Comments from the Devs

[Siatdiat]

I don't like at all the way this is going.
Developers work on their game, it shouldnt be an open forum. Right or wrong, it's important to have an author standpoint and be truthfull to that.
Small changes are welcome but this going back and firth on features it's just... silly.

"Here's your aggro icon" "Oh ok you dont like it, here take this one instead" "Is this one ok?"

It seems there're giving players too much weight into the development/suggestion department, so either this is all a fake and they wont ever really include any suggested mechanics, or they're turning a high profile game into an open mod that people discuss on forums. Ok this example may be too extreme but i hope it still shows my point.

The only MMO you ever played was FF11 I guess.

[Gulkeeva]

Well they were intended to be that way. Apparently if crafting isn't a long, tedious and eye-gouging experience in a MMO, it has no real value. Also, you have to figure that since crafters are as equal as fighters in this game, down to the levels themselves, and the fact that they can engage in the entirety of the CSes, crafting must keep its high value above all else.

Alot people are just used to other MMO crafting methods which are much faster/easier. I'm pretty used to the wow method. If you got the money+time, you could level a craft to max level within a day (like 8-12 hours).

Even though a craft can be leveled that fast to max level it still has its uses and makes good money (not only that great benefits through increased craft only dps buffs or stat bonuses or healing or some other benefit).

Also about the earlier comment about dev's going back n forth on stuff ingame... hopefully SE doesn't waste too much time doing that (they really should release a test server, so it can be done once and done right the first time) instead of wasting resources constantly going back and fixing what they just added... Yoshi P mentioned adding one in possibly, wonder when that will be.

[Spider-Dan]

Yep. I like that too. Except these aren't any of the things they're doing. Making the icon toggle-able is re-tar-ded. People are gonna have it turned off, then turn it on to explore new areas, then turn it back off.

Why would someone toggle it on and off? I interpreted the toggle as something specifically to shut up the dead-enders who want to complain about having too much information. What reason would they have to ever toggle it on?

As for the "problem" of people being confused by an aggro icon on a mob far beneath their level that may not actually aggro (and that they can twoshot anyway if it did): who cares? Just run past it. If it cons blue and it has an aggro icon, you should be able to add 2+2.

[solracht]

My brain hurts from reading the death penalty thread. I'm so lucky I didn't see it until now.

I don't like at all the way this is going.
Developers work on their game, it shouldnt be an open forum. Right or wrong, it's important to have an author standpoint and be truthfull to that.
Small changes are welcome but this going back and firth on features it's just... silly.

Complaining about toggles? Really? Guess what most successful MMOs have? Options.

[Grey Jorildyn]

Whether a mob is aggressive or passive is part of the mmo culture's metagame knowledge set now. I do not think it should be the type of information that is not readily available visually to a player. That type of knowledge should be few and far between.

[Hyan]

I don't like at all the way this is going.
Developers work on their game, it shouldnt be an open forum. Right or wrong, it's important to have an author standpoint and be truthfull to that.
Small changes are welcome but this going back and firth on features it's just... silly.

"Here's your aggro icon" "Oh ok you dont like it, here take this one instead" "Is this one ok?"

It seems there're giving players too much weight into the development/suggestion department, so either this is all a fake and they wont ever really include any suggested mechanics, or they're turning a high profile game into an open mod that people discuss on forums. Ok this example may be too extreme but i hope it still shows my point.

I see what you mean, but fine-tuning should be alright and exactly what this kind of feedback is for.

New comments for today, but no translations yet. I'll add them once they become available.

[Aratharn]

Give us the info on companies already!

[Hyan]

It's scary how many posts and even threads have popped up regarding the new DP policy that is "not harsh enough".

I wonder whether these people would rejoice if the patch notes said "you now lose 10% SP for dying!"

I just can't wrap my head around that thought.

[Tomino]

The only MMO you ever played was FF11 I guess.

No.

We're not talking about buffs or nerfs here, or developers stepping in to fix a certain mechanic that led to unwanted game situations. It's not even about easing a certain process (ie. crafts) that has become tedious.

We're talking about specific design choices that shouldn't be changed in a desperate attempt to win players back. An aggro icon won't make anyone re-install the game and on the other hand, if the game finally gets proper content, no one will ever care if the icon's there or not.
I really don't see the point of these super-tiny-little fixes (that are going back and forth now), death penalty talks included. I mean, really?

I know they want to toss a few bones but in the actual game state, I dont even know if it's worth the time.
Obviously, I'm eager to be proven wrong by some huge update post detailing all the battle changes and such.

[Croy]

No.

We're not talking about buffs or nerfs here, or developers stepping in to fix a certain mechanic that led to unwanted game situations. It's not even about easing a certain process (ie. crafts) that has become tedious.

We're talking about specific design choices that shouldn't be changed in a desperate attempt to win players back. An aggro icon won't make anyone re-install the game and on the other hand, if the game finally gets proper content, no one will ever care if the icon's there or not.
I really don't see the point of these super-tiny-little fixes (that are going back and forth now), death penalty talks included. I mean, really?

I know they want to toss a few bones but in the actual game state, I dont even know if it's worth the time.
Obviously, I'm eager to be proven wrong by some huge update post detailing all the battle changes and such.

I have a feeling the death penalty talk wasn't even started by the players. They are re-evaluating the whole combat system and making classes more individualized and they probably saw an ability like 'Raise' and said "Wow... this spell is useless right now." and suddenly talk went to how to alleviate that and the death penalty talk came from that. When you add in the new tiered raise system they are planning, it suddenly glorifies raise, makes death even more trivial in a well balanced party, and stops or mitigates some unwanted abuses within behest and leves by penalizing death/return/fight mechanics. Yoshida just happened to find a well talked thread on the death penalty and put in his two cents of where they are going with that. At least that is my guess. Yoshida had a very coherent and very deliberate response to that death penalty thread which makes me believe that not only was it discussed internally, but was already decided on well before that thread picked up steam.

[Sephiroth]

I really don't see why everyone is complaining about this being looked at so soon. One dev could probably write the code to toggle the icon in about 10 mins, then another 5 mins to test it and resize the graphic. Displaying the mob's rank is even easier to implement, it's just a case of displaying a variable. If little shit like that helps make players happier it's all good. This is fluff, not shit that's going to take any noticeable time away from serious development.

[Tomino]

Your points are both valid and, again, I sincerely hope to be proven wrong.

It's just that Yoshida started in like January? It's April now and major events aside (which it's right to take into account) we got GUI fixes, 13 quests, a lot of polls, some minor minor tunings and a very long "to do" list.
I dont want to look like I'm yelling at them because I understand it was an hard task to begin with, but this doesnt even feel like a game anymore.

If you plan to deliver a significant fix in no less than 6 months maybe you'd just shut down the game, maybe it'd create more hype once it gets back on, dunno. Unless now they consider PC version some sort of open beta before PS3 release, which sound plausible.

[Selamis]

Your points are both valid and, again, I sincerely hope to be proven wrong.

It's just that Yoshida started in like January? It's April now and major events aside (which it's right to take into account) we got GUI fixes, 13 quests, a lot of polls, some minor minor tunings and a very long "to do" list.
I dont want to look like I'm yelling at them because I understand it was an hard task to begin with, but this doesnt even feel like a game anymore.

If you plan to deliver a significant fix in no less than 6 months maybe you'd just shut down the game, maybe it'd create more hype once it gets back on, dunno. Unless now they consider PC version some sort of open beta before PS3 release, which sound plausible.

They're essentially redoing the entire battle system and UI from scratch and looking into changing zones around and remapping them upon the hiring of the new, now current, team of developers. What we have now still took them time but it's by far not the reason things have been drawn out, so in addition to working on that, they have people working on the bigger changes planned that Yoshi laid out. His polls were just to get a feeler to see if he was on the same page as the players because he wants to make sure he gets it right from the get go, instead of just blindly saying "yeah let's do this that sounds great" since that's part of the problem to start with.

After 1.17 and 1.18, that's when we'll see the most content coming in I think, because these next two patches are supposed to be the ones that included all the major changes he's been working on. What we have now is basically a beta, without the data wipe, and it's good that they're doing it this way because if they just shut the servers down while working to fix the game, I'd say half the people wouldn't even come back (not that they already may anyway using the current method.)

This way people that are playing, can at least see things as they evolve and be like "ok, yeah, this is totally different from x months ago when I remember it as being like this..." Add in the twin natural disasters and looming nuclear crisis and it's amazing that they are even continuing at all, they could have just as easy pulled the plug on 14 and called it a day given everything that's happened. They're committed to their customers, I feel in time they'll be rewarded and people will at least give this game a chance once it's finally released on PS3, so I'd say it's a save bet they're treating it as a big beta test for PS3 like you said.

Longer than I had planned, sorry lol.

[Hyan]

It's just that Yoshida started in like January? It's April now and major events aside (which it's right to take into account) we got GUI fixes, 13 quests, a lot of polls, some minor minor tunings and a very long "to do" list.

Yet what do you think they could do instead? Just like you said, this game has been out for 6 months but they have been developing these features for two to three months at most. That's about the time you'd expect most of the "larger" features on that list to be finished (if you focus on finishing them asap). Companies have been in the making for longer I think and it seems they're coming before everything else (1.17).

It may very well be that the upcoming patches will suck or be underwhelming, but I don't think the patches we've gotten so far matter in the big picture of things. They do it just to keep our attention. The shit that decides whether this game has any chance or not have yet to be implemented.

I bet they'll be underwhelming, if only for the fact that the combat system will probably feel like a mess until they finish it and I doubt the class restructuring will be dealt with completely at that time either. It'll look like a construction yard until like late-Summer imo.

But, like you said, it's still entertaining to follow what's happening.

[Lucavi]

Well shit, Tomino, they tried it the other way - the developer's way. Look what it got them: the golden shit award from pretty much every review site in the world that isn't housed in Japan or weaboo land. They had to try something, and I'm not saying that this was the right answer either. The right answer was to actually look at other competitors before you even started working on the game, continue to look at others, and try to improve on your product while not promising the sky and offering the acid rain. This game launched as a complete joke, and everyone smelled it weeks, if not months, in advance.

I wanted it to work just as much as everyone, but its got such a long way to go, and having to dip back and forth like this will simply slow everything down. They needed a hard, customizable UI system from the get-go. They failed miserably; I doubt they even knew what UI meant. Its okay though: console MMOs don't have to have PC-customizable options. They should have made this console only; it would have been easier to build, and would have been received far better.

[Tomino]

Well shit, Tomino, they tried it the other way - the developer's way. Look what it got them: the golden shit award

True, but that's what any developer risks and it's honestly part of the job.
You take choices, you face fans and haters. What I'm fearing now is that they got beated so hard they lost any "guts" to take decisions and stand by them which is definitely akward for such an high profile title.

But again, I don't want this comment of mine to sound too harsh on them. Yoshida team has a monumental, hard task to face and they have all my support because I'm among those who hope FF14 can, one day, deliver.
I'd just prefer them to release concept arts or teases instead of makign posts about minor mechanics such as death penalties or, lol, aggro icons. Also, between a teaser and 13 quests released, I'd honestly prefer teasers.

[Hyan]

You take choices, you face fans and haters. What I'm fearing now is that they got beated so hard they lost any "guts" to take decisions and stand by them which is definitely akward for such an high profile title.

Neither extreme is good. Do you think they are going towards the other extreme now? I can't see why you'd think that. Like you said, they are commenting on little things that players want tweaked (and make huge threads about). The big picture has remained the same regardless of whether everyone agrees with it or not, at least so far- and even if it seems that grand "plan" is taking them towards WoW, FFXI or whatever, it is still their(his) vision. That's what it should come down to. The developers have a vision, and the players who support that vision will help them get where they need to be (by giving their opinion). Aggro icon was coming, some kind of DP adjustments are coming- bitch all you want, and that wouldn't change. But they can still make it toggleable and the icon smaller.

Though right now all of this seems a bit pointless, I bet it'll become very important once they've laid out the groundwork for combat and class system. It will not be perfect from the get-go, and that's where we come in. They'll also learn to be a bit more careful about the visuals next time if we tell them the aggro icon and some monsters were too large this time.

[Corrderio]

The more I see these the more I wonder if we'll get any info on actual stuff. There's 3 things I'd kill to actually get info on.

Crafting System: Yoshi-P said in the 4th letter he was going to talk about the "introduction of new synthesis concepts" however that's the last we heard of it.

Companies: Everything seems to be done so it seems odd why we're being left in the dark. Yoshi said in the closing of his 5th letter he was going to talk about it in his next letter then in his 6th would talk more about them before 1.17 goes live, however would it kill them to give us a little insight on what to expect?

Battle System: This one is a no brainer, everyone wants to know about the changes and at this point I'm sure Yoshi-P finalized his decisions on what will happen with classes and other changes so something this is something else everyone would like to get some insight on.

[Hyan]

The more I see these the more I wonder if we'll get any info on actual stuff.

Well, Matsui just commented on auto-attack. Probably will take a day or two to get a translation though.

[Tomino]

Do you think they are going towards the other extreme now? I can't see why you'd think that.

A few things made we wonder about how much they're putting (again) on the table.

The whole idea of re-making zone, for example. I dont know how much of a rumor it is, but it's still akwardly new to have a developer re-work on content that was already made, approved and delivered.

Second, it worries me how many suggestion topics flooded their official forums. Now, either they'll basically ignore everything players wrote because they already made up their mind (think traditional classes), or they really believe they can work with this huge community and salvage ideas "on the fly" to better appeal their audience.