Discussion for Letter from the Producer LIVE Part XX

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Originally Posted by kyuven

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You are willing to give SE a pass due to cultural differences. I do not. As SE actively cultivated the NA/EU markets they bore the responsibility to learn these cultures and to adapt to the differences with Japanese culture. That is how global companies work. What this means is that they bear the responsibility to cater to each culture that they deal with. What may work in Japan does not, necessarily, work in NA/EU. They must learn this.

I stated in a later post that I thought that the forums were a more appropriate place to answer these questions. That is why we have different areas in the forums catering to different people. This is SE's design. Let them use it for communicating with different cultures and their specific needs.

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Originally Posted by Callinon

I'd have preferred they start at 1 too. As for the class vs job semantics nonsense.. I don't care what you call them, they should've started at 1.

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I think this has something to do with what was originally planned in V1.0 and it's ancestry in Ultima and Wizardy. In Wizardy, FF1 and pretty much all the Final Fantasy Games prior to 6, there was a class the character started as, and was later upgraded to a Job. The cross-classing comes from Wizardy.

To quickly refresh. The Knight in FF1 was basically the Paladin. The Thief upgrades to Ninja, The White Mage upgrades to White Wizard. etc There was no cross-classing. Cross-classing in Final Fantasy does exist (see FF6) and such, but it's something that originally came from the Wizardy games. Wizardry Online kept these but otherwise the mechanic for doing it in Wizardy requires leveling , and then going back to level 1 again taking as many skills from the previous class depending on what level you achieved. Wizardy isn't a babies game and is unforgiving.

In Final Fantasy XIV, I believe there may have been the intent of doing the Class -> Elite Classes like Wizardy, but with it's own Final Fantasy type of Jobs (See FF5 and FFX-2 for FF games with dynamic job changes) So you may start as one class, but you can pick a job with the Soul Crystal which reduces the cross-classing in favor of several new job-specific skills. Even though you are a SCH or a SMN, you are still leveling the base Arcanist class. What that unfortunately causes is the notion that "jobs" are superior than the base class they derive from. They aren't. You have 10 cross-class skills as the base class, only 5 as the Job, and you are limited only to cross-classes that are relevant to your Job. Some classes like the casters don't really benefit from the cross-classing since everyone just picks the CNJ's protect/stoneskin/cure set, thus not needing to rely on a healer. Since you can't cross-class the Job skills, you're stuck without some of the better skills as well.

What I expect from V3.0 is that you get a new Soul Crystal for those jobs, but they either require a specific base class, or they "add" skills to any base class like the Job's already do to their specific class.

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Originally Posted by kyuven

That explains so much.
Aside from boss encounters, a lot about the game feels like it was designed on paper and no one in testing was listened to, in addition to the developers clearly not having a fixed direction for content.
Say what you will about the idea of HW following directly from ARR and requiring it, at least you're told exactly where to go and have reason to be there.
In FFXI (and some older MMOs, like EQ1) expansion content is plopped down on top of the existing content, only really activating when you seek it out. During my recent return to FFXI, the only reason I even figured out how the WoG zones work was because I wanted to unlock Dancer, which requires it.
There are pluses and minuses to both, but the lack of direction in FFXI definitely says it was born in a committee meeting without thought to how it would feel.

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Square-Enix.... has a bad record of not listening to feedback. Even during the FFXIV V1.0 beta, all feedback was disregarded and those that could send feedback were just a tiny tiny fragment of the players who beta tested. I imagine that Square-Enix was probably told many things in FFXI and FFXIV were horrible by their testers and was also disregarded because of the sunk costs. Hence why FFXIV had to be re-done from scratch, not just incrementally patched over.

I think they started to listen to feedback once a lot of negative feedback about XIII came out, and tried to fix that with XIII-2 and wound up alienating those that liked FFXIII. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

With Final Fantasy, Square-Enix subscribes to the same model that Ultima subscribes to. Every game must be a DIFFERENT game. Not just an iteration of the last game.

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Originally Posted by Ladon

Extending the current tomestone system in 3.0 is a huge disappointment for me.

Honestly I don't think I can put up with any more tomestone grinding and weekly caps. This really, really drains my excitement for the expansion.

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People wanted more tokens (see the anti-RNG threads)

I'm not sure what to say or to complaint... Are we still in the same direction with the topic?

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Originally Posted by nuyu11

I'm not sure what to say or to complaint... Are we still in the same direction with the topic?

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Welcome to the Official Forums.

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Originally Posted by Remus

I can bet they won't be ready. Servers are going to die once 3.0 comes out because a large amount of people will be coming back to try the expansion. I don't want to be negative but I can see this happening.

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you make it sound like other MMO's don't have this problem lawl even WoW had a problem with it's recent expansion launch... I don't think I've seen many if at all any clean launches/expansion launches after playing a variety of MMO's in the past 13 years lol... a smooth launch has to be an unpopulated launch which shows no excitement =p i figure if the server break theres a lot of hype~

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Originally Posted by kyuven

And that's before getting into the crap summoners had to go through to get their summons. Imagine if, in order to summon Ifrit-Egi, you either had to solo Ifrit Story Mode, or beat Ifrit HM. And you had to do this for all your egis. Oh, and you don't get any other class features until you do. And this is after a job unlock quest that depends heavily on RNG and seasons

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I went back to FFXI recently as sort of a time-burn before Heavensward to relive the Nostalgia, but I know you mean about the quests. Way way way back when, FFXI encouraged you to interact with basically any NPC to see if they offered anything. Or used a linkshell for advice or what to do next, etc. But things are a lot more stream-lined now. Technically, to get any of the celestial avatars, you can do a level 20 mini-trial. I didn't have to do it on my new character since my lvl 99 BST's tiger kills them in 2 hits...which is perhaps another issue in itself haha, but did they change things to help SMN with that. But when it was first released, the job itself was very lackluster. It took a long time for it to get where it is now.

But, I adore its job quest. I was able to get all the different weathers on a job without sneak and invis. I did use RR once, but it was honestly the most fun I had had in a long time. I forgot what having a dangerous open world is like after playing FFXIV, which is a shame. AND, when you complete the SMN quest, a rainbow plops across La Theine for everyone to see! How cool is that?! FFXI did do some things right for its time.

I don't always want to be spoon fed directions. But in general I agree, wiki was very valuable even coming back.

To be honest with everything i've been reading on this thread I am embarrassed by our community... Most if not all are whining for the fact they didn't release a QnA even after a 2 and a half hour live letter that gave bucket loads of information.

Everyone who has ever complained about not wanting a QnA are ungrateful people who need reminding what yoshi-p and his team did to bring this game back from the dead. Grow up and just be thankful he gave you any sort of information. Because to be honest i love this game and everything that comes with it, yes there are problems but it is the only MMO i have stuck around for longer than 6 months and not get bored.

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Originally Posted by Rizon

As SE actively cultivated the NA/EU markets they bore the responsibility to learn these cultures and to adapt to the differences with Japanese culture. That is how global companies work. What this means is that they bear the responsibility to cater to each culture that they deal with.

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They do, but it only goes so far. Even in house for most NA companies you cater to only so many things before it becomes a pain. I see requests come in all the time and things that are important to some people mean nothing to higher ups, and it is thrown to the waste side. I've seen conditions where people go "if you implement this, I'm going to quit"..they let them know who to contact to get the process started and will begin posting the job next week for a new hire. That's just a quick run down but if someone wants to take the words, twist them until we make lemonade more power to you.

I understand the frustration and you have every right to feel this way with certain things. Just sometimes need to take a step back and enjoy the good things that are coming from all this and not the negative.

I am very excited for 3.0, I am not always happy with a lot of things but, I voice my concern and log in..then get happy go lucky with the amazing scenery and all the wonderful things that make me love this game.

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Originally Posted by Felis

People wanted more tokens (see the anti-RNG threads)

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From what it sounds like though we aren't getting the token system where we actually want it. Alexander HM still seems RNG. Which they haven't said but probably still RNG

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Originally Posted by Bayohne

The “lootmaster” system will allow the party’s master to distribute lottable items. For example, before entering content you’ll be able to establish item lotting rights in chat, so please be sure to put this to use.

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I'm not sure about this. Obviously FF XI had a similar system and it worked, but I think this is more for Free Companies / Linkshells (and honorable Party Leaders). I'm afraid of the trolling and loot stealing that could happen in random situations, though.

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Originally Posted by Bayohne

Additionally, we’ll be making it possible to do a single take-back on items you accidentally needed or greeded on.

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This is FANTASTIC news! :D Such a good thing to have, for those accidental lots (or for situations where you lot, only to have a friend / party member ask (too late) if they can have it, and you wanted to give it to them then).

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Originally Posted by Bayohne

Additionally, unlike the Coil of Bahamut, players will be able to re-enter a floor in Alexander even if you have cleared it (similar to the Crystal Tower). You will be able to challenge it as many times as you wish until you obtain the item that you want. Also, even if you Need on an item, you will still be able to help others with the progression of Alexander.

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This is great news! :) If this comes to fruition, it finally opens up Free Companies and Linkshells (and Friends outside of Statics) to help each other out (and have more FC-based activities with "odd number players" (outside of the usual static 8 players). :)

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Originally Posted by IchirouHayami

To be honest with everything i've been reading on this thread I am embarrassed by our community... Most if not all are whining for the fact they didn't release a QnA even after a 2 and a half hour live letter that gave bucket loads of information.

Everyone who has ever complained about not wanting a QnA are ungrateful people who need reminding what yoshi-p and his team did to bring this game back from the dead. Grow up and just be thankful he gave you any sort of information. Because to be honest i love this game and everything that comes with it, yes there are problems but it is the only MMO i have stuck around for longer than 6 months and not get bored.

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I suspect that the players who you describe as "ungrateful" and "whining" are simply frustrated because they did what they were told to do - submit questions to the designated threads - but the many questions didn't result in many answers.

Others are simply suggesting that the questions could be addressed at some point, perhaps in forum or topics posts, which seems like a pretty good idea!

There's probably also a degree of frustration that some burning questions that pop up on nearly every thread continue to remain unanswered.