New Letter from the Producer, XII

[Gicker]

A lot of post to read so forgive jumping to the end here, not so much forum time for me.

It seems like they are planning on giving people what they want.

An upgraded classic ffxi version for the hard cores with some nice additions from other systems released since xi and a more casual game play system for casuals and soloers who might come from games like WoW.

I am looking forward to this myself. I have times when I can play all day and times when I'm lucky to get on a few hours a week. So being able to jump in full blast with real party play and being to to accomplish something in just a few hours will be awesome.

Guys, I have been rather morbid at times about the community. It's been a rocky start not just for the game but for the community. But I am starting to have a lot more faith in people again. I can see people being more reasonable now by and large, or what I perceive as such. I have full faith that both the end product will be what we wanted from the beginning and that SE will get us there, with our vital input along the way. SE may not have a great history with it's players, but what they are showing now has indeed restored at least my faith in the game. And what I'm seeing from the community lately has restored my faith in it's playerbase as well.

And at the end of the day, if I do ever get tired of the rage trolling, all I need to do is log into the game, because in game, things are very friendly and people seem to get along better than almost any other mmo community I've ever seen. Such a stark contrast with the forums sometimes, but c'est la vie. It stands a testimony for us, that no matter how we express our frustrations on the forums, this game will succeed from both a development and community standpoint.

Cheers to you!

[Gicker]

Well do you guys want to be old men who try to relive their lost high school glory days or people who live every day to the fullest? Move on and have fun.

[Nuru]

Doesn't matter if they increase the level cap or not. In some way or another, your gear is going to become obsolete, and if it doesn't, then getting the new gear wouldn't be worth it. This would destroy all hopes for new content and so on..

That's just how MMORPGs will evolve and expand. Its really just the only way it is going to happen. Whether its just better gear, more content, or level cap raise. They all tie into one another. There is no denying that.

[kukurumei]

Doesn't matter if they increase the level cap or not. In some way or another, your gear is going to become obsolete, and if it doesn't, then getting the new gear wouldn't be worth it. This would destroy all hopes for new content and so on..

That's just how MMORPGs will evolve and expand. Its really just the only way it is going to happen. Whether its just better gear, more content, or level cap raise. They all tie into one another. There is no denying that.

Yea... there's one thing FF11 did well, it was very durable in having players repeat content. It was very elegant in execution.

Another stake in why FF14 is having problems. It just wasn't thought out very well to work with low amounts of content.

[Jynx]

I personally have no issues with large quanitites of gear becoming obsolete overnight, as long as it's well paced out. Don't pull a WoW and crush everyones great gear withing a month of them gaining it.

[ShinChuck]

I just can't get into these letters, they're far too vague and unnecessarily padded. They sound good, but it's just a bit too flowery to me, very political. You know, list a bunch of nice sounding but nebulous ideas and changes, and the people hear what they want to hear.

For example, I see people cheering for quest based leveling as if it's confirmed, and while I would love for that to come to fruition, all we know is that "sidequests" will yield skill points, and we're getting an undefined "large volume" of quests in an undefined timeframe in an undefined set of patches. Again, I'd love for quest based leveling over repeating the same dull leves over and over, it's just hard for me to get excited over such ambiguous phrasing and details.

That whole thing basically says that they're rebalancing guildleve difficulty/rewards and goals, adding more quests, and doing minor interface tweaks - most of which are for "a later patch". There's also unexplained ideas like "special levequests" and the usual vague wording like "adjustments", which pops up multiple times usually without explaining exactly what sort of adjustment will take place, or "changes", which tells us nothing but an intention "to make different".

Then there's the timeframe, which seems to fall under only two categories, "coming in 1.18" or "coming sometime in the future". I just can't get excited about all these announcements for things that could be way down the pipe.

My only hope here is that it's translator errors, and that the original Japanese letters are more specific.


Anyway, to go off on a tangent, please stop asking us to "wait a little longer". It's been ten months. Far better games have been both overhauled completely and created in that timeframe, and the mantra the whole time has been "wait a little longer". It just starts to come off a little insulting after a while.

[Jynx]

Question: If your fed up with waiting...why are you still waiting? It's a simple question.

I have no issue with waiting, it does me no harm in waiting for the game to amp up. I understand if people are "Fed up" with waiting, but what I don't understand is why people continue to complain about waiting when there is nothing to tie them down to the game at all.

I understand it's not good for the game if people start leaving by the boat loads, but you are sending the strongest message that you are done "Waiting" when you quit and leave. Standing around and complaining about waiting just proves to them your still waiting...despite the complaints.

Not trying to white knight or anything, I just get confused with all the doom-gloomers being unimpressed and still obviously holding on to some shred of hope instead of walking away.

[ShinChuck]

Question: If your fed up with waiting...why are you still waiting? It's a simple question.

I have no issue with waiting, it does me no harm in waiting for the game to amp up. I understand if people are "Fed up" with waiting, but what I don't understand is why people continue to complain about waiting when there is nothing to tie them down to the game at all.

I understand it's not good for the game if people start leaving by the boat loads, but you are sending the strongest message that you are done "Waiting" when you quit and leave. Standing around and complaining about waiting just proves to them your still waiting...despite the complaints.

Not trying to white knight or anything, I just get confused with all the doom-gloomers being unimpressed and still obviously holding on to some shred of hope instead of walking away.

Had a bigger post, decided it was too rambly!

Shorter answer: I disagree with the basis of that question. Whether or not I'm "fed up" with waiting, that doesn't mean it's any less cheeky or mocking for SE to use the tagline "But wait longer!" for every single producer letter and update we get, which was my point. Whether or not I walk away, I'm still in some respects "waiting" for something if it never gets delivered, even if I'm not actively sitting there pining for it.

It takes me virtually no time and zero cost to check the forums or occasionally pop on to XIV (which is also still free, another important point here), and making opinions known is, I believe, a stronger message than just disappearing and leaving SE without any feedback on updates. It's basically no loss for me, and I get to make my thoughts known in a manner that will hopefully lead to a more enjoyable game.

What's wrong with having hope? I think everyone here has hope, and I certainly wouldn't want to chase off any players who still have it.

[Jynx]

blurb

Fair enough

[Zenaku]

Wait so he think party play is not for ffxiv wtf? ok yoshi-p i love to party playing by myself level up is boring i get sick of it within 30-1hour vs Finding people take about 30-1hour then play for 1-4hours level up.

I hope you still working on something for party just fix the dam SP from mobs and allow us to do camps like in ffxi so players like us can do it and let the casual do the soloing.