Balmung and Gilgamesh Crisis

[Lexia]

You can't say it's our fault, either. SE could've locked it any time they wanted. It's not like we, the players, know if we are pushing the server limits. SE was happy to take people's money to transfer to Balmung. They allowed the problem to happen. Because they wanted cash. Now it's their job to make it scale.

I would say both parties have fault in it for SE allowing it and for other players going "oh it really not locked you can just pay to transfer in"

[Reokotsae]

Well the queue is bad, it wouldn't be half the issue it is without the instance bottleneck problem and a grace period of even 30 seconds to a minute in which to relog. I've been in plenty of launches where the queue was terrible anywhere from 1-6 hours (lol rift had a 7 day queue at one time god bless it) but almost every game was generally safe once you were through the queue because of the grace period.

[Paladinleeds]

SE was happy to take people's money to transfer to Balmung. They allowed the problem to happen. Because they wanted cash. Now it's their job to make it scale.

Actually, I think it was more a cultural difference. From what I hear, if restrictions (like character creation restrictions) are on a server, the Japanese take it as "Oh, that server is full, we best leave it to its own devices", vs the American/European approach of "Oh, we can still get in if we transfer, let's do it!" - and I think Square Enix being a Japanese company, they were struggling to understand and get their head round the Western mentality. Bear in mind the JP culture vs Western culture is miles apart from each other. They're so very different. You hear stories quite frequently of extreme "Culture Shock" going from one to the other. Now, are they free of blame? No. But I think a little more understanding is required here.

[Belisaire]

You hear stories quite frequently of extreme "Culture Shock" going from one to the other. Now, are they free of blame? No. But I think a little more understanding is required here.

Fair enough--and as someone who lived in Japan for a good chunk of time, I can tell you the cultural differences are there and I can understand how they may have expected the Japanese customers to respond different to this sort of thing.

That said, Square-Enix is a global company and they market to customers in other countries. This isn't their first MMO rodeo, either. They know that the NA region has a different opinion of rules and things. And I don't entirely believe that they didn't want the money. Take a look at the Mog Station, and the wild prices they'll charge you for some simple emotes and outfits that arguably, should be in the base game.

This is a business, not a charity. They've known Balmung was in trouble for a long time with the property issues. They knew people were continuing to transfer in. It's a little bit too late for the finger to be pointed at the players when they players do not have access to the kinds of resources and knowledge that the developers do. And we shouldn't have to manage that ourselves anyways. We're paying a monthly sub fee for those things to be taken care of and for them to figure out how to make the game work for us.

[mrCK]

They didn't offer Free transfers until after Early Access, and by then the transfers were breaking.

[MomomiMomi]

They've known Balmung was in trouble for a long time with the property issues.

Did they really though? I wonder. I clearly remember Balmung having a calamity over housing and Yoshida was like "lol everything's fine, we're meeting demand."

[Paladinleeds]

That said, Square-Enix is a global company and they market to customers in other countries. This isn't their first MMO rodeo, either. They know that the NA region has a different opinion of rules and things. And I don't entirely believe that they didn't want the money. Take a look at the Mog Station, and the wild prices they'll charge you for some simple emotes and outfits that arguably, should be in the base game.

I think the issue here is those that call the shots on do the servers get locked, etc, are done by people from and in Japan, who might not have had any experience of the Western culture. Sure, it might not be their first MMO rodeo, but are the same people who worked on XI and called the shots for XI calling the shots for XIV? As far as I'm aware, they got an entirely new team for ARR right? So that would mean people who don't necessarily have the experience of the Western culture. I can agree that money probably played a part of it, but I don't think it was the main factor, I think the main factor was the cultural difference due to the different team involved in XIV from XI.

Sure, could other people at SE have said "Hang on, this happened with XI with our NA playerbase, be ready for that." but that's external forces and outside the scope of the SE XIV team, who people tend to blame. I think eventually it got to a point where they were getting stuck and asked for help (something I believe is also frowned upon in Japanese culture, which if so, would explain just how desperate the situation got in their eyes). Whatever happened, they've at least got their head screwed on now, to an extent, about Western culture. Regarding mog station prices, I agree, some of those do come off a little on the high side, but if people buy them at those prices (and I am guilty of it myself, because I like gifting friends from time to time and like some of the stuff myself, enough to buy it), why wouldn't SE take advantage of that additional revenue stream? I'd say that's just common-sense for business. But I digress...

[Belisaire]

snip

I've found... over time, that Square-Enix doesn't do basic user research. In my real life life, I'm a product designer. A big part of my job involves ruthlessly studying the people I am trying to market to, in order to make sure it meets all of their needs. If and when we market the product elsewhere, we study that region and craft the product to make sure it meets their unique needs, because one size fits all just doesn't work.

What is unfortunate with Yoshida is that, having played 1.0, I remember he actually had very good design and user research practices. When he was trying to figure out the direction to take, he'd regularly poll the player bases... and he'd present the data back to us, with graphs showing what people in different regions asked for, and he'd pick a route that would satisfy a little bit of all the player's needs, and we the players would understand why something was happening.

With the launch of 2.0, that ended. He's never done it again. They've taken the route of "We know best," without regularly getting good, regular feedback from the players anymore. Unfortunately that's like, the pinnacle of design hubris. When you design and build systems in a bubble without regularly bringing in feedback from the outside, it's not a matter of if you will miss something critical, but when.

[Riion]

Has anyone been able to transfer? I'm on Gilgamesh and more than willing to transfer to avoid these stupid queues from crashes every time I attempt an instance.

[Rita1989]

Has anyone been able to transfer? I'm on Gilgamesh and more than willing to transfer to avoid these stupid queues from crashes every time I attempt an instance.

Unless you move to the EU or JP database those issues wont go away