Why does this patch feel rushed like when the game was released?

I'm assuming SP is messed up since you were supposed to solo with leves and thats not really possible at the moment.

Gathering leves are messed up because they send you to spots packed full of 40+ agro mobs

Hate is messed up and people are having problems taking down the major NMs

there are still issues with the game freezing or disconnecting and you get booted from a raid if you do.

mp seems unbalanced (this is understandable since they said they would balance out the game)

While I fully understand the difficulties of implementing a new system there is no real excuse for sticking a bunch of high agro mobs right where a gathering leve is supposed to be done. All that shows is that they didn't consider that when creating the patch which essentially means it is rushed. I realize people will say "give them time, 1.19 is the fix-it-all patch" but honestly, its been almost a year. The quality of patches is continuously disappointing. So please in the future, just postpone release for a month and fix things. the little things DO matter and do effect how people perceive the game.

short answeer ,
Why does this patch feel rushed like when the game was released?

because it is.
i love 1.18 direction but lets stick to the facts.

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Originally Posted by Azurymber

I'm assuming SP is messed up since you were supposed to solo with leves and thats not really possible at the moment.

Gathering leves are messed up because they send you to spots packed full of 40+ agro mobs

Hate is messed up and people are having problems taking down the major NMs

there are still issues with the game freezing or disconnecting and you get booted from a raid if you do.

mp seems unbalanced (this is understandable since they said they would balance out the game)

While I fully understand the difficulties of implementing a new system there is no real excuse for sticking a bunch of high agro mobs right where a gathering leve is supposed to be done. All that shows is that they didn't consider that when creating the patch which essentially means it is rushed. I realize people will say "give them time, 1.19 is the fix-it-all patch" but honestly, its been almost a year. The quality of patches is continuously disappointing. So please in the future, just postpone release for a month and fix things. the little things DO matter and do effect how people perceive the game.

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for real.....

I don't think players are trying to adapt to the change more than they are fighting against it.

People are bashing hate system before they even know how it works.

People are bashing abillity changes before playing for more than a few days with them "Or sometimes play with them at all"

People are bashing MP changes before again playing for a few days to see how they can adapt to the new playstyle.

I think it's more of a problem of people "Rushing" their assumptions on how these change the game, many things are totally game-changers but people are jumping the gun to bash the new systems before trying to work inside of them. It's a case of "It's not as easy as it was before" before people even know whats going on.

Mages are mad because they can't solo NM's anymore, Archers are made becasue they don't outclass everyone anymore, people are mad because leveling has slown down a bit, people are mad because things changed.

People don't like change

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Originally Posted by Jynx

I don't think players are trying to adapt to the change more than they are fighting against it.

People are bashing hate system before they even know how it works.

People are bashing abillity changes before playing for more than a few days with them "Or sometimes play with them at all"

People are bashing MP changes before again playing for a few days to see how they can adapt to the new playstyle.

I think it's more of a problem of people "Rushing" their assumptions on how these change the game, many things are totally game-changers but people are jumping the gun to bash the new systems before trying to work inside of them. It's a case of "It's not as easy as it was before" before people even know whats going on.

Mages are mad because they can't solo NM's anymore, Archers are made becasue they don't outclass everyone anymore, people are mad because leveling has slown down a bit, people are mad because things changed.

People don't like change

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I agree with this 100%.
But i also agree this patch is really unpolished.
Is what the "i want my content/patches now!!!" crew does to a game.
So now the same people are the ones who are complaining about bugs/unbalance.

Oh the irony.

The irony is this patch was delayed an entire month (or was it even more?).

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Originally Posted by Victor

The irony is this patch was delayed an entire month (or was it even more?).

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It should have been delayed more.As we can see it was not enough .
Whats the worst could happen , whoever have not left yet, is not going to.

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Originally Posted by Jynx

I don't think players are trying to adapt to the change more than they are fighting against it.

People are bashing hate system before they even know how it works.

People are bashing abillity changes before playing for more than a few days with them "Or sometimes play with them at all"

People are bashing MP changes before again playing for a few days to see how they can adapt to the new playstyle.

I think it's more of a problem of people "Rushing" their assumptions on how these change the game, many things are totally game-changers but people are jumping the gun to bash the new systems before trying to work inside of them. It's a case of "It's not as easy as it was before" before people even know whats going on.

Mages are mad because they can't solo NM's anymore, Archers are made becasue they don't outclass everyone anymore, people are mad because leveling has slown down a bit, people are mad because things changed.

People don't like change

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I agree completely but speaking as a 50 mrd and 50 arc, doing rank 40 leves solo is -boring- now. Not because its hard or because i dont like change, but because its the same thing except with /sitting to heal between battles. And you end up with a lot less SP. It's like they extended a grind nobody liked in the first place (and i've got like vintage hauby +1, engraved bhuj +1, crab bow +2, etc, so its not a matter of gear)

And theres no excuse for screwing up gathering leves. Thats just really poor planning. not a gamestyle change or anything like that.

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Originally Posted by Azurymber

I agree completely but speaking as a 50 mrd and 50 arc, doing rank 40 leves solo is -boring- now. Not because its hard or because i dont like change, but because its the same thing except with /sitting to heal between battles. And you end up with a lot less SP. It's like they extended a grind nobody liked in the first place (and i've got like vintage hauby +1, engraved bhuj +1, crab bow +2, etc, so its not a matter of gear)

And theres no excuse for screwing up gathering leves. Thats just really poor planning. not a gamestyle change or anything like that.

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Why are you doing R40 leves when you're at R50? Go do the dungeons.

Change is fine if it's a good change.

The current problem is partly people aren't being objective about the changes (mages and archers needed a little nerfing). The other part of the problem is the patch wasn't without flaws.

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Originally Posted by Azurymber

The quality of patches is continuously disappointing.

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I'm not sure I can call it disappointing, but then again maybe my expectations for this game are that low now. Still, this game is going to be a WIP for the foreseeable future.

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Originally Posted by Azurymber

And theres no excuse for screwing up gathering leves. Thats just really poor planning. not a gamestyle change or anything like that.

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Please explain this bit to me, I have not done any gathering leves yet but I'm used to avoiding agressive mobs in my levs. Iron lake has always had Kabolds for it's leve area for Botany at least.

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Originally Posted by Jynx

I don't think players are trying to adapt to the change more than they are fighting against it.

People are bashing hate system before they even know how it works.

People are bashing abillity changes before playing for more than a few days with them "Or sometimes play with them at all"

People are bashing MP changes before again playing for a few days to see how they can adapt to the new playstyle.

I think it's more of a problem of people "Rushing" their assumptions on how these change the game, many things are totally game-changers but people are jumping the gun to bash the new systems before trying to work inside of them. It's a case of "It's not as easy as it was before" before people even know whats going on.

Mages are mad because they can't solo NM's anymore, Archers are made becasue they don't outclass everyone anymore, people are mad because leveling has slown down a bit, people are mad because things changed.

People don't like change

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Exactly!!!

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Originally Posted by Sonic_the_Hedgehog

Why are you doing R40 leves when you're at R50? Go do the dungeons.

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i tried doing it as a rank 40 gld too :p

For the most part I agree with Jynx (at the time of this writing, anyway), but the high level enemies next to the gathering points is somewhat irritating. Gathering is about all I do in FF14 anymore and the area I can do that in is more limited than it was. At least one person claimed to have a R50 battle class and was still unable to complete a gathering leve due to aggressive enemies in the area.

If this is only temporary (ie they're planning to redistribute the gathering points to less contested areas) then I'd appreciate a nod to that effect. If it's permanent, well I guess I'd like to know that, too.

Still, though, It's not like I'm hopping mad about it and I'm sure Square will let me know where they're planning on going with this in due time. I do think it's important to voice reasonable concerns over the future and the present, though I usually leave that up to other people to do.

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Originally Posted by Victor

The irony is this patch was delayed an entire month (or was it even more?).

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I get the impression that the upper management might have been pushing him to get 1.18-1.20 out according to some kind of schedule. I mean if they push out 1.19 end of next month 1.20 should conveniently roll out at the 1 year mark of the the CE edition launch.

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Originally Posted by Jynx

Please explain this bit to me, I have not done any gathering leves yet but I'm used to avoiding agressive mobs in my levs. Iron lake has always had Kabolds for it's leve area for Botany at least.

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a lot of spots where nodes appear now have like 30 beastmen in a tiny area, so dodging them takes 15min+ and then they agro while you log, and you can't take them out as a r50 dow/m since more just move to the area or they respawn. This basically cuts out 2-3 gathering leves as viable to complete. Its not a HORRIBLE thing, its just sloppy.

I'm not going to deny that the patch has a few hitches here and there, but what I don't agreee with is the kneejerk reactions alot of people are having.

Slow down and take some time to analyze the situation before crying foul.

I will take more testing this weekend to change my opinions on some things, that might happen as world is realistic. While I like many things ïn update, I dont like major things much now. I will give it another look >> with gameplay before spewing out more of my just one time tested actions' opinions. It might work, some people like it. Yet I find it rather bad atm.

From all things now I find battle issues + ballance uncomplete, rushed and not properly tested.
I like actually ARC now more before the update, its finally not spiking dmg all time, yet it is still strong dps class.
Mages have it harder now, I find many problems with that. Gladiator should provoke, not to have got green enmity after provoke skill.

and so more, I will give it another shots tho.

I agree this patch has definitely made the game feel rough, even jagged around the edges. I have a few more issues:

* I was in Thanalan yesterday and the sky kept flickering. I thought it was lightning but it was a sandstorm. It looked awful.

* The camera can get shakes. It seems to happen more when the camera is at a long distance but that's how I like it. This was a problem before but seems worse now.

* Engaging enemies is terrible, at least as a mage. I don't lock-on so now I never know if I'm 'engaged' or just have the reticle on the mob. So, I press up to change my action bar row and instead my reticle moves. Or, if my action bar row only has spells and I want to engage the mob so that up will change my action bar row, there's no way to do it without hitting a number for a spell and then backing out of it. It feels untested.

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Originally Posted by Zkieve

I agree with this 100%.
But i also agree this patch is really unpolished.
Is what the "i want my content/patches now!!!" crew does to a game.
So now the same people are the ones who are complaining about bugs/unbalance.

Oh the irony.

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It's been stated, though, that there would still be rough spots and things wouldn't be "polished" with this patch. Yoshi noted this in at least one of his letters.

This is the first of a number of major updates they're doing, things will be adjusted, tweaked and revised as necessary as time goes on.

I see a lot of people complaining about the adjustments as though how it is now is how it will forever be going forward. That's never the case. Nothing is ever etched in stone with a MMORPG. If any MMO should prove that, this one should.

This isn't the conclusion of FFXIV's new direction. It's just the beginning.

Not 50, but <3 this patch! Restored alot of my faith in SE (well, for the most part) Although I can see people not liking change after being in a sweet spot for so long. Specially after it makes things more complicated to achieve things that were much easier accomplished at the begining.

Rushed, what?

There's few bugs to be found, everything is functional.

Some features are meant to be complemented by later patch additions.

Nothing in this patch is rushed. Everything works according to the big picture.

The only flaw is that the patch didn't come any sooner.

This patch most definitely wasn't rushed and it was stated that 1.18 is the start of everything and refinements as well as more additions and etc will happen through 1.20 and beyond as this first set of changes is very large in scope -- It pays to actually read what Yoshida and the reps write about.

This was the rough first draft patch. Expect balancing and more content in 1.19 and beyond.

Assuming we don't all grow old and gray before then...

1.18 never should be the perfect patch.
It was the start of a series of patches. Especially if major things are still in the pipeline (Stats, Class System, Materia)
People can't expect 1.18 to be the answer of ALL the balancing problems.

We have to wait. A least till 1.20 or whenever they finish their end summer outline.
That's were things start to get serious.

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Originally Posted by Jynx

Please explain this bit to me, I have not done any gathering leves yet but I'm used to avoiding agressive mobs in my levs. Iron lake has always had Kabolds for it's leve area for Botany at least.

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It's a lot worse than the Iron Lake kobolds, by far. There's a mining node for "Mining Treespeak" that's trapped directly behind an Ixali (rank 48-ish) encampment. There is no way to access it other than running directly through at least half a dozen Ixali (no matter how you try to approach it), and the node is within their territory so they will not deaggro you. Even if you have a rank 50 combat class to switch to and dispose of the Ixali (you need to kill at least 5 of them), there's nowhere safe to stand to tap the node without being interrupted by a respawn (they respawn very fast).

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Originally Posted by Azurymber

I'm assuming SP is messed up since you were supposed to solo with leves and thats not really possible at the moment.

Gathering leves are messed up because they send you to spots packed full of 40+ agro mobs

Hate is messed up and people are having problems taking down the major NMs

there are still issues with the game freezing or disconnecting and you get booted from a raid if you do.

mp seems unbalanced (this is understandable since they said they would balance out the game)

While I fully understand the difficulties of implementing a new system there is no real excuse for sticking a bunch of high agro mobs right where a gathering leve is supposed to be done. All that shows is that they didn't consider that when creating the patch which essentially means it is rushed. I realize people will say "give them time, 1.19 is the fix-it-all patch" but honestly, its been almost a year. The quality of patches is continuously disappointing. So please in the future, just postpone release for a month and fix things. the little things DO matter and do effect how people perceive the game.

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You have to keep in context of how much they worked with for patch 1.18, it's not as simple as other patches so errors are to be noted. Think about it, with a game changing concept like "Auto-battle" do you think it would be wiser to hold off releasing it while people are still using stamina or to release it with bugs so that people can adjust to auto-battle and give input.

Say they decided to delay this VU by 2 week, you would have the following things happen
-People losing faith in the game
-People still annoyed by the mp and "over-nerfed" feel of mages
-Mob placement

However since the patch is released they can look on the forums and analyze where they can fix things such as if they relook at mages and see they made MP cost to high they can fix it, and all the complaints about high level mobs in gathering areas should be fixed soon as well.

For this game at least for this patch the best move was to release it once it was ready and fine tuned to the best of their ability. The rest comes down to unforseen bugs or issues. Changing auto-battle is a huge change effecting a wide variety of concepts such as mob difficulty, abilities, animation and weapon delays. Consider how many mobs are in the game, all the abilities needing new recast timers and mp tweaks, and all the weapons that needed to be tweaked to "delay".

Just need to give them time never know it's possible that this week they may patch things up a tad to fix some notable issues since it would be a mistake to wait til 1.19.

Not enough staff and no leader that can demand more from the team.

6 months to build new gear?! Seriously? How do they manage to put more gear in XI with all the new content with a whole lot more of variables to work with?

Don't give me that HD graphics excuse I've seen entire character models built within a week with competent 3d modelers and I'm sure SE workers are some of the best in the industry.

Compared to XI gear in XIV is multiple times easier to make because the 3d models are just scaled copies of one another whereas in XI Galkas and Tarutarus had actually different 3d models because of their tails and ears. In XIV only 2 gear sets need to be made and usually the female version is almost the same.

I understand that the battle tweaking takes a lot of time but I'm constantly surprised by how little visual tweaks the patches bring.

Even the potato sack-gear could be easily made to look better with a more interesting texture and some 3d sculpting to the normal map to make the surface more individual.

XIII-2 is being made with a lot of the assets from the previous game and rest of the staff is doing only a few PSP games. Can't you please utilize the 3d modelers a bit more?

The landscape doesn't need to be completely turned upside down at once but at lease seeing that you're working on it would go a long way to boost the confidence in this game's future.

Having said that I really like the new quests. It feels like the first time there's content that doesn't feel cheap and the new music tracks are really good addition to the game.

But the 3d modelers really need someone to crack a whip on them to make them work at least on a decent speed. Optionally if I'm completely wrong and there's only one 3d artists working on this game I'd really suggest hiring more.

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6 months to build new gear?! Seriously? How do they manage to put more gear in XI with all the new content with a whole lot more of variables to work with?

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When you make a comparison like this you can't ignore the obvious - A lot of XI's new gear are modified versions of older gear. For example, the Nebula gear set is the same model as the Errant gear set; The Alcide's Harness is the same as the THF Job Specific Armor, Dragon Harness, the Brand New gear set from Voidwatchers are modified versions of the Assault Breastplate (been around since 2004), the Iggira BLM JSE gear (been around since 2004) and a modified Denali armor set, which been around since 2006.

Basically they take old models and reformat them into something new, which is what most MMORPG developer does including Blizzard -- They don't build from scratch most of the time. Also remember that XIV's armor sets are varied based on materials used, which means created multiple copies of the same armor to have a different look or texture, which you normally can call easily without making a new model, but XIV's armor are just more than a head, body, hands legs and feet piece, they're multiple pieces thereof.

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Originally Posted by Seif

Don't give me that HD graphics excuse I've seen entire character models built within a week

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Prove it. Show us said Character models, with full animations implemented, to the highest graphical standard PC allows that was created in a simple week along with their documentation proving that was started on Monday, and completed on friday, because I've seen them take months to years and I actually work in this industry.

There's a reason the player model is the most detailed and NPCs tend to be less detailed you know, and it's not laziness I can assure you.

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Originally Posted by Raikki

It's a lot worse than the Iron Lake kobolds, by far. There's a mining node for "Mining Treespeak" that's trapped directly behind an Ixali (rank 48-ish) encampment. There is no way to access it other than running directly through at least half a dozen Ixali (no matter how you try to approach it), and the node is within their territory so they will not deaggro you. Even if you have a rank 50 combat class to switch to and dispose of the Ixali (you need to kill at least 5 of them), there's nowhere safe to stand to tap the node without being interrupted by a respawn (they respawn very fast).

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someone obviously never played FFXI and never had to sneak/invis harvest.. dieing @ Mt. Zyhlom with no real easy way back.. BOOO HOO! it makes it fun.. figure it out.

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6 months to build new gear?! Seriously? How do they manage to put more gear in XI with all the new content with a whole lot more of variables to work with?

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Lol, it doesn't take any less time in XI.

They can build as many new models as they want, but they need to start preparing them 6 months in advance.

There's no limit on how many models can be made (aside from money limitations of course), but it's going to take six months from start to finish. And that is the industry standard. If XI can pump out new models in 3 month intervals, all that means is that preparing those models was started 6, 9, and 12 months ago.

In other news, if trolls like Seif really can't come up with better complaints than this I am convinced the game is finally in good hands.

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Originally Posted by Betelgeuzah

In other news, if trolls like Seif really can't come up with better complaints than this I am convinced the game is finally in good hands.

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indeed.......

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Originally Posted by Betelgeuzah

In other news, if trolls like Seif really can't come up with better complaints than this I am convinced the game is finally in good hands.

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I finally agree with Betel on something again!

>.< Get back in the kitchen azury... no one told you leave that place...

overall i'm happy with the patch although i haven't got to see and do all of it. i wasn't impressed with the solo guildleves and behest but i think what we have now will make more sense as we see the next 2 patches hit the servers. my only real complaint is the severity of the death penalty , after fighting the ogre and dying many times in the 8 man raid all my gear is broke hopefully they can atleast reduce it some.

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Originally Posted by Forbin

someone obviously never played FFXI and never had to sneak/invis harvest.. dieing @ Mt. Zyhlom with no real easy way back.. BOOO HOO! it makes it fun.. figure it out.

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I might agree with you if we were able to sneak/invis. From the sounds of it harvesting items became much harder than it was prior.

Chances are next update they may move the grade 5 nodes around in some areas to compensate for the new mob positions.

The gathering is the only thing that they really messed up this time. As gatherer myself I wonder if they even get how them mess it up. They seem a bit clueless about it to be honest.

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Originally Posted by Betelgeuzah

Lol, it doesn't take any less time in XI.

They can build as many new models as they want, but they need to start preparing them 6 months in advance.

There's no limit on how many models can be made (aside from money limitations of course), but it's going to take six months from start to finish. And that is the industry standard. If XI can pump out new models in 3 month intervals, all that means is that preparing those models was started 6, 9, and 12 months ago.

In other news, if trolls like Seif really can't come up with better complaints than this I am convinced the game is finally in good hands.

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6 months is actually not the industry standard for creating high res models. most 3d artists can do it much faster, but i think he meant the time it takes from when they decide a new armor should exist to it existing, a lot of that time is probably spent in planning stages.

Personally i think they spend too long in planning, 6 months is how long i would take to do a 3d model in my off time, when im bored, and thats with me relearning the whole 3d software.

i think the proof that this patch didnt have the man power behind it is the fact that we ice skate while drawing our weapons.

i honestly never thought theyd release that feature as retarded as it looks. some times my legs dont go back to their animations at all, i have to stop and then go again to activate the animation.
i know they said they were gonna fix that in a later patch on the JP forums, but that is 100% aside from the point.

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Originally Posted by Physic

6 months is actually not the industry standard for creating high res models. most 3d artists can do it much faster, but i think he meant the time it takes from when they decide a new armor should exist to it existing, a lot of that time is probably spent in planning stages.

Personally i think they spend too long in planning, 6 months is how long i would take to do a 3d model in my off time, when im bored, and thats with me relearning the whole 3d software.

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i have to agree with this.
it would take me a few hours to create a weapon mesh and texture using amateur made programs in FFXI. if i can do that then im sure they can pump out something proffessional with an actual team and actual software shorter than a 6 month span.