LOLPATCH 1.16a

[Felis]

What have you expected?
The servers are just reopened, they told us they needed to push the patches a few days behind because the troubles and there was no preview about 1.16a

Remember: No preview = don't expect a big patch

[Abriael]

How has FFXIV evolved? Its gotten no where lol. Its still pretty much the same game as release

No it's not. The UI has been almost completely overhauled. Every single menu has been streamlined towards usability and ease of display of information, from selling, to crafting, to repairing, chatting, map, equipment, stats... there's almost no part of the UI that has been left untouched. They turned the market wards in an almost full fledged AH system, added new equipment, new guildleves, overhauled a large percentage of the crafting recipes, completely changed the server structure by multiplying the number of servers in the cluster, removed basically all lag issues, completely overhauled the skill points system and leveling curve, overhauled the guildleve system, both for local and regional, added NMs and relative prizes and so forth. You can recheck the patch notes if you like, and you'll notice a LOT of changes that you probably already forgot.

This counts as a quite massive overhaul of the basics of the game, many systems haven't been tweaked, but they have been rethought from the ground up. Tweaking a system that's already in place takes much less. And if you compare the tweaks added to tera, without falling into the obvious trap as considering content that has been already in development for months as something that has been developed on the spot snapping fingers, then you'll see that FFXIV is evolving quite faster.

This, of course, without even mentioning that tera is a much simpler game than Final Fantasy XIV is. It's based on older gameplay and class mechanics that have already been worked upon by developers for ages. balancing those is much, much easier than a game based on an innovative class system.

This recent update was just tweaks and fixes. That is it, and it lacks.

We were already told that significant updates (besides the fact that tweaks of an important system like targeting is quite significant) would have been delayed to april, for a very valid reason, so what are you surprised about, exactly?

Why do people think building content or simple tweaking or implementing much needed systems require a lot of work?

Because people might actually have the experience needed to *know* that it does, instead of basing their opinion on educated (or actually quite random) guessing.

I need you to build me a program bigger and better than Final Cut and Sony Vegas, fully featured and perfect stereoscopic capabilities - I need it by tomorrow.

I would appreciate this too. that'd save me the harm I will need to soon inflict on my wallet to get the new version of Sony vegas. Thank you.

[viion]

Other studio's games didn't get rushed out and doesn't require foundational redesign -- why people still don't understand this is beyond me.

Um, because it does? You do know companies hardly announce things at the start of it's cycle right? You mentioned Tera which they mention upcoming changes well after it's nearing completion, Blizzard does exactly the same thing.

Its not about understanding the statement its just you're understanding it in the wrong way, A redesign is not like knocking down a house and rebuilding. Its more like having a new kitchen fitted. You're understanding it the wrong way.

Think about it logically? What do they need to do? People could say the class system needs a fundamental redesign, why is that? Its not unique and stats are broken. Okay so how hard is it to fix this? Well not really, you people have provided their ideas and non of them say "delete everything you have and start over". Stats would be algorithm changes which is not hard its math and in mmo its simple math. There is also the concept of: You've done it before!

And your second message makes no sense because once you have a setup then implimenting systems, content and tweaking should not be a time consuming approach, especially when you have a team over a 100. Other studio do it fine, and the whole "they dont state it in the start of the cycle" i dont even get what you're trying to say here, it has nothing to do with what im talking about.

SE are just bad developers and extremely slow, its notoriously known and not just on MMO's. Took them 4 years late to get onto Next Gen consoles while other studios (who had difficulties such as MGS4+MGSOnline) did it in half the time. Both games were announced in development @ same time.

[viion]

No it's not. The UI has been almost completely overhauled.

Stopped here, how has it? They deleted some windows? WOW you know how those windows got there? THEY ADDED THEM, they just UNDOING what they did lol. I mean this latest patch they just adding a switch so you can GO BACK to how things were (talking about targetting).

The speed of the UI increased but thats no changes to the UI just how the server handles the information, but its still extremely bad and messy.

I wanted to ask you: What has significantly changed on the UI that makes the "overhaul"? But figured I'd find it somewhere in your post. "from selling, to crafting, to repairing, chatting, map, equipment, stats..."

Selling: they removed 1 window which they added, its still badly designed and has tedious window @ start.
Crafting: more windows removed which they added, last receip book, not hard anyone in college could do that.
Repairing: They added an icon and... Make red boxes depending on a %, made pre-existing data visible
Chatting: still buggy but now has transparency (again not hard since they choose to have this off @ start), you can have 2 windows copy/paste. Colors, woot you figured out how to do something that you did before!
Map: Changed some graphics, made it so you can zoom and move with keys, awesome, built myself an app that can do it, took me 1 day and i knew nothing when i started.
Equipment: idk whats changed here.
Stats: how have these changed? The stats window has not been touched.

[Jennestia]

Other studio do it fine, and the whole "they dont state it in the start of the cycle" i dont even get what you're trying to say here, it has nothing to do with what im talking about

Yes it does -- You're basically saying they can announce and do things quicker, when in reality they're only announcing things after it's at the end or nearing the end of the cycle as it's been in production for awhile.

I've played MMOs since they're mud days and I've been in game development for well over a decade, I've yet to see a company announce features the second they finish writing the outline -- always when they have a solid base to build on.

Took them 4 years late to get onto Next Gen consoles while other studios (who had difficulties such as MGS4+MGSOnline) did it in half the time. Both games were announced in development @ same time.

Ironically, you again assume they started making the game right after the console came out lol. You do know, FFXIII was original a PS2 title right? You do know they were busy working on their next-gen engine more than developing for the systems, right? So slowness? Nah, because Konami's engine took them even longer to make than Square's Crystal Tools took.

Also, to my knowledge they've been developing just fine on the PS2, even had a few games for launch and a year after, you do remember the PS2 was a next gen system, right? Hell Square's PS2 launch title was the best graphically at the time.

[Abriael]

Think about it logically?

We're not just thinking about it logically. You could have notice since quite a while that we talk out of experience.

What do they need to do? People could say the class system needs a fundamental redesign, why is that? Its not unique and stats are broken. Okay so how hard is it to fix this? Well not really, you people have provided their ideas and non of them say "delete everything you have and start over". Stats would be algorithm changes which is not hard its math and in mmo its simple math. There is also the concept of: You've done it before!

This is a very, very big oversimplification. Aside from the fact that there are quite a few people that said exactly "delete everything, you have to start over", but hopefully those are being ignored.
Balancing a MMORPG is an extremely complex piece of work that will *never* end. MMORPGs that have been out for several years are still in the process, and I actually don't know a major MMORPG in which the developer has actually reached a level even near perfection.
Balancing a MMO is basically like playing Jenga. If you move a block, that move will have an impact on the nearby blocks, and those will impact on every other block, and moving the wrong block can easily collapse the whole tower. The interlocked dynamics are normally a nightmare, and even more so in a system in which flexibility is one of the major areas of interest. If you unbalance a class, you unbalance them all.
That's why every single change needs not only to be devised and implemented, but also to be tested internally in a wide variety of situations, and it will possibly go back to the drawing board multiple times as issues are noticed and eliminated. Some times it will simply be scrapped, because the issues it creates, despite the fact that it sounded good on paper, are too big to bother.
Internal testing isn't even foolproof, by the way, because internal testing very rarely survives to the ingenuity of a larger playerbase (how FFXI players turned Ninja in a rather unbalanced tank is an example), and that's why now they're consider to add even a public test server, to make the testing system more foolproof.

Implementing a change is already much harder than you seem to think, and it's only the first step of the whole process.

And your second message makes no sense because once you have a setup then implimenting systems, content and tweaking should not be a time consuming approach, especially when you have a team over a 100. Other studio do it fine, and the whole "they dont state it in the start of the cycle" i dont even get what you're trying to say here, it has nothing to do with what im talking about.

His message makes a lot of sense. A team of "over 100" (you actually don't know the numbers of the FFXIV team, mind you, not every single person at SE is working on FFXIV), needs to be split into a massive amount of areas, which are split into a quite large amount of tasks.
Even simply creating ONE new piece of equipment requires the following:
-concept design
-Modeling
-Mapping (both texture mapping and normal mapping)
-Texturing
-Tweaking to every single body or head type
-retweaking of textures and maps to avoid stretching and blurring with different body types
-Optimization of the polygonal model to reduce hardware load
-Creation of the stats
-Creation of the recipe
-Testing in several different situations, with all the classes involved
-Possible debugging

This will incolve:Art director, concept designer, 3D artist, texture artist, a possible separate one for mapping, coder, combat lead/team, crating lead/team, the QA team for testing, and everyone may be involved again for debugging when issues are found.

Game development is a much, much more complex process than the uninitiated would think, and game development on MMORPGs and prominently online environment is twice as complex.

SE are just bad developers and extremely slow, its notoriously known and not just on MMO's.

It's an extremely bad idea to judge professional figures that you have no experience about.

"other studios do just fine" is exactly what I said before, an educated guess based on lack of experience. Different games have different situations, levels of detail and levels of content, even different procedures. You bring up tera a lot, but Tera's content is based on MUCH simpler models and a much simpler system. It's no doubt that designing a piece of equipment ((or any kind of content) for Tera takes a lot less than doing the same for Final Fantasy XIV, simply because the level of detail is on another planet.

If "anyone in college" could do it, there wouldn't be a massive percentage of unemployment between people coming out even from specific software development schools.


if my claims were so "wrong", you'd have arguments to counter them, instead of exclusively resorting to personal attacks to try and belittle them.

[whoopeeragon]

In a revolt against the numerous posts banging out the developers and SE's supposed 'firing' of them, please, NOT ONE person got kicked from the team. The team merely reshuffled, the old team taking other positions in the new ones. I don't get why people still repeatedly say that they got fired or removed or trussed up like chickens and sent to the burial grounds.

[whoopeeragon]

Other news: Servers are now back on. Enjoy it while it can bring your satisfaction!

[quantumsaint]

In a revolt against the numerous posts banging out the developers and SE's supposed 'firing' of them, please, NOT ONE person got kicked from the team. The team merely reshuffled, the old team taking other positions in the new ones. I don't get why people still repeatedly say that they got fired or removed or trussed up like chickens and sent to the burial grounds.

I especially loathe the demonizing of Tanaka that goes on. We probably wouldn't have this game in any state at all if it wasn't for him.

[Jennestia]

I especially loathe the demonizing of Tanaka that goes on. We probably wouldn't have this game in any state at all if it wasn't for him.

Nor Seiken Densetsu, nor Chrono Cross, nor the Gears (Xenogears?) etc.