Okay, big changes take time. However.

[Alexis_Arteme]

I get it. Careful measuring, time-consuming testing, all that. It's a very tough thing to do, fundamentally changing an entire game when you have a player base that is willingly exploiting every tiny thing they can get away with. So it takes time. You can't just release something willy-nilly and not expect a complete catastrophe. So we sit and wait.

This is my conundrum. It's been stated by Square that they have different "divisions" for each of their patches. Different sections of employees that focus on one thing or another. While I can understand that most of them are probably at least loosely involved in this "big battle patch", what I don't understand is why we have had to sit here for three months without anything truly substancial happening in the game.

Where the heck is the art department? Busy re-sizing fireballs and rodents? Why on earth is there not about 25 different new hairstyles for every race, a female highland hyur, "Final Fantasy" looking armor and clothing, new spell art, etc etc etc? None of this has anything to do with their precious battle system. IMO the least they could do is throw us a pretty graphical bone every once in awhile, and I'm not referring to the "99 cent discount stickers" they consider to be aggro markers.

If they just bothered to make the game better looking and allow us some more individuality, I'd be a LOT more patient with all of this.

But what can I say? It's a free game. That I haven't played in weeks because I'm waiting for something, ANYTHING, new to be added.

[Mimmo]

This game is gonna take a while to be "ready". Many people are waiting week by week or day by day but i dont see much happening b4 the summer is over. Prepare yourself for the long haul. You're right in that the company does have different divisions, and maybe they can release other things along the way...but honestly no one ever knows what SE is up to. I just hope this game gets its legs running again and hope that ps3's release saves it

[Joe_Cool]

This is my conundrum. It's been stated by Square that they have different "divisions" for each of their patches. Different sections of employees that focus on one thing or another. While I can understand that most of them are probably at least loosely involved in this "big battle patch", what I don't understand is why we have had to sit here for three months without anything truly substancial happening in the game.

Because most of the "content" that can be added require the "battle" changes to be made first? And that new armor, gear, etc. may come from battle related content as well.

Let's take those high teir NM's for example. Remember how many party members were initially able to fight against them? And then some of the "battle" changes turned the max party members to 8 instead of 15. Guess what? They had to re-do the stats to the NM's, amount of mobs that pop with Dodore, etc. So my guess is that it'll save alot of time in the long run and we'll get more updates/content faster if they mainly focus on getting battle changes and such done first instead of putting things in before and then having to re-do them all over again when something is changed via battle.

[LateReg]

Because most of the "content" that can be added require the "battle" changes to be made first? And that new armor, gear, etc. may come from battle related content as well.

Let's take those high teir NM's for example. Remember how many party members were initially able to fight against them? And then some of the "battle" changes turned the max party members to 8 instead of 15. Guess what? They had to re-do the stats to the NM's, amount of mobs that pop with Dodore, etc. So my guess is that it'll save alot of time in the long run and we'll get more updates/content faster if they mainly focus on getting battle changes and such done first instead of putting things in before and then having to re-do them all over again when something is changed via battle.

Bad example. They didn't need to touch the difficulty of the NMs at all. It only took about 4~6 people on any of them (without THM solo) before the 15 > 8 max patch, and now you can trio all of them with a tank, DD, and a healer in a reasonable amount of time.

[Joe_Cool]

Bad example. They didn't need to touch the difficulty of the NMs at all. It only took about 4~6 people on any of them (without THM solo) before the 15 > 8 max patch, and now you can trio all of them with a tank, DD, and a healer in a reasonable amount of time.

It may not be the best example but it IS an example of how things are re-done to accomodate changes to "battle" related content.

Keep in mind that there were also groups fighting the NM's that weren't rank 50. Maybe they were 40 are so.
And also, with 15 people, you could kill the NM faster and have much more pops in the giving time frame that they pop in. A group of 3 might would kill it 1 time within the pop window whereas 15 people could kill it 5 times within that same pop window.

[Alcide]

Because most of the "content" that can be added require the "battle" changes to be made first? And that new armor, gear, etc. may come from battle related content as well.

Let's take those high teir NM's for example. Remember how many party members were initially able to fight against them? And then some of the "battle" changes turned the max party members to 8 instead of 15. Guess what? They had to re-do the stats to the NM's, amount of mobs that pop with Dodore, etc. So my guess is that it'll save alot of time in the long run and we'll get more updates/content faster if they mainly focus on getting battle changes and such done first instead of putting things in before and then having to re-do them all over again when something is changed via battle.

Don't start talking about the NM nerf, they didn't have to do that, they chosed to do that, taking away to the players the only challenge they had... but that's a different matter.

I agree with the OP; of course the main update we are waiting for is the one about the battle system, so that we can see some content coming too, indeed i find it weird that we'll have the dungeons before the BS and the job system are perfectly implemented, but well I guess they understood that we need something to do while we are waiting ^^'
On the other hand this game doesn't need only BS and content: what about the UI? You can't say it's perfect, it's the worst UI I've ever seen in any MMO; same goes for the loot system, for the chat logs, for the LS management. Do these things need the BS fixed in order to be redesigned too? I don't think so... still when asking about it the answer is "The BS as a higher priority, so you'll have to wait for that"... ehm... what the f*ck?? o.O is the UI team and the others bringing the BS team coffees an snacks whil they're finishing their work??

I'm ok with waiting for things to be done (even if i'm running out of patience since I'm playing this game for almost a year now) but reading those answers are really making me wander what the hell they're doing.

[Rentahamster]

Because most of the "content" that can be added require the "battle" changes to be made first? And that new armor, gear, etc. may come from battle related content as well.

The OP is talking about stuff that can be improved on that doesn't have to wait for the battle changes.

Why on earth is there not about 25 different new hairstyles for every race, a female highland hyur, "Final Fantasy" looking armor and clothing, new spell art, etc etc etc? None of this has anything to do with their precious battle system. IMO the least they could do is throw us a pretty graphical bone every once in awhile, and I'm not referring to the "99 cent discount stickers" they consider to be aggro markers.

Don't need a new battle system for new haristyles or armor colors or spell effects.

Let's take those high teir NM's for example. Remember how many party members were initially able to fight against them? And then some of the "battle" changes turned the max party members to 8 instead of 15. Guess what? They had to re-do the stats to the NM's, amount of mobs that pop with Dodore, etc.

Actually, the game would be better off if they hadn't nerfed the NMs and just left them alone. 8-man parties pre-patch could take out all the NMs, and some could even be soloed. Now, they're even easier to kill.

[Joe_Cool]

The OP is talking about stuff that can be improved on that doesn't have to wait for the battle changes.

I was referring to the OP's "what I don't understand is why we have had to sit here for three months without anything truly substancial happening in the game." statement.

I understand about the art work and such, but OP said "truly substancial happening in the game" in the above statement so I kind of took that to mean beefy content in the game. My apologies if I just misunderstood.

[viion]

Joe I think you're misunderstanding it.

You dont need a battle system to make a 3D Model or do some Texturing. Infact I could go do it now without touching a battle system/game mechanic at all.

And that is the flaw, honestly even if we kept having art images of content to come but cant be finalised until after battle changes would make people happy. Screen shots of new items made, we dont need stupid stats info we just want to see how it looks.

When the producer release the 2 art images, did he require the whole new battle system to be fininshed so he could show us 2 jpg images? ...... that is all we are asking for.

And even so, they have implemented some gear without the battle system finished and they are going to do it again come dungeons, new gear be added and the battle system will not be finished and stats need to be redone. So this whole "cant be done until battle system is done" is complete nonsense.

SE just dont have anyone working on that stuff, its obvious and the only explanation. Probably working on other games and will call them in later.

[Picoman]

Joe I think you're misunderstanding it.

You dont need a battle system to make a 3D Model or do some Texturing. Infact I could go do it now without touching a battle system/game mechanic at all.

And that is the flaw, honestly even if we kept having art images of content to come but cant be finalised until after battle changes would make people happy. Screen shots of new items made, we dont need stupid stats info we just want to see how it looks.

When the producer release the 2 art images, did he require the whole new battle system to be fininshed so he could show us 2 jpg images? ...... that is all we are asking for.

And even so, they have implemented some gear without the battle system finished and they are going to do it again come dungeons, new gear be added and the battle system will not be finished and stats need to be redone. So this whole "cant be done until battle system is done" is complete nonsense.

SE just dont have anyone working on that stuff, its obvious and the only explanation. Probably working on other games and will call them in later.

I think it is more that Yoshi-P doesnt want to release any new stuff under this old battle system due to the fact that it would be new content with a crappy system.

I do think that there has to be a landslide of content after battle fix. I would be sad if i had to wait another year for cap increase and new zones.