Anyone else notice 'held-back' content?

[Fuzball]

This has been driving me nuts for awhile now... But has anyone else noticed the impossibility of missing airships and other content? It doesn't take a game programmer to realize that if you have the code to run a ferry, you have the code to run an airship.

Programmers don't actually have to hard-code aerodynamics to make it fly ya know... Unless SE hired a really bad code monkey that made a class called FerryToLimsa(), making an airship should take no more than 50 lines and some database bookkeeping

Although the graphic artists might take longer to design the flying boat, it's nearly impossible to not have the ability to implement airships if you can implement boats...

So, why are these things being held back? Is SE planning an 'expansion' which would constitute pay-to-play for us all, releasing it with a big 'bang' of everything we've always wanted--including that pony from Christmas in '94?

I could see the flaw in implementing these improvements slowly after a launch flop, as fan-fare is required to salvage a project like this... But that's the only reason I can come up with for the lack of obvious quick-fix content.

Please tell me that I'm not the only one noticing that the only difference between a ferry and an airship are textures and a 'Wooosh' noise

[Platinumstorm]

Well, considering that the boat ride doesn't seem to be completed, and that there is no use currently for the airship, I can't see them rushing to put it in.

I'd love to have them too.

The boat ride is missing many reference textures so that you actually feel like you're moving; it doesn't have any sort of dynamic to it like FFXI, although it doesn't have to. It would also be very nice to be able to walk onto the boat yourself, rather than getting picked up This actually bugs me a lot.

The airship would need to have air to fly though, and they would need a mapping of the ground below to incorporate it. This also includes reference points.

I really don't expect to have airships until they redo all of the world.

[Leonesaurus]

I think had it not been for all the set backs the game has had over the past 9-10 months (give or take) we would have had many of these now known things a lot sooner than later. I think that's one viable reason they haven't had the time to work on it at all lately. But I hope the do plan on working on them again soon after the battle updates come along with the first dungeons and stuff.

[Cerveau]

Have any of you been checking SE's stock value? Its the lowest its been in three years. They don't have the money to fix anything nevermind 'lately'.

Do yourselves a favor and stop wasting your time.

[DurtiMonkeyToe]

Have any of you been checking SE's stock value? Its the lowest its been in three years. They don't have the money to fix anything nevermind 'lately'.

Do yourselves a favor and stop wasting your time.

We have stopped wasting our time... by not reading your posts.

[Morphemes]

who gives a flip! You're all leveling in GD Thanalan! The Illuminati don't give us airships, our primitive minds couldn't handle the technology... I have more fun running around aimlessly, i think they called it "Adventure".
More important... I swear these boats aren't moving..

[Abraxai]

I think honestly, with this game, they have a lot of back-logged content that either isn't quite finished, or isn't finished in a way that they feel fits their 'vision' for the game. Moreover with the system changes they're doing over the next 2-3 patches it'd be kind of redundant to add something that may later need changing (not saying the airship falls into that category), but equally.. System changes should be made and fixed and flattened out before Square Enix even CONSIDER bloating in all that back logged content. I imagine that's all they're waiting before they add a lot of stuff.

Or is that just being over hopefully optimistic?

[Fuzball]

I think honestly, with this game, they have a lot of back-logged content that either isn't quite finished, or isn't finished in a way that they feel fits their 'vision' for the game.

I like that explanation better than my conspiracy

I still wonder, though, if SE has been setting aside finished content thinking 'this will be released in the final pay-to-play version.' It's kind of like the whole boiling a frog in hot water thing, if we don't notice any instant, dramatic changes to the game, it would be hard to suddenly slap a monthly price tag on the game and not expect to see a drop in players. Although, I think that 1.18 & 1.19 might change that...

If FFXIV can produce content faster than we can play through it, then players will at least pay for the game until they've tried that new content perhaps that's what they're aiming for instead of a gigantic 'boo-ya' patch that starts pay-to-play...

[Abraxai]

I like that explanation better than my conspiracy

I still wonder, though, if SE has been setting aside finished content thinking 'this will be released in the final pay-to-play version.' It's kind of like the whole boiling a frog in hot water thing, if we don't notice any instant, dramatic changes to the game, it would be hard to suddenly slap a monthly price tag on the game and not expect to see a drop in players. Although, I think that 1.18 & 1.19 might change that...

If FFXIV can produce content faster than we can play through it, then players will at least pay for the game until they've tried that new content perhaps that's what they're aiming for instead of a gigantic 'boo-ya' patch that starts pay-to-play...

I agree with all that.

I think along with that the thing a lot of players forget, myself included, is we are a very small community.. The amount of people that play this game currently is still within a 5 figure boundary.. We're only a minuscule percentile of the player base they're aiming for I think so I don't genuinely feel it matters to square as much if they release 100 things a week or 100 things every three months.

[Fuzball]

5 figures?!? Wow! If I remember correctly, the average amount of players logged into a single FFXI server was 5 figures >< And considering that there's probably 5 RTMs named "Dsdfds Asdasd" for every 1 actual player, it's a sad, sad realm we play in

On a side note-- are those people with the face-roll names trying to make gil to sell, or are they leveling characters to sell? I used to think that people who bought FFXI gil were stupid. But if people are actually buying FFXIV gil, then we've reached a new low...