PLEASE Learn from your mistakes......

[Azurymber]

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.



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.

when i played Hello Kitty Online when it was with aeria games (and i was a gamesage on it) the game sucked. It was broken and mobs were like impossible to kill even in the first area and everyone knew it. But everyone still had fun. There weren't many complaint threads and most people focused on community and fun events (some of which i held). It was a -very- different environment and the community was like 90% 25-30 yr olds.

Star Wars TOR boards right now seem a lot less trollish and complainy than here.

And while XI had complaint threads, there weren't nearly as many, because they never really told anyone what was in a patch till it was out

Perfect World (which essentially suck) also has/had way less complaint threads than here

i dont believe EVE online has a lot of complaint threads

And since when do we have an ETA for relaunch? Isn't that speculation -right there-? link to where the ETA is?

[Exni]

If they communicated "properly" there would still be rage threads every day and there will always be massive amounts of speculation. ALL released mmo's experience this exactly like the amount that FFXIV does. They all result in forums with almost no positive threads.

There. Fixed that for ya.

Edit: Plz stop using SW: TOR as your shinning example.. That's just foolish. How about trying a game that the public is actually playing...

[DeadRiser]

Do you posts get "finer" with time like wine? Doesn't look like it.

[Petori]

Players get no info about next patch beforehand = rage
"We don't know anything about this patch! SE sucks!"

Players get vague info about next patch beforehand = rage
"We don't know enough about these features! SE sucks!"

Players get all info about next patch beforehand = rage
"This will break the game! I know all about it without trying it! SE sucks!"

There is no happy ending.

[PrettyPrincess]

Pretty much this ^

[Zoltan]

One PR professional and 1 cultural anthropologist would fix all the problems.

Maybe Yoshida-san needs more staff to help deal with information dissemination, but I assure you that they are on a fixed budget.

What you suggest is that they should give more information and a disclaimer on every projected change. I would contend that every single piece of information they provide has an implied disclaimer. It would not solve any problem.

The fatigue/surplus idea was a really bad mistake. They apologized and demoted Tanaka. There was the PR spin. At least they were wise enough to LEARN FROM THEIR MISTAKE and remove the fatigue system. You do have to give them credit though because they tried to deal with the societal problem where people play MMOs for too many hours of their lives. It just didn't work.

I believe that the problem with FFXIV is that SE does not have direct input from real players when they consider making changes. They come up with ideas among their own employees and programmers, but implementation and actual use often exposes exploits or consequences which were unintentional. It is simply the problem with modifying existing programming code without having enough time or resources to fully test the changes. I would simply tell you that it is probably the resources.

They are trying to satisfy a very opinionated fan base through these forums. They are obviously listening based on the feedback we read herein.

Players have the right to state their opinions about games they invest hours playing. For people to challenge them and complain about raging or complaining is not productive and a waste of time.

Thanks for your concern.

when i played Hello Kitty Online

lol.

Nice work on the solo guide BTW. You do need to check out affect vs. effect.

[ViolentDjango]

when i played Hello Kitty Online when it was with aeria games (and i was a gamesage on it) the game sucked. It was broken and mobs were like impossible to kill even in the first area and everyone knew it. But everyone still had fun. There weren't many complaint threads and most people focused on community and fun events (some of which i held). It was a -very- different environment and the community was like 90% 25-30 yr olds.

Star Wars TOR boards right now seem a lot less trollish and complainy than here.

And while XI had complaint threads, there weren't nearly as many, because they never really told anyone what was in a patch till it was out

Perfect World (which essentially suck) also has/had way less complaint threads than here

i dont believe EVE online has a lot of complaint threads

And since when do we have an ETA for relaunch? Isn't that speculation -right there-? link to where the ETA is?

They've expressed that they have loose expectations on when the release will be, which is sometime next year. Its speculation to try and claim a specific quarter, but its been clear for a while that their ultimate goal is releasing the PS3 version (which is ready to go) before the end of next year, if not earlier.

/sigh/

The community of a completely broken game run by a company that doesn't care enough to balance the primary functions of the game is NOT good indication of a good community. And how can you assess the age range of the ENTIRE community of the game? Final Fantasy is a 24 year old series -- One can easily assume that most of its core fanbase had to have been old enough to appreciate its better games (3~7, which is debatable but beside the point), meaning meaning that 25~30 age range is probably applicable here as well.

Star Wars TOR hasn't come out yet. So you can't talk about how its community is amazing when most of them don't even have access to the game yet. Wait until a couple of months after they've gotten used to/tired of the baseline content and then come back.

Final Fantasy XI-era SE gave us LESS information. So bringing up that community by saying it is better is contradictory to your entire argument. Apparently, to appease you and create a dream community, they should tell us absolutely nothing (which I assume is why the first community you listed was so "good" -- I can't imagine a broken game having very much information flowing from the Developers -- especially when starting areas were overpowered and impossible to fight in.

EVE is a game you can play without touching your computer for a week, and the lengthy and exhausting requirements for becoming a top tier "player" off it lends itself to a style of gameplay only hardcore enthusiasts can really enjoy for extended periods of time. Hardcore games tend to have less complainers as the grassroots communities tend to drive away "whiners" who are new to the game before they've rooted themselves enough to want to stick around. Its a common thing among gaming communities, though its more common in competitive ones (which is why many more hardcore gaming communities experience very slow flow of new players in high tier play) -- and its something I see constantly as founder of a company that deals primarily with competitive gaming. This point doubles up when you consider that Final Fantasy XI was significantly more hardcore when compared to say, World of Warcraft, which has a notoriously "bad" community. Final Fantasy XIV is purposefully more casual, and casual communities have much larger low-ends; i.e. less grind-it-out style hardcore gamers.

And that's not necessarily a bad thing; it's not something to chastise the community for. Its the nature of people and the way they respond to scenarios. Negativity, like positiveness, has its goods and its bad. Just like you say people who are overtly in-favor of SE's approach are "white knights" and blind to their fallacies, those complainers you bark about are representative of the kind of players who will be integral in helping the game become more successful. This game has problems, and until there are more people willing to support it than there are condemning it (i.e. when there's something to fight for), there are going to be LOTS of complaining threads.

And that's a good thing.

It means, at the very least, those people care enough to express their opinions and voice their concerns about how the game could potentially be better. They may not always be right, and SE definitely won't always go with their point of voice -- but a forum full of thousands of people who, despite how badly the game has done thus far, are willing to stick around to play, give feedback, and brainstorm improvement ideas to help the game become better and more enjoyable for everyone is the definition of a good community.

[ZachCero]

Nice Solo guide Azure, I can tell with that you a very proficient person, and you are very much into details. From that point of view I can see where you are coming from. I also agree with what you say, but atm it seems that SE/Devs are working hard nonetheless.

[elreed]

I dont agree that much with Op. why? pretty simple, the game is getting better every patch they release, you say to dont make changes on crafting if the battle system isnt over, why cant they do both things at the same time? I think you believe they only have 4 people working on the game, thats pretty silly on your part, they must have teams doing different things at the same time, i can almost assure that they are already working on expansion ideas.

Btw crafting and battle systems are both important, to begin with they made the crafting system unique i've never seen a craft to be so demanding in other games, there are things that i still dont like about it, but they're changing it for good, i didnt liked that from rank 1 you had to have a lot of trouble with recipes, but i agreed that in higher levels the crafting should be really difficult to make it worth it.

Patch 1.18 didnt felt like rushed, they needed to make content for people who were actually playing and waiting for something to do, raids right now are really great they add lot of challenge to the game, and whats gonna change there with jobs? well maybe they need to tweak some stuff but not that much.

I agree that SE needs to release content with a lot of quality as they have been doing lately, in my op. SE is doing fine right now, i like to have surprises in the released content, thats one thing that i really hope they do, because right now they are almost saying everything they're adding and spoils things for me.

I actualy read the other day apost from someone, that made a list of pending things that most of those were actually already fixed or added, so if this is the case please play the game and stop making threads that says im not being negative but.....

[Azurymber]

Nice Solo guide Azure, I can tell with that you a very proficient person, and you are very much into details. From that point of view I can see where you are coming from. I also agree with what you say, but atm it seems that SE/Devs are working hard nonetheless.

I totally agree. I think the Devs are giving it their all. And i hold Yoshi-P in -really- high regards. That guys works like crazy.
I just don't think SE is allocating the proper jobs to the project.
I don't see this as much as a "fixing a game" problem as i do a "fixing a brand" problem. SE needs to convince people that FFXIV is a good game, and just making the game good isn't enough for that. It requires skills outside of game development. And it doesn't seem like SE is utilizing those skills.