The Letter is up

[Firon]

I hope they change the animation where you switch between passive and active - where the character slides...that could drive me crazy

Well in the letter it says the fine tuning for the animation would be in 1.9 so maybe that should address it.

[Pulseczar]

Ill ask again what is your point cause he never promised any big changes till this very patch right here so what lackluster updates? He added more content than Tanka did his first 4 months he was in charge.

A UI overhaul was promised to be on the front burner as he felt it was the most critical change in the rest of the development. It since then has been retracted in favor of putting the battle adjustments first. A plethora of other changes were also planned for early 2011 (under Yoshi's new team — listed in his older letters) that have not been followed through.

[Delmontyb]

The 2 week delay is a real bummer. I was looking forward to this patch way back in the mid spring.
Now it seems the delay is going to be nearly 3 months.
I seem to recall Yoshi saying the updates would be every 2 weeks for small patches and 2-3 months for the larger ones.

So all in all we are looking at 5-6 months since work on this patch started.
Is it just me, or does it seem like this game is going to take more time to fix, than it would to start from scratch? Well the new animations and changes to that attack system look promising, still mixed feelings about the speed of the auto attacks especially on pug.

It's just you.

Sadly many people think that 5 - 6 months of game design is a long time, when really it isn't. I'm not defending SE here, just trying to put game development in perspective... It takes a lot of time... Start over from scratch (my definition is not using any assets already created) would push development 5 years out on an MMO, typically 3 years on a AAA title.

Right now 1.18 is in that critical stage, testing, and fixing bugs, it sounds like it's going to be a big update, so that means more can go wrong, and sometimes finding bugs is a pain, because they might spend weeks testing and not find a bug that we find in a few minutes. It's just the way things work, changing one thing can have effects in other areas that you didn't see coming.

It's just the nature of game development.

[Firon]

A UI overhaul was promised to be on the front burner as he felt it was the most critical change in the rest of the development. It since then has been retracted in favor of putting the battle adjustments first. A plethora of other changes were also planned for early 2011 (under Yoshi's new team — listed in his older letters) that have not been followed through.

Not in one of his letter's he said UI early 2011 cause he took charge in early 2011.... That was tanaka who promised companies and UI early 2011

[Gidonoidon_Sur]

Clarify with me. Because I think people are setting their expectations too high for this upcoming patch (or I am setting mine too low, which is possible). This patch will introduce auto-attack, removal of stamina bar, and 2 new dungeons. That is pretty much it, right? Materia, job system, balancing of stats, all that stuff will be later, right?

[Pulseczar]

Not in one of his letter's he said UI early 2011 cause he took charge in early 2011.... That was tanaka who promised companies and UI early 2011

Now you are just babbling nonsense and arguing for the sake of it. Read some of his interviews where he clearly stated the UI overhaul was what he wanted to tackle first. We can agree to disagree. Here's hoping for 1.18 to be successful.

[popdai]

The optimistic vision of 1.18 will kill this game definitely.

Stay pessimistic, and you'll get no disappointment when the 1.18 will go live.

Trust me.

My 2 cents.

[northernsky]

So it seems like skills such as "Ferocity" are not affected by auto-attack, which was a strong worry for many players. Guess ARC will be fine then.

[CrstyCaptin]

Underwhelming, though the push back was to be expected. My main beef was the short letter. Sweet, gave a brief overview of the battle changes, but no mention of anything else. You said you have a complete dungeon but thats as far that topic went, no mention of recipe changes, or server latency(very big one here) fixes. Not seeing the 'multiple teams' working on 'different aspects of the game' really shining here. Hope that changes this summer(roll out the patches after 1.18)

I will say I'm at least glad it looks like the battle pace has slowed down a bit though I hope they balance the SP awarded per mob again due to this new slower pace(if it stays). Also with the patch being pushed back two weeks I can take a break from grinding fishing in tier 3 fatigue.

Edit: Oh, and as much as I hate BR because it's so simple, at least people will be able to auto attack while in que instead of thumbs inserted in asses? That's one thing to look forward to.

[Laiferr]

I really am tired of all the negativity generated towards this game, but I myself am starting to get tired and concerned. I don't mean to be a debbie downer, but I'm feeling disheartened... 3 months waiting, now two more weeks, with only one dungeon completed? Does this mean we will only have 2 dungeons? How long will they even be fun for? I can imagine these adjustments will be great when we first log on - looking forward to the battle changes myself - and the dungeons will be good for a week or two. But after that, it's just the same again, and how much longer will we be waiting for content and basic changes? Everyone tells me 'it's a good start' and 'the right direction' and I agree but it's been so long now... Not that far off a year. How long is unacceptable to get the game to a basic level? Why does it take so much longer than other game developers? I wish they could just outright tell us why this is taking so long. I'm desperately hoping these dungeons are more than just grinding through walls of monsters. I'm seriously hoping these battle adjustments make normal partying a viable option.

To end on a positive note I do really like the look of these battle changes and the game sorely needs some tactics, which it looks like this will generate!