Letter from the Producer LIVE Part X: Will the netcode issue be honestly addressed?

[Alcyon_Densetsu]

I have updated the OP to reflect the loose organisation of discussion we've empirically achieved on the netcode issue.

Thread: Sorry SE, but endgame won't work if you don't fix something.
(1,601 replies • 133,806 views) → Early feedback

Thread: .3 Second Positional Update Delay (Requesting Dev Response)
(487 replies • 30,795 views) → More specific feedback

Thread: Why the netcode issue exists, and why it cannot be fixed.
(95 replies • 6,889 views) → Technical considerations

Thread: Letter from the Producer LIVE Part X: Will the netcode issue be honestly addressed?
(80 replies • 5,657 views) → Communication considerations

[Alcyon_Densetsu]

The worst part about this, is that even if this game had a ton of excellent endgame, satisfying and fairly balanced pvp, perfect class balance in pve, 15 more well designed dungeons, and the housing and vanity slots stuff goes off without a hitch and is excellent, this problem will ALWAYS be lurking in the background, gnawing at people. If they don't fix this or address it in some manner, they are GOING to lose a lot of customers and credibility, pretty much regardless of anything else they do or don't do. ESPECIALLY if this issue causes people to get hit by stuff in pvp that they shouldn't be, that will raise a TON of hackles.

I totally agree with this. It's a fair sum up of the problem.

And it's exactly why they're going to be extra-extra-cautious when wording anything about it. That said, SE's not particularly known to be quick at responding to feedback or criticism, especially when it's founded on very real considerations; and somehow I can't help but think it has to do with this company's internal management (culture, practice, higher-ups mentality). Whatever Yoshi-P thinks about it, I'm not sure his hands (or rather, mouth) are free in this matter.

Which is why I'm not quite sure we'll hear anything before some time, probably not in 2013, possibly not before they have a working solution already well advanced in the pipes. If Sinth's estimations are correct, that might not be late into 2014, provided they start working on it right now (or already are).

[Billie21]

The worst part about this, is that even if this game had a ton of excellent endgame, satisfying and fairly balanced pvp, perfect class balance in pve, 15 more well designed dungeons, and the housing and vanity slots stuff goes off without a hitch and is excellent, this problem will ALWAYS be lurking in the background, gnawing at people. If they don't fix this or address it in some manner, they are GOING to lose a lot of customers and credibility, pretty much regardless of anything else they do or don't do. ESPECIALLY if this issue causes people to get hit by stuff in pvp that they shouldn't be, that will raise a TON of hackles.

This issue is literally the only technical issue I can think of that can cause people to quit. Sure people cry about overcrowding, lag, and a host of technical issue in other MMORPGs, but it's rare for people to actually quit over that. Almost invariably people quit over gameplay stuff, but the lag in FF14 is so bad that it can actually trump gameplay elements.

THAT is exactly the reason why I am SO mad when it comes down to this specific issue.
Honestly, I find the game FAR from perfect. There are so many things that would be improved, that are subpar with what can be found on the market.
Still, there are things that are so AWESOME that I could honestly ignore these issues or design errors, really.

But THIS specific issue is litterally game-breaking. And it's all the more frustrating that there is an awesome game that you would like to enjoy, really, but just can't.
As said above, you can add a tons of great features, you can have the perfect, most entertaining game in the world, it's all pointless if the players just can't play it.

As much as I have seen flaws in this game from day one, the ONLY thing that has led me to even consider quiting is this specific problem.

[Alcyon_Densetsu]

THAT is exactly the reason why I am SO mad when it comes down to this specific issue.
Honestly, I find the game FAR from perfect. There are so many things that would be improved, that are subpar with what can be found on the market.
Still, there are things that are so AWESOME that I could honestly ignore these issues or design errors, really.

But THIS specific issue is litterally game-breaking. And it's all the more frustrating that there is an awesome game that you would like to enjoy, really, but just can't.
As said above, you can add a tons of great features, you can have the perfect, most entertaining game in the world, it's all pointless if the players just can't play it.

As much as I have seen flaws in this game from day one, the ONLY thing that has led me to even consider quiting is this specific problem.

My thoughts exactly. Quoted/bolded for truth.

[xanj]

bumped
/10char

[Sunarie]

Can you stop writing my thoughts? (lol)

So yeah, clearly we feel the same way about this. However are you ready to pay for months, even a year, until they revamp the whole architecture?

I mean, even if they did acknowledge the issue and publicly committed to shift the millions…I don't know. If they said that, I'd probably keep an interest for the game, and come back to check on patches, but probably not more than a month each time, just to experience the content not impacted by the bad netcode. Things like housing, etc. That would give them 2, maybe three months (should 2.3 come before the fix) from me until it's fixed.

Snipped that quote from another thread (the dodge one) just so I wasn't bumping it and keeping the discussion the ones currently open. Sorry for any confusion x.x

Anyway, I don't know how long I'm willing to pay at this point. A lot of my fun comes from playing with friends and those in the community I am in. So as long as they're all playing, I'm likely to stick around as I don't really get the issue that badly. I haven't ran into anything yet that was completely unavoidable for me and I can live with that.

That being said, a few of our FC get the issue a lot worse, to where they literally cannot complete Titan because they die to plumes. These are people that have raided in every other MMO, and while not completely flawless (no one is), certainly were able to get through encounters a large majority of the time. They are likely to quit well before I normally would, and if I run out of people to play with I may well migrate to the next game along with them. So I'm not sure SE making an announcement that they working on it will fix that if the fix is going to take a really long time. It would make me feel better, and would cause me to actually check back on the game more often though. If I leave and they haven't so much as acknowledged there's an issue, then I'll probably just end up leaving and not looking back.

Star Citizen is one my guild is interested in, though not me personally. They're also looking at Wildstar and ESO. We're a large multi-gaming community, so no doubt there are options for me regardless of my interests.. but I really wanted to stick with this one, as many others did as well.

[Alcyon_Densetsu]

Snipped that quote from another thread (the dodge one) just so I wasn't bumping it and keeping the discussion the ones currently open. Sorry for any confusion x.x

Haha don't be, no problem for me on the contrary it's keeping things neat, I like it.

(hidden to keep things on topic)

As for the rest of your post, I am in a situation somewhat comparable. I usually play games that I personally like, but the ones I stick to are those where I can play with friends (not necessarily RL friends, but friendly individuals that I like). My FC (60+ people) is the result of a pretty massive achievement that I was so glad we could pull off with my best friend: we literally gathered pretty much everyone that we knew and was playing MMORPG's currently, and made it so there was no restriction whatsoever to join so people could invite their friends ("+1's" as we say IRL when your invitation allows you to bring a friend to a party). +1's, +2's… the thing got somewhat much bigger than we expected (we didn't do any traditional 'recruitment' in-game to gather 60+ people, it's all 'friends of friends'). It's just sooo great in and out of itself ^.^ We simply let people self-organise, so that hardcores are running Coil and helping others do Titan, whereas the more casual crowd is simply enjoying the game at their pace (we ran tons of low-level dungeons so that people only resort to using DF as rarely as possible; not that we're against DF but it's just nicer/funnier to play with friends, obviously).

Regardless of how much they play (which has more to do with RL than IG considerations), we have two kinds of players: die-hard FF fans, some of whom were still in FFXI until early 2013; and all-around MMO'ers/gamers obviously more likely to hop from a game to the next. I don't think I need to tell you which of these two kinds is starting to leave the game, be it to clear their GTA V, enjoy their PS4 and whatnots. I belong to this latter group (never played XI as I was leading in or exploring other games, and I tried pretty a good deal of the AAA MMO's released since the last decade, though these last years I didn't play a lot since I took back uni courses besides work). I'm feel quite sorry leaving this great gathering, I really wish it were otherwise. But I'm already thinking of the next step, organising our foray into ESO most likely (not really hyped up by Wildstar personally), and obviously SC (though I know this game is quite specific a genre and won't cater to many players, it being a sandbox horizontal progression MMO based entirely on skill). But I'm a sci-fi fan so I just can't pass on this incredible occasion to ride a spaceship >_> … haha

I'm feeling we're kinda off topic here, it would have been better to discuss all of this via pm or something but since we can't, well, I just wanted to respond.

________
ON TOPIC

About 4 days until the Letter from the Producer LIVE Part X.

Will SE address the netcode issue?
Probably not, for all the reasons we’ve touched in these threads. Too big an issue, too slow a publisher; that we get an answer or even an acknowledgement is simply… too unlikely.

But we’ll see!

[ArcyEvil]

That said, SE's not particularly known to be quick at responding to feedback or criticism, especially when it's founded on very real considerations; and somehow I can't help but think it has to do with this company's internal management (culture, practice, higher-ups mentality). Whatever Yoshi-P thinks about it, I'm not sure his hands (or rather, mouth) are free in this matter.

.

Thats the problem with them i think, culture and higher-ups mentality. They wont answer to no1 coz it will do scratch on their perfect image and perfect honour, they consider that this problem dont exist as long as they will not mention about that. They taking us for complete idiots and inferior to them coz we too dumb for "zoom out".
Its shame coz i rly like this game, but i dislike the way they handling things.

[Phe]

I hope the issue will be adressed in the live letter.

[Wisdomcube]

As others have said, this particular issue is the only reason I might quit.

The -only- reason.

Kind of amazing that there hasn't been some kind of response or acknowledgement from SE considering this topic is easily the most popular on the english forums.