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 Quests are also rushed out and seem outdated compared to the ffxi quests that were out over 8 years ago.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.

[darkstarpoet1]

that's my biggest complaint honestly. the changes are not bad, but what is being replaced by what feels like lateral moves.

the battle changes we replaced a broken system that needed work with another broken system that needed work. to me i would have been fine if they had held off on getting rid of the old system until they had the new one ready. yes, it would have taken longer to do such, but i had learned the old system and was enjoying it as it was. the problem with changing the system is that everyone had to learn the new system all over again and now in right at a month we will have to do so again. this is the main reason i am not touching battle classes again until all of the changes are complete.

the battle regimen being removed and not replaced by anything. yes, i know it will be replaced in the future, but having a functioning system right now is better than having nothing. yes, it needs alot of work and is not great, but good is better than nothing. it's like having a tire low on air. sure it's not great, but it is better than taking the tire off the car and driving it with only 3 until you get the 4th to put on.

to me the changes are showing the type of mentality se has atm. if people want changes just throw something in half finished or just take out the old completely and you have a change. i believe this type of mentality is why we got the half finished horrible release we got to begin with.

you can see there was alot of stuff in the works with the original staff and had to be removed due to running out of time. you can also see that the new stuff is following the same path.

if you want to make changes that is completely fine, but discuss what you want to change with the players you want to attract and find out their feelings on the changes and if they like the ideas take your time and get them completed and then put them in. changes to make the game better are great, but change for the sake of change that is not improving the gameplay nor making the game more fun is not. do not make changes just to say things are changed when if you step back and look at the change you realize the new changes are as bad, if not worse, than what you replaced.

[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.

[Sonic_the_Hedgehog]

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

WTF? SE has been communicating with us, hell they actually started to release patch notes before that actually patch and they took in our concerns after 1.18 and made some quick changes in 1.18a. Also they haven't been rushing things, 1.18 took like 3 or 4 months to come out and 1.19 is taking about two months, and 1.20 may take two months as well.

IMO they're doing just fine. If SE wasn't doing these "drastic" things, then people would be complaining that SE wasn't doing enough. Also people are gonna get mad at whatever they do in this game, because they're letting people play this game while they're fixing it. Just be glad they're letting you keep your sh** instead of deleting your character when they finally charge. Let the Devs do their job, they already know that if we don't like something we'll let them know.

[darkstarpoet1]

WTF? SE has been communicating with us, hell they actually started to release patch notes before that actually patch and they took in our concerns after 1.18 and made some quick changes in 1.18a. Also they haven't been rushing things, 1.18 took like 3 or 4 months to come out and 1.19 is taking about two months, and 1.20 may take two months as well.

IMO they're doing just fine. If SE wasn't doing these "drastic" things, then people would be complaining that SE wasn't doing enough. Also people are gonna get mad at whatever they do in this game, because they're letting people play this game while they're fixing it. Just be glad they're letting you keep your sh** instead of deleting your character when they finally charge. Let the Devs do their job, they already know that if we don't like something we'll let them know.

too bad the same wasn't done for the original staff.

[LillithaFenimore]

Azury,
I understand where you are coming from but in reality, there are always going to be people who have issues with w/e is being done. SE could have released a game that was wonderful and great and so on and so forth...and there would still be people posting who don't like this or don't like that or w/e.

Just as you stated, maybe other forums don't have it as bad as this one, IDK I'm not in other forums, however, they still exist.

[Sonic_the_Hedgehog]

too bad the same wasn't done for the original staff.

Well what can you say, the business world is cutthroat. Tanaka is a seasoned producer/developer, the company expects him to push out a good game, he didn't, so they brought in someone new and took on a different route. In Japan when you f**k up, you step down.

[Azurymber]

WTF? SE has been communicating with us, hell they actually started to release patch notes before that actually patch and they took in our concerns after 1.18 and made some quick changes in 1.18a. Also they haven't been rushing things, 1.18 took like 3 or 4 months to come out and 1.19 is taking about two months, and 1.20 may take two months as well.

IMO they're doing just fine. If SE wasn't doing these "drastic" things, then people would be complaining that SE wasn't doing enough. Also people are gonna get mad at whatever they do in this game, because they're letting people play this game while they're fixing it. Just be glad they're letting you keep your sh** instead of deleting your character when they finally charge. Let the Devs do their job, they already know that if we don't like something we'll let them know.

SE communicates like this:
"We decided to implement this in 1.19.. here are some vague details."
and 10min later on the forums
SPECULATE SPECULATE RAGE RAGE RAGE SPECULATE RAGE END OF THE WORLD

whereas SE should be communicating like this:
"We have decided to implement x. Here are some key details. We know you may have concerns about x, y, z. This is how we will address them. We apologize to anyone who is being negatively effected by this.. Heres a list of reasons why we have decided to go this route. We have a team focusing on this aspect. Please post any concerns you have in this thread and like any concerns you agree with and we will take them into consideration, thank you"
edit: this would create one topic that focuses on the debate, remove speculation, and take a lot of the negativity and drama off the general board making the game look less like a failure.

or put another way. the difference is between having game devs just post updates, and having professional public relations managers, marketers, and social anthropologists post updates that suit the culture they are being communicated too and promote a positive community as opposed to the heavily negative community we currently have.

or put another way, its the difference between companies that succeed and companies that fail. There is a reason that companies spend millions on marketing and public relations. And I'm not sure if part of the problem is japanese culture because I know a number of other Japanese companies have had public relations disaster (ex. toyota) and the japanese government has had massive public relations problems over the quake and nuclear crisis.