PLEASE Learn from your mistakes......

[AmyRae]

whereas SE should be communicating like this:
"We have decided to implement x. Here are some key details. We know you may have concerns about x, y, z. This is how we will address them. We apologize to anyone who is being negatively effected by this.. Heres a list of reasons why we have decided to go this route. We have a team focusing on this aspect. Please post any concerns you have in this thread and like any concerns you agree with and we will take them into consideration, thank you"
edit: this would create one topic that focuses on the debate, remove speculation, and take a lot of the negativity and drama off the general board making the game look less like a failure.

This doesn't work for a number of reasons.

First, if they gave you full details of their plans, they may need to recant due to adjustments based on the results of play-testing their creation. Exploits may be discovered, or there may be a more balanced approach discovered later on. If they keep changing their tune about what you can expect, it will just upset the playerbase even more than if they'd held back the specifics to begin with.

Second, even if when they provide all the details (in the days leading up to the patch), it still doesn't prevent some players from complaining that it wasn't what they expected. You can't please everyone. Not everyone has the same ideas about what would be enjoyable in the diverse activities an MMO offers.

Third, you can't make a good game by committee. Player feedback is valuable, but you can't design your whole game based on polling. It would end up being an incoherent mess. A good game designer has to have the courage to lead and give players an experience they didn't know they wanted.

Finally, you won't ever stop discussions about how things could have been done differently as long as there's any interest in the game. You see it as a bad thing, but really, it's a sign that people care about playing.

[odette]

People will complain regardless how much Info they release. People complain just to hear themselves complain and because they can. reason why you see it more here? Because other games don't release an unfinished product 2 years before it should be completed. 90% of the FFXIV community is from FFXI and anything that they put in that wasn't in that game is going to cause mass panic simply because of how bad the game is right now. And for some reason everyone thinks FFXI was the best game in the world.

You are a huge Hypocrite though. Your advice to them is "Don't rush" yet you want them to rush out info to unfinished Projects and patches. They simply can not give out complete info to an uncompleted project, its impossible.

The bottom line. no matter what SE does how much they release, how much they talk. people WILL rage/complain/Speculate just because they can, just like you are now.

Btw just because someone disagree's with you doesn't make them a troll.

i'm agree with you
well maybe new changes in the game comming soon but ffxi players dont like new stuff they want old things

[Zetonegi]

You are a huge Hypocrite though. Your advice to them is "Don't rush" yet you want them to rush out info to unfinished Projects and patches. They simply can not give out complete info to an uncompleted project, its impossible.

There is a difference between not wanting them to rush and wanting them to do things in the right order. I'm going to assume you aren't a programmer and have little to no experience coding. The debugging process works, roughly, in 4 simple steps that can also be applied to patching::
1) Identify the exact problem
2) Make a plan to fix it
3) Implement the changes
4) Repeat from step 1 until you have removed all bugs
Assuming you are a skilled programming team, by the team you have fully identified the bug you should have a good idea on how to fix it or at least how to break it down into parts that you can fix. When you finally start implementing the changes you know exactly what you're going to change.

Like it or not SE is in the debug phase of this game. There are problems with the game that they need to fix before they move onto other things. While they are trying to iron out kinks in the battle system, something the entire game relies on, they are also adding things to the game. That is a waste of time and everything they are adding that is based on the battle system, such as raids, is being rushed out. Why is it being rushed out? Because after they make an update to the battle system, they have to rebalance all the existing content. Adding new content delays core changes to the game that NEED to be released. Raids are nice but we don't NEED them yet, especially since they are delaying fixes to the game's core. If you have your priorities wrong, like SE currently appears to, you can rush out some things and be taking far too long on others. Lets say you're working on a program used by a bank. Now no program is perfect and you have to fix bugs and such but you primarily release new versions of the User Interface without addressing known bugs, some of which may be extremely problematic to anyone who uses it if left unfixed. You are rushing out the UI while you need to release bug fixes.

And to address your note on not being able to give complete info to an uncompleted project:: If the people making changes cannot give detailed explanations on ALL the changes they plan to make, then those people should be fired. They may have to make changes to their plan but before any programmer starts making changes they have a plan. They know that they are going to change X, Y, and Z and they know how they intend to do it. Stuff can happen that requires them to make different changes than the ones they first wanted to but when they start, they have a complete list of what they're doing and how they intend to do it. Its like constructing a building, they have a blueprint that shows EVERYTHING about the building. Or like baking a cake, you have a recipe that tells you how to do it. Or modern demolitions where after computer simulations, they have a PLAN on where to put the explosives and exactly how much they need at that spot. They don't just throw up beams and hope the building looks like the Empire State Building or throw random stuff in a bowl and hope they come out with cake batter or toss TNT in random places and hope they take down the building without collateral damage. Programming works the EXACT same way, you don't code blindly, you plan it out as best you can then make changes to your plan as you progress if they are needed.

[Haji]

There is a difference between not wanting them to rush and wanting them to do things in the right order.

-snip-

Like it or not SE is in the debug phase of this game. There are problems with the game that they need to fix before they move onto other things. While they are trying to iron out kinks in the battle system, something the entire game relies on, they are also adding things to the game. That is a waste of time and everything they are adding that is based on the battle system, such as raids, is being rushed out. Why is it being rushed out? Because after they make an update to the battle system, they have to rebalance all the existing content. Adding new content delays core changes to the game that NEED to be released. Raids are nice but we don't NEED them yet, especially since they are delaying fixes to the game's core. If you have your priorities wrong, like SE currently appears to, you can rush out some things and be taking far too long on others.

In this case I totally disagree. Or rather, what is the right thing to do is also the wrong thing to do.

The simple truth is that upon release the game had no content. If they stopped adding it, the game would become dead, or nearly so. They had to add the content to keep people occupied. If they can't keep people occupied, then repairing the core of the game becomes irrelevant.

There are some arguments and variations to this, but to put it simply: If you want to make the process as smooth and efficient as possible, then you should just shut the game (to save on server fees) and re-launch it when it's ready. If you want the game to keep running, you have to make compromises. And this compromise means that adding content is of equal importance to fixing core game issues.

[Davorok]

I think that the Forums are working as intended.

Yoshi, Dev Team and Reps give us info and we give them feedback (positive and negative).

We give Yoshi, Dev Team and Reps suggestions (positive and negative) and they give us feedback.

Do our responses sometimes get heated? Yes.
Are our posts sometimes juvenile? Yes.
Are some of our ideas stupid, unrealistic and/or impossible? Yes.
Do some good ideas get noticed by the Devs and even implemented? Yes.
Are the Dev/Rep posts always what we want to hear? No.

FFXIV is still a work in progress and SE is utilizing us as beta-testers and as an integral part of the Development Process through feedback & suggestions. I for one, find that extremely cool it's just that some folks get all butt-hurt when others don't agree with their ideas.

It's Human Nature I guess. We argue over Politics, Religion, Sports, Video Games and everything else under the sun. The best we can ever hope for is that the folks in positions to effect change listen to all sides and make the best possible decisions, which usually involves Compromise ( a dirty word in today's world).

[Zetonegi]

In this case I totally disagree. Or rather, what is the right thing to do is also the wrong thing to do.

The simple truth is that upon release the game had no content. If they stopped adding it, the game would become dead, or nearly so. They had to add the content to keep people occupied. If they can't keep people occupied, then repairing the core of the game becomes irrelevant.

There are some arguments and variations to this, but to put it simply: If you want to make the process as smooth and efficient as possible, then you should just shut the game (to save on server fees) and re-launch it when it's ready. If you want the game to keep running, you have to make compromises. And this compromise means that adding content is of equal importance to fixing core game issues.

The problem with that is if you make the compromises, the game will never get fixed because you have 2 options::
1) release a HUGE balance patch where everything is changed
or
2) change the core then change everything later
The former won't come in any reasonable time if they're constantly adding new content because it balancing gets much more complex the more stuff you have to balance. The later gives you with a completely broken game when the changes are first applied.

The only way you'll see the game get fixed in reasonable time is if SE says sorry to the Rank 50 people, fixes the core of the game, and then works on adding new stuff on top of it. Is the forum a step in the right direction? Yes but it doesn't solve everything and in fixing the game, they'll have to accept the fact that trying to make everyone happy isn't going to solve anything in a reasonable time. And in trying to make everyone happy, they're pissing people off. Fixing the core of the game needs to be the number 1 priority and if they do a good job in communicating that with us, people will stay, they might take a break from playing for a bit but they'll stay. We are beta testing this game and as testers we need to remember that fixes to the game need to come before new content. If SE has to take down the servers for a bit to get those fixes done with less moaning on our part then so be it. When the servers went down after the earthquake we lived. I think we can manage if the servers go down for another week or two or even a month so SE can fix stuff like server lag or implement the battle system changes they've mentioned.

[Mortikhan]

To me this is simply a case of being behind the curve:

Example:

Player 1 is angry about the combat system. Player 2 likes the combat system. Player 1 quits because nothing is being done about the combat system (he/she might come back but is heading back to another game or to a new game for the time being). SE decides to make changes to the combat system to encourage Player 1 and players like them to return to the game. Player 1 gets engrossed in another game and ignores SE's attempt. Player 2 gets mad and does the same thing as Player 1 because he/she is mad that they changed the battle system.

SE can't seem to buy a vowel here. No matter what they do...communicate or not communicate... change or don't change...they are pissing off just about everyone by either acting too soon or too late. Our patience and peoples will to come back and check in on the game from time to time are going to be the only things that keep them afloat until they make all of the changes they are going to make.

I have said this before and I will say it again. An intriguing storyline trumps game mechanics every time. Content = depth. If the game has more content then people will at least have something to do while they are fixing the mechanics. This might go a long way to building some REAL interest in the game.

[Azurymber]

Instead of wasting time on raids and such they could have developed deep interesting story lines.
If they had 15 in-dept story heavy quest lines all going (lets say 5 in each city) and released new parts each update, people would keep coming back to know what happens next. And they would be an incentive to level up jobs.

[PrettyPrincess]

Not quite what I meant, but seems like the sort of response one can expect from others on these forums. +1 sarcasm i guess.

I can't take people on these forums seriously anyways

[ViolentDjango]

If they communicated properly there wouldn't be rage threads every day and there wouldn't be massive amounts of speculation. Other games do -not- experience this anywhere near the amount that FFXIV does. It results in a forum with almost no positive threads.

It doesn't take a year to reform an attribute and battle system. It shouldn't even take 2 months. It's a collection of variable and simple formulas and should be easy to tweak and adjust. If you look at posts from 4 months ago every white knight was arguing that 1.18 would fix the "core battle mechanics" problem and they would be able to release patches much faster after. As it stands the "core battle mechanics" won't be stable until after 1.20 which going by the 2-months between patches history will be november or december.

Edit: and the fact that people consider common sense to be childish or negative is just an example of the blindness of white knights.
Not pissing off your players every week with dooms-day speculation should be common sense
Not changing the entire core system of a game and breaking parts of it every patch should be common sense.

Lol... What "other games" are you talking about? Because in my experience, just about any game with regular updates deals with this... People speculate, even when they know exactly what's coming. Unless SE gives line-by-line explanations of the code in the game, they'll be something people spend hours wondering about.

Its just part of the human condition, and there's nothing wrong with it, especially when the Development Team is actually looking into people's opinions and ideas for insight into things they can work on.

Edit: and the fact that people consider common sense to be childish or negative is just an example of the blindness of white knights.
Not pissing off your players every week with dooms-day speculation should be common sense
Not changing the entire core system of a game and breaking parts of it every patch should be common sense.

Presentation counts for a lot. Your point could be as factual as "air exists", but if you present it childishly, people will always call you on that. Retreating to rebuttals about how people are "white knights" doesn't help you get taken any more seriously, and the defensive insults definitely don't help drive your point home.

Frankly I disagree with most of what you said. They are working hard and making considerable progress with improving the game. We already have an ETA for when they want to be ready to relaunch, and we have a relatively detailed map of what they plan to do. I don't think we can really ask for more within reason. And its not "White Knight"-ism to say that giving them time to do work and make progress is reasonable. Its hard enough to program and design a game -- its even harder to design and adjust one that was built with lack of foresight.

Its not like we're paying for anything, or like we will be paying before the game relaunches -- so I don't feel there's a reason to rush any of it.