A call for transparency

[Nipa]

I want one of SE programmer, one who is actually able to understand exactly why, for instance, adding mailboxes or LS remote control is so hard, to explain the broad workings of their whole client-server architecture, as well as their development chain.

I don't want this explanation coming from a manager, a designer or some PR people, I want it from someone who understand the inner workings of the whole game. I don't care if it's in Japanese, I don't case if its badly written, I don't care if it's not advertised in big font on the lodestone.

But I think now this is the only thing that could restore a bit of credibility in SE. Either they assume they don't have the skills to make a decent MMO yet, and it will take years to acquire them, either they continue BSing us with whatever new anecdotal feature planned for the next patch/month/semester and asking themselves fundamental questions such as "shall we jump?" or "what color for the new event bells?".

More transparency. Way more transparency.

[Mack]

I want one of SE programmer, one who is actually able to understand exactly why, for instance, adding mailboxes or LS remote control is so hard, to explain the broad workings of their whole client-server architecture, as well as their development chain.

Talk about time well spent (/sarcasm). Aside from the odd nerd that will understand anything that programmer is talking about I think the majority of people don't care WHY its so hard to add something like mailboxes or /searching or LS control but more care as to WHEN these things will be added regardless of how difficult it is. I can appreciate the programmers hard work and I understand, as your average gamer, how difficult it must be to program video games (I've done some programming long ago) but also as a gamer considering the programmer in this case is SE I don't care about excuses and want results.

I love it when people talk about others' lack of knowledge in software programming and keep making excuses for SE taking their sweet time overhauling this game. While those people are smart and know the overlay of the programming structure and its intricacies what they don't understand is that a company like SE, if they were serious about saving this game, would induce more and more resources into the project (that is if they actually think it'll pay off). To me, them taking their time doesn't bode well and tells me they don't think this game will ever become a big hit but a mediocre should have been sometime down the road.

[Renshi]

Renshi, I like you but I'm a little perplexed about your post. Did you not follow the history of communication I outlined above? The lack of transparency is affecting the community.

I just like surprises, that's all, and since I'm part of the community, I don't feel affected by it, but rather I like them to be mysterious. That gives the "You didn't know, but we made this!" effect, which can end with "So Awesome!" or with "What's this bullcrap?".

I can understand players who can't wait for infos, but I prefer to wait and doing something other in an Idle state rather than ask infos directly to SE dwelling in frustration.

Remember tha what I've wrote is strictly subjective and written with a smartphone =)

[Neptune]

Amen Nipa.

Fair enough, Renshi.

To me, them taking their time doesn't bode well and tells me they don't think this game will ever become a big hit but a mediocre should have been sometime down the road.

I wonder if there is some truth to this. The only legit reason I can think of as to why things take so long is that somehow all of the existing code is super bad. They can't afford to lose time by creating a new game engine so they have to bring in new people to look at the code, which is definitely happening to some extent. I wonder if it makes a difference if you have 500 programmers or 1 programmer looking at bad code and trying to untangle the knot. It seems like the old "too many chefs in the kitchen" dilemma. But I also wonder, is bad programming the only thing to blame for how long things are taking?

Clearly SE in 7 months can't accomplish what most other MMO dev teams can do in 1-2 months. Aion just got another graphics engine. I'm not sure how long that was in development but I think it was less than 6 months.

[Mack]

Amen Nipa.

Fair enough, Renshi.



I wonder if there is some truth to this. The only legit reason I can think of as to why things take so long is that somehow all of the existing code is super bad. They can't afford to lose time by creating a new game engine so they have to bring in new people to look at the code, which is definitely happening to some extent. I wonder if it makes a difference if you have 500 programmers or 1 programmer looking at bad code and trying to untangle the knot. It seems like the old "too many chefs in the kitchen" dilemma. But I also wonder, is bad programming the only thing to blame for how long things are taking?

Clearly SE in 7 months can't accomplish what most other MMO dev teams can do in 1-2 months. Aion just got another graphics engine. I'm not sure how long that was in development but I think it was less than 6 months.

Well its not just the programming right? everything seems to have taken a slow route so to speak. What I hope is happening is reprogramming and battle system overhaul and in the background there are teams working on a lot of content but the producer letters tell me too little is being worked on so far. I'm less worried about "too many chefs in the kitchen" as opposed to too many eggs in a single basket....well not really worried, but just sort of observing now, since I've basically lost all care for this game lately. I guess we'll see what happens.

[Neptune]

Well its not just the programming right? everything seems to have taken a slow route so to speak. What I hope is happening is reprogramming and battle system overhaul and in the background there are teams working on a lot of content but the producer letters tell me too little is being worked on so far. I'm less worried about "too many chefs in the kitchen" as opposed to too many eggs in a single basket....well not really worried, but just sort of observing now, since I've basically lost all care for this game lately. I guess we'll see what happens.

You know you have a point. The battle system blueprint, released a couple of weeks ago, shows a surprising lack of finalization. How it could take the team more than 7 months to complete their analysis of the battle system baffles me. What else is a good example of something very slow going that might be unrelated to programming?

[Mack]

Off the top of my head, for example, they mention including only two dungeons in this coming patch for content - that is one thing, how long does it take to make two dungeons really? they've been working on this game past its release for 7 months like you said, if they have different teams (well loaded teams that is) working on different categories you would think 7 months of work would get us at the very least 2 dungeons per given level (i.e., maybe at R20, 30, 40, 50, etc.). And its not just dungeons, they are still just "talking" about Chocobos...what is there to talk about exactly? why has no one been working on this stuff already? what about player housing for example, or player companies that were promised to us last year even.

I know all these have a programming portion to them but according to the developer's letters they have hardly touched up on them yet. Just seems to me like SE are in a state of "we already screwed this up so we'll see what we can salvage and move on"...as in they aren't willing to inject too much more equity into this project (or at least not more than necessary by their calculations and I bet it wont be enough). From where I'm sitting this game wont even surpass FFXI in overall subscribers, I doubt that's what they had planned when they were working on it, it still baffles me how wrong things went too. Its too bad really; I know some people will call me a troll but I'm saying it like I see it, I would have loved nothing more then selling my soul to this game for the next decade but I don't think its ever going to happen.

[whoopeeragon]

Off the top of my head, for example, they mention including only two dungeons in this coming patch for content - that is one thing, how long does it take to make two dungeons really? they've been working on this game past its release for 7 months like you said, if they have different teams (well loaded teams that is) working on different categories you would think 7 months of work would get us at the very least 2 dungeons per given level (i.e., maybe at R20, 30, 40, 50, etc.).

Call me someone who still has hopes, but I'm thinking that it's a mere mis-translation. Perhaps they wanted to mention that it will be two types of dungeons (rank 30 and 50 dungeons), not just two. But again, that's mere speculation; because if only two dungeons came out, not only will I be eating my words here, my respect for the developers will take a dive.

@Neptune: I think they only really started with the battle system revision around 4 months ago, when the player poll # 2 came out, since I believe that where they got the information from. (correct me if I'm wrong, I haven't looked at the past topics on the lodestone in a while). Since that's where most of the 'community' cried out for a new battle system, and seeing how SE acts, I don't think they would have noticed how bad the battle system was until the community vied for it. As such, it leads me to think they started probably only 4 months ago. Just a thought. Not saying you're wrong, just adding a different perspective. ^^

But still....they are missing vital basics. LS management, kweh~, a way to give MWs stability. And my pet hate; why were there so little mage classes on release? Only two? T^T

[Meridian]

Off topic - I really wish people would accept other peoples points-of-view and give constructive arguments for or against them, instead of flaming each other. Does not give a good impression for anyone reading this forums to get an idea of the community. FFXI was sold on it's community spirit.

On topic!

A PTR would enable the devs to get feedback from players directly on the changes, without having to patch it into the live server, then realise it was the wrong thing to do. I am all for this.

[Neptune]

I know all these have a programming portion to them but according to the developer's letters they have hardly touched up on them yet. Just seems to me like SE are in a state of "we already screwed this up so we'll see what we can salvage and move on"...as in they aren't willing to inject too much more equity into this project (or at least not more than necessary by their calculations and I bet it wont be enough). From where I'm sitting this game wont even surpass FFXI in overall subscribers, I doubt that's what they had planned when they were working on it, it still baffles me how wrong things went too. Its too bad really; I know some people will call me a troll but I'm saying it like I see it, I would have loved nothing more then selling my soul to this game for the next decade but I don't think its ever going to happen.

Actually I think one major factor that has never been recognized is that the FFXI team and the FFXIV team are the same team. In other words, our team is busy working on FFXI and that is detracting from the manpower put into FFXI. I wish I was wrong but they never indicated that the team ever split, and I think at least 90% of the teams are composed of the same people.

Call me someone who still has hopes, but I'm thinking that it's a mere mis-translation. Perhaps they wanted to mention that it will be two types of dungeons (rank 30 and 50 dungeons), not just two. But again, that's mere speculation; because if only two dungeons came out, not only will I be eating my words here, my respect for the developers will take a dive.

@Neptune: I think they only really started with the battle system revision around 4 months ago, when the player poll # 2 came out, since I believe that where they got the information from. (correct me if I'm wrong, I haven't looked at the past topics on the lodestone in a while). Since that's where most of the 'community' cried out for a new battle system, and seeing how SE acts, I don't think they would have noticed how bad the battle system was until the community vied for it. As such, it leads me to think they started probably only 4 months ago. Just a thought. Not saying you're wrong, just adding a different perspective. ^^

It's true that it wasn't a main priority until 4 months ago but according to the interview with Yoshida above, the new team was in place before the announcement in November and they had already started problem-solving then. So the question is, 7 months later, why is there a "blueprint" for battle instead of a finished list of changes? The blueprint didn't even indicate that the changes were final and that programming was the only thing incoming. A lot of stuff was very vague, as noted above, and completely up in the air. 7 months later.

Off topic - I really wish people would accept other peoples points-of-view and give constructive arguments for or against them, instead of flaming each other. Does not give a good impression for anyone reading this forums to get an idea of the community. FFXI was sold on it's community spirit.

On topic!

A PTR would enable the devs to get feedback from players directly on the changes, without having to patch it into the live server, then realise it was the wrong thing to do. I am all for this.

It's true, I have turned on the flamethrower recently. I always try to throw a decent explanation in as the flames are roasting away though.

On topic, totally Meridian. The fact that there is no test server AND no transparency shows that the team has something to hide from us. I think that whatever they think they've got to hide, they need to just humble themselves and get comfortable with us. I think that the remaining playerbase is willing to accept whatever they do, since 60% of them are white knights anyway, lol.