A Letter to The Producer

[DefendPopPunk]

I don't recall that relic quests were "meant" to be for casuals, it just happened that way. I seem to remember Yoshi-P saying something about more people getting it than he intended. I could be wrong.

[Yukiko]

The Novus stigma was materia and in add the stupid fail rato...
The alexandrite was well made, even when drop rato from FATES was way tooo low...

600.000 gil for one materia?! Maybe after a year farming...
Nice RNG if trying to get the materia on your own with spiritbonding, but better dont talk about RNG, working as intended...

[MilesSaintboroguh]

How is running the same dungeons over and over more fun than farming atmas? for my it's the same repetitiveness, at least the atma part can be done at your own pace w/o being locked for 20 min in an instance.

Dungeons can be done very easily, even if you have to do it a ton of times and you know what to expect. Atma is pure RNG and you have no idea how long it will take for you to finish the whole set. That's why no one likes it.

[Xmbei]

I was expecting the Hunt system to be kind of like FFXII version and be more of a levequest style system... Where you make a group go to the area with the mark log and activate it and then you have to find the monster but it is your parties, instead we got a zergfest that really ruined it for me. In community behaviour and dialog... I have seen more rude people than I have seen prior, its disappointing to me.

[Tsuga]

Hey Amy, really well written OP!

While I do not feel I'm on the verge of quitting myself, your post parallels my feelings and situation so much. I too was a 1.0 player. I played for the entirety of 1.0, maxed out all of my classes, ran all of the dungeon and completed most story content (outside of the last hildebrand quest and some of the job quests). I consider myself a regular casual, then and now.

After all that we went through together in 1.0 it really does feel like the Dev team, and yoshida have changed. There have been so many well thought out posts outlining the issues with this game on both the jp and na side, there is no way that they are not hearing us, but in most cases they refuse to address concerns and grievances with even a small acknowledgement. It feels like whenever there is controversy in the community over new content SE ops to step aside, and instead respond to requests for doo-dads and widgets, as if the new posts filter is not flooded with complaints and concerns about a handful of significant additions every patch.

These boards were established so that the community could communicate directly with the Dev team, however it feels like it's become a fan board, where any complaint is quickly stifled by members of the community, and is unaddressed or outright ignored by the community reps and devs.

I miss the days when it felt like our concerns about the games direction meant something more than just noise. At this point it feels like the only say we really have is with our dollar, and unfortunately for me that means that most of my friends only come back after major patches, and that pool of people is slowly dwindling.

Apologies for any typos, posting from my phone

[AmyNeudaiz]

I'm glad many of you feel this was well written, I really do hope Yoshida eventually reads this.

[Renik]

Dungeons can be done very easily, even if you have to do it a ton of times and you know what to expect. Atma is pure RNG and you have no idea how long it will take for you to finish the whole set. That's why no one likes it.

More convenient is not more fun, and even if you know how much time it will take, the myth sink TOOK much more time and repetition than the atma farming.

[ApolloGenX]

Honestly someone that self conscious shouldn't be heading a dev team, let alone producing an a-rate video game.

Edit: all I am trying to say is that yoshi needs to take a lesson from ducks, let the hate slide off his back like water.

This. It's part of the job... inconvenience to one person or insecurity is no excuse to alter a business practice or provide an inferior customer experience. I say this as someone that is in charge of developing a product... and yes, people can be unreasonable in expectations... that is irrelevant - your job is your job. He could share a more generalized road map... but transparency was great during beta... it really set them apart - now it's gone.

[Tsuga]

but transparency was great during beta... it really set them apart - now it's gone.

It really did feel like we were being listened to in Alpha and Beta, then we could actually see that they were listening. A post would get a dev response and by the next phase we'd see the changes.

I felt like the live letters - though the questions were hand picked by the community reps - were also a great venue for Yoshida and the devs to be upfront about the future of the game, and a great way for them to respond directly to concerns about the bigger picture of FFXIV. Now it just feels like all they are are marketing pushes for the next patch.

[MilesSaintboroguh]

More convenient is not more fun, and even if you know how much time it will take, the myth sink TOOK much more time and repetition than the atma farming.

And RNG based farming could take even longer than the myth farming itself if the game decided to make it that way, so it's not really that much better.