New Letter from the Producer, XII

[Gicker]

Well do you guys want to be old men who try to relive their lost high school glory days or people who live every day to the fullest? Move on and have fun.

[Nuru]

Doesn't matter if they increase the level cap or not. In some way or another, your gear is going to become obsolete, and if it doesn't, then getting the new gear wouldn't be worth it. This would destroy all hopes for new content and so on..

That's just how MMORPGs will evolve and expand. Its really just the only way it is going to happen. Whether its just better gear, more content, or level cap raise. They all tie into one another. There is no denying that.

[kukurumei]

Doesn't matter if they increase the level cap or not. In some way or another, your gear is going to become obsolete, and if it doesn't, then getting the new gear wouldn't be worth it. This would destroy all hopes for new content and so on..

That's just how MMORPGs will evolve and expand. Its really just the only way it is going to happen. Whether its just better gear, more content, or level cap raise. They all tie into one another. There is no denying that.

Yea... there's one thing FF11 did well, it was very durable in having players repeat content. It was very elegant in execution.

Another stake in why FF14 is having problems. It just wasn't thought out very well to work with low amounts of content.

[Sine]

I'd rather not work hard for 2 year sprints only to have the level cap raised and all the gear I've obtained become useless. And do it all over again.

While I don't mind the cap being raised every so often and some gear being replaced, I hope they make some lower lvl gear relevant when that happens. Maybe not to the extreme like FFXI, but a few pieces here and there (ex. lv33 neck item being best in slot for a long time).

[Rowyne]

I guess playing FFXI as my first MMO screwed me over. I can't wrap my mind around it, and when the raised the level cap it broke my heart. Yes, you all get to hear another sob story. There are memories attached to all that gear, the rewards that come with a challenge. I just don't get it. There isn't anything like it. The fact that rewards for missions were relatively balanced for 6-7 years made me feel like I was playing different pieces of the same game, which made me feel like I wasn't wasting my time. At least until the level cap rose and 8 years became obsolete. Now its a different game. I don't want FFXIV to be a new game every 1-2 years. If I'm going to invest that much time into it, I can't be feeling like I'm wasting that much time.

It's not a sob story at all. It is hard to accept at first. When my husband finally pulled me away from four years of FFXI, I started playing WoW with him shortly after the release of The Burning Crusade, its first expansion. Everyone in his guild was devastated about how their epic raid gear they worked for months and months to get in Molten Core and Blackwing Lair wasn't just obsolete, but completely obliterated by quest rewards they got after spending a half hour in the new expansion's starting zone, Hellfire Peninsula. That was like a slap in the face. Being that FFXI was the only MMO I'd ever played previous to WoW, I couldn't wrap my head around it, either.

That's what is really wrong about how WoW treats new content. It overlaps in a way that makes the old content prematurely obsolete. And they not only do it between expansions, but with raid progression within an expansion.

During Wrath of the Lich King, four endgame raids were introduced, the second being Ulduar. Ulduar was arguably the most beautifully designed raid in the game with unique fights and an amazing story that revolved around the Titans and the Old Gods. It was the only raid that unlocked a hard mode depending on how you completed the encounters, with four bosses defeated in hard mode granting access to a special end boss that you only had one hour per week to defeat.

Before most guilds had a chance to clear and really enjoy this content, Ulduar was made obsolete when they prematurely released the third raid, Trial of the Crusader. ToC was a joke by comparison, being nothing but five single boss encounters (no trash) in a colosseum-style setting. If this wasn't bad enough, the armor sets could now be purchased with badges (which dropped off 5-man heroic dungeon and raid bosses). So, you only had to set foot in a raid to get weapon upgrades.

Now, to my point. Even to this day, Blizzard will admit that what they did with Ulduar/ToC progression was a huge mistake. But they will only admit that their mistake was in the premature timing. They have zero problem with making their massive loot tables within each raiding tier completely obsolete approximately every six months. If SE is really smart about it, I believe they can find a way to make gear last longer and retain its value (because who wants to see cherished pieces like AF become worthless trash). So that when expansions come and level caps increase, we feel like we experience character growth--not start over, progress, rinse, repeat. I don't ever want to see FFXIV sink to the depths of a game that recycles gear as fast as my local department store.

[Jynx]

I personally have no issues with large quanitites of gear becoming obsolete overnight, as long as it's well paced out. Don't pull a WoW and crush everyones great gear withing a month of them gaining it.

[ShinChuck]

I just can't get into these letters, they're far too vague and unnecessarily padded. They sound good, but it's just a bit too flowery to me, very political. You know, list a bunch of nice sounding but nebulous ideas and changes, and the people hear what they want to hear.

For example, I see people cheering for quest based leveling as if it's confirmed, and while I would love for that to come to fruition, all we know is that "sidequests" will yield skill points, and we're getting an undefined "large volume" of quests in an undefined timeframe in an undefined set of patches. Again, I'd love for quest based leveling over repeating the same dull leves over and over, it's just hard for me to get excited over such ambiguous phrasing and details.

That whole thing basically says that they're rebalancing guildleve difficulty/rewards and goals, adding more quests, and doing minor interface tweaks - most of which are for "a later patch". There's also unexplained ideas like "special levequests" and the usual vague wording like "adjustments", which pops up multiple times usually without explaining exactly what sort of adjustment will take place, or "changes", which tells us nothing but an intention "to make different".

Then there's the timeframe, which seems to fall under only two categories, "coming in 1.18" or "coming sometime in the future". I just can't get excited about all these announcements for things that could be way down the pipe.

My only hope here is that it's translator errors, and that the original Japanese letters are more specific.


Anyway, to go off on a tangent, please stop asking us to "wait a little longer". It's been ten months. Far better games have been both overhauled completely and created in that timeframe, and the mantra the whole time has been "wait a little longer". It just starts to come off a little insulting after a while.

[Jynx]

Question: If your fed up with waiting...why are you still waiting? It's a simple question.

I have no issue with waiting, it does me no harm in waiting for the game to amp up. I understand if people are "Fed up" with waiting, but what I don't understand is why people continue to complain about waiting when there is nothing to tie them down to the game at all.

I understand it's not good for the game if people start leaving by the boat loads, but you are sending the strongest message that you are done "Waiting" when you quit and leave. Standing around and complaining about waiting just proves to them your still waiting...despite the complaints.

Not trying to white knight or anything, I just get confused with all the doom-gloomers being unimpressed and still obviously holding on to some shred of hope instead of walking away.

[ShinChuck]

Question: If your fed up with waiting...why are you still waiting? It's a simple question.

I have no issue with waiting, it does me no harm in waiting for the game to amp up. I understand if people are "Fed up" with waiting, but what I don't understand is why people continue to complain about waiting when there is nothing to tie them down to the game at all.

I understand it's not good for the game if people start leaving by the boat loads, but you are sending the strongest message that you are done "Waiting" when you quit and leave. Standing around and complaining about waiting just proves to them your still waiting...despite the complaints.

Not trying to white knight or anything, I just get confused with all the doom-gloomers being unimpressed and still obviously holding on to some shred of hope instead of walking away.

Had a bigger post, decided it was too rambly!

Shorter answer: I disagree with the basis of that question. Whether or not I'm "fed up" with waiting, that doesn't mean it's any less cheeky or mocking for SE to use the tagline "But wait longer!" for every single producer letter and update we get, which was my point. Whether or not I walk away, I'm still in some respects "waiting" for something if it never gets delivered, even if I'm not actively sitting there pining for it.

It takes me virtually no time and zero cost to check the forums or occasionally pop on to XIV (which is also still free, another important point here), and making opinions known is, I believe, a stronger message than just disappearing and leaving SE without any feedback on updates. It's basically no loss for me, and I get to make my thoughts known in a manner that will hopefully lead to a more enjoyable game.

What's wrong with having hope? I think everyone here has hope, and I certainly wouldn't want to chase off any players who still have it.

[Zenaku]

Wait so he think party play is not for ffxiv wtf? ok yoshi-p i love to party playing by myself level up is boring i get sick of it within 30-1hour vs Finding people take about 30-1hour then play for 1-4hours level up.

I hope you still working on something for party just fix the dam SP from mobs and allow us to do camps like in ffxi so players like us can do it and let the casual do the soloing.