They should put actual MMO players on the development team.

[Mijin]

I'm not fighting. You are the enemy? eh, i dont think so. You have your opinion, with a good amount of good statements. Or are you a Neomarl in a Sheepskin?

Lol na, I'm just making fun of the way this thread went. Page 12 was the first solid page with out me getting trolled at least once.

Since no ones trying to troll me any more I guess I'll have to call it a day. Crafting's too boring to do with out entertainment.

[Chardrizard]

Hi everyone disagrees with me, everyone is a troll.

[Mijin]

Hi everyone disagrees with me, everyone is a troll. Heh-Heh-Heh!

"Hi I disagree with what you have to say and can't wait to go on and on about it over the internet. Telling people what I think about them in real life is scary."

Who's everyone anyway? Oh you mean like the same 6 people who keep posting?

Well J-Biebs... I'm gonna tell ya' something important here so I want you to make sure you pay attention. If what you're doing isn't called trolling, what ever this little self-esteem building exercise of yours is really called it's even less funny than trolling kind of depressing.

[Velhart]

"Hi I disagree with what you have to say and can't wait to go on and on about it over the internet. Telling people what I think about them in real life is scary."

Who's everyone anyway? Oh you mean like the same 6 people who keep posting?

Well J-Biebs... I'm gonna tell ya' something important here so I want you to make sure you pay attention. If what you're doing isn't called trolling, what ever this little self-esteem building exercise of yours is really called it's even less funny than trolling kind of depressing.

I believe you are thinking too hard on that one.

[Maxthunder]

Yeah, that's exactly what I said; they don't have time to play so they need to hire people that do... And when you say most of them were players... Players of what? I know Yohi-P has mention playing Dark Age of Camelot and Diablo II, not really much help there. Even if some of them were casuals in the past I'm talking about putting hard core, basement dwelling, elitist mmoplayers on the staff who actually know how a MMO should work.

The DEV team has the technical skills needed but not the design sense... that's the #1 reason that this game has been suffering since day 1 imo. Granted Yoshi-P's teams doing a much better job, they may even salvage this game. However if they want to go above and beyond they're going to have to do better.

I agree with you and the reason why is that Yoshi is taking xiv way to casual. I do believe hardcore players could and would have better suggestions at how content should be designed for all types of players. Unfortunatly if Yoshi continues on this path there may not be an xiv to even play.

[Tonkra]

Nonsense. They have ppl that play MMO helping them. Plus like yoshi said. You can't do both. Work at SE, and play an MMO 8 hours day. When do you sleep? Most of them were players before they got hired. When you get to work making games, usually you don't have time to play the games. Know what I mean?

eh, i have a work myself and can play MMorpgs.

Its not like that, that SE employees are working 15+ hours each day ;XD

[Mijin]

I believe you are thinking too hard on that one.

I believe that I'm glad you liked it. I BELIEVE! Not like there's anything better going on, I'm sitting here crafting... So when things are slow here I just sit here and add to posts instead of making new ones. Plus I like to make them easier to read sometimes. I especially wanted to make the one in question easier to comprehend considering who I wanted to read it. Hell most of the time I open up the edit window just to look at a post I made, and the close it with out changing anything. I already mentioned that all of my posts are edited.

I agree with you and the reason why is that Yoshi is taking xiv way to casual. I do believe hardcore players could and would have better suggestions at how content should be designed for all types of players. Unfortunatly if Yoshi continues on this path there may not be an xiv to even play.

Well I'm glad to see that someone shares my opinion. I think that the current marketing strategy has some uses, but wow clones have never been that successful in the past except for maybe Rift. However, to turn the game into a WoW clone will cause a portion of the current player base to become disinterested. I guess they can't really "Fail" though because no matter what content comes out it will be better than this. I just don't know if I like the direction its going.

[Dargoth_Draconia]

I've decided to redraft the post in order to better explain my argument, as it seems a lot of people were getting confused and angry. If you're interested in the first post you can easily find it quoted below.

In the following text I will explain what is, in my opinion, an easy and cost effective solution to a development problem that stems from a lack of knowledge regarding MMOs.

There are people in this world who have invested tremendous amounts of time (13+ years) playing MMOs nearly everyday. In spite of the warning messages displayed before each log on, these people have made lifestyle choices out of this game and many others unfortunately. While this can almost wholly be viewed as a negative, there is one small thing that could be considered positive. These life choice gamers have amassed tremendous amounts of knowledge of what a MMORPG should be, and what it shouldn't. It is my suggestion, that it would be beneficial to put the knowledge of such people to use.

The current development team has been doing a much better job than the last. The team however lacks in experience when it comes to making, let alone playing MMO's. As can be verified in this interview, the current game director Naoki Yoshida stated that he had to ask members of his team to play MMOs because they were unfamiliar with them. Naoki Yoshida himself has played some MMOs in the past, but he's stated here, that he no longer has time to play games. That being said this is also the first MMO that hes ever worked on, let alone directed.

So my proposition is simple. Find obsessively hard core players from various MMOs with various gaming history and put them on payroll. Their purpose would just be to give feedback on new content and suggestions on how to improve it before it's released, that's all. I'm not suggesting that they do anything else other than that, and it's not like you would have to pay these types of people much because it's most probable that they are unemployed as it stands anyway.

I think it's important to note, highly valuing customer feedback isn't a radical idea. Some of this games competitors it very seriously. Some games open beta test every one of their patches just to make sure people approve of the content. This is a much more costly solution that I doubt this game can afford however.

In the following pages filled with flames and trolling, the three biggest arguments and my responses to are as follows:

A= Argument R=Response (paraphrasing)
A: Gamers aren't qualified to make games, they don't know how to code and stuff.
R: Well that's not what I suggest they do, I'm suggesting their job would be correspondence and nothing else.

A: That's what community reps, the QA team, or the forums are for.
R: The community reps aren't enough. The quality assurance team tests for bugs and stuff like that. They have nothing to do with deciding if content will be fun or successful. The forums aren't a reliable source for a number of reasons. The forums are filled with trolls, and because so few XIV players post here things can get very clicky. Very few of the player base posts here, and of them that do post many are inexperienced with MMOs themselves. Trolls go on feeding frenzies with people who make suggestions, most people don't even bother. Who really knows how much information that the community reps hand pick on the English forums actually make it to those in charge in Japan anyway?

A: I'm stupid.
R: You're stupid.


In conclusion I doubt that this thread will ever make it to the eyes of anyone important, however I feel strongly about it so here it is anyway.

Would it really be any different than how it is now? Who is to say the feedback from those said people are going to be any more liked than the ideas they come up with? I don't think you have a strong enough point here to even make a forum post, you should be content that they offer us player polls from time to time and actually read our feedback on forums.

[Hyrist]

So my proposition is simple. Find obsessively hard core players from various MMOs with various gaming history and put them on payroll. Their purpose would just be to give feedback on new content and suggestions on how to improve it before it's released, that's all. I'm not suggesting that they do anything else other than that, and it's not like you would have to pay these types of people much because it's most probable that they are unemployed as it stands anyway.

I agree with the concept of playtesting with gamers on the payroll. However I disagree with your target pool.

If you create an MMO based off of players who do nothing but play games, you run the risk of appealing only to that target audiance, which is small.

So, I would pool the audience for prominent figures from each section of gaming. It's not hard to find them. You take some of your top players, then you take from a pool of your active playerbase, such as those who provide media outlets about your game, podcasters - web-comic players. These can range from midcore to casual, as hardcore players do not usually set aside time to push a media outlet - but are rather integrating their favorite pastimes together to save time.

Then you take something from the larger media outlet. Commission someone from Game Trailers or some other outlet. Someone who heavily covers MMOs. And you invite them to a conference with your community team and possibly some developers. You do this in the early stages of a major project, be it an expansion, rework, or during the initial phases of producing an MMO.

And you discuss the competition. Who's doing what right? Who's doing what wrong? What is it that is unique about other games that would not in the environment you're trying to build. And how do you build with mass appeal. You pay the people for their time, and you only bring them in at certain junctures, pretty much at each major milestone.

This gives you a varied and dynamic feedback on the game in development, in trade, they will go out and advertise the game for you as they'll spread their word about the game, likely praises given the fact that you've just paid them to go out talk to them, and play their game some.

Overall it's a small cost to do in comparison to a strong subscription base or good box sales, and the game will really benefit from it.

Can it be done here? Nah, we're already closing in on Alpha/Beta. We'll get to give our input in during those times. Though the overall impact may not be as grand - it's still a good way of getting feedback from your interested base.

[PSxpert2011]

Nonsense. They have ppl that play MMO helping them. Plus like yoshi said. You can't do both. Work at SE, and play an MMO 8 hours day. When do you sleep? Most of them were players before they got hired. When you get to work making games, usually you don't have time to play the games. Know what I mean?

Yeah, what she said.

Also what Hyrist said,

I agree with the concept of play-testing with gamers on the payroll. However I disagree with your target pool.

If you create an MMO based off of players who do nothing but play games, you run the risk of appealing only to that target audience, which is small.

This makes sense too. Players hired to develop a game wouldn't work.

A real developer is educated with a bachelors degree or two, has creativity, artistic and computer knowledge along with other sh!t you never heard before in your tiny, elementary~high-school life.