[Stormblood Budget] Where all the money's gone ?

[Vaer]

I don't have a source so don't quote me on this, but didn't they say they aren't going to discuss the meat until May? This upcoming live letter is still in April and to top it off, it's a Q&A so we're relying on the community again... I hope I'm wrong to be honest so feel free to correct me.

Some very important things we need to know still, what are they gonna do with casters? The current state of slashing and pericing down, and how will they balance PLD and WHM, and much more.

Battle changes, combat and stuff related to jobs are not allowed to be asked, that info will be next month. Their excuse is most likely "It's still in development." Whether you believe it or not is up to you.

* Please note: Information pertaining to job actions, action adjustments, and the battle system revamp is planned to be released during a Letter from the Producer LIVE scheduled for May. Please hold onto any questions related to those topics until then.

April's will probably be a recap summary on all the stuff coming, maybe a live demo of a character running around in some of the new areas, swimming demo, showing off the new housing area and stuff like that is possible. Then again it could just be nothing.

[ToasterMan]

Ah, my favourite - the Q&A. They choose the safest and not revealing of info questions, or ones that have already been answered numerous times, as well as the worst questions - the "what's your fave colour, Yoshi!?" and "can you high-five the screen!?" and so on... made even worse by the number of these "questions" they waste time answering. It's a complete waste of time, and utter farce.

Meanwhile if someone does ask a major question about game play, we basically get, "Please look forward too it."

[Alleo]

@Alleo - they use the word revamp, not overhaul, as it carries a lighter connotation that is more about iteration than drastic changes. They were also pretty quick to clarify that it wouldn't be massive changes (esp in light of how many latched on to the idea of it becoming action combat for some reason) and have maintained that position since.

Well a revamp is still more than just combining skills together and such stuff at least in the eyes of the players. Also they used that word on an official presentation and only much later when Yoshida was asked about it he said that it really wont be a revamp. I just believe that you should not use such words on marketing if its not even true. If I remember it correctly even after saying to us that it wont be quite the big change they still used that word. They simply could have wrote that there will be some changes to the skills. This would still leave enough space open for interpretation.

The fan fest gave us a lot of new information. New jobs and their roles, new areas (including under sea), primals, 8 man raid and 24 man raid, beast tribes, player housing, battle system, swimming, some early dungeons.

Now, this all was given without getting into deep details. Fan fest run on an extremely tight schedule, details are coming in live letters (hopefully).

Knowing that we are getting RDM and SAM is a big hype on its own. But some players are always thinking negatively and stared complaining about two new jobs being dps. SE already said they want to fix tanks and healers before adding new ones, which in my opinion is a good thing.

But new jobs, new areas, the raid and some little words on dungeons is not really that much new. We already expect that those things are in the expansion. They also did not give much information on the new battle system and I do believe that swimming is not a true selling point. (Its really interesting that their announcement for housing killed any hype that I still had at that time..since they decided to stick with their bad system)

What the person you replied to wanted was more information about stuff that is completely new content, not content that we already have in some kind of way in a different paint. Would anyone truly get hyped for the expansion if they would show us a presentation of the fates in the new countries? Probably not.

The problem at least for me is: We are not that far away from the expansion and other than maybe Eureka we dont know about anything truly new. They dont really talk about the changes to the skills and every time they say something, you get the feeling of: Please look forward to it. For me this creates the feeling that either they wont have much new content at the beginning of the expansion (which would be bad because not everyone wants to wait for some 4.x patches for new things) or that they dont feel confident in the content and thus wont show much of it, which would also be a bad sign for me. (And like I wrote in the last post: If you talk more to your customers about the content with polls and beta testing than maybe you would not have implemented so much stuff that would fail so badly like LoV or the two versions of the diadem..also next to new content it would have been nice to see improvement of old content like chocobo racing. Even if its just two new races and small changes..but they throw these things out and often leave them be.)

Maybe they will release information in the next few weeks that will have me completely hooked on the expansion. And I in the end really hope that there is content in SB that I truly and deeply love because I want this game to have great success. But thanks to all the stuff in HW and the behavior of the devs..well I am way more skeptic and negative for SB.

[Silkerin]

silly people, we all know that the money that is made from 14 and/or should go to 14 goes to all other games but 14...

[Yasuhiro]

Thank God I skipped their latest games at least...a shame considering people say Nier Automata is good, but I'm just too scared to try it.

It's worth checking out because Nier games and Drakengard are objectively bad games with a few good ideas but this game in particular is getting praise all across the board where as before a Nier/Drakengard game getting a 80+ score on metacritic was literally the definition of "when pig's fly" what an age we live in when a Yoko Taro game gets favorable scores.

but also many bad spin-offs like Theatrhymn, Dissidia, World of Final Fantasy and final fantasy explorers).

bad

spin-offs

u wot m8? Those are the best ones.

[Berethos]

Well a revamp is still more than just combining skills together and such stuff at least in the eyes of the players.

Revamp: give new and improved form, structure, or appearance to.

That's what a revamp is. Refining the abilities, getting rid of useless stuff, adding UI elements where it makes sense - that all fits in the definition.

It's the responsibility of the player not to look at that word and take it to the most extreme conclusion...which is how you get people thinking that when they said revamp (which is what they are doing) they somehow meant overhaul (which is what they aren't doing).

[Ririta]

Now, this all was given without getting into deep details. Fan fest run on an extremely tight schedule, details are coming in live letters (hopefully).

They didn't go into "deep details" because there's none. We've played this already.

I guarantee if you anything that you listed was going to be any different from what we already have, we would know. It makes no sense to hold information that will get people talking about your expansion.

At least one of those had its hype noticeably dampened by the same thing that leads to surprises - their focus on making major changes with each expansion.

One of the first questions after artifacts were announced was if we'd use them past Legion. That they are meant to be a single expansion feature killed a lot of the hype...

So as I said above...double-edged sword that cuts both ways.

Can't miss the taste of nice things if you never eat nice things.

[Berethos]

Battle changes, combat and stuff related to jobs are not allowed to be asked, that info will be next month. Their excuse is most likely "It's still in development." Whether you believe it or not is up to you.

Given how "in development" by their definition could include the number crunching/balance passes and tweaks (and based on how they don't talk details much until its implementation ready, I'm inclined to believe that "in development" for them includes everything up until it's ready to be added), and most MMOs I've seen with more transparent development are often doing that particular phase of things up until the month or so before a launch?

I'd actually have a harder time believing that they've finished all that - art, effects, UI elements (since those are getting added), testing of those, and the initial balance passes - and are just sitting on it for...reasons?

Can't miss the taste of nice things if you never eat nice things.

Missed my point entirely.

[Vaer]

Given how "in development" by their definition could include the number crunching/balance passes and tweaks (and based on how they don't talk details much until its implementation ready, I'm inclined to believe that "in development" for them includes everything up until it's ready to be added), and most MMOs I've seen with more transparent development are often doing that particular phase of things up until the month or so before a launch?

They've always been very secretive so I'm inclined to believe it is just the way they do things. We'll never know really, they could be holding back because it's not ready (this is more likely, since they are literally trying to cram an expansion out the door in 6 months which is actually really quick IMO), or because PR said they are going to do it this way. Actually on many different occasions, Yoshi's replies was something on the lines of "I'd like to tell you, but PR."

Blizzard for example just does things differently. They usually have a huge info drop at one point, not the slow vague drip that SE does, and then they allow people to test some of it on the PTR sometime down the line. Eventually the fansites get all the info and most of it is known, and anytime they change anything and iterate the information is made available if you know where to look. I think most MMOs have some sort of alpha or beta period for expansions before they release where people pull info from.

Personally I think it's a calculated decision to have this info out right before the release, since the game will be in a lull where there hasn't been a substantial update to the game in a while. It'll be a "Hey guys we're still alive, here's some stuff" hype infusion. Certain competitors will be releasing updates around that time (at least 1 expansion) as well.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Well a revamp is still more than just combining skills together and such stuff at least in the eyes of the players. Also they used that word on an official presentation and only much later when Yoshida was asked about it he said that it really wont be a revamp. I just believe that you should not use such words on marketing if its not even true. If I remember it correctly even after saying to us that it wont be quite the big change they still used that word. They simply could have wrote that there will be some changes to the skills. This would still leave enough space open for interpretation.

Sadly, it's typical PR practice. Look at the supposedly "challenging" dungeons. Yoshi later rephrased it in MrHappy's interview to imply they would only be challenging because people are relearning their abilities.