what is planned and ask people to give input. You don't get input AFTER the feature is done because it is easier to change it while it is being developed.

I just wish they put this on hold and work on it more and introduce it in a off patch. I just get this feeling they just adding it to bulk up the patch more.

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Originally Posted by Jynx

snip

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Your whole argument lies in the rough idea that "the more time they take to create content, the better it will be".

But that's simply not true at all.

Even if they were to implement housing on 3.x or whatever, doesn't mean it'd be perfect or that it wouldn't have the blatant flaws we know today.

So, not only you give your players way less content on average (which leads to people leaving the game because you're just too slow to deliver), but the content you give them doesn't even have the guarantee that it'll be even good.
But it seems you completly missed my point as none of what you said answer that. So, as I said, you didn't get it, so I'm done arguing.

Last thing: why do I care about your opinion? Because what you want directly contradicts with the very reason I subscribed to this game for 3 years now.

Goodbye thread.

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Originally Posted by Cidel

Diadem didn't "fail," it just was the framework for the next part of it in the next major patch so they could finish it and add more content to it. :rolleyes:

Give them a chance to finish their content.

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Maybe they should try testing it in isolation on a legacy server and work on it and perfect it before launching it instead of releasing half baked content for the sake of releasing content.

How about all of you do like i do?

Instead of thinking how everything will be and be hyped up to no end about the patch, be with no hype at all, and check how things will be when the patch comes out, like a new thing you never seen before.

If everyone was like this, everyone would enjoy the patch much more.

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Originally Posted by Fyce

Even if they were to implement housing on 3.x or whatever, doesn't mean it'd be perfect or that it wouldn't have the blatant flaws we know today.

So, not only you give your players way less content on average (which leads to people leaving the game because you're just too slow to deliver), but the content you give them doesn't even have the guarantee that it'll be even good.

Goodbye thread.

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OH boy.

Let's just say that you feel housing would be just as bad today if it was released now than years ago. Your out of your mind or have no faith in the developers.

I trust them to release good content when givin time to bug test and stress test and polish their content. You obviously think of product development as a linear line with no change in quality regardless of time.

Systems interconnect and interact when polished well as a whole. Systems are clunky and unintuative when put together seperated.

But I guess your done so you won!

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Originally Posted by Ashewalker

How about all of you do like i do?

Instead of thinking how everything will be and be hyped up to no end about the patch, be with no hype at all, and check how things will be when the patch comes out, like a new thing you never seen before.

If everyone was like this, everyone would enjoy the patch much more.

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I already run with the mindset that any new additions will be trash. Less disappointment that way.

squardon are great ideal first there some many fates one can't do alone.

there one eastern shroud that player can get minion but nobody want do it

there one in The Churning mists that players need a team to do there alot fates that aren't doable alone. there one drop the fat chocobo card nobody can do this alone.

there alot fates need team work to do

i like see this system like fellow in ffxi where customize your squardons. there alot good reason for this.

Yoshi P is think about new players aswell old he focus everyone not just one group of players how can he help all us

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Originally Posted by MagiusNecros

I already run with the mindset that any new additions will be trash. Less disappointment that way.

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I hate to judge before trying something, but with the new features, I too will go with the mindset that it is bad. FFXIV is great with trial bosses, MSQ, Side-quests and dungeons, but the new content always comes as half baked.

As I said in the other thread, I fear 4.0 will come with more unfinished stuff before anything started at 3.0 is actually finished/fixed.

Diadem and Gold Saucer are abandoned, Free Company Crafting is just bugging people to finish crafts.

Airship Explorations (Exploration LOL) are just Free Company Ventures, Squadron is just Grand Company Ventures, Chocobo training is just a cutscene.

It's a trend of contents that we have no interaction whatsoever. We just click menus, dices are rolled and we wait for timers. Repeat.

It makes me real sad: Most of the great stuff we had this expansion are basic stuff we had for 2.0 (Story, Primals, Raids)

Most of the new stuff just fell flat.

PS. Except PotD, that was good.

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Originally Posted by Laerune

I hate to judge before trying something, but with the new features, I too will go with the mindset that it is bad. FFXIV is great with trial bosses, MSQ, Side-quests and dungeons, but the new content always comes as half baked.

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I honestly don't know what else you expect with new content, though. Yeah, they're great with Trials, MSQs and dungeons... but remember that those are the bulk majority of the game so they have a lot of practice and experience making those. Whenever you're introducing a new and novel system to a game, there are bound to be issues and problems with it since 1.) You've never made those types of systems before and 2.) You have no empirical evidence of how those systems will work once they're live.

Consider it like this... you have a baker, and all he makes is bread. He can make you any type of bread you want and chances are it's going to be good. He decides one day to make a cake... he's never made a cake before. It's similar to bread in some ways, but vastly different in others. The cake may come out decent, but you shouldn't expect it to be flawless. The difference is, the baker in this case (SE) is letting us try it out on the first attempt with no previous feedback. It's been said many times before, for new systems like this... SE needs a PTR. I understand they don't want people getting insider knowledge of things like EX Primals and Raids, so you don't include them. Imagine how Diadem would have turned out if a small group of select users, users who were known to be good at sussing out these issues, was allowed to see the content first and provide all the feedback they get anyway when they release the patch.

They're far too eager to try and innovate and throw out new features in every other patch. I'd much rather see them take a longer patch cycle on newer features to get actual hands-on feedback than rush this stuff out the way they do.

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Originally Posted by MagiusNecros

Maybe they should try testing it in isolation on a legacy server and work on it and perfect it before launching it instead of releasing half baked content for the sake of releasing content.

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Oh I agree about all the "half-baked" thing. My comment was only made sarcastically (I guess the eye-roll emoticon isn't telling enough) as it seems to be the battle-cry of people telling others to stop being disappointed in content previewed before it's released/ gets updated many months down the line. It just sounds ridiculous when used as an excuse for content we have had sitting like Diadem and housing.

I wonder how many people (actual players) have access to the test server. It's one thing to go at it from a development point of view, and an entirely different one to come at it as a paying customer.

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Originally Posted by Malzian

Consider it like this... you have a baker, and all he makes is bread. He can make you any type of bread you want and chances are it's going to be good. He decides one day to make a cake... he's never made a cake before. It's similar to bread in some ways, but vastly different in others. The cake may come out decent, but you shouldn't expect it to be flawless.

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So what if we don't want cake and we want a cookie?

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Originally Posted by Stormfur

I wonder how many people (actual players) have access to the test server. It's one thing to go at it from a development point of view, and an entirely different one to come at it as a paying customer.

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Unless they have changed it, there is no test server where we can try out BETA versions of content. SE does (used to?) it testing in-house, compared to other mmorpgs who tend to have a test server and live server open for their players.

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Originally Posted by Laerune

Unless they have changed it, there is no test server where we can try out BETA versions of content. SE does (used to?) it testing in-house, compared to other mmorpgs who tend to have a test server and live server open for their players.

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Test server reply:

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Are there any plans to implement a public test server for patch content?
https://www.engadget.com/2014/11/12/...rs-and-post-f/

Infrastructure-wise, we have the system in place to make a test server public. However, if we were to set up a test server, we'd have to make sure to hide all "spoiler" content, which would in turn push back the major updates schedule by about a month.

A Realm Reborn has been in service for only about one year, so instead of implementing a test server, we have put priority on bringing major updates to our players as quickly as possible. In the future, we would like to find a way to shorten such delays and make it a reality.

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Originally Posted by Masekase_Hurricane

So what if we don't want cake and we want a cookie?

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Well, they're making it... so you're gonna get it...

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Originally Posted by Riardon

GC Squadrons are a big disappointment at least for now.
Turns out they are exactly what many people predicted to be.
They are just ventures.
They state they have plans so you can use them in dungeons in future.
Well this feature was a big disappointment for now. I wish it was something new and unique.

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Oh look! New Feature Disappointment thread! How original!

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Originally Posted by Malzian

Well, they're making it... so you're gonna get it...

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Isn't a cookie just a failed cake that couldn't cut it?

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Originally Posted by Riardon

I was expecting something fun. This is just another venture system. We didn't really need one more. We had the retainers and the airship missions already. Adding a 3rd was a bit pointless. And we really don't know how far int he future we will be able to use them. Airships supposed to get more functionality in future but they still didn't. Sending an NPC into the void and wait for a timer is not fun. They could at least think something a bit more fun.

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I'm always curious about what people mean by "fun", since it nearly always comes void of examples. I mean, I guess it's possible that "I was expecting something fun" literally ends at that... an expectation of fun. Like someone waking up in the morning and thinking "ooh this should be fun" with absolutely nothing going on in that brain of theirs as to what, why, or how it's going to be fun lol.

I share the disappointment about the lack of use in dungeons or whatever else (temporarily), but we are at least told it will come later. If that's all people wanted, then think of this as the teaser or introduction for it, because that's essentially what the 3rd venture system is. I swear though, I am going to rage if this requires ventures to do for some stupid reason.