The Letter is up

[Sephr]

I really am tired of all the negativity generated towards this game, but I myself am starting to get tired and concerned. I don't mean to be a debbie downer, but I'm feeling disheartened... 3 months waiting, now two more weeks, with only one dungeon completed? Does this mean we will only have 2 dungeons? How long will they even be fun for? I can imagine these adjustments will be great when we first log on - looking forward to the battle changes myself - and the dungeons will be good for a week or two. But after that, it's just the same again, and how much longer will we be waiting for content and basic changes? Everyone tells me 'it's a good start' and 'the right direction' and I agree but it's been so long now... Not that far off a year. How long is unacceptable to get the game to a basic level? Why does it take so much longer than other game developers? I wish they could just outright tell us why this is taking so long. I'm desperately hoping these dungeons are more than just grinding through walls of monsters. I'm seriously hoping these battle adjustments make normal partying a viable option.

To end on a positive note I do really like the look of these battle changes and the game sorely needs some tactics, which it looks like this will generate!

Sorry Debbie, but he said from the start it would only be 2 dungeons this update.

But yeah, we're hardly moving at a great pace, but that's the way it is.

[Azurymber]

if these dungeons are anything less than dynamis-level i will consider them a failure. Dynamis was like the bare minimum of FFXI instances and they were pretty well designed and fun. If this turns out to be like a moblin maze mongers "run through and kill stuff" and then a boss, i will be really dissapoint.

[Spellbinder]

if these dungeons are anything less than dynamis-level i will consider them a failure. Dynamis was like the bare minimum of FFXI instances and they were pretty well designed and fun. If this turns out to be like a moblin maze mongers "run through and kill stuff" and then a boss, i will be really dissapoint.

I'm not trying to be negative, but setting high standards is the first step to disappointment.

[Elkwood]

Come On Guys Seriously what is with all the Hate today. This is by far the biggest update in the history of the game and still a vast majority of what I read on these forums is people whining that it is not enough. If you guys knew anything about programming then you would know redesigning game mechanics and animations is a HUGE update, due to the amount of time and effort it takes to capture the animations, have the graphic designers touch them up, do the 3-D effects, implement the effects into the game, design the new weaponskill animations, implement those into the game, then test said changes to ensure nothing else was jacked up during the update. You have no idea on a program this big just exactly how much time and effort this takes, it is not a simple create graphic and insert here thing to do.

This is the same principal of auto attack, when you remove something as massive as manual attack and then add the algorithms and calculations for auto attack there is a very good chance that a vast majority of the game was jacked up and needed to be debugged before that video could even be shown.

2 weeks to wait for the patch is really not that bad of a delay and he gave us a lot of good information in that small letter.

Confirmed for 1.18

2 Endgame Dungeons
Auto Attack
Proper Enmity Calculations
New Weaponskill Animations
Active/Passive Mode switch while Moving
Stamina Gauge Gone

Then he added there is still more to come on top of that, so again why all the hate because truly this is shaping up to be one hellva patch just on what he confirmed today not including other things to be added into the patch. 1.18/1.19 are going to be fantastic patches of hopefully many more fantastic patches, and this is the first true update from the new development team so i would think a little more gratitude would be in order.

Has it been a long trying wait, yeah it has, is it annoying yeah it is, but good things come to those who wait and after today's letter i am glad I waited.

[Kailea_Nagisa]

People over hyped this patch way to much, do people honestly not get what they had to do here just to add auto attack?

Most if not all of the algorithms and code for battle had to be rewritten.

[CrstyCaptin]

Come On Guys Seriously what is with all the Hate today. This is by far the biggest update in the history of the game and still a vast majority of what I read on these forums is people whining that it is not enough. If you guys knew anything about programming then you would know redesigning game mechanics and animations is a HUGE update, due to the amount of time and effort it takes to capture the animations, have the graphic designers touch them up, do the 3-D effects, implement the effects into the game, design the new weaponskill animations, implement those into the game, then test said changes to ensure nothing else was jacked up during the update. You have no idea on a program this big just exactly how much time and effort this takes, it is not a simple create graphic and insert here thing to do.

This is the same principal of auto attack, when you remove something as massive as manual attack and then add the algorithms and calculations for auto attack there is a very good chance that a vast majority of the game was jacked up and needed to be debugged before that video could even be shown.

2 weeks to wait for the patch is really not that bad of a delay and he gave us a lot of good information in that small letter.

Confirmed for 1.18

2 Endgame Dungeons
Auto Attack
Proper Enmity Calculations
New Weaponskill Animations
Active/Passive Mode switch while Moving
Stamina Gauge Gone

Then he added there is still more to come on top of that, so again why all the hate because truly this is shaping up to be one hellva patch just on what he confirmed today not including other things to be added into the patch. 1.18/1.19 are going to be fantastic patches of hopefully many more fantastic patches, and this is the first true update from the new development team so i would think a little more gratitude would be in order.

Has it been a long trying wait, yeah it has, is it annoying yeah it is, but good things come to those who wait and after today's letter i am glad I waited.

I think mine, and a lot of others beef, is what do you see this patch all about? Battle related system/overhauls? Ok, we need that desperately, but do you remember when we were told that we were to get major updates from time to time while also getting smaller ones on weekly intervals? Do you remember the talk about 'multiple teams working on different aspects of the game'? So far all we've heard is talk about the battle system, which again is a huge issue. What about the server latency issues? Crafting recipes? In-game bugs? The list goes on, but why no mention of these issues being addressed?

As far as I'm concerned push back your patch another month or two if you really need the time to get it right, but patch in some stuff for the other aspects of the game. While I admit that the game does revolve around combat there are other aspects that could be addressed to keep people interested/provide feedback. Waiting two months for an 'epic patch' which won't be epic isn't the way to go. I just don't understand why this battle patch has to be the first thing to come out. It's like their 'battle team' actually works on every aspect of the game. How cool would it be to have 8 slots to trade stuff instead of 4? Little stuff like this would keep me happy in between your 'game changing' patches. I'm sure others would feel the same.

[Procas]

Yup, new Weapon Skills. I'm excited to see they still have some awesome creativity up their sleeves.

Prolly those new ws are in fact a small show of "new jobs"

[Elkwood]

I think mine, and a lot of others beef, is what do you see this patch all about? Battle related system/overhauls? Ok, we need that desperately, but do you remember when we were told that we were to get major updates from time to time while also getting smaller ones on weekly intervals? Do you remember the talk about 'multiple teams working on different aspects of the game'? So far all we've heard is talk about the battle system, which again is a huge issue. What about the server latency issues? Crafting recipes? In-game bugs? The list goes on, but why no mention of these issues being addressed?

As far as I'm concerned push back your patch another month or two if you really need the time to get it right, but patch in some stuff for the other aspects of the game. While I admit that the game does revolve around combat there are other aspects that could be addressed to keep people interested/provide feedback. Waiting two months for an 'epic patch' which won't be epic isn't the way to go. I just don't understand why this battle patch has to be the first thing to come out. It's like their 'battle team' actually works on every aspect of the game. How cool would it be to have 8 slots to trade stuff instead of 4? Little stuff like this would keep me happy in between your 'game changing' patches. I'm sure others would feel the same.

As far as we know some of that stuff may actually be in this patch we don't know yet. As far as the content issue of things goes from a development standpoint, there is a crapload of content ready to be implemented we know this from Tanaka, Yoshi has said he refuses to implement content until the battle content is completed and working, which makes sense because there would be even more things to fix if he did this.

From what i can see as frustrating as it is, the wait is almost over and we can expect a lot of good things from this team once 1.18/1.19 are out and the battle system is done.

[normalforce]

Come On Guys Seriously what is with all the Hate today. This is by far the biggest update in the history of the game and still a vast majority of what I read on these forums is people whining that it is not enough. If you guys knew anything about programming then you would know redesigning game mechanics and animations is a HUGE update, due to the amount of time and effort it takes to capture the animations, have the graphic designers touch them up, do the 3-D effects, implement the effects into the game, design the new weaponskill animations, implement those into the game, then test said changes to ensure nothing else was jacked up during the update. You have no idea on a program this big just exactly how much time and effort this takes, it is not a simple create graphic and insert here thing to do.

...

Has it been a long trying wait, yeah it has, is it annoying yeah it is, but good things come to those who wait and after today's letter i am glad I waited.

Thank you, +∞ to this! I feel the same way.

[Anty]

Well, I'm both impressed and disappointed...

On the one hand, it looks like they've modified weaponskills to make tham look better, more unique, and more fantasyesque, that's much more like it.

On the other hand, the speed of auto-attack seems about as fast as what we had in FFXI, and weren't we told that it would be faster than that? In addition, it didn't show how the update would affect archer. (aka the class that will be the most affected by AA)

Still, looks like the next update will be something to look forward to.

true, but on the other hand you have skills with timers, so you won't be seeing your character doin the normal attack that often i might think, thats why they did the ablilites, the autoattack is just the placeholder. Could be a lil faster but all in all looks pretty good to me.

And they are also stating that they have plans for more hits with autoattack. So that might give us the more speedy looks then. That might be enough for the feeling.

Oh.. and i love the new animations, me as mage just hope for epic spells as well