any questions?

[User201109011315]

The harp bow got me thinking...

I think it's time to face the music. The jig is up, so to speak. It may seem like I'm singing the same old tune with this thread, but I would just really like to know what the deal is here. I'm tired of having to play it by ear, not knowing what I'm getting myself into, not knowing what this game even intends to be in the long run.

The brief intermission between Tanaka stepping down and Yoshi taking over has long since ended, and it's probably about time the new "vision" if such a thing exists is presented to players in order to allay some confusion.

Harps and Bows mingling and reproducing bastardised love children is but one confusing aspect of FFXIV's future. I think most people prefer to tune-out the dev team's mistakes, but there are a few changes lately which clash too horribly with the original game that they cannot be ignored. Many of the changes so far have not worked in concert with the original FFXIV, nor fixed it. Yoshi was supposed to bring harmony to the game, but you cannot make a foundation stronger by only weakening its structural composition.

Is Yoshi a genius, or is he just pulling our strings? Sometimes it all just seems like incompatible fanservice. To pitch a valuable idea requires indepth knowledge of the game, otherwise the ideas will create dissonance and discord. And was dissonance not Tanaka's forte? I thought we were beyond that by now.

If I'm not mistaken, Yoshi is to be creating a forum-post soon about his ideas on FFXIV and MMOs in general, so I just hope some things get resolved.

The prevailing questions I personally have are:

• How does FFXIV expect to compete in the market?
• What are its selling points, and will FFXIV best other MMOs in these departments?
• Are you worried that standardising the game will only lead to carbon-copying?
• Is there an upper and lower limit to imitation, and where is that?
• Revising the game to suit every player, is that a wise move?
• What should an MMO be?
• Where do other MMOs go wrong?
• Where did FFXIV go wrong? Why did people leave? / Why did people stay?
• What perceived problems exist and how do you intend to solve them?
• What are the redeeming features of FFXIV?
• Is there danger of interfering with these good features?
• How much instancing is too much instancing?
• Is there value in the armory system?
• Won't the current choice of job-implementation erode some aspects of the armory system?
• Will all players now be cookie-cutter builds?
• What is the current dev team's opinion on the difference between jobs and classes?
• Is the new Bard/archer an infringment on the differentiation between class and job?
• To justify implementation, will jobs be better than classes at certain roles?
• Will that make classes a pointless intermediate on the way to jobs?
• Will crafters now only be "materia users"?
• Is there merit in a player-run economy?
• Have the HQ changes removed some depth to the crafting system?
• Is there anything for crafters to do besides grind ranks?
• Has the materia system and HQ changes injected more grind into the game?
• When are we getting drag and drop???

flame away.

[Tsukino]

Bow-harp doesn't just clash with the previous game, it clashes with the very idea behind the system that it's coming with. Jobs are supposed to provide narrower, specialized roles for parties - paladin tanks better than gladiator, white mage heals better than conjurer, etc. - yet "barcher" does exactly the opposite. It gives them something new and completely different, turning them into some hybrid instead of focusing on an already-present aspect of the class.

Forget sticking to ideas the game shipped with, they can't even stick to ones they've come up with themselves.

[Anonymoose]

You interest me, Gifthorse. It's such a strange mixture of good questions and QQ.

I appreciate Yoshida-san's open lines of communication, so I do hope he gives a casual interview like this a shot one day. He usually talks to people with agenda - websites, magazines, etc. I think it'd be great for FFXIV's image he he fielded some very open questions like this - because however much unjustified negativity and fearmongering you've got going on about content you've yet to experience well enough to evaluate, you're right that the vision of what we can expect the soul of XIV to be has become blurry.

[Holland]

Those are very valid questions Gift. I feel I can not ask those questions from a game that is intended for P2P and is currently free. Personally, I'll start worrying about this when they ask for my money, aside from that, I'll just keep giving my opinion to what ever they intend to implement no matter how farfetched it may seem, they are the developers, not me.

As to the "I need to know what I'm getting into" line, that is usually reserved for the 30 days free trial =p

[Starlord]

Man.. He's REALLLLLY bored to write a wall of pointless text

[Holland]

Man.. He's REALLLLLY bored to write a wall of pointless text

Nah, I don't consider it pointless. I imagine a lot of players that are investing a lot of time in the game would have similar concerns.

[RAXX]

These are questions to worry about asking when the game comes to a point of completion.

[Rau]

What I really want to know is WHY they released this game so prematurely. Surely, no one at SE could have through what we had at launch was ready for the shelves. Hell, what we have now is barely ready.

[Holland]

What I really want to know is WHY they released this game so prematurely. Surely, no one at SE could have through what we had at launch was ready for the shelves. Hell, what we have now is barely ready.

Please... Don't bring this up now... =/

[captainpicard]

Please... Don't bring this up now... =/

Why? Its the $100,000 question.