No Letter from the Producer XI ?

[Firon]

lol this is a joke the patch is supposed to be this month and its the 10th and still no info? does it really take days n days to write a letter? no it doesnt...even if its just minimal info....no wait its almost halfway through the month....they should have MASSIVE amounts of info on this patch if its coming out end of this month....i think yoshi broke both his hands and has a pencil in his mouth trying to write the next letter and its taking forever to get the scribbles right.

Now you say even minimum info if he did that all of you info crazy people would start ranting.

[PikachuLink]

we're already ranting man ...... this is bs

[SHJcules]

oh Yoshi-P, look what you have turned us into

we pick at the grubs from our beards, as we wait for you to feed us scraps

[Bethor]

I don't care when the patch actually comes =x If they add Dungeons and stuff, it might be great. But mixed up with an unfinished battle improvement patch and even w/o the job adjustments the Dungeons going to be worthless, kinda.

Maybe it's a nice change for intbetween but all in all they should work on the jobs and battle mechanis before adding new content imo =x heck..

And I think my hopes died for the individual key bindings for my keyboard, eh? Arrows Keys & camera prz ;_;

[Trovyria]

Just checking the last few letters, this has been the longest wait inbetween letters when it's probably the most important time in the game's brief history. This summer is the period that will make or break it, if it still only has ~800 people per server when fall game season rolls around, it's pretty much done on a commercial level. This is the time to be giving content sneak peeks like candy. Here's our job system, here's our new dungeons, here's what we're doing to the battle system in detail, here's how we plan to address mounts and the timeframe, here's our plans for future content, etc. Just because they want to fix the battle system first is no reason to completely ignore every other aspect of the game.

Not to mention I don't buy the excuse of not adding content until the battle system is fixed. There are pleanty of games, RPGs especially, that have carried bad combat systems with amazing story and complelling content. If people like your content and story enough they'll play it no matter how horrid the battle system. Yet, no matter how great a battle system you have, no one will continue to play an empty game. There is no reason content and battle fixes can't be worked on at the same time. Your artists and content designers shouldn't also be your combat coders. If they are... there is a huge problem anyway. In reality, our brand "new" battle system is likely to be auto-attack instead of button spam, with the skills on some kind of point system instead of stamina. I would love to be wrong, but I'd about bet on it, and there's really nothing wrong with that as a system. Where the problem occurs is having a game that since launch over half a year ago has recieved little to no content. RIFT, a game that came out in March, will have had 3 major content patches by the time we get basic combat systems. RIFT is the indy game studio here, not Square Enix. They should have pleanty of money and manpower to equal if not surpass what any other MMO can do content production wise. If they truly can't make it as fast, then it's time to bring in a bunch of people. Because there is a timeline to restoring this game, and it's coming up pretty soon.

[Jennestia]

Not to mention I don't buy the excuse of not adding content until the battle system is fixed. There are pleanty of games, RPGs especially, that have carried bad combat systems with amazing story and complelling content.

Too bad I can guarantee you're:

A. Talking about offline games
B. Ignoring how jaded, fickle and stubborn MMORPG gamers are these days
C. Forgetting that in order to create one thing, another must exist. i.e FFXIV's foundation and cornerstone is the Battle System, if that's in the process of reworking you can't build ontop of it or it's wasted time, just like you can build a house without a foundation but I can guarantee it will collapse on itself.

Also --

RIFT, a game that came out in March, will have had 3 major content patches by the time we get basic combat systems

When you people do comparisons to FFXIV, at least realize that:

A. One game wasn't rushed out the door
B. One game isn't going through an overhaul of various systems (this fact can't be ignored as much as some people want to try to because it kills their cynical argument.)

Rift in particular is nothing new and it blatantly banked on being a WoW "Clone", which most MMOs that are, only needs to change the storyline because the MMO is already made for them, this is what we call a Template. FFXIV tried to be different, even from it's previous FF MMO and it got rushed out the door to try to show they have something inline for 2010/2011 and to beat out cataclysm, which was a bad decision on Wada's part. Now we're in the process of waiting for stuff that should have been done during development, especially if the game was held off till around now before releasing.

[Chrees]

There is no reason content and battle fixes can't be worked on at the same time. Your artists and content designers shouldn't also be your combat coders. If they are... there is a huge problem anyway.

They're not the same teams, and they are working on content at the same time. You'd know this if you actually read the letters instead of being nitpicky about how many days have passed since the last one. The battle changes need to come before the content so that the content can be fully enjoyed. However, this doesn't mean that there has to be a huge gap between the two as you suggest. I'm sorry you missed the memo about there being new dungeons/raids being released along with the first battle changes, and how Ishgard, for example, will become available sometime after the battle changes as well.

[Betelgeuzah]

Before Rift came out, we didn't hear too much about it for years. Why is this?

Because Rift developers were designing and developing the basic gameplay systems and architechture. Once that was done, surprise surprise- they started to be a lot more open about the game, and could implement new content and fixes on top of the foundation in place more quickly and efficiently.

Guess what SE is doing as we speak? Something that every other developer does when the game is tightly under wraps. The service is live, the game was already released, but that doesn't matter. It's not the reason why developers are so tight-lipped. It's because the game they are working on is not in a state it can be revealed in.

Everyone here is confused simply because yes, the service is up and running. No one has ever done it this way, because nobody has had the money nor an IP they feel needs to be saved at all costs. SE is different, and FF is different.

It's no more complex than that.

[Firon]

Before Rift came out, we didn't hear too much about it for years. Why is this?

Because Rift developers were designing and developing the basic gameplay systems and architechture. Once that was done, surprise surprise- they started to be a lot more open about the game, and could implement new content and fixes on top of the foundation in place more quickly and efficiently.

Guess what SE is doing as we speak? Something that every other developer does when the game is tightly under wraps. The service is live, the game was already released, but that doesn't matter. It's not the reason why developers are so tight-lipped. It's because the game they are working on is not in a state it can be revealed in.

Everyone here is confused simply because yes, the service is up and running. No one has ever done it this way, because nobody has had the money nor a game they feel needs to be saved at all costs. SE is different, and FF is different.

It's no more complex than that.

Betelgeuzah I usually always agree what you say but i think you are wasting time typing out why they cant say anything everyone thinks they know the dev procedure all we know most dev's wont say anything until the higher ups give the OK.

[Betelgeuzah]

Oh I'm not talking about their silence here, although that was understandable too- up until a certain point. There's no reason to not talk about the changes this close to their implementation.

I was talking about the over-all development of the game so far.