Quote Originally Posted by Hayden View Post
I think we all have a right to be cynical. I find myself jumping to the defense so often not because I have unyielding faith in Square, or because I am blinded by some sort of unjust devotion to this game, but simply because of the harsh and immature nature of so many of the individuals with sometimes very just and understandable opinions, that are unfortunately just worded very incorrectly and as I said before, harsh and immature.

You, me and everyone else have every right to be disappointed. But as you so articulately pointed out, we are (or will be) paying for the chance to participate in the development of an incomplete MMO.

They could (and maybe should?) have dumped this whole project rather than sink manpower and time into fixing it. Rather they choose to try and fix it. So rather than being left out, we were given the chance to play the game during the process. A unique and somewhat exciting process if you ask me. But not with out its frustration and heart ache either.
I seriously think they should've shut down the game and worked on it until 2.0 was released - there's always this nagging feeling in the back of my mind that if more resources (NOTE: NOT MORE PEOPLE) were available to work on 2.0 we'd get it sooner. The game has some serious issues that won't be and can't be addressed until 2.0 (UI latency + position update latency). I wouldn't have minded losing access to this game since I have other games I can play in the meantime - tons of GOTY material titles came out this year, and if it would've allowed Square to get 2.0 out the door before other MMO and MMO-like competitors got their product.

At the same time, their continual patches of the originally heavily flawed game also allows us, as customers, to in a sense "teach" Square Things You Should Do and Things You Shouldn't Do with MMOs. They've made a lot of good game design decisions, and equally as many bad decisions with each patch, and I think with each additional patch the devs are slowly starting to "get" how you're supposed to make an MMO that is meant to appeal to a wider (not necessarily Western) audience.

One small thing I noticed with 1.20, for example, was their addition of a mini-action bar on the bottom right that gives you direct access to certain functions at the click of a mouse - perfectly suited for mouse and keyboard users. If people didn't complain about the horrible convoluted UI, improvements like these wouldn't have been made. Their revamped party search function UI also seems to have been based on feedback from us about repeatedly telling Square not to make UIs for new functions convoluted like they did in the past. And now that they learned that Going Through Multiple Menus Is Really Bad Design, that means that in future functions they implement for our current alpha/beta and for 2.0, they will take that into account.

Basically, people need to realize that there IS valid criticism - there are bad AND good game decisions Square has made in multiple instances. What we (the so-called bashers or haters) get annoyed by is when someone comes by and says "nothing is wrong here" when it's pretty obvious something is wrong. Then in another thread validly criticizing a bad design decision, those same people say the same thing. And then another, and then another. That's when we get irritated and that's when the back-and-forth arguments between the same people happen. It gets annoying when the same people continuously say nothing is wrong for every issue that is presented when people make perfectly valid points about these issues. Then in the end - those same people end up telling us "no matter what Square does you'll never be satisfied and you're just a bunch of whiny crybabies and should play another game!"

As I've stated in other threads, I applaud Yoshida when his team does the right stuff (finally getting Chocobos in, fixing/balancing classes, streamlining the god-awful synthing system, making the combat system more fluid), but I'll also get on him and his team for the bad stuff too (the DoH/DoL achievement requirement, his need to focus on the 8-player content rather lowman content, the UI/position latency, etc). I've actually posted in a couple threads telling others to lay off the irrational criticism because some people DO look like they're just complaining for the sake of complaining, using really bad slippery slope analogies and sweeping hyperbolic generalizations about Square. I've also posted in just as many threads telling defenders to piss off because they've used ad hominem attacks on those justifiably criticizing Square for bad design decisions (common attacks are "you are too lazy" or "learn to play".

Regardless of all the arguing and namecalling (which I will say I am plenty guilty of), I'm just glad there's a place for us to express our support AND our grievances considering how small the population of this game is. We may not get all of what we want into this game, but I can imagine this game would be in a MUCH worse state if the forums weren't opened up in the first place.