Should SE be a little more transparent?

[Nephera]

ho hum.



on one hand : I can appreciate when Devs surprise their players with new content and systems

on the other hand: the game is in a state right now we're not really big on surprises



On one hand: Yoshida is definately being more transparent than his predecessors in square and i understand that a lot of information isnt being handed out because nothing is set in stone yet

On the other: While he's surpassing his predecessors he's still far behind his peers if you look at other games community pages and developer blogs (Lotro,AOC,Champions online etc etc.) where they'll have fairly detailed overviews of upcoming features a month or two in advance, sometimes several.

edit:

in the end: I'd like him to give more information out earlier, but if its going to end up being untrue because the feature wasnt planned out completely then whats the point.

[Seif]

I think at least time estimates for the "big changes" would mean a lot to a majority of people.

Sometimes I think there are no big changes in the works because there's literally nothing to look forward to as all the changes are a complete mystery. Even companies page that was supposed to reveal "all about it" revealed in fact nothing.

Are they stringing us along or is there really a "complete overhaul" and "rebuild" coming as hyped by Naoki or are these just buzzwords that in reality just mean slight balancing and endless tweaks?

I quit playing recently as I ran out of hope because of this issue. (you have to give me some credit for cheering this game for 6 months though)

[Betelgeuzah]

I think at least time estimates for the "big changes" would mean a lot to a majority of people.

Spring for the first big change. That limits the implementation of the patch to quite a small timeframe. I don't think they can do better than that at this point. Sure, they might have a set date, but with 95% probability that is going to change.

[Abriael]

Right now, SE is more Transparent then most MMO Developers to be honest.

This.

And yes, this thread is a joke. Someone is seriously overestimating his importance and feedback if he thinks that SE needs to tell us every single detail not to "run this game further into the ground because we didn't warn them before it was too late!"

Seriously, get a grip on reality

I think at least time estimates for the "big changes" would mean a lot to a majority of people.

this is an overwhelmingly silly request. Game development is not an exact science, and no game developer that works with any decent professionality gives timeframes or dates for the release of patches before everything is finalyzed, because testing times cannot be properly estimated.

Otherwise you end up doing like Creative Assembly with Shogun 2. They released their game without a publicized feature (Dx 10+ and antialiasing) without even warning their customer. And after release they promised that it'd come in a patch in "2-4 weeks". Then the 4 weeks passed, and they had to announce it would be delayed a further month, causing justified rage aplenty.

In game development you don't make promises you're not sure you can keep. That's a golden rule.

[Evangela]

I'm sure they don't want anyone can see them sleeping on the desk

[gifthorse]

Then why are we here, Abs?

[Mack]

By the way, I apologise in advance if this thread seems ungrateful. In fact, I do think SE has made attempts at transparency, but it still seems inadequate. They have told us how they intend to change the armory system (either by adding traditional jobs as specialisations to existing classes or adding advanced classes), but they haven't told us how they intend to change the battle system nor what companies are. And considering that they are implementing the last two very shortly, we as players might have already lost our chance to provide feedback on the idea. If the idea was something everyone hated, for example, we could have said so and spared them to formality of actually developing it.

While I am all for surprises, perhaps it's in SE's best interest to run some things by the players first to see if it's something people actually want. Nobody likes bad surprises.

I mean, what if Grand Companies turn out to be another rendition of Guildleves, for example? Or what if the new combat system reverts back into the tedious "combat" (and I use that term loosely) that was FFXI?

What if they run this game further into the ground because we didn't warn them before it was too late!?

At least they gave us a vague idea of what to expect in regards to changes to the Armory System. All I know about Companies is that they aren't player-run anymore, and all I know about combat is that it involves auto-attack. Perhaps we should know more than this so we can direct our efforts into making suggestions for things the development team are actually working on.

After all, I am getting sick of hearing the same comment everytime I make a suggestion: "well it's not a priority so they can't add that into the game until after they get companies and combat out of the way" when companies and combat are not things we can even begin to discussing, having no material to work with.

Companies have probably been in the works for a while now I don't think our opinion of them new or two or four or even 6 weeks ago would've mattered much.

[zaviermhigo]

I just don't understand how they think if they ever gave us real information they'd spoil us. Just because I know the lore and crap beforehand, and how it functions, doesn't mean its spoiled, instead you just make us ignorant about the content, when we go to tell anyone about whats happening in this game we give them vague information....honestly word of mouth is a better advertising ploy than Square Enix obviously thinks.

[Betelgeuzah]

I just don't understand how they think if they ever gave us real information they'd spoil us.

"Hey guys!! We are planning amazing things! For one, direction and position affect combat! Secondly, different mage jobs have different aspects they specialize in, like frontal cone or AoE spells! In addition, Marauder can make attacks AoE at will and Pugilist can choose between offensive and defensive stance!!!1 I hope you look forward to everything!!!"

Yeah... if you think they can't spoil us with concepts that never come to fruition, you're wrong!

There's a reason why specs and costs need to be decided and implementation to have been going for a good while before they can be sure that the features are going to work as intended and thus they can tell us about it.

[Jynx]

I wont stop my crusade for information until I have Yoshi-P twittering when he is going to sleep, waking up, and going on a bathroom break.

Otherwise how can I keep track of his progress!?

Sarcasm aside, SE is being pretty transparent as far as MMO companies go, and especially as far as Square Enix is known to be. Hell I remember in XI they would do updates and it was up to us to make sense of the sometimes poorly translated cliff-notes they left us with.

"Fields of Valor is now available guys...have fun figuring it out!"