They should put actual MMO players on the development team.

[Jynx]

However, I'll still disagree

So you don't think the QA team who tests everything we do somehow has never had a single foot in the MMO genre? You know because SE has MULTIPLE MMO's under it's belt it must never hire people to test their MMO's. It's not like FFXI was tightly balanced for several years or anything either.

Your right we must somehow take a small quip from Yoshida as to somehow mean everyone on his team is utterly useless and unaware of what a MMO even is.

and some actions taken included asking development staff not clear of MMO gaming to play them.

I assume this is what your pointing at. The part where he sais he asked team members who are not clear on MMO concepts, where in this does it state a majority of any percentage of the team?

[Mijin]

That is about the extent of it. The amount of time playing an MMO or not would make no difference.
An opinion panel is typically part of the final review before release (although now a days they just use Beta for that).

Thanks for sharing. That was insightful and I did take some info from that. Opinion panels according to what you said are no longer used, and most new content being released doesn't receive a beta. However WoW does do a beta out for every patch, and now that I think about it I bet that's why.

I think the amount of time or the amount of time doing anything in life does make you more informed. I'm having a hard time having people understand while I believe in this concept so I'll try another metaphor.

Say for example you work at a company that makes fishing tackle. You love your job because your favorite hobby is fishing. Your boss, who doesn't fish, tells you about a new trout lure that will be painted red. You ask him why? He explains to you, "Well red lures sell the best that's why." You the explain to your boss that in all of your time fishing blue lures have always worked the best for trout. You boss agrees to go with some blue lures and some red lures. In the end the blue lures out sell the red ones.

[Mijin]

So you don't think the QA team who tests everything we do somehow has never had a single foot in the MMO genre? You know because SE has MULTIPLE MMO's under it's belt it must never hire people to test their MMO's. It's not like FFXI was tightly balanced for several years or anything either.

Your right we must somehow take a small quip from Yoshida as to somehow mean everyone on his team is utterly useless and unaware of what a MMO even is.



I assume this is what your pointing at. The part where he sais he asked team members who are not clear on MMO concepts, where in this does it state a majority of any percentage of the team?

According to cloverkitty, whos obviously informed on the subject.

Then it goes to the play testers who look for bugs, or functionality of the area/section of the game they are required to repeatedly test (levels, collision, effects, etc)

They don't test if the game will be enjoyable or profitable. Further confirmation on the subject can be obtained via google or here.

[Andrien]

The point of this entire forum is to get feedback from the players that is playing this game. Then the dev team take our feedback and incorporate them into the game.

This way its like having thousands of mmo players on the dev team

/end thread

[Mijin]

The point of this entire forum is to get feedback from the players that is playing this game. Then the dev team take our feedback and incorporate them into the game.

This way its like having thousands of mmo players on the dev team

/end thread

So you think this forum represents the whole player base? I don't, most players don't use these forums. I don't know what the actual percent is but I'm guessing it's very low. Not to mention there are several people who post on here every day, and anytime a suggestion thread pops up they troll the shit out of it. Not to mention the mini-trolls who just like to hop on the band wagon of what ever the big trolls are after.

It's not really their fault though... Where there are forums there will be trolls. People use the many forums of the internet to verbally lash out at people to compensate for their own inadequacies. Most people grow out of that stage though. Other games, like Diablo III for example are forced to heavily moderate their forums to such a massive extent that they're nearly unusable. So it's either one extreme or another I guess.

Besides even if things were perfect on the forums, how much information gets filtered through the English speaking Community Reps to the people in charge in Japan. I bet it isn't much.

[Pandastirfry]

Say for example you work at a company that makes fishing tackle. You love your job because your favorite hobby is fishing. Your boss, who doesn't fish, tells you about a new trout lure that will be painted red. You ask him why? He explains to you, "Well red lures sell the best that's why." You the explain to your boss that in all of your time fishing blue lures have always worked the best for trout. You boss agrees to go with some blue lures and some red lures. In the end the blue lures out sell the red ones.

wait, wait, wait. Your boss comes up to you and says trout lures will only be painted red from now on because "the red ones sell better" most likely because he actually has data and sales records to back this up. but because you say blues ones work better basing it purely off the anecdotal evidence of you own fishing trips, your boss will for some asinine reason ignore sales records and trending data, change company policy, and some how the buying habits of consumers will change? That makes literally no sense what so ever.

you really don't think your analogies through at all. Your "experiance" as a fisher in that analogy is of little to no use to your boss. Regardless of the success you have had with blue ones, if the public at large is of the opinion that red ones are better (hence the reason your boss wants to make only red ones) then it is in your boss's and your own best interest to make red ones.

[Mijin]

wait, wait, wait. Your boss comes up to you and says trout lures will only be painted red from now on because "the red ones sell better" most likely because he actually has data and sales records to back this up. but because you say blues ones work better basing it purely off the anecdotal evidence of you own fishing trips, your boss will for some asinine reason ignore sales records and trending data, change company policy, and some how the buying habits of consumers will change? That makes literally no sense what so ever.

you really don't think your analogies through at all. Your "experiance" as a fisher in that analogy is of little to no use to your boss. Regardless of the success you have had with blue ones, if the public at large is of the opinion that red ones are better (hence the reason your boss wants to make only red ones) then it is in your boss's and your own best interest to make red ones.

While you're obviously over analyzing that for the sake of argument, I'll play along:

You work as a marketing consultant for a large fishing tackle manufacture. You love your job because your favorite hobby happens to be fishing. You're boss comes up to you one day and says, "Well, we've decided to sell a new lure for trout, I was thinking about painting it red because red bass lures have the highest sales." You explain to you're boss that while red bass lures are favored among fishermen for bass, experienced fishermen actually prefer to use blue lures for trout. You can attest to this because you're an experienced fisher yourself, otherwise you wouldn't have known. Your boss says, "Okay let me check with the marketing people and I'll get back to you." The next day your boss comes up to you and agrees to go with the blue trout lures, because he obviously has no knowledge of fishing, he just knows how to make lures. The blue trout lures turn out to sell much better, and everyone lives happily ever after.

Hopefully that one isn't as confusing for you, I tried not to leave any details to the imagination. Just in case:
Bass Lure = Single player games
Trout Lure = MMORPGs
Red/blue = content
The experienced marketing consultant = who needs to be added to the picture

I hope this helps you understand my metaphor (which is more like a short story now).

Knowing what customers want is just as important if a more important than sales data when it comes to making profit.

[Pandastirfry]

While you're obviously over analyzing that for the sake of argument, I'll play along:

You work as a sales consultant(oh no you don't! I saw your edit this was your original job title in the analogy) for a large fishing tackle manufacture. You love your job because your favorite hobby happens to be fishing. You're boss comes up to you one say and says, "Well we've decided to sell a new lure for trout, I was thinking about painting it red because red bass lures have the highest sales." You explain to you're boss that while red bass lures are favored among fishermen for bass, experienced fishermen actually prefer to use blue lures for trout. You can attest to this because you yourself, are an experienced fisher otherwise you wouldn't have known. Your boss says, "Okay let me check with the marketing people and I'll get back to you." The next day your boss comes up to you and agrees to go with the blue trout lures, because he obviously has no knowledge of fishing, he just knows how to make lures. The blue trout lures turn out to sell much better, and everyone lives happily ever after.

Hopefully that one isn't as confusing for you, I tried not to leave any details to the imagination. Just in case:
Bass Lure = Single player games
Trout Lure = MMORPGs
Red/blue = content
I hope this helps.

Knowing what customers want is just as important if a more important than sales data when it comes to making profit.

okay... yet again, if your marketing people already had this information that Bass lures are good in red and trout lures sell well in blue... THEN YOUR BOSS WOULD ALREADY KNOW THAT DUMMY! Because if you were doing your damn job as a sales consultant, you would have told your boss the sales figures for fishing lures, and when the new lures came out the new trout lure would be blue. because sales figures and data would have already told the boss that blue trout lures sell better, and this would have gotten funneled down to the development guys, who would paint it blue. You would never have been in that process, neither would the marketing guys. Your "knowledge of fishing" is absolutely useless, you don't become a manager, CEO, or Director by being pig ignorant of your your own industry.

Further, in your analogy, your boss didn't go with blue because "he has no knowledge of fishing and has bowed to your superior intellect and buisness accumen" It's because he verified that blue lures sell better by going back to actual market research. If market research hadn't coincedentaly backed you up, he would still have had to rely on only YOUR WORD that blue is better, and that is no way to make a buisness plan

[Mijin]

okay... yet again, if your marketing people already had this information that Bass lures are good in red and trout lures sell well in blue... THEN YOUR BOSS WOULD ALREADY KNOW THAT DUMMY! Because if you were doing your damn job as a sales consultant, you would have told your boss the sales figures for fishing lures, and when the new lures came out the new trout lure would be blue. because sales figures and data would have already told the boss that blue trout lures sell better, and this would have gotten funneled down to the development guys, who would paint it blue. You would never have been in that process, neither would the marketing guys. Your "knowledge of fishing" is absolutely useless, you don't become a manager, CEO, or Director by being pig ignorant of your your own industry.

Lol well then I guess the fundamental disagreement we're having is that I do consider the people in charge to be ignorant in comparison to it's competitors. All of their experience is with single player games, which is fine but they need to take customer feedback into much more careful consideration than its competitors do, and their competitors already take it pretty damn serious.

You're presenting your argument as that there is magical sales data that covers every aspect of designing new content but there isn't. There is for some things sure.... like recently Yoshida mentioned in an interview that they would probably be adding a underwater level before a sky level because sales data supports it. Even though sky first would have been his personal preference. When you're trying to be innovative there is no sales data... Like the idea not to make an auction house for example... It seems like they fall short on common sense when there is no data to guide the way for them. Not to mention that no matter what all of data for other games in the world supports, some of it just wont apply to this game because the games audience is different. People that play WoW don't want to play FFXIV... they never will unless we turn it into a wow clone, and in doing so they'll loose all of their current audience because the current audience doesn't want to play wow... WoW is for the instant gratification type people. FFXIV is for effort rewards types.

What the companies trying to do from what I've read about 2.0 is to copy what works for WoW because it sells better. This isn't going to work for the same exact reason that WoW clones have never worked in the past, WoW players will just play WoW... Especially considering they're getting an expansion around the same time we get 2.0

[Pandastirfry]

Lol well then I guess the fundamental disagreement we're having is that I do consider the people in charge to be ignorant in comparison to it's competitors. All of their experience is with single player games, which is fine but they need to take customer feedback into much more careful consideration than its competitors do, and their competitors already take it pretty damn serious.

You're presenting your argument as that there is magical sales data that covers every aspect of designing new content but there isn't. There is for some things sure.... like recently Yoshida mentioned in an interview that they would probably be adding a underwater level before a sky level because sales data supports it even though it wasn't his personal preference. When you're trying to be innovative there is no sales data... Like the idea not to make an auction house for example... It seems like they fall short on common sense when there is no data to guide the way for them. Not to mention that no matter what all of data for other games in the world supports, some of it just wont apply to this game because the games audience is different. People that play WoW don't want to play FFXIV... they never will unless we turn it into a wow clone, and in doing so they'll loose all of their current audience because the current audience doesn't want to play wow... WoW is for the instant gratification type people. FFXIV is for effort rewards types.

What the companies trying to do from what I've read about 2.0 is look at all sales data of WoW, and try to follow in their footsteps. This isn't going to work for the same exact reason that WoW clones have never worked in the past, WoW players will just play WoW... Especially considering they're getting an expansion around the same time we get 2.0

I'm not basing my argument on sales data at all, I'm poking holes in your terrible analogy based on sales data.

You can think people in charge are ignorant til the cows come home. That doesn't change the fact that playesr are considerably more ignorant. The trouble with your argument that SE should "employ 'Professional' gamers to play the game to tell them how to improve it" is that all their information would be the product of those handful of players' personal biases and desires. I'd rather trust market research and the few requests and bits of information that get back to SE from the forums, over a handful of sweaty nerds that just get to hand over a wish list and have a globally distributed game tailored to their own venal wants.


Basically... I'm beginning to think this thread was just a failed attempt to apply for a job that you want SE to make for you... Am I too far off the mark?


also you keep saying all of SE's experience is in Single Player games... Last I checked they've been running a moderately successful MMO for 10 years now, just a little under half of the Final Fantasy franchises life span. and launched several years before WoW, while I'm definately not XI's biggest fan, I do have to say that I think I'm safe in saying they have the gist of what they're doing.