Patch 5.3 will allow Flying Mounts in ARR areas!!!!

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Originally Posted by Schan

This thread... I can't even.

Are people actually sitting in their chairs and judging what the devs do with their free time? Because it's not what they want them to do? Who are you to dictate what a human being does on their free time? Do you want your boss to turn out at your doorstep on you day off to tell you how to spend your time?

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I'm 100% with Schan on this one. Probably because I've actually had this ridiculous scenario happen to me. I work two jobs, a full and a part time, and was actually reamed out by the assistant manager at my part time job for not answering a text on my day off until a couple hours after it was sent. He had the nerve to lecture me on how I had to be readily available whenever they needed me. I started filling out applications for a new job as soon as I got home, managed to land a better one within a week of looking, and absolutely threw him under the bus when I gave my two-week notice to the store manager.

Free time is free time and absolutely no one- boss, customer, or otherwise- has the right to dictate how you spend it.

To put it another way, let me use an analogy that is mainstream enough I think most of you will get: You know the first Harry Potter book/movie and how it starts out with Dudley's birthday? Remember how he had a room full of presents and flips about about having one less than the year before? In this analogy, anyone whining about "but I wanted X, not flying" is Dudley. Let that sink in for a minute. You are Dudley Dursley.

Bunch of ingrates. :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

The quest changes seem the most important to me:

A Realm Reborn changes (A Realm Revamped?)
-Streamlined MSQ quests
-Approximately 13% content removed
-Other quest content streamlined, much less grindy/bloated and less steps, better for new players
-EXP boost and more gear rewards from quests. No need to do side quests to reach level 50 and beyond for HW.

That's going to be major in drawing in new players. ARR has been by far the biggest turn-off for any newcomer. We've all said and/or seen in Novice chat, the phrase "stick with it, I promise it'll get better in HW!".

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I don't think this will draw in new players at all.. but it might help with player retention. Drawing in new players will depend on how these changes shake out, and how much people talk them up down the line. You have to remember that right now, the game gets plenty of new players, the problem is KEEPING them.

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Originally Posted by Schan

This thread... I can't even.

Are people actually sitting in their chairs and judging what the devs do with their free time? Because it's not what they want them to do? Who are you to dictate what a human being does on their free time? Do you want your boss to turn out at your doorstep on you day off to tell you how to spend your time?

Imagine if that was someone's boss doing that. Oh boy that's not a good outlook on that boss now is it. if bosses can get away with behaving like that they will work you to death for the sake of profit. It's totally unacceptable for a boss to do that but now it's fine for a customer to do that? Because that's literally what some of you are doing right now. Look at yourselves. Listen at what you're saying. Think at what you are implying with your words.

"your free time is not meant to be used to relax and recover so you can tackle the task that will come next. No! it's meant to be used to continue working on stuff I want."

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Honestly, anyone who thinks that the devs do things on their free time because they want to needs to take a look into Japanese business culture. It's commonplace for people to spend extra time at work because that's just how things are done, and if you don't give your time up to complete projects (etc) then you are (indirectly) putting more work onto your team because you're not willing to put in the time to do your work; And that means that you're not a team player.. and if you're not a team player, then you'll be passed over for people that are.

I mean, it'd be really nice to think that the dev team is doing this because they love us so much.. but even a cursory glance at Japan's unspoken business practices is enough to know that's probably not the case.

1st off I like to apologise to the devs for how much of a spoiled brat I have acted over the last few pages, it was wrong of me to even suggest how you should spend your free time, it's yours and yours alone to do as you want, i'm sorry.


I'm going to go do some reflection over this past year to find out why I changed so dramatically as this time last year I was defending their free time from others.

Some people are here like "It'll kill the social aspect of the game" as if they just didn't press autorun and called it a day, not paying any mind or attention to the sacred "social aspect" of the game whenever they load into ARR areas.

Why would they work on stuff in their free time? Likely going to be because it's a way for them to earn esteem from their superiors or it's a lie/stretch. Highly doubt it's just out of passion. (This doesn't invalidate it though.)

Besides, aren't game developers known to work overtime? You don't hear other companies say which part they worked on "in their free time" as a way to shield it from criticism. Unless your main argument is rescource allocation, you can be critical of it just like anything else in the game.

The dev team aren't your friends or family, they offer you a product for you to consume and be satsified with. They are likely thankful for any feedback and criticism as they should be, cause it concerns satisfaction of their consumers which are their lifeline.

With this change in particular I think it may attract more players to play longer (newbies seeing higher level players fly will make them long for it).

I for one am glad they add flying to ARR-areas, since I have waited very long for that feature plus got a few alts who will sooner or later hit 2.1-story (ergo, who will be more fun to play when it comes to unlocking Lv50-dungeons as well as waltzing up to 3.0).

Looking at some people in this thread, I am actually quite surprised to read so often the philosophy of "But social interactions will suffer when flying gets added!", since it makes me wonder when these people have travelled through 2.0-areas for the last time.
->Don't want to break the illusion for them, but no matter on which datacenter I happen to play with alts, the old areas are usually empty or only filled with new players. The rare times I see older playable characters strolling around are either bound to events, to hunting, to gathering or to the relic-weapons (Zodiac). The by-me-dreaded RP-players are also VERY hard to spot in places that aren't called a city-state.

I think flying in ARR areas is great. I hate having a quest marker at the top of Lower La Noschea and the only Aetherite in the area is at the very bottom. I'm not really interested in Unreal fights. I already don't like doing EX fights for a mount so... Seems like a do once and never again thing.

So, I work in software development myself, and I have friends who work in the game industry.

Yes, this is the kind of thing that software developers and game developers absolutely do in their "free time."

Friend of mine who works for another big AAA game studio as one of their hardware level graphics programmers (meaning he deals with a LOT of extremely fancy math equations for how light bounces and scatters -he was involved in some of the early experiments of voxel cone ray tracing) has as his "side project" trying to get modern stuff to run on very very old hardware by elegantly minimizing the code and required processing power.

My boss is sometimes up at 4AM tinkering on some improvement for our product that no client asked for, but he couldn't sleep because he was thinking about it. Another one of our devs often gets in a couple hours of work after his kids are asleep, because coding is silent and he can knock out a ticket or two to put himself to sleep.

Gpose was another project that was a "spare time" thing for the dev team, and now it's an integral part of the game.

I would want to see changes in early levels not only for questing

The game play at very early levels with 1 2 3 combo is very boring, even later it's still the same, with add one passive more, and two or one aoe

If not people who encouraged me to keep playing coz " it will eventually get better at end " I would just quit

There is too much focus on "end game" than on letting people having fun faster

( cutting off skills , from expansion to expansion, and spreading those on spectrum from 1 to 80 isn't working well )
And some jobs just suffer not having crucial skills on lower levels

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Originally Posted by frostmagemari

Honestly, anyone who thinks that the devs do things on their free time because they want to needs to take a look into Japanese business culture.

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I am somewhat aware of what the japanese business culture is like. I've read about it but I have to admit I haven't experienced it (i would guess i have experienced something akin to it. employers try really really hard to go around laws. you need to look out for yourself. Unfortunatly i'm in a "business" where i can't just up and leave because that will hurt a third party who is not to blame. Of course your employer knows that so they really like to push the envelope)

But from the surface glimpses I have got it seems that Yoshi P at least tries to not be that type of boss. He has admitted to crunch but he has also delayed patches so the team would get some rest. I understand he's really good at PR speak but i don't think someone who has admitted to crunch would now try and make it sound like its "free time". I could be wrong but so far the signals i pick up on are that he tries to not do that. Granted there is a difference between intent and reality so I could totally be wrong.

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Originally Posted by Crushnight

1st off I like to apologise to the devs for how much of a spoiled brat I have acted over the last few pages, it was wrong of me to even suggest how you should spend your free time, it's yours and yours alone to do as you want, i'm sorry.


I'm going to go do some reflection over this past year to find out why I changed so dramatically as this time last year I was defending their free time from others.

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Look, I can tell you feel passionate about the Shadowbringer races (I would guess Hrothgar in particular) but there is a line that needs to be drawn. I'm glad you're able to take a step back. Being so passionate sometimes makes us lose sight that there are people who work on the game we love. It happens. Please don't beat yourself over it. Just try to do better next time :)

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Originally Posted by Schan

I am somewhat aware of what the japanese business culture is like. I've read about it but I have to admit I haven't experienced it (i would guess i have experienced something akin to it. employers try really really hard to go around laws. you need to look out for yourself. Unfortunatly i'm in a "business" where i can't just up and leave because that will hurt a third party who is not to blame. Of course your employer knows that so they really like to push the envelope)

But from the surface glimpses I have got it seems that Yoshi P at least tries to not be that type of boss. He has admitted to crunch but he has also delayed patches so the team would get some rest. I understand he's really good at PR speak but i don't think someone who has admitted to crunch would now try and make it sound like its "free time". I could be wrong but so far the signals i pick up on are that he tries to not do that. Granted there is a difference between intent and reality so I could totally be wrong.

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I don't know Yoshida, nor do i ever think i'd get the chance to.. but if he says he doesn't try to be that kind of boss, i'll believe it at face value. The thing i'm talking about though is more of a national issue in Japan in regards to businesses rather than crunch culture that happens in game studios.

It's hard to put into words for me since i don't have first hand experience; From my understanding of it, its not that the boss is hovering over your shoulder telling you to stay late but instead its a toxic mishmash of loyalty/respect/peer pressure. The work you do impacts the company and your coworkers, and even if not verbally mandated, it is your responsibility as an employee to make sure the business thrives and your coworkers aren't punished by your poor/unfinished work; and if higher ups think that you're not meeting those two criteria, you won't be selected for upward movement. You probably won't be fired either, you'll get shuffled off to some corner of the company where people forget about you until you quit, which isn't really a thing in wider Japanese business culture or you succumb to working yourself to death/commit suicide (It's such a large problem that the government had to get involved to try and curb it).

So even though Yoshida probably doesn't advocate them staying late to do things, it's such a normal practice in Japanese business culture that you put in extra time to finish your work that it's just something that people do because the business structure expects it of them.

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Originally Posted by frostmagemari

I don't know Yoshida, nor do i ever think i'd get the chance to.. but if he says he doesn't try to be that kind of boss, i'll believe it at face value. The thing i'm talking about though is more of a national issue in Japan in regards to businesses rather than crunch culture that happens in game studios.

It's hard to put into words for me since i don't have first hand experience; From my understanding of it, its not that the boss is hovering over your shoulder telling you to stay late but instead its a toxic mishmash of loyalty/respect/peer pressure. The work you do impacts the company and your coworkers, and even if not verbally mandated, it is your responsibility as an employee to make sure the business thrives and your coworkers aren't punished by your poor/unfinished work; and if higher ups think that you're not meeting those two criteria, you won't be selected for upward movement. You probably won't be fired either, you'll get shuffled off to some corner of the company where people forget about you until you quit, which isn't really a thing in wider Japanese business culture or you succumb to working yourself to death/commit suicide (It's such a large problem that the government had to get involved to try and curb it).

So even though Yoshida probably doesn't advocate them staying late to do things, it's such a normal practice in Japanese business culture that you put in extra time to finish your work that it's just something that people do because the business structure expects it of them.

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i know what you are talking about. Granted my comment deviated towards crunch culture... with that said you can also argue that crunch culture is another facet of the same thing. did you not read the accounts of "freelance" devs that would be expected to put in the hours or their contract would not be renewed?

I've personally witnessed accounts of people being called "part timers" by co-workers simply by coming to and leaving work on time. We are talking about people working the normal full time hours and actually leaving on time. Peer pressure is a thing, especially in corporate settings.

I understand it's quite bad in Japan. on top of culturally speaking -> getting into the corporate ladder = a true job there's also the fact that every employee is the face of the company and you certainly do not want to bring shame to the company so you bend backwards. stuff is expected from you and you are constantly expected to go the extra mile.

Can't say I know Yoshi P but I like to think he tries to minimize that even though we're talking about Square Enix which is a corporation so yeah...SE is going to be SE.

I mean this whole issue is partially what causes them to put blue lights in certain places.