A call for transparency

[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.

[Nipa]

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.

Well, even though you are most certainly right on the playerbase, you have to factor in the little tiny detail of the game still being free. And I'm pretty sure they are more afraid of the damage the switch back to a subscription model will do, than of any other negative criticism we can imagine.

At this pace, can we seriously expect a game worthy of a subscription in one year?

So maybe they are simply trying to hide that, hoping one day some players will be unconscious enough to subscribe (and buy some excuse of an expansion or a PS 3 version).

[Sephr]

At this pace, can we seriously expect a game worthy of a subscription in one year?

So maybe they are simply trying to hide that, hoping one day some players will be unconscious enough to subscribe (and buy some excuse of an expansion or a PS 3 version).

There is no logic to this theory. Thinking that people will stumble into subscribing makes no sense, and you think they've settled to simple keep their fingers crossed and keep quiet? We are talking about the same multinational corporation here aren't we?

Honestly, they really haven't been that quiet recently, the gatherer Q&A literally just went out in the japanese forum, so that'll be here today or tomorrow.

I'd say if anything, info's been picking up a lot. Remember the good 2 months of silence we had earlier in the year?

[Lerris]

A test server makes sense when you have a pipeline of content and changes to release. SE is in the position of having their pipeline drastically shortened. Since they claim they are committed to bringing out the changes ASAP, a one-week run on a test server delaying the release of the content/battle changes to the live servers by a week is out of the question. They don't have a version waiting for a release date; when they do it will go straight to the live servers.

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.
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More transparency. Way more transparency.

Releasing architectural information to the public is out of the question. Among other things, making such information public gives the inevitable network hackers a starting point, and is not in the best interests of the company, the players or the shareholders. There may not be anything innovative about their architecture, but releasing such detailed information to the competition is also potentially damaging.

Private corporations lack transparency in these regards for very good reasons.

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?

@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.

It's not finalized until it's been implemented and tested.

Inputs from the community regarding the battle system were received less than 4 months ago. Mid-June would be a 4 month turnaround; until then, they had to analyze everything, not just the battle system. And the team is split up, to develop the battle system and the related content in parallel.