Updates: FFXI and FFXIV, a comparison

[Rinsui]

Yeah, that's what I thought. You really are basing their progress on the content implemented to the live servers.

9 months after launch and 5 months after "Mister Miracle Patch" took over, yes. But another poster beat me to it:

This whole overhaul excuse is about as much bullshit and overused nonsense as Beta was when the excuse was "Come release it will be better, this is beta theres no need for all content ^^" yah that worked out super great.

So just have faith?

They could post screenshots, but they seem more concerned with surprising people than actually just telling people what's up

Because, like, they always manage to surprise us in a positive way?

They develop everything that relates to each other at once. Then it is not merely the concept that works and looks good on paper, it's the end result that works too. When there's a problem with AA that affects other features, they are changed accordingly. At the end every feature is ready simultaneously and there are no issues to be had.

Because, like, chocobos are intricately related. Amongst each other, and to the materia system. So it's just logical we have to wait until they introduce the materia system to ride chocobos?

My best friend who is game dev is laughing at you nubs who is saying this process is going to slow.

My friend laughs at your friend for working at a company that's going to be bancrupt within a few weeks.

Depends on what you mean. I didn't know this game was in such a dire need for more normal monster types that they should be working on them instead of... pretty much everything else imaginable.

If there was evidence they are actually working on "everything else imaginable" I could bear brown, black, brown-black striped, blackish-brown and brownish-black marmots a little longer. Maybe even for a couple of days.

Simple Menu changes could take months cause the code could collide with tons of other things but people don't know that

Good you know. Chaos theory. A butterfly flaps its wings... and suddenly the Black Shroud, like, E*X*P*L*O*D*E*S.

And dear God, we have gotten UI improvements, new models and effect improvements during the last few months. What the hell is even your point?

Yes, but I'm really astonished they didn't also enlarge the UI. Like, when something is really ugly... make it BIG!

I hope no developer ever read the BS Betel writes.

[Wolfie]

I hope no developer ever ready the BS Betel writes.

SE does read what he and others like him write, and we ended up with this s***ship of a game.

[Warlyx]

It lacked anything to do endgame. So first thing they did was fix that and added endgame content, they opened a test server so people could test it with an instant 50 char and complain about any issues, the content is being released this year with several dungeons including difficulty settings and new armour, level cap, all your usual jizz jazz ready for the story expansion pack later in Summer. Bluehole listened to their fans, they dont want to be losing another 80k of their team so they fix the primary issue. XIV primary im afraid is not the battle system lol. But ah well.

and thats a perfect example in how to manage a MMORPG that is lacking something


I can say the same for Rift , the launch was amazing , some minor problems , but the gameplay was there , the quests ,dungeons (lacked some endgame but its fixed ,and adding more ) , fun zones , rifts (i love them ) , PVP , a Dungeon LFP working , plenty of gear , sets included , lots of factions to get gear from , achivements , and fun things to do ....

both games have been released (tera only in korea) in the last months ............

the only game that i remember a fail release was AoC and now has 1 expansion and is going F2p this month, but improved a lot in the 1 year.

[SuzakuCMX]

All of them excluding Goblins have been in the game since Alpha. Just turning the on switch does not count as a new developed mob when its been fully developed over a year ago.

Why would they add new mobs when they'd have to adjust them with the battle difficulty.

[Physic]

Why would they add new mobs when they'd have to adjust them with the battle difficulty.

they are probably going to try not to adjust the monsters that much, but rather adjust the players. Most monster adjustments they make will probably across the board multipliers.

Its just easier to solve the difficulty equation while keeping one variable(monsters since they are already committed to changing players) the same.
hence i would be none too surprised to find out we are signifigantly weaker next patch.

[Mack]

All of them excluding Goblins have been in the game since Alpha. Just turning the on switch does not count as a new developed mob when its been fully developed over a year ago.

Who cares about new mobs now? the entire game needs changing, mobs aren't going to make it any better.

[Prevbean]

I honestly wouldn't be arguing with these blinded fanboys that keep making up excuses for SE on how unacceptably slow they been adding anything. I honestly wouldn't waste my breath they are the laughing stock for anyone that plays and enjoys many MMOs in their time.

[Ava]

I honestly wouldn't be arguing with these blinded fanboys that keep making up excuses for SE on how unacceptably slow they been adding anything. I honestly wouldn't waste my breath they are the laughing stock for anyone that plays and enjoys many MMOs in their time.

Alternatively, "fanboys" shouldn't waste their time arguing with people like you who play a game they hate and whine all day on the forums as if someone is forcing you to play this awful game. I don't think Square's fail is acceptable at all but if you're not willing to be patient, then leave. The devs need constructive, valuable feedback they can use, not whining about how slow patches are or demanding specific dates and details for every little thing to come in the next six months.

[RedAffinity]

There's numerous lines in the development process. Starts out with dev lines which then are merged, art ~ code ~ etc.. and it forms other baby clients. These then are further tested through and eventually blossom into a faux-live version which gets pounded on rigorously (lolz) by the devs and quality assurance. Once the team gets a thumbs up, an update is pushed into live, and that's where we come in.

As bland as the battle system (and many other features) is in FFXIV, it's balanced to be boring among other areas of the game. Tearing down a core component and reworking it from the ground up is pretty darn time consuming.

Before I get my head chewed off, I'm not making excuses for Square-Enix.

I don't know if the amount of work put in has truly been efficient time-wise or not but generally speaking... any changes to the battle system, especially one as big as promised, is like trying to blow up an old building in the middle of New York city and trying to build it back ground up without affecting anything around it. There's a high risk of a bad domino effect. You have to consider something as basic as auto-attack requires a tremendous amount of balance, including reworking of the stamina gauge, actions and abilities and enemy balance as well.

I wish we knew exactly how big 1.18 is. I too feel like wtf it's been 8+ months and we haven't seen much. But at the same time, a lot has been promised for this patch, and I understand they don't want to further develop new content for a soon to be changing battle system.

As for FFXI, the development process for that is probably perfected for their team. They add content and adjustments, they don't need to tear things down and try again.

[Roughgalaxy]

well the downside is... they have to basically do a complete overhaul on the game, rebuilding it from the ground up. This task is hard enough on it's own, but then you add having to run live servers with uppity customers (myself included) and you got such a storm of crap that it turns into a shitnami. Multiply all this with the fact that the engine they use to build the game is nearly worthless and you got a clusterf*** of epic proportions.

Sure XI is pretty good now, but it had the same issues XIV is having now, it is a shame that the XIV team didn't learn from the mistakes of their predecessors but thems the breaks. XIV is effectively reverted to a beta status and this stings a bit as we still are playing for the game with our initial purchase. Sure a bit more information, maybe even a small daily dev blog would be nice, help us see the progress they are making without taking up to much of their time.

It has to be said however, that if the major issue with a game is that there isn't enough of it... well that's a helluva lot better of a problem than some I can think of.