Is this really good enough?

[Damiea]

I don't really know where to start with this post. I have been through a lot of bad game launches through the last year, Diablo 3, SimCity, Guild Wars 2, World of Warcraft. All these games had pretty bad launches. I think this early access has become the worst game launch I have ever taken part of.

Now this is where I seem to have trouble finding words. Not because I don't have a lot to say, but because I don't think what I, or anyone else on these forums has to say really matters. What we have / have not paid for is irrelevant in my opinion. It's about credibility. I paid for a pre-order under the assumed basis that I would be able to partake in the early access, which I have been completely unable to do thus far. However I am not the only one. There are countless pages of people who have had problems since day one of early access.

I am not mad that I have not been able to play. It happens, things go wrong, any adult knows this. You can't whine and cry every time things don't go your way. The reason I am mad is because I don't feel like after what the video game industry has been going through that this is acceptable. We are living in a world where we are making it okay for things like this to happen. Where is the person from Square Enix admitting that this was a poor early access and a mistake? Why is this good enough? Why is it acceptable to just follow suit with all the other poor game launches and add your name to the staggering list of people who would rather pay for the least and hope for the best rather than just be prepared for the worst.

Launches like this send a clear message to your player base. Your bottom line and profit is more important than the very people who pay for your product. You claim that people not being allowed on is to maintain a stable game play experience for the people who log on. Now that makes sense for a beta. This is not a beta. This is a service that your company used as a SELLING POINT. You sold me a product and now nearing the end of it I am realizing I won't get to use it at all. You sold me a lie. I don't think a few cheap cookie cutter apologies are good enough. I feel that what has happened over the last few days is a sign that you are unprepared and unwilling to be prepared as a company.

This is not a message to Square Enix. This is a message to other frustrated players. I don't need your opinions, I don't need you in here defending square. You won't change my mind because as I person I feel I deserve better treatment than is being provided. I think it's something we should all consider. The message we are sending to companies when we let things like this slide is that it's okay. I don't believe this is okay.

I wonder what happens tomorrow at the launch? There is clearly no problems in SE in taking away that which was promised. I expect tomorrow I will find myself troubled by the same things that are going on today and have been the last few days. This game was not ready. Is not ready. Will not be ready. By the time it is, it will be way to late.

[VengeanceManatee]

I don't really know where to start with this post. I have been through a lot of bad game launches through the last year, Diablo 3, SimCity, Guild Wars 2, World of Warcraft. All these games had pretty bad launches. I think this early access has become the worst game launch I have ever taken part of.

Now this is where I seem to have trouble finding words. Not because I don't have a lot to say, but because I don't think what I, or anyone else on these forums has to say really matters. What we have / have not paid for is irrelevant in my opinion. It's about credibility. I paid for a pre-order under the assumed basis that I would be able to partake in the early access, which I have been completely unable to do thus far. However I am not the only one. There are countless pages of people who have had problems since day one of early access.

I am not mad that I have not been able to play. It happens, things go wrong, any adult knows this. You can't whine and cry every time things don't go your way. The reason I am mad is because I don't feel like after what the video game industry has been going through that this is acceptable. We are living in a world where we are making it okay for things like this to happen. Where is the person from Square Enix admitting that this was a poor early access and a mistake? Why is this good enough? Why is it acceptable to just follow suit with all the other poor game launches and add your name to the staggering list of people who would rather pay for the least and hope for the best rather than just be prepared for the worst.

Launches like this send a clear message to your player base. Your bottom line and profit is more important than the very people who pay for your product. You claim that people not being allowed on is to maintain a stable game play experience for the people who log on. Now that makes sense for a beta. This is not a beta. This is a service that your company used as a SELLING POINT. You sold me a product and now nearing the end of it I am realizing I won't get to use it at all. You sold me a lie. I don't think a few cheap cookie cutter apologies are good enough. I feel that what has happened over the last few days is a sign that you are unprepared and unwilling to be prepared as a company.

This is not a message to Square Enix. This is a message to other frustrated players. I don't need your opinions, I don't need you in here defending square. You won't change my mind because as I person I feel I deserve better treatment than is being provided. I think it's something we should all consider. The message we are sending to companies when we let things like this slide is that it's okay. I don't believe this is okay.

I wonder what happens tomorrow at the launch? There is clearly no problems in SE in taking away that which was promised. I expect tomorrow I will find myself troubled by the same things that are going on today and have been the last few days. This game was not ready. Is not ready. Will not be ready. By the time it is, it will be way to late.

As I have said before in a similar thread: SE should make an official announcement. Pushing back the dates for release, so they can fix this all up. Give everyone involved a free months worth of gameplay (Extra). And then release once they have fixed all of these glaring issues.

The damage has been done, and they have done some very mentally addled moves in their endeavor's. Doesn't mean they can't fix it and turn this around. Good read, overall.

[Derceto]

Nice post and a good read. No unintelligible ranting. I'd have to say that I am about on par with you. This isn't acceptable, no. However, we don't know the details behind these problems, only what SE tells us. Some problems can't be foreseen, but if what SE has told everyone is indeed true, then this problem could have easily been avoided with proper implementation. Hoping their stability takes a few leaps forward in the remainder of the week. I'm sure they don't want this game to get blasted after the tragedy that was XIV 1.0. My only guess is that, they aren't telling us everything (of course), and they are frantically trying to get things fixed properly. Keeping my fingers crossed.

[MajinUltima]

The core issue with the logins seems to be a MORE positive response in north america and a bigger interest in the game than anticipated. This is the opposite of SWTOR, which had WAY too many servers at launch, and had several near-dead servers a few months later. I'm fine with THIS, provided a solution is incoming within a reasonable and open timeframe, which so far has not been the case.

My main gripe with the login issue is that the super tiny queues mean my place in line is constantly dropped and I have to sit at my computer spamming login attempts every 30sec, while people in-game afk for hours to avoid it.

[KalAnthony]

I agree with Majin, what they needed was to add more servers and they should of known from Beta 4 that they were getting a huge base. What would also help is allowing character transfers to less populated servers. The legacy servers for example are servers that were combined from the 1.0 release when they didn't have enough players, allowing those people to move would of helped a little in the congestion area. I think a lot of those players have also come back so now you have 2 or 3 servers worth of people trying to get into one server if that makes sense. I have enjoyed the playtime I've gotten so far.

[Seregil]

My main gripe with the login issue is that the super tiny queues mean my place in line is constantly dropped and I have to sit at my computer spamming login attempts every 30sec, while people in-game afk for hours to avoid it.

I think this has been everyone's main gripe. Putting players in an extended queue is one thing, but to tell them, "sorry, we're full, try again later" is both insulting and unacceptable. Queues we can handle, we expect them... especially since SquareEnix didn't expect how many players they'd have (which one would think might have been the easiest thing in the world to foretell).

When the game officially launches - and it already has in some parts of the world, according to the news on the launcher and elsewhere - I expect an even more fiery backlash than what has already transpired.

It's a shame, too, because I had high hopes that this game wouldn't fail. Serves me right for wishful thinking, because this game will now not even hobble out of the gate before it's deemed a commercial failure.

[Woobies]

No...Quite frankly. It is not good enough. I was one of the players locked out of Beta 4 for 30+ hours dues to a 3102 issue that went unaddressed until the very end of beta. It was beta...so while a bit disappointed, I didn't complain too much since I wasn't paying for it. Before continuing with my pre-order, I specifically asked if I would be able to play during EA. I was told by customer service and a general announcement by Yoshido that everyone in EA would be able to play. Since EA has started, I have encountered repeated 90000 errors, 3102 errors, 10102 errors, the dreaded 1017 login screen, disappearing server lists, limited login, inability to progress story line due to instance issues, repeated downtime for maintenance and so on. I tried for 8 hours to login and when I finally did get in, I got to play for 15 minutes before getting booted for more server maintenance. The game is unplayable by most people which is acceptable during a beta but not a EA or release. I do not see the problems improving as release approaches either. If nothing, I expect them to worsen.

There remains no response from SE to the unplayability of the game nor any recourse offered to those who paid to play an unplayable game. "Sorry and thank you for patience" is not good enough.

[Shadowblind]

What I want to understand is how the game KNOWS when you're at the end of a looooong mission, and just before you finish you magically "lose connection to server" for half a second and get thrown out only to find that the world is suddenly "full".

I spent money for this?