Why does everything take so long?

[Maxi_Irving]

I agree with you wind. It seems to me people want changes they can see, not feel.

[Ignis]

I think these fixes have been so painstakingly slow and so small because the developers are simply holding back on releasing new content. I cannot consider anybody in SE to be so STUPID as to release a game with such low-level playing standards. It simply doesnt fit into my head. It only leads me to believe that they have released the game deliberately in a bad state. Why? Because they wanted to hold back on the game's content (at least its the most obvious reason i can think of). Why do this? So they can save up on the content itself. They might have wanted to release loads more for the PS3. Thus 2 birds with one stone; they unleash the same amount of content for 2 platforms without having to make more.
So in the present moment they are still NOT giving new content to the game, even though they might have it.
This doesnt excuse all of the fixes that had to be done and still need to be done with the game. Maybe they launched the PC version as a guinea pig and get the rest of the testing done on it? This might have gotten out of hands for SE though, since there were more issues to be addressed than they actually thought of.
What do you think?

[Cairdeas]

It's been 6 months since the game was released, and ~3 months since the new developer lead has come in, and the game's development still moving at a snail's pace.
The 3 months that the game was still under the old staff should be thrown out of any calculations. The 3 months since should be as well as they were still working on releasing content and changes promised by the old management of the team. Also they are laying groundwork items so that when they do release the massive content update they have planned it works and is balanced. There is no point in releasing a Dungeon they might have ready now if they will just be changing it all again in less then a month or two to accommodate the massive changes to the battle system.


Monster redesigns involved increased size, when most complaints were that they had boring designs.
I've not seen anyone say the monster designs were boring. Searching the forums I can't find any instances of "Monsters look boring" or any other mix of those words. I personally think the monsters look awesome the problem was you couldn't see the detail in the monsters because a lot of them were scaled so small.

Combat effect redesigns involved, again, increased size of the effects, when most complaints were that the effects were boring and too similar to one another.
The explaination of "Combat Effects were increased in size" doesn't mean they just drag and dropped the scale of the effect. A lot of them will probably prove to have been redrawn and enhanced. We will not know until they are released.

The devs are still investigating how to implement jump/AH, and their effects. Really? You can come up with a workable database schema for an AH in less than a day, and the queries and services to add or remove entries in less than an hour. Why is this taking so long?
They are not developing the AH, they most likely have one designed and built already. The problem is that the Market Wards ARE an AH in the simiplist terms you just don't put items up for Auction, instead its all buy it now with set prices. Time Delayed Auctions are boring and useless in MMO's. A few more tweaks to the responsiveness and ease of use for the Marketwards and an Auction house would be redundant and a waste of time to implement and I'd rather they spend that time on other features. Jumping is also dumb, But the problem is deciding how they want to implement it. Free Jumping is usually frowned upon by most of the Final Fantasy Fan Base because it doesn't reflect the Final Fantasy Series and it leaves a bad taste in some peoples mouth when you see people standing around gatherpoints like Aetherite and Levequest NPC's and just jump around out of boredom. The other options are an Emote, Implementing it as a Ability in combat (Dragoon Onry) or implementing a system like Zelda/FFXIII where its situational and automatic. Which is the option I support.


There have been NO new levequests introduced, and the side quests that were introduced are extremely basic, light on lore, and few in number. Is anyone even writing lore for this game?
There actually HAS been new levequests added since launch. And the Sidequest system was introduced in the last major patch and the quests implemented at that time were the simplest ones that had complete at that time. Yoshida said they would be adding more and more Side Quests with ever major patch which will include 1.17 (And possibly 1.17a) Now that the side quest system is in place (the foundation of the system) they can add new and more extravagant quests as they are ready.

Devs still investigating map collision for getting hung up on ledges?
If a user reports a map collision that prevents gameplay in an area it should be investigated.

Market Ward search is still elementary and not flexible. Seeking items is still extremely difficult to work with.
I can seek and find items in the Marketward in less then 10 minutes and be on my way to questing again. In the Auction house in XI sometimes it would take up to 30 minutes to do some shopping because of having to fight over the price. If an item is listed as the last time bought for 1k its reasonable to expect that the next one should be about that. But sometimes it isn't and you end up haggling with the AH for more time then you expected just to try and not get screwed.

Why does everything take so long? What's taking up all the dev's time?
An Earth Quake, a Tsunami, Multiple Sub Teams working on Multiple New and Changed Systems, having to produce reports on those changes, sync and compare them with all the other teams, Make sure the content meshes properly with everyone else changes. Then Testing. LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS OF TESTING. The biggest delay? Localization for 4 languages. Japanese, English, German and French. All 4 localization teams have to work together so that the same experience is presented to all players fairly and in the same way But makes sense in the native language. This takes MASSIVE amount of time and just Google Translating Does NOT do it. I'd just like to make an example of something. Do you think they just thought up the name "Marauder" for Axe Users? It wasn't just a random decision based on skills it uses. Its much much deep and most likely was the result of one localization crew member spending hours and hours of researching. The word Marauder is of Old French Origin. It was used to describe Frank warriors who raided the area that is now France. These warriors were known and feared for their weapon of choice which was named after them. The Francisca, a massive axe that was thrown blindly but caused great damage to large groups of clumped up soldiers. This connection seems very simple but to come to it took a lot of research. I know because I myself had to do it. Though I had the benefit of knowing the end result of the research and instead worked backwards it was still quite a bit of time researching.

The Fact of the matter is you should be treating it as if we are still in beta and the content is coming as its developed.
The problem is people keep expecting Expansion Pack levels of content every 2 weeks an NO development team can perform that kind of miracle. Theres a reason most MMO's do Major Content Updates three times a year with a major expansion every 1.5 to 2 years. It takes Time. And if you can't give them time then its obviously just not the game for you. Those of us who have faith will stay and will enjoy the content as it comes, like we have since XI first released naked. Valkurm Dunes one of the Signature Zones of XI didn't even exist until a year after it was released.

[SnowTiger]

Ideally, I'd like to see them merge an AH with the wards, and if they did, I think it would surpass the AH in FFXI or any other mmo... Whereas I just don't see the wards ever outright surpassing an AH, although it could offer certain perks.

Basically, take the zoneline to the wards, and replace it with an AH zone.

Retainers would not all be standing around, but there would be spots where you can interact with you're retainers, the bells basically, but maybe with a different coat of paint. And of course a way of interacting with the AH itself, and a way to receive things that you buy, either directly, through your retainer, or with a delivery system.

Those details aside, the main perks over the traditional FFXI AH would be:

- More slots to sell things, and no fees incurred until the thing actually sells, so no listing fees for higher ticket items that sell slow.

- The ability to LIST items by the stack, but to SELL them individually, such as the wards currently allow... That is a drastic improvement over the FFXI system... If you have 99 of something to sell, but the buyers only want 1 at a time, and you only have 7 sell slots.. It sucks, it blows ass, pure and simple. That perk alone would make the whole system worth while.

- You'd still have all the functionality of an AH, and preferably a price history, allowing supply and demand to work it's magic without all the uncertainty that arises when a market dries up for even an hour. Supply and demand is a superior approach, despite what some people say.

- Support for listing HQ versions of items, and have them show up as HQ. The wards don't do that as of now, and it's a real pain when you're selling or seeking HQ items. Poking through the bazaars one by one like people had to at launch is completely unacceptable, period.

- It could be streamlined so as to be quick and efficient... Need to pick up a couple things real quick, and have a party waiting on you? No problem... With the wards, especially pre patched... You had to pick either the party, or hours of shopping. Now it's a lot better, but it could be better still. Would be nice not to have to go ward diving for each purchase, even with the retainer stars. Not bad now and then, but when you're making some stuff for people, and have none of the mats, you could easily end up doing 10 or 20+ dives to get all the stuff you need. It's just a waste of time, and annoying.

Now let's look at the downsides... Oh wait, there wouldn't be any. Well that's settled then, we need a retainer compatible AH to replace the wards. :P

[Cairdeas]

Now let's look at the downsides... Oh wait, there wouldn't be any. Well that's settled then, we need a retainer compatible AH to replace the wards. :P

In your system how would items put up for auction be treated.


"Time Delayed Bidding" Where you put up a bid and then wait for the timer to run out
"Highest Blind Bidder" (FFXI)
or
"Transparent Buy It Now" (FFXIV)

Because as it is, I do not want to spend hours sitting at a wall tell them I want to buy a sword for 2k when the AH tells me the last one sold for 1.5K Then end up spending 8k to get it and it having taken me an hour to get to that point.

When in XIV I can walk up. Look at all of those swords. See the cheapest, and go buy it if the price is right.

[Wevlum]

I don't care so much about the AH situation and I don't expect changes overnight, but it would be nice to hear a bit more information about the proposed combat/class systems; even if it's just a case of, "we're thinking about doing this, this and this". It's just nice to hear a little reassuring "FFXIV is going to be alright" whispered into your ear now and then and I also think it would lay some of the "maybe they're just lazy" to rest perhaps too.

I also think that when all the update/changes notes are to do with trivial matters lately, (such as increasing mob/spell size) and when there is a complete lack of information regarding any kind of follow up to their work with the mentioned drastic changes to combat/classes, it can get a little frustrating.

So to summarise I can accept they need time to do these drastic changes, but it doesn't take more than a day's work to briefly mention some details of what they're planning for these changes. Also could these tid bits of often contradicting information regarding companies be anymore of a...co- um... strip tease? Let's go with strip tease! Sure you want to build up the anticipation of your shiny new system but at least give us a clue of what it involves.

There have also been a few mentions of "hey it's free, don't complain". I just wanted to point out that some of us payed for the collector's edition which was like £30-40 and then many of us needed PC hardware changes that we got just to play FFXIV. I myself had to purchase a new graphics card and since I'm mostly a console gamer (with the exception of Borderlands/FFXI) it was a pretty "especially for FFXIV" purchase. So don't take for granted "it's free so you have no right to complain." Besides which, getting punched in the face is free but I'd certainly object to it.

[Winterclaw]

Why things take so long? Typically in a larger company you have a number of checks and balances and a certain amount of inertia to overcome.

1. Someone has a proposal
2. It gets critiqued
3. It eventually gets approved or not
4. Someone works on the design
5. The design gets critiqued
6. The design gets approved
7. Someone starts coding
8. If there is a snag in coding it has to be worked around.
9. As it is coded, people are asked if this is a good design or works (if you are a good company, you do hallway usability testing)
10. The coding is finished and sent to QA.
11. QA tests it, makes comments, submits bugs, and if you've got a good company, suggests changes.
12. It goes back to coding and design perhaps.
13. The fixes/changes are done and retested.
14. Do this until QA is happy or someone tells them to shut up.
15. The update happens.

It's a long process. Sometimes you've got multiple departments working together. Sometimes the coding breaks something else. Sometimes the code doesn't have any comments and you are forced to put together what's going on. Sometimes you are in the middle of one thing and something more important gets dropped on your desk.

[Cairdeas]

Why things take so long? Typically in a larger company you have a number of checks and balances and a certain amount of inertia to overcome.

1. Someone has a proposal
2. It gets critiqued
3. It eventually gets approved or not
4. Someone works on the design
5. The design gets critiqued
6. The design gets approved
7. Someone starts coding
8. If there is a snag in coding it has to be worked around.
9. As it is coded, people are asked if this is a good design or works (if you are a good company, you do hallway usability testing)
10. The coding is finished and sent to QA.
11. QA tests it, makes comments, submits bugs, and if you've got a good company, suggests changes.
12. It goes back to coding and design perhaps.
13. The fixes/changes are done and retested.
14. Do this until QA is happy or someone tells them to shut up.
15. The update happens.

It's a long process. Sometimes you've got multiple departments working together. Sometimes the coding breaks something else. Sometimes the code doesn't have any comments and you are forced to put together what's going on. Sometimes you are in the middle of one thing and something more important gets dropped on your desk.

This is Correct.

I work for a Healthcare EMR company. We have a massive Program already designed/built/and in production for the last two years, but the vender has proven to be unable to maintain the level of development we need.

We've instigated taking on a new vender to design us a new UI for our whole database.

Its been approximately a year and a half since we first contacted them and as far as I've been informed they haven't even started coding the new UI. Its been all up contract negotiations and designing and "Drawing" the UI so we know what it might look like.

We are not even expecting the Basic model to be functional for another year. Then the full functional model to be ready in 3 years.

And all it is, is a UI that lets you keep records of Doctor Patient Visits and the effects of wound management on a wound over time.

[BelgianRofl]

This is Correct.

I work for a Healthcare EMR company. We have a massive Program already designed/built/and in production for the last two years, but the vender has proven to be unable to maintain the level of development we need.

We've instigated taking on a new vender to design us a new UI for our whole database.

Its been approximately a year and a half since we first contacted them and as far as I've been informed they haven't even started coding the new UI. Its been all up contract negotiations and designing and "Drawing" the UI so we know what it might look like.

We are not even expecting the Basic model to be functional for another year. Then the full functional model to be ready in 3 years.

And all it is, is a UI that lets you keep records of Doctor Patient Visits and the effects of wound management on a wound over time.

Dang. FFXIV's fucked.

[Moth]

Dang. FFXIV's fucked.

consequences will never be the same.