Be brave

[DNO]

the game is 100% better now then it was when those reviews were made. So Yes Tanaka sucked and Yoshi is doing 5x better.

All that matters is the game is getting better and in a hurry this summer. So this thread is Moot.

Yoshi 1
Tanaka 0

[Konachibi]

@konachibi

Instead of looking at some of the more fringe criticisms as being off-base, consider that the concerns raised represent the interests and expectations of players unfamiliar with Final Fantasy. It may have taken me 20 seconds to establish my account, but I have a friend that actually hit a brick wall during account creation and had to wait for me to get on the phone to help him out. Even though these criticisms may not seem valid to me and you, they are still valid for some. And if the developer wants this game to have wide appeal and accessibility, any concerns should be resolved. Especially when they are all so simple. Even with beautiful music it shouldn't be on all the time. It should fade in and out.

ALL MMO's loop their soundtracks, the ones that don't are the ones people complain doesn't have enough music in. *Menu> Audio > move slider down*
Apparently there's a great deal of people too stupid to know how to do that if reviewers consider it an issue! Warcraft syndrome perhaps?

Not knocking your friend but in an account management system where all you do is answer the questions and keep clicking 'ok', I reeeeaaaally can't see anyone's point of view when saying it's difficult.

I chose those particular criticisms because they are easily the DUMBEST 'cons' I've ever seen reviewers try and use. It's like they were desperate to say it was a bad game, as if they HAD to, were forced to. "No PVP" is just downright complete and total stupidity as a con when reviewing a final fantasy game, the reviewer must have been thicker than the table I have my keyboard on right now.

Plus those reviews are very much like the ones I read before I bought this game 3 weeks ago, they listed the same cons that friend told me about, he'd heard them from his sister who had played the game.

I still bought this game.
I'm glad I did
I like it!
And I will continue to like it unless they do something incredibly amazingly stupid, which I doubt.

But seriously, some of the gripes the reviewers gave the game was just retarded.

I think one of the posters when you first made the thread hit the nail on the head "They're always going to hate this game because it's unique and it's not WoW"
ALL MMO's that try to clone WoW always get excellent reviews when they first come out. Warhammer Online had way more problems that FFXIV but people didn't kick up a stink 'cos it was a WoW clone.

The opinions were biased.

They always will be.

[Wolfie]

I'm sorry, I don't think you fully know what Yoshida's been talking about lately, or is planning. But before I get to that...

Most of the reviews praised game features that weren't immediately s***ty; combat and armory system especially.

When I picked up this game, I was enamored with the armory system and how combat looked. But then I realized that the armory system made for extremely homogenized, boring classes; everyone and their mother uses the same skill set (barring some extremely few unique skills) and all classes play almost identically. Your class is tied to a single weapon, and you need to level all classes if you want to be decent. Point allotment is absolute horse s***, stats and food have no major effect on anything, battle regimen is a totally useless feature, no level restriction on items is stupid, and I could go on and on and on about things relating to the armory system and combat that sucked.

The only reason the reviewers 'praised' the armory and combat systems is because traditional MMOs have you locked into a single class. But almost every player who spent more than a month on this game realized that the original armory system made for homogenized, boring classes and directionless spamfest zerg combat.

Now let's have a look at the criticism that the game received.

-Absolutely miserable interface

Has seen numerous improvements, from tooltips, to targetting, to menu depth reduction, to sorting, to MW window improvements, monster level/enmity gauge, etc. This has been one of the most worked-on parts of the game.

-Does a poor job of communicating important information

See above. Lots more tooltip information, in-game tutorials, terrible stylized font replaced with human readable font, etc.

-Limited questing means you're always looking for something fun to do

Dungeons were added, leves have seen some fixes, behest has seen some fixes, monsters have been rearranged to help with party grinding, side quests implemented. Future works is more dungeons, more quests, more leve fixes and adjustments, beastman strongholds, Ifrit/boss fights, large scale PVE.

-Everything about the economy stinks

Not too much fixing here besides MW usability fixes. The materia system and redoing crafting recipes will be MASSIVE help for this.

-Every aspect of the game is filled with dumb obstacles.

They've slowly been removed. Anima regenerates faster, you get cheaper teleports, chocobos and airships are incoming, you can manually set homepoint now instead of having it be automatically set, leve ticket system incoming, dumb monster placement has been fixed, collision adjustments, stamina gauge removed, etc. The game is much more user friendly now than it was a year ago.

-slow anima regeneration

Fixed.

-lack of mounts

Incoming, with airships.

-confusing account management

No mention of this yet.

-annoying outside game config

No mention of this yet.

-dependence on text macros

Problem alleviated somewhat by new action bar and auto-attack, but otherwise not much done.

-manual configuration of gamepads

No mention, but we have keyboard key reassignment coming soon.

-lack of convenient UI features

See above. UI is massively improved.

-game soundtrack on endless repeat

There have been plenty of music changes, but overall it's still repetitive and boring.

-cookie cutter environments

Is in the works. Has been mentioned extensively.

-lack of auto follow.

No mention here.

-Attacks and damage being out of sync during combat

Lag and combat fixes have help dramatically with this. Combat is much more responsive now, but not as good as it should be.

-Crafting is a chore through multiple menus

Crafting is being redone, we have a recipe book now, etc.

-Lack of intuitive navigation of features

Map was redone, UI redone, tutorials and tooltips galore, see above.

-No mail system

No mention of this yet.

-Grinding

Yoshida has repeatedly stated that he's moving the game away from grind-centric gameplay and into instanced/small group gameplay. Dungeons, redone leves, redone behest, and side quests with exp rewards were the first steps. We have much, much more coming down the line.

-Storyline missions too spaced out

We have sidequests and dungeons now. More PVE stuff incoming.

-Levequests lose their appeal after a while

Leves have been adjusted repeatedly, we have more adjustments coming, and as above, we have other, non-leve content for people to enjoy at any time.

-Dull grind

See above.

-Too many submenus

Menu depth has been alleviated. See above.

-Useless map

Map almost completely redone. It's not useless anymore.

-Poor PC optimization

There has been little progress on this, and no mention of DX10/11 support. But server side optimization has been moving along decently.

-Lack of mounts

Mounts and airships incoming, see above.

I could continue, but hopefully you get the message. Yoshida has tackled almost all of the major criticisms the game received AND handled some things that were major faults with the game that nobody noticed. He's handling the things that have the largest impact on gameplay and usability first -- and that are feasible -- and everything else second. He's turned this game from being the smelliest, most rotten turd on the block, to something that is now average or slightly below average -- in one year. Should anyone have sat down to analyze the game for longer than a few hours, they'd have realized that Tanaka gave us a game with nothing in terms of redeeming qualities, cool features, or interesting gimmicks. Nothing.

And he would have kept going.

TLDR: yay yoshida, boo tanaka

[Konachibi]

Mail system has been mentioned and is being implimented in one of the upcoming patches.

The Outside game config isn't annoying. Hell it's easier to use than Mass Effect 2's and makes more sense!

I don't use macros and my battle capability is fine

The music still suits the areas, if you don't like it, turn it off.

The 'lag' is being fixed post-1.19 per an announcement Yoshi made. It is in fact an animation package error.

Pc optimisation I will agree does need to be addressed, it gets annoying when my frame-rate drops just by being near some grass, or how people magically pop in and out of view from 20 feet away.

You missed the PvP bit, to which the answer would still be "It's final fantasy, duuuh" If they want PvP go join Warhammer Online or Global Agenda.

I think once the 1.19 patch is out the only thing that'll really be left on that list is the PC optimisation. That's a part of the game that'll take quite a while to fix because it's not an easy thing to change.

And seriously I dunno how they can scream this game is bad. If they want to see what a really bad MMO is like, they should go try one of those free2play korean mmo's. Those games give you like, 5 quests, then from that point on the ONLY means of levelling is to keep constantly killing none-stop to ridiculous level caps like 150. Then usually when you hit the 150 level cap they give you an option to drop down to level 50 again but with some kind of special class. you then have to do the ridiculous grind again.
Those games hold competitions to see who hits the level cap first upon release and they know it's going to be, at least 6 months before someone achieves it.

It all just seems so dumb.

[darkstarpoet1]

the game is 100% better now then it was when those reviews were made. So Yes Tanaka sucked and Yoshi is doing 5x better.

All that matters is the game is getting better and in a hurry this summer. So this thread is Moot.

Yoshi 1
Tanaka 0

yes, some do believe that.

[Ilean]

yes, some do believe that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped...d_weasel_words

[Konachibi]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped...d_weasel_words

I tried to read that, but all it said in my head was "If you notice this notice you'll notice this notice is a notice"

[Pyrix]

They're getting rid of the system where we can switch weapons on the fly instead of having to go change our class like in FFXI? What the fuck is wrong with SE?

[Murugan]

They're getting rid of the system where we can switch weapons on the fly instead of having to go change our class like in FFXI? What the fuck is wrong with SE?

I don't know, what is wrong with you? Where did you hear that? Why would you possibly think they would be changing it to make us go to our non existent mog houses to change classes? I have heard nothing like that.

[Konachibi]

I think she was being sarcastic maybe.

If not then she's spotted something in this necrothread that no one's ever noticed before.