Urgently Change your Approach SE

[Shougun]

I believe he meant they don't know what it takes development wise.

Yeah I got that, but I meant on what particularly - people could have an idea and it isn't safe to assume they don't. "Well clearly you don't because what you want costs a lot" "I know it does, I still am asking for it because this feels substandard" may be a legitimate back and forth between two knowledgeable people.

[Tiggy]

people could have an idea and it isn't safe to assume they don't..

Sure, some of us may understand programming and may understand that it takes time to implement features from a theoretical level, but we programmers have no possible way of knowing how that effects this specific application since not one of us has any domain knowledge for FFXIV's servers or engine. I believe it's quite safe to assume no one has that knowledge in this player base outside of the few devs that play, and they most certainly won't be the ones posting here. Just because something may seem like a small tweak on the outside does not mean for one second that the underlying system could possibly handle that "tweak" without a serious overhaul.

Being a programmer myself it makes me know one thing for sure. I know that I know nothing about this game's architecture. I can theorize possible ways systems may work on the back end, but it likely won't be the way it actually works.

I honestly can't tell you how often I've seen this happen where I work now and at past jobs. It's never as simple as you think it will be. Suggest ideas, changes, tweaks, new features to your hearts content, but I see no reason we can't be a bit more respectful about it.

[Mjollnir]

Sure, some of us may understand programming and may understand that it takes time to implement features from a theoretical level, but we programmers have no possible way of knowing how that effects this specific application since not one of us has any domain knowledge for FFXIV's servers or engine. I believe it's quite safe to assume no one has that knowledge in this player base outside of the few devs that play, and they most certainly won't be the ones posting here. Just because something may seem like a small tweak on the outside does not mean for one second that the underlying system could possibly handle that "tweak" without a serious overhaul.

Granted, outside of S-E it's unlikely that anyone knows the programming impact of a given request, but what we do see is lots of other MMOs delivering similar functionality and content with ease (instanced housing is a prime example of this). When the response we get is 'server limitations, no changes planned', people are bound to be annoyed as they a) pay their subscription (unlike a lot of those games) and b) want FFXIV to be the leader of the field.

[Aldora]

Sure, some of us may understand programming and may understand that it takes time to implement features from a theoretical level, but we programmers have no possible way of knowing how that effects this specific application since not one of us has any domain knowledge for FFXIV's servers or engine. I believe it's quite safe to assume no one has that knowledge in this player base outside of the few devs that play, and they most certainly won't be the ones posting here. Just because something may seem like a small tweak on the outside does not mean for one second that the underlying system could possibly handle that "tweak" without a serious overhaul.

Being a programmer myself it makes me know one thing for sure. I know that I know nothing about this game's architecture. I can theorize possible ways systems may work on the back end, but it likely won't be the way it actually works.

I honestly can't tell you how often I've seen this happen where I work now and at past jobs. It's never as simple as you think it will be. Suggest ideas, changes, tweaks, new features to your hearts content, but I see no reason we can't be a bit more respectful about it.

I agree with Tiggy here.

From a development standpoint, I still think it’s amazing what the FFXIV Team has managed to achieve since the moment they decided to turn this ship around, in order to salvage whatever they could from 1.0 and turning it into ARR.

I take my hat off and take a deep bow for the team, for bringing us a game which has been played by many so far.

It is true that the recent patches mostly consisted of features and content that required a large amount of grinding. It is something that the “old guard” is used to, but times have changed. The gamers of today do not wish to grind hours upon hours to get the items/upgrades they want, since the gamers from the past have full time jobs, a family, a social life outside of the game or simply can’t put in the same amount of patience and effort they had years ago. The same applies for the gamers of today.

Personally, i don’t think that’s wrong in any way. We are still “just” playing a game and playing a game means that should have fun playing it. Every single player out there has it’s own idea of having fun. One player has fun tackling End Game content like Coil. Another player has fun competing with other players through PvP. And another player wants to earn as much money as they can by selling their gathering/crafting services and stimulate the economy. There are plenty of players who have fun, just trying to get vanity gear or the latest minions.

Each and every one of those players want to have a certain amount of content to keep themselves busy. Since we have such a wide variety of players, we need to the same amount of variety to keep as many of the players happy.

Its a humongous task for a team such as the FFXIV team to generate enough content for each “discipline”/”variation” and deliver them at a pace so that these specific players will not have to wait more than 6 months for the next batch of their desired content.

Don’t get me wrong, even though i think that i have more then much content to do (to the extent that i do not have enough time to actually do all of it), i do feel that there is not enough content to keep everyone busy and satisfied. The content is being consumed by the playerbase a lot faster then it’s being “crafted” by the FFXIV team. In my personal opinion, i feel that the only way for the FFXIV team to solve that problem, is to expand the FFXIV team in the kitchen in order to cover more ground (content wise) with each patch.

Also, i’m not going to deny that systems have been implemented in a way that it feels that they were cutting corners in order to release it as fast as they can or to artificially prolong the lifespan of the content. Sometimes i get the feeling that the FFXIV team is testing certain design idea’s by implementing it in a certain way to see if the community thinks that this particular implementation is acceptable or not. For instance, the whole Zodiac Brave Questline uses all kinds of grinds like the Low Drop Rate grind (Atma stones), the objective related grind (the books for the Animus upgrade), the daily grind (the daily Expert Roulette for the Mysterious Maps), and the spirit bond grind (the Nexus grind).

Based on the feedback we give, they will either scrap the idea for future content or adjust/evolve it so that it uses in various future content.

I do want to repeat what i’ve said in several threads, as well as what others in this thread have said as well. Even the simplest of “fixes” or idea’s, might be the hardest one to implement. And i’m not just talking about coding wise. The FFXIV team does not only have to look at the coding side of it, but also the effect it might have of the the performance of the game, if it follows the vision they have for the game, if it were to limit the players too much in participating into the said content, if it could be abused by others, etc.

Also, one of the biggest frustrations of a developer is that when you fix a bug or change a feature, it would introduce more issues in a completely different (sometimes even unrelated) section of the code. A prime example would the be issue with the controller movement with the release of 2.38.



That being said, i do have faith that the (grind) content we’ve seen in the past few patches, will not set the course for every type of content which will be introduced/expanded upon with the upcoming patches. I would like to take a snippet out of the Letter from the Producer LIVE Part XVII Q&A Summary (09/11/2014) to explain my reasoning behind it, supported by the development what we’ve seen from the FFXIV 1.0 Alpha up to the Patch 2.38.

Q: I've noticed a lot of the systems recently introduced to the game require a lot of time to complete (The Hunt, Zodiac Weapons, etc.). Do you plan to focus on such time-consuming systems and features in the future?

A: Considering that both patches 2.2 and 2.3 introduced new systems to the game that require considerable amounts of time to complete, I understand how it may appear that the game's direction is steering toward overly time-consuming activities. However, just as I've mentioned in previous interviews, we consider FFXIV: ARR to be akin to a theme park, and we're working to provide a wide variety of activities for players to enjoy. However, due to scheduling issues and circumstances surrounding implementation, we've been prioritizing the implementation of party-based challenges utilizing the Duty Finder whenever possible. As a result, we were a step behind in implementing systems that make use of the open world, or those that require time but can be completed at one's own pace. With the introduction of Zodiac weapons followed shortly after by the Hunt, it may seem as though we're shifting focus toward time-consuming systems, but rest assured this is not the case, and we plan to strike a balance with party-based activities as we move forward.

Also, when it comes to major patches, we plan things out on a yearly basis, and there are a lot of plans for instanced encounters based on the premise that they will be implemented with every major patch. In between these periods, the development team has been proceeding to plan various systems and features based on feedback from players, and they are calling this "adlibbing." The largest system we have planned for the future is the Gold Saucer, but it won't be skewed one way or the other with regard to what types of activities will be made available.

You can call me a White Knight, but i still put my trust in Yoshida-san and the FFXIV team to deliver content which will keep me occupied for years to come, while having fun in the process.

This kitty is here to stay. (^_~ )

[Clavaat]

-snip-

But Tiggy, the customer knows everything! Down to how, this should definitely work because I've seen it work other places! All the time! How dare you question the client?! /s

But in all seriousness, a Dev Cycle doesn't necessarily work patch-to-patch. Different parts of the team work on different aspects of the game (i.e. some on patches, some on expansion, etc). Some of the "forward progressing" ideas we've seen discussed here may either be in development or planned for an expansion. I don't know for sure, but I do know that often we have to push back things to a bigger release than a patch, simply because of time. There are a TON of moving parts to game, particularly an MMO that has to constantly evolve.

I know everyone gets tired of hearing "just wait till the expansion", but honestly, that is where we could definitely see the biggest changes occur because of the above reason. The team in general has had to work much faster than anticipated. Things don't always go according to plan, but for the most part they have been up front with their shortcomings and where they plan on going. Not many devs would release this kind of information publicly.

And maybe we won't see big changes. I'll pretty much be happy either way, aside from a few things I would personally like to see change or not change. From my perspective, this is exactly how game dev works, and frankly SE has been pretty open about how they plan on moving forward.