Open letter to the producer

[Loki_Jortunn]

Dear Yoshi. P

You have been our producer for 5 months now and in that time we have seen some changes and the game has progressed:

* Item stacks
* Item search
* Party size
* Party Bonus
* Side quests
* Increased Mob size
* Increased Cobyln HP
* New NMs


Each patch has made changes that have improved the game however there is a feeling among people that I have played with that the changes have been (or at least should have been) simple to achieve and shouldn't have taken the time that they did. Most of the improvements stated above could easily be achieved by changing the values in a database or simple "if" statements added to the client.

This has led to speculation as to what the FFXIV teams have been up to.

Updating the game engine to DX11 was mentioned last year, the updated battle system has been in development the entire time you have been producer. What are the status of these changes? As players we are hungry for this information we feel we are being kept in the dark as to what is happening in development. For example Companies are going to be added, we don't know how players will interact, if this is how the quests will let us link into the dungeons, or lead to LS housing (again something that was mentioned once yet we haven't heard mention of it again). The small pieces of information we have are that there are 3 Generals: 1 per city state and they wield weapons that have names similar to relic/mystic weapons from FFXI. This may be good background story but as players we need more concrete info on how this will effect players in game.

You had a good thing going where you would list the changes you wanted to make and would tick them off when they were met or give approximate time line for when they would be introduced. This hasn't been updated in months and some things have been totally forgotten about, e.g. /assist.


This letter isn't an attack but observations of myself and LS members, we have some suggestions that you might want to consider that would help win back some support from the community.

* More information. We assume that there are weekly meetings between yourself and the various FFXIV teams: if some information from these team meetings were to be posted, we would know what was being worked on and if issues arose then we would be more forgiving.

* Small (random) group feedback or more surveys, this gives you information on how players are reacting to the changes you make, the forums give instant feedback however the feedback come from those with the loudest voice not necessarily from the majority.

* Make new content difficult. This would allow you to keep existing players happy and busy giving you more time to work on the next chunk of content. Most players come from FFXI (as shown from your first survey) and the content there was famous for being difficult and this kept players playing for years.

* Open a test server, this lets players test out game mechanics that you are tweaking. As you know players can come up with novel ways to break systems that you create, this would give you an opportunity to combat this.

You have made strives to improve the game and we are grateful for your hard work. As players who have stuck with the game for the last 8 months we are hoping that the game succeeds.

Loki Jortunn

[Betelgeuzah]

This may be good background story but as players we need more concrete info on how this will effect players in game.

You want != you need.

More information != 'more forgiving' community.

[Mack]

You want != you need.

More information != 'more forgiving' community.

This I don't understand as if some people see SE as their mom or dad and they will defend it from any angle. Who cares? I NEED more info...hell, the only thing I've been looking forward to since launch is more info...I spend my time on the forums more than I do in the game.

[BelgianRofl]

And less information = more people bidding farewell to ffxiv.

[Betelgeuzah]

And less information = more people bidding farewell to ffxiv.

That would be a catastrophe. Can't let any of the precious 30k people still playing to quit!

The current playerbase is a drop in the ocean. Either the playerbase expands exponentially or the game is closed down. You are meaningless. They only need few thousand players to give feedback if it comes down to it. The rest is filler.

[BelgianRofl]

That would be a catastrophe. Can't let any of the precious 30k people still playing to quit!

The current playerbase is a drop in the ocean. Either the playerbase expands exponentially or the game is closed down.

This is actually quite valid.

[Arcell]

And less information = more people bidding farewell to ffxiv.

Clearly it hasn't dissuaded you yet. So how was Portal 2? I beat it all in about 2 days, made me really think about quitting FFXIV.

[Eekiki]

And less information = more people bidding farewell to ffxiv.

But you'll still be here, won't you Rofl? Of course you will.

Fixing this game's programming is not so simple, seeing as the bulk of it was outsourced to...we'll just call them "incompetent" contractors. The folks at SE have to sift through all that awful code and figure out how to fix it without breaking the rest of it. It's like playing Jenga.

[DurtiMonkeyToe]

But you'll still be here, won't you Rofl? Of course you will.

Fixing this game's programming is not so simple, seeing as the bulk of it was outsourced to...we'll just call them "incompetent" contractors. The folks at SE have to sift through all that awful code and figure out how to fix it without breaking the rest of it. It's like playing Jenga.

Speculation at its finest.

[Abriael]

And less information = more people bidding farewell to ffxiv.

you mean like you did?

@ the op: if you really are a "programmer" involved in any kind of design of commercial products (and from what you "suggest" it definitely seems you're not), you would know that posting non-final information from development meetings (which is a laughable request in itself) is an extremely unprofessional practice, that leads to disastrous PR problems when such information becomes obsolete and/or invalid due further refining of plans and actual practical implementation..
TL;DR version: horrible idea. The rest is the usual "i know better than you!" stuff. I should have known from the "open letter" part in the topic. That's normally a clear indication.

Other than that, I always have fun reading self professed "programmers" (mind you, i don't know many professional coders, especially in this field, that would refer to themselves as "programmers") that speculate on how the game is/should be coded without having seen a line of code of the game and without an ounce of experience in MMORPG coding.