PLEASE Learn from your mistakes......

[Azurymber]

I don't mean to be negative or anything but to me it seems like SE is still making the exact same mistakes since this game was released. So rather than rant, I'm going to write out a point by point "final fantasy history" to demonstrate all the places SE has gone wrong. Feel free to skip the list and go straight to the argument at the bottom.

• Prior to the release of the game, SE allows speculation of surplus to go wild. As such people are already complaining non stop about how the game will be horrible. Rather than release a statement explaining surplus in detail. Tanaka lashes out accusing foreign sites of being full of false rumors and fabricated remarks.
  Lesson: COMMUNICATE. Don't leave things up in the air to be speculated on. Post exactly what you have done and if you intent to change it or not.
  
• During open beta people think the game essentially sucks. Countless people speculate that no one would release a game that bad and that release would come with a bunch more zones unlocked, Ishgard open, serious server improvements, etc. Obviously not true since the release was essentially a carbon copy of open beta.
  Lesson: COMMUNICATE. Don't let speculation go wild even if it makes you profit. So many people had purchased the game thinking the open beta was just part of the game and were extremely disappointed. Honesty would have avoided a lot of rage.
  
• Most people hate the initial battle system so SE -rushes- to change it. As a result we get Coblyn grinding. Archers can literally rank to 50 by 1 or 2 shotting coblyns with multishot. Every other mob in the game becomes pointless to solo on because they can't compare to coblyns, and parties become completely pointless.
  Lesson: DON'T RUSH. If they would have taken their time redesigning the battle system the game might have been a lot better. But instead they rushed out a broken system and left it for months causing many to quit.
  
• SE implements quests... sadly they stick a bunch of the "quest" mobs that agro right where gathering leves are, ruining a number of gathering leves. Quests are also rushed out and seem outdated compared to the ffxi quests that were out over 8 years ago.
  Lesson: Don't rush.... seriously quantity does not mean quality. There was no need to have nearly identical quests in each city (ex. go kill 6 marmots). Unique quests that continue along a storyline with moving stories and memorable characters is what makes a game. Running for 2 hours to kill mobs for 30 seconds or talk to someone for 3 lines, all for 3000gil when many people have over 50mil gil, is not competitive in today's world of MMOs.
  
• SE Replaces coblyn grinding with a leve link system. Sadly they openly allow people to exploit the system by failing leves, resulting in tons of people getting multiple jobs to 50 rapidly. As a result there is absolutely no reason to solo or party outside of leve link parties.
  Lesson: DON'T RUSH... again, rather than release a broken weighted system SE should have just taken the extra month and balanced out mob SP so that people started partying and soloing again
  
• 1.18 comes out, yayyyyyyy! Cept that with it comes a reshuffling of mobs that make gathering leves and gathering in general nearly impossible. Further, by capping sp 10 ranks above you and making mobs so weak, they create a system where there are -no- challenging fights really (cept maybe if you do beastmen solo) and the majority of levelling is off mobs you kill in 30 seconds each.
  Lesson: DON'T RUSH... Before you stick mobs somewhere check if mining or bot nodes spawn there and if gathering leves use the spot. Further, balance out the battle system so that party fights last longer than half a minute. To be honest, this patch wasn't horrible. But if you think about it, they will have to rebalance the raids each patch now to work with new battle systems each time.

So has SE learned any lessons? NO

1. look at these boards, look at the history of these boards. Do you know what they are? 50%+ speculation and people raging over speculation.
SE still fails to communicate properly. They constantly announce new initiatives that lack detail and end up causing massive rage threads to be created. The crafting "dumb-down" is the best example of the most current one.

What should SE do?: Easy... COMMUNICATE. Instead of releasing vague statements and posting "we will look into it" or "we intend to change it in the future", clearly state what you are doing currently in detail. If you are going to change how zones look have a thread explaining EXACTLY how you intend to do it, and update it when it changes.
DONT POST UPDATES ON ONLY ONE FORUM IN ONLY ONE LANGUAGE. I understand Yoshi-P likes to communicate directly with players. But when he posts something on the Japanese board and it gets mistranslated here, people speculate and rage.

2. STOP RUSHING THINGS.
If you haven't sorted out the battle system don't release raids until you have. Raids are fun and all but you're going to have to change them and rebalance them once you implement "jobs" for each class. Put your effort into a stable battle system and THEN reshuffle world mobs, release raids, etc.

Don't release a materia system -BEFORE- you have a solid battle system in place. All its going to result in is people working hard to get a good materia, then the battle system and raids being re-worked, and all that hard work being completely useless. People -will- rage.

What should SE do?: Easy... do things in the proper order. Have a fairly stable battle + attribute system before you decide to create raids or implement equipment enhancing systems. Or put another way, Don't change the game on us every 1 month. Instead of rushing things out to please people, focus on the core first, and then expand. That way you don't waste huge amounts of time moving mobs around and messing up quests and leves every patch.

Overall: SE still hasn't learned to communicate. These boards are full of rage threads and speculation rather than people discussing how to have fun in the game.

And SE still hasn't learned to take things slow. Revamps to crafting and materia sound great. but making them before you actually have a working attribute and battle system is essentially pointless. Think of it in FFXI terms. Tons of ppl leveled dragoon for its penta-thrust ability. Then SE gimped drg and a bunch of people rage quit. If people spend money on materia investments only to find out 1 month later they wasted it all, people will not be happy. Further, if people invest in materia and then SE decide to mess up the system (like they seem to be doing with crafting), people will rage (as many crafters have over the possibility of specializing in 1 craft and making crafting easier)

TLDR?
-SE needs to learn to communicate
-SE needs to stop rushing things out.

[AlexNiculaie]

I don't mean to be negative or anything

Liar. If you are going to post a negative (if slightly childish) rant, at least own it. As it is, they are communicating fine. Sometimes, all one can give is a vague statement. As for rushing stuff out, if that were the case, we would have already had 1.19 out with multiple bugs. They aren't in a position to hold back material for too long, and are in a bit of a catch 22.

[Azurymber]

Liar. If you are going to post a negative (if slightly childish) rant, at least own it. As it is, they are communicating fine. Sometimes, all one can give is a vague statement. As for rushing stuff out, if that were the case, we would have already had 1.19 out with multiple bugs. They aren't in a position to hold back material for too long, and are in a bit of a catch 22.

If they communicated properly there wouldn't be rage threads every day and there wouldn't be massive amounts of speculation. Other games do -not- experience this anywhere near the amount that FFXIV does. It results in a forum with almost no positive threads.

It doesn't take a year to reform an attribute and battle system. It shouldn't even take 2 months. It's a collection of variable and simple formulas and should be easy to tweak and adjust. If you look at posts from 4 months ago every white knight was arguing that 1.18 would fix the "core battle mechanics" problem and they would be able to release patches much faster after. As it stands the "core battle mechanics" won't be stable until after 1.20 which going by the 2-months between patches history will be november or december.

Edit: and the fact that people consider common sense to be childish or negative is just an example of the blindness of white knights.
Not pissing off your players every week with dooms-day speculation should be common sense
Not changing the entire core system of a game and breaking parts of it every patch should be common sense.

[DoctorMog]

[Removed by Moderator according to the FINAL FANTASY XIV FORUM Guidelines.]

Damn, guess I didnt get in before

"typical sarcastic response of forum trolls that don't actually play but think they know whats best for the game."

You win this round sir.

[SniperRifle]

Damn, guess I didnt get in before

"typical sarcastic response of forum trolls that don't actually play but think they know whats best for the game."

You win this round sir.

Idk how you do it Mog, but you manage to impress me on a consistent basis. It's like we see eye to eye but you can project what I'm thinking better then I can myself.

[Sonic_the_Hedgehog]

If they communicated properly there wouldn't be rage threads every day and there wouldn't be massive amounts of speculation. Other games do -not- experience this anywhere near the amount that FFXIV does. It results in a forum with almost no positive threads.

It doesn't take a year to reform an attribute and battle system. It shouldn't even take 2 months. It's a collection of variable and simple formulas and should be easy to tweak and adjust. If you look at posts from 4 months ago every white knight was arguing that 1.18 would fix the "core battle mechanics" problem and they would be able to release patches much faster after. As it stands the "core battle mechanics" won't be stable until after 1.20 which going by the 2-months between patches history will be november or december.

Edit: and the fact that people consider common sense to be childish or negative is just an example of the blindness of white knights.
Not pissing off your players every week with dooms-day speculation should be common sense
Not changing the entire core system of a game and breaking parts of it every patch should be common sense.

I'm seriously upset that my previous comment to this was deleted and I was only telling the truth. I'll say it again, but without the f-word, which was censored btw. I'll like how calling someone out on their bullcrap is offensive to SE.

"You're such a hypocrite, first you say don't rush the game, next you're complaining that the patches are taking too long to come out. You can't have it both ways."

[Azurymber]

I'm seriously upset that my previous comment to this was deleted and I was only telling the truth. I'll say it again, but without the f-word, which was censored btw. I'll like how calling someone out on their bullcrap is offensive to SE.

"You're such a hypocrite, first you say don't rush the game, next you're complaining that the patches are taking too long to come out. You can't have it both ways."

umm if you read what i posted i did not say that in any way.
I said they shouldn't just rush things out for the purpose of having something done if they will change it again next patch
And I said they should have been able to fix the battle system within a month.
Theres no point in wasting time on content when it changes 2months later. Fix the core first, then fix the game.
Instead they said they are fixing the core (and you can't tell me tweaking battle algorithms take half a year) and instead spent tons of time on things like raids which will be completely different once battle algorithms are changed.

Kinda like if you build a building, you do the foundation fist, then the basement, and build up from there. You dont put together the top floor first then try to sneak under it and build the foundation and basement.... get what im saying?

[ViolentDjango]

If they communicated properly there wouldn't be rage threads every day and there wouldn't be massive amounts of speculation. Other games do -not- experience this anywhere near the amount that FFXIV does. It results in a forum with almost no positive threads.

It doesn't take a year to reform an attribute and battle system. It shouldn't even take 2 months. It's a collection of variable and simple formulas and should be easy to tweak and adjust. If you look at posts from 4 months ago every white knight was arguing that 1.18 would fix the "core battle mechanics" problem and they would be able to release patches much faster after. As it stands the "core battle mechanics" won't be stable until after 1.20 which going by the 2-months between patches history will be november or december.

Edit: and the fact that people consider common sense to be childish or negative is just an example of the blindness of white knights.
Not pissing off your players every week with dooms-day speculation should be common sense
Not changing the entire core system of a game and breaking parts of it every patch should be common sense.

Lol... What "other games" are you talking about? Because in my experience, just about any game with regular updates deals with this... People speculate, even when they know exactly what's coming. Unless SE gives line-by-line explanations of the code in the game, they'll be something people spend hours wondering about.

Its just part of the human condition, and there's nothing wrong with it, especially when the Development Team is actually looking into people's opinions and ideas for insight into things they can work on.

Edit: and the fact that people consider common sense to be childish or negative is just an example of the blindness of white knights.
Not pissing off your players every week with dooms-day speculation should be common sense
Not changing the entire core system of a game and breaking parts of it every patch should be common sense.

Presentation counts for a lot. Your point could be as factual as "air exists", but if you present it childishly, people will always call you on that. Retreating to rebuttals about how people are "white knights" doesn't help you get taken any more seriously, and the defensive insults definitely don't help drive your point home.

Frankly I disagree with most of what you said. They are working hard and making considerable progress with improving the game. We already have an ETA for when they want to be ready to relaunch, and we have a relatively detailed map of what they plan to do. I don't think we can really ask for more within reason. And its not "White Knight"-ism to say that giving them time to do work and make progress is reasonable. Its hard enough to program and design a game -- its even harder to design and adjust one that was built with lack of foresight.

Its not like we're paying for anything, or like we will be paying before the game relaunches -- so I don't feel there's a reason to rush any of it.