Realm Reborn = downgrade?

[Nemy]

uhhhh I used prat quite appropriately....

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/prat

Definition of PRAT

British
: a stupid or foolish person

I.E. Stop being an Obnoxious Prat, assuming you know what your talking about 99% of the time, when its closer to 50-75% for everyone.

No no no... i was saying that I used prat inappropriately, not you.

[Xmbei]

No no no... i was saying that I used prat inappropriately, not you.

ohhhh lolol my bad ;0 miss understood your (...) statement lol we good now XD lol was worried for a second XD.

[Nemy]

ohhhh lolol my bad ;0 miss understood your (...) statement lol we good now XD lol was worried for a second XD.

Yeah i just liked the word and used it instead of, well, the selection of words usually used there, knowing its probably not the correct use.

[Onisake]

Yeah, totally. I'm sure everyone would be willing to wait, 8, 12, 16 weeks, whatever it'd take, right? Feature creep be damned, right?

Except they wouldn't.

First, upper management, Wada-san, the board of directors, and stakeholders are all expecting Yoshida-san to keep to the timetable and milestones he set way back in October. (Remember the PDFs that were released?)
This is what happens in the business world: if you tell someone you're going to have something done by X day/month/year, you better damn well have it done, or have a very good reason as to why it's not. Especially since they're pouring so much money and "honour" into this project... which is the first of its kind, by the way -- no one else in the history of gaming has ever dared try to revive an all-but-failed MMO (and with good reason: it's an even bigger gamble than the original release).

Second, gamers are not the people who matter right now, when teams make decisions like the one being discussed (complained about) here. Yes, they're making the game for us to enjoy, but it's still them who are making the game; not us. This is not design by committee. They may hit us up for ideas from time to time (like "what kind of uses would you like to see for jumping?"), but this is not one of those times.

Scope creep is a completely different problem than this. There is a difference between releasing an unfinished/unpolished product (IE: 1.0) and releasing something that is polished and ready for market.

SE has said they will take feedback from both Alpha and Beta and try to implement feedback before launch. what if the overwhelming feedback is "The animations are crappy, the game does not feel polished"

I am well aware of the problems of scope creep, as I work in technology transfer for a biotech company. If a product isn't ready, guess what? I don't transfer it. I've delayed things for several weeks because of color inconsistencies on a printed box. Almost always a customer will overlook something if it's printed correctly. but if it's not printed correctly and it looks janky, people will notice.

Polish is important. VERY important. it's under appreciated when it is there. I'll agree. but when it's not it will get picked apart.

Car dealerships don't let you leave the lot before they wash the car. a TV with a scratched bezel is half the price of a TV with no blemishes. they have the exact same functionality. so why is this? because polish is important.

Just because it's what you want, doesn't mean it's automagically in their best interest or even doable in this situation.

I want it because I want the game to be as successful as it can be. Gameplay is more important. I will not argue that. but i don't' understand why quality must also be sacrificed.

If i'm not having fun, and i don't feel immersed i'll stop playing. I'm not a raving fanboy who will follow something through thick and thin. the game failed. it's being relaunched. why in the world would they not want to put their absolute best foot forward?

there is a lot on the line here. if the game fails again, no-one will be that surprised. some people will be upset. and SE will take a big hit. and the general consensus will be "Good try guys. Noble effort. we gave it our best, but let's go home"

and it will go down in history as an example of what not to do. No-one wants to be that guy.

But, if it succeeds it will go down in history as a big Cinderella story. I like SE. but they've gone downhill. They could really really use a win right now.

I will admit I'm a little biased. I have the mentality of almost everyother American "Go big or go home" i'm not a fan of doing just what's good enough. but as an Engineer I understand this is needed, and the best path forward at times. SE has a lot of opportunity here, it's very foolish to just let it pass by.

[Velhart]

Yet somehow, that one is not strategic, and the sliding all over the place is, why is that?

NO one says it isn't strategic necessarily, however, its no-fun factor and inconvenience isn't strategy, it is a burden. FFXI it worked because it rarely had mobs that required a lot of moving. FFXIV it is all about moving around, and animation lock only hinders this. So yes, sliding all over the place I believe is needed for FFXIV.

[Onisake]

Fair enough. Feature creep was hyperbole, I have no problem admitting that.
If the overwhelming feedback during alpha/beta is such, though, I will certainly not complain if they change it again. After all, it's their decision; not ours. And they'd be working off of solicited feedback, as opposed to -- forgive the generalization -- children crying on the lodestone forums because, omg, they saw a video one time, and it totally didn't live up to their expectations.

I can understand this. but I'm complaining, not because of the video, but because of how i've seen games succeed/fail in the past and personal experience.

They have the animation data. It was changed for a couple of reasons 1) Animation lock (there are some limitations in the current engine that cause this) 2) time/resources/unknown

the animation lock could have been fixed a different way. 1) if action has been initiated by player, and player moves before it is executed: animation does not play. movement overwrites animation. possibly cancels ability. (Server packet loss has a lot to do with this as well though 2) sliding. animation plays, but you can still move. your lower half just doesn't do a run animation.

They also said they want to increase the pace of fights. I'm not quite sure what this means. speed? action/inputs? both? this one makes more sense to me. if they are speeding up fights. the animations we have now, while pretty, are a little slow. and it might not look quite right if they just 'fast forward' them to accommodate faster inputs. but this hasn't been explicitly said. (although I suspect it's the case) they've only said they chose to focus on gameplay rather than animations. but in this case we can still have animation lock. If i Input 4 commands in rapid succession, and i'm finished before 2 of them are completed, then i might be in 'animation lock' because i'm waiting on the animations to catch up with my commands. and there may be an issue with queuing commands, etc.

but even this is a different balance between having quality animations and streamlining those animations to accommodation faster inputs (IE: faster pacing/gameplay)

But this is different still from just running around and battle sequences. I think the high quality movement could stay, and i'd be more forgiving of the lower quality of battle animations to accomdate the rapid release of vastly improved gameplay.

But also, where is the line drawn? if it becomes too fast it's like an action game. and harder content will require players to have faster reflexes. and the whole point of playing an MMORPG is for the slower pace and less reliance on 'twitch reflex' needed for FPSs and some MOBAs.

I realize these are extremes, and the whole argument is a little convoluted. but again we dont' know until we get our hands on it. I still stand by: I expect the quality of the animations to be on par with the current version.

Why is this? because they've been talking about the relaunch for months. it's probably been internal for over a year. So the decision to slack on the animations was made very early on. And i'm not a fan of that.

You see the same behaviour in just about any medium... if someone doesn't notice any issues or whatnot, then you've done your job well. I know this from experience as well.
However, regarding delays, if you look at how Yoshida-san has handled 1.0's patches, he sets deadlines and he sticks to them, almost religiously. He's practically the only director or producer that I've seen announce a patch's deployment date 2-4 weeks out, while said patch is still in development, and still hit it. So, from that observation (plus how detailed 2.0's milestone data sheet was in the released prospectus) I gather that he (or his boss, or whomever) is pretty serious about deadlines and milestones. Thus, extrapolating from that, if the team only has enough time or manpower for one of 3 scenario outcomes, for example,

Yes, but I've seen several item actions get moved to later patches because they were not ready.

this is fundamentally different. there are things that can wait and be patched later. (number tweaks/balance for PvP, as this is more dependent on how community abuses things) and things that should be included at launch.

...in order to meet their milestone, they will decide to choose the scenario that, they feel, will be the greatest benefit to ARR's goals, and, for the time being, we have to respect that.
During beta, however, they may very well have time to go back and tweak the animations, and I'd be all for that. (Hell, I think everyone here would be; I've read through just about every page and have yet to see anyone who thinks they're perfect as shown.) But until they get that possible flood of feedback on their animations, it's just not a priority... not like ensuring high-quality gameplay is. They obviously don't want to fail on that twice.

I agree. However I understand the business perspective, but I give feedback from the customer perspective. I understand well the business decisions, but if I say nothing, I won't get the quality I desire. If it's something I want there are probably other people who want it too.

I will be interacting with the game as a customer. So I should primarily give my feedback as a customer. because I understand how decisions are made (or at least i think i do) I can better word my arguments to appeal to that audience.

I too want the game to be as successful as possible. It's not that they don't want to put their absolute best foot forward (most of them are artists; I highly doubt this is the case), but more that they just don't have the means or time to do so (else they wouldn't have had to even make such a decision). They made the decision that they need to, instead of perfecting animations (which they hypothesize few of their target audience will really care about), spend more time on other facets... especially ones that they feel they need to make up for and prove that they can actually accomplish.

I'm working with a product that we've delayed for 8 weeks because of an unexpected bug. we set our original deadlines based on what we think we can accomplish. but it's still just a best guess. delays happen.

Ideally you don't set release dates until things are pretty much done. that's why we dont' have a release date for ARR. we just know it's most likely going to be next year. to add some extra polish will greatly help to hook new players. that's my argument.

Exactly; they don't want to be that example. They understand that the biggest reason why the initial launch failed so hard in everyone's eyes was because of the shockingly huge lack of gameplay outside of leves, so they're apparently reasonably sacrificing development time where they can from other areas (again, within reason) to ensure that that does not happen again. They can always go back later, whether during beta (time willing) or post-launch, and touch up animations or fix recurring "technical issues" such as "missing" or "non-playing" animations via surreptitious "bug fixes" and such.
In contrast to "bug fixes", they don't want to have to add big or "core" gameplay elements in the immediate post-launch window (say, pre-2.1) all because they decided other things were either just as or more important during development than said elements. That would send the message, loud and clear, that they didn't really learn their lesson... and I imagine that's the very last impression they want to give any time in the near future.

I'm ok with upgraded animations coming later. but there's always going to be that excuse: we need better/more content. it will always be on the back burner because it's never as important as gameplay. that's why it should come now. otherwise i doubt it will ever really happen. we're already waiting. lets wait a little more.

Apologies if my attitude seemed a bit snarky or whatnot in my last post, Oni. Seems it was unwarranted towards you. hehe

tell you what. if I start crying we can rent a canoe and gently float down my river of tears to SE HQ and get our collector's edition games signed by Yoshi. <3

[Empyrean]

Dear god, reading through this thread, so may users are just as cancerous as the Bioware or Arenanet fanbases. "NO NO EVERYTHING'S PERFECT EVERYONE WHO CRITICIZES IT IS CLEARLY A TROLL." God I hope you people don't get into the Alpha/Beta. Nothing helps a development process more than constructive criticism, and nothing hurts a development process more than people sticking their heads in the sand and claiming that everything's perfect. Why don't you want them to make the best damn MMO ever? Why are you content with mediocrity. Not only should they have animations for strafing, they should have idle animations, and idle sitting animations, and visible emotes for all emotes while sitting.

[Tyrzea]

I raise both hand for realistic animation in FFXIV: superior graphics is a selling point for me.
Honestly, FFXIV had nothing new to offer besides of the visuals compared to other MMORGs.
Since 2010 start the animation was cut down several times.
Repair animation was cut twice to the point when it doesn't display the repair process at all!
It is getting worse: the excuses for "non-polished alpha" just don't cut - 2010 FFXIV alpha had the same visuals as the production release.
I vote with my $$ for better-than-now FFXIV:ARR.
I will take them somewhere else if I won't enjoy the game: no point of enduring a sloppy design

[yukikaze_yanagi]

I raise both hand for realistic animation in FFXIV: superior graphics is a selling point for me.
Honestly, FFXIV had nothing new to offer besides of the visuals compared to other MMORGs.
Since 2010 start the animation was cut down several times.
Repair animation was cut twice to the point when it doesn't display the repair process at all!
It is getting worse: the excuses for "non-polished alpha" just don't cut - 2010 FFXIV alpha had the same visuals as the production release.
I vote with my $$ for better-than-now FFXIV:ARR.
I will take them somewhere else if I won't enjoy the game: no point of enduring a sloppy design

Oh yeah, superior graphics really worked super in this version

[Meti]

I'd be pretty disappointed if they did end up not having those little detailed animations. Even though at first it made the game feel 'sluggish' to respond, to me (because I was used to unrealistically instant movement and response and such), I really grew to like it. It made the character feel a lot more real than in any other MMO I'd played. Since what I love best in MMOs is roleplaying (not necessarily with others, sometimes just in my head, thinking of what my character is like and what stories might happen to them), this is pretty important to me, and made me be fond of the game all the more, even with all its other flaws.
So yeah... If they really end up making 2.0 feel like every other MMO out there, that'll make me pretty unhappy.