Mogtalk interview with yoshi p

[Trensharo]

My ISP isn't the problem, otherwise there would be hundreds if not thousands of complaints given who my ISP is. Tons of people in my FC are complaining about Lags, and I just DC'd. I can't do a MSQ Duty because it freezes for upwards of 30 seconds (if it doesn't outright disconnect) and things spawn and zip across the room at warp speed and fail it. I've gotten DC'd at least 5 times. But, thanks for giving the token response. I'm connecting from East Coast USA to Aether. My ISP is not the problem, and neither is my connection - wired or wireless.

I don't need to troubleshoot.

They do.

The game is borderline unplayable for me, and several others that I'm in contact with in-game. So annoyed by these "troubleshoot your internet" clueless responses.

[Hestzhyen]

My ISP isn't the problem, otherwise there would be hundreds if not thousands of complaints given who my ISP is. Tons of people in my FC are complaining about Lags, and I just DC'd. I can't do a MSQ Duty because it freezes for upwards of 30 seconds (if it doesn't outright disconnect) and things spawn and zip across the room at warp speed and fail it. I've gotten DC'd at least 5 times. But, thanks for giving the token response. I'm connecting from East Coast USA to Aether. My ISP is not the problem, and neither is my connection - wired or wireless.

I don't need to troubleshoot.

They do.

The game is borderline unplayable for me, and several others that I'm in contact with in-game. So annoyed by these "troubleshoot your internet" clueless responses.

You are the clueless one here, my friend. If you had even a basic understanding of how your client connects to SE's servers you'd understand that lag and disconnects are not always the fault of the game publisher and are often due to bad routing on the part of your ISP. Try a VPN service and see if I'm right.

If all you're going to do is scream FIX IT then no one can help you. If you and your friends post about the issues you're having and give them something to work with, SE can look into it. I also connect to the game from the East Coast to Aether and it's been smooth sailing for me for months. So yes this could be a region and/or ISP-specific issue that affects you and your friends. But with scant information to go on, and you thinking you're above anyone's suggestions if it doesn't immediately solve your problem, you'll probably stay frustrated until you unsub. That's your prerogative but don't go dismissing advice as stupid just because you're too frustrated to take it.

[KisaiTenshi]

My ISP isn't the problem, otherwise there would be hundreds if not thousands of complaints given who my ISP is. Tons of people in my FC are complaining about Lags, and I just DC'd. I can't do a MSQ Duty because it freezes for upwards of 30 seconds (if it doesn't outright disconnect) and things spawn and zip across the room at warp speed and fail it. I've gotten DC'd at least 5 times. But, thanks for giving the token response. I'm connecting from East Coast USA to Aether. My ISP is not the problem, and neither is my connection - wired or wireless.

I don't need to troubleshoot.

They do.

The game is borderline unplayable for me, and several others that I'm in contact with in-game. So annoyed by these "troubleshoot your internet" clueless responses.

Take this to the tech forum then, report trace logs there.

Nearly 100% of "the game keeps dc'ing me" is your own hardware, and most of the time it's the WiFi Router/ISP router/Modem. When it's not your own hardware, the trace logs will show where something is being dropped.

Late as am to the thread...

* Instant death mechanics have been here since 2.0 so it's not a new thing to deal with healing power creep (although healing power creep is kind of a problem, and yeah, I'd say the ridiculous spam in o4s/o8s do show that...)
* Instant death mechanics aren't what makes healing hard. Vuln stacks and healing debuffs do. If someone fails an instant death mechanic and dies... it's acknowledged as that person's fault. Reset and soldier on. Vuln stacks, etc tend be more "Oh well the healers can just heal more, it doesn't really matter if I fail that mechanic."

My preference is more for DPS down debuffs. That really drives home the message "I shouldn't do that" without needing to instant kill someone, and doesn't punish the healer for a non-healing mistake.

The problem there is that healing creep just makes people ignore the vulnerability debuffs. Now if the debuffs were always negative (eg burrs from Aurum Vale) as they stack and didn't time out, then perhaps we would see a mechanic that has a damage curve that is exponential that leads into a wipe if the healer doesn't remove the debuffs.

FWIW, I'd rather see the snowboarding game than blitzball.

That's probably something that would only ever be solo. One other MMO game that put snowboarding/skiing in, essentially just made it a ski-jump thing, and that was it.

[xJimmehx]

Blitzball gameplay could be like ranged dps/healer gameplay, but with monks shoulder tackle and melee skills for close range. (just like in x)
Throw a ball at a team mate like you would a heal or buff..(tab target and press skill button)
Require tp and GCD to slow down the game for people with average/semi-high ping. (thats why they made the GCD iirc)
I dont need big rewards..gil would be nice. I wont even try it if it is another menu manager. Id rather un-sub.

[Tridus]

Most MMO's doesn't even have healers, you gotta take care of your own healing. And if they made healing diffuculty higher than it is now, then a lot and I mean A LOT of people would struggle.

I don't see how. It's the same thing, it'd just take more casts. As it stands now, I can spend over half my time not healing, easily. People pushing it to the limit can wind up barely doing any healing at all. That doesn't strike you as a problem on a role called "healer"?

There's plenty of room to make healers devote more casts to healing without making healing impossibly difficult. Those casts are coming out of DPS and/or stand-around-doing-nothing time. They also reduce the need for one shot mechanics by making killing people with periodic damage and running healers OOM actually feasible, which simply doesn't happen in most content right now.

[Theodric]

My ISP isn't the problem, otherwise there would be hundreds if not thousands of complaints given who my ISP is. Tons of people in my FC are complaining about Lags, and I just DC'd. I can't do a MSQ Duty because it freezes for upwards of 30 seconds (if it doesn't outright disconnect) and things spawn and zip across the room at warp speed and fail it. I've gotten DC'd at least 5 times. But, thanks for giving the token response. I'm connecting from East Coast USA to Aether. My ISP is not the problem, and neither is my connection - wired or wireless.

I don't need to troubleshoot.

They do.

The game is borderline unplayable for me, and several others that I'm in contact with in-game. So annoyed by these "troubleshoot your internet" clueless responses.

Out of curiosity are you European? There's been a lot of bizarre connection issues/lag for European players that has yet to be addressed unfortunately.

[Tridus]

Out of curiosity are you European? There's been a lot of bizarre connection issues/lag for European players that has yet to be addressed unfortunately.

Not just European. My best friend is in the US and on Saturday he had to use a VPN and route to Mexico to make the game playable at all. But that was on Comcast as far as we can tell.

[KaldeaSahaline]

As far as latency issues goes - NTT is SE's chosen partner and they are the issue 100%. It's super easy to blame them, but in reality that isn't what fixes this. SE needs to work with NTT to ensure that users coming into their nodes are getting good results. Other gaming companies have done this in the past when widespread users reported issues. Before anyone tries to say it isn't widespread (because it doesn't affect them), please save it, it's documented even here on the OF in a 50+ page thread, as well as a litany of them elsewhere.

Regarding Bliztball - if it is more menu content, it will be a waste of resources/dead on arrival. The game does not need ANY more menu content. Here's the conundrum - do you design the content to be played/visited by the masses or do you simply design it to be the best it can/faithful/fun?

In my experience/opinion - these types of undertakings are best served by simply building the best possible iteration of the content form. In that, it will succeed on its own merit rather than artificially forcing it to be relevant to the masses.

What I would want out of Blitzball is a real live breathing match. Active gameplay elements, matchmaking, both solo and as a team, with ability to play against a range of AIs as well as PVP. It doesn't need to be some kind of scaling progression system, or have obscure rewards gated behind it, simply make it fun to play and people will participate.

It needs to be easily accessible, but deep at the same time. Build in functions to let FC's/statics/linkshells compete against each other for prizes. The idea is this should be something people can do during downtime for fun. Build in spectate options for people to watch.

If Chocobo Racing was basically Crash Team Racing/Mario Kart but with FF paint on it, I'd probably play it every single day with friends, but we got some awful implementation instead, basically dead on arrival.

[DrWho2010]

And the fetishism on rewards needs to disappear. Bigger rewards doesn't make the content better, so if you think you need to put tomestones on blitzball, something is wrong.

Problem is a lot of people won't do stuff if there is nothing attached to it. they may do it once or twice but without the carrot there is nothing keeping them there.

[Granyala]

The reason they depend so heavily on instant-death mechanics is due to how insanely strong healing potencies are. Simple raid wide AoEs are rarely threatening because all three healers can bring players back to max HP in seconds or simply rely on Regen ticks since not enough happens to warrant a full heal.

Thank god!
Nothing feels more frustrating than a healing design like WoW, where you spend your majority casting weak ass heals that barely manage to move the HP bar. >.<