Aren't holiday quests a waste of development time and effort right now?

[sharky]

Just playing FF14 is like a holiday every day. So no, we do not need holiday quests.

[gifthorse]

Obviously they've already made the event so they might as well release it, but for future reference they should probably consider useing staff members in more important ways.

[Peregrine]

Above all they need to mind the caliber of the content they are releasing. If the simple and trifling things are coming out of the pipes first, SE needs to be the first to admit that they're simple and trifling and not the solution, because the player will make that judgment themselves and it'll be worse if it appears SE is trying to play off simple content as acceptable solution. The quality of the quests were free to play. Their quality should have been correctly assessed by the development team, and the player base should have been told that they were pretty insignificant efforts with pretty insignificant results, but they're the things that make the PS3 people's experience better.

The quality of holiday events are free to play. Their quality should have been correctly assessed by the development team, and the player base should have been assured that no REAL content or progress was harmed in the making of this simple diversion. However, my real guess was that in fact real content was harmed. Did anyone in the player's poll tell them we need more holidays as a fix? I didn't. I still maintain that they got their priorities messed up (and they realized this too late which is why they killed the may holiday finally).

If the players come to those conclusions themselves, as opposed to being acknowledged by Square Enix before they reach those conclusions, it appears that Square Enix is an impotent developer who doesn't understand how to repair their game.

As it stands, the quests and the holiday event are making front-page, headline sections in the comments when they should honestly be apologized for ahead of time.

If you're trying to build a subscription-quality game, every time you release free to play-caliber content you'd best apologize in advance. Period.

Some of you do not understand that, and you never will. They need to, even if you don't. Maybe they already learned their lesson, since they made the right decision and killed the next holiday event until next year.

Then again, we'll see if the next batch of quests is as bad as the first.

[gifthorse]

Above all they need to mind the caliber of the content they are releasing. If the simple and trifling things are coming out of the pipes first, SE needs to be the first to admit that they're simple and trifling and not the solution, because the player will make that judgment themselves and it'll be worse if it appears SE is trying to play off simple content as acceptable solution. The quality of the quests were free to play. Their quality should have been correctly assessed by the development team, and the player base should have been told that they were pretty insignificant efforts with pretty insignificant results, but they're the things that make the PS3 people's experience better.

The quality of holiday events are free to play. Their quality should have been correctly assessed by the development team, and the player base should have been assured that no REAL content or progress was harmed in the making of this simple diversion. However, my real guess was that in fact real content was harmed. Did anyone in the player's poll tell them we need more holidays as a fix? I didn't. I still maintain that they got their priorities messed up (and they realized this too late which is why they killed the may holiday finally).

If the players come to those conclusions themselves, as opposed to being acknowledged by Square Enix before they reach those conclusions, it appears that Square Enix is an impotent developer who doesn't understand how to repair their game.

As it stands, the quests and the holiday event are making front-page, headline sections in the comments when they should honestly be apologized for ahead of time.

If you're trying to build a subscription-quality game, every time you release free to play-caliber content you'd best apologize in advance. Period.

Some of you do not understand that, and you never will. They need to, even if you don't. Maybe they already learned their lesson, since they made the right decision and killed the next holiday event until next year.

Then again, we'll see if the next batch of quests is as bad as the first.

I don't see what everyone has against you and your arguments. You're only thinking of the game's welfare in then end. SE can go ahead and release crappy content, but then they're just begging for it. You can't deny that the stuff they've released up until now has been far from satisfactory. And if SE thinks such trivial content is a solution for the game, then they're out of touch. And if they don't think such content is a solution, then they should seek to make ammends to the signals they are sending to the player-base since it's pretty clear that people will say they're out of touch if the only signs they've given indicate exactly that. Essentially they are saying that these crappy quests and holiday events are where their priorities lie, and it reflects poorly on their image.

Whether this is their priority or not, their actions speak louder than their words (of which we have none anyway).

[Peregrine]

They don't understand the comments because I'm one of the few people capable of overriding simple affect and posture if it means doing the right thing. I'm not the good little patriot they can understand, so I must be a troll because that's how concrete operational thinking works. There aren't many people who truly understand that republican fiscal responsibility and democrat social obligation are both sound ideas. I'm one of them.

I play this game. Clearly. But unlike a good little patriot, I see the comments. I note the defects. People are straight laughing at this letter. Another Holiday. They have every right to. This is free-to-play caliber crap. More free-to-play caliber crap.

Major content updates:
Holiday event 1-free to play caliber
New gear-free to play caliber
Holiday event 2-free to play caliber
Faction NMS-pay to play caliber
NM gear-free to play caliber
New enemy release-free to play caliber
Roaming NM release-Pay to play caliber
NM gear-Pay to play caliber
Quest release-free to play caliber
Holiday event 3-free to play caliber

UI tweaks and intuitive streamlines, stability improvement, technical improvements: Pay to play caliber. Understatement of the year. If they continue with the technical improvements and don't let up, that will be the ONE success story we have so far other than the NMs buying 3 months of time so that the game didn't outright die.

I'd be much happier if they stuck a lot of the latter up where they hyped all the former. Some of the technical improvements have been LEAPS and BOUNDS better than those quests. People who have grown to lol @ this game update after update appreciate those little things, because trying to pass off these lame content updates as significant insults their intelligence. But it's still needless to say that these technical improvements should have never been needed. You do these sorts of things right, smart, well the first time if you are a top 5 gaming company with 8 years of MMO experience. Period.. MINDFUL development not MINDLESS coding. Even so, this is good quality improvement.

What do you do with the former? You just straight tell us you know they're not that great, instead of gambling that they'll pass and buy more time.

I rate FFXIV as 5/10 right now, only reason I play is because it gets points where I emphasize. Valentione's day was garbage. Did any of you all even make more than one Valentione day product? 2/10. Waste of data. The quests were garbage. Worst gameplay I've ever endured in a MMO. Most painful day in the game EVER. 2/10. Do not want.

Two major hits to my overall assessment is threatening to knock that overall rating down to 4/10. 5/10 needs improvement. when you start talking about 4's, that's fatal flaw territory. Then here we go. A holiday event leading the hype of a "patch". That did it for me, really. That's why I'm angry.

Because of their gamble, to hype bumbling free to play content as "patch" and the focus of their communication with us...4/10 confirmed. The game got WORSE because they overemphasized the significance of two holiday events and a batch of TROLLING quality quests. And it got worse in a lot of players' minds. They have the sheep. They will always have the sheep. They need to start being honest with themselves and the people who are actually expecting them to perform in order to give them their support.

Get these quests and holiday events out of my face until you can bring me and the players I represent something of pay-to-play caliber UNLESS you outright admit that your new content is both NOT fixing anything AND is not delaying anything that DOES. ...this...ends.

If they had never released Valentione's day, those quests, and now yet another holiday, I'd still rate this game 5/10 because the technical improvements are steadily making it a better experience and we have the potential of solid content coming up in June-ish. If they had said look, we know these things aren't Final Fantasy Quality, but this is what we have been able to clear the decks so far...fine.

But they didn't. What's a company again? Hell if I know. Don't even have the basic premise, and this is coming out when again?

Why, player, thank you for your concern. To answer your question a company issssLOOOK AT THE MOOGLES AND THEIR AMAZING COLORED EGGS! Hahahahaaaa!

[Jennestia]

They don't understand the comments

Most people don't "understand" (care) for your opinion because every post is condescending or just of an unsound mind.

It's like someone asks why the sky is blue you'll go into detail on how they're an idiot for not knowing the scientific reasoning other than "light reflecting off the water."

[yukikaze_yanagi]

They don't understand the comments because I'm one of the few people capable of overriding simple affect and posture if it means doing the right thing.

I introduce you Belgianrofl. You'll understand it magnificiently.
Seriusly, you slap your opinions as a fact, an unquestionable truth, so your topics, good or not, get dealt like fuming pile of doo-doo, and you like another troll. Tune down your internet ego, and maybe you'll get better responses

[Peregrine]

My opinion of some of my fellow remaining xiv players is irrelevant to the discussion, so I don't really care how you take the tone. The tone reflects my disdain at the sheer amounts of obvious distraction and diversion some of you all can be thrown to keep you happily grinding and hunting eggs.

In the process of distracting you, they are burning the confidence of players that I prefer to play with. I'd rather they ignored you and focused on repairing the image the rest of the players have of ffxiv, which includes the need to STOP distracting you and start acting like they are doing nothing but fixing the game.

No more holidays until the new battle system is done. The PVE is rolling. And the job system is overhauled with new gear and animations. No more useless fetch quests until we have quest systems with meaning behind doing them.

It's time to stop distracting you with stupid things, because the rest of the potential players see the crap they release to you and figure that's all this team has to offer.

[Peregrine]

Really I don't expect half of you to understand the idea that in releasing distraction content like this, they look like buffoons to the players who are criticizing their content, because half of you cannot understand a position you don't personally hold.

To you, this is free content and Free can't be bad because if they don't release your egg hunt well you just don't get to hunt eggs and you want your egg hunt so there should be egg hunts how dare I say you shouldn't get your free egg hunt grinch. Grinnnnch!

Nothing is free. In giving 40,000 people an egg hunt, the team looks like they are still the clueless bumblers that 400,000people lost interest in supporting.

[gifthorse]

Most people don't "understand" (care) for your opinion because every post is condescending or just of an unsound mind.

The reasoning behind peregrine's posts does not seem unsound to me, and the tone by which it is delivered is irrelevant. Einstein could have stated E=mc^2 with a hateful attitude, it wouldn't have made him any less correct. I mean, we're not getting marks for presentation here.

It's like peregrine says, superficial distractions might be fun for a select few, but to the vast majority, it looks like that's all the game has to offer.

In fact, it's ironic you would upbraid Peregrine for his/her tone when it is the tone of the developers which needs to change. Acting like an easter egg hunt is a suitable bandaid to the swine flu that is FFXIV isn't winning them any confidence from the players.