Know Your Maker?

[Nazrious]

How well does the FFXI community know their makers?

Aside from a few people has SE really let the player base know who is responsible for development of the game?

is anything known about the methods SE implements when dealing with Devs?

Are there a bunch of Hot shots in charge of content or mediocre joe blows just hasing through the work day?

What are the Devs feeling about FFXI?
Are they die hards from the old days of FFI or is FFXI the first time they have come into contact with FF?

Just a few questions that might help us as the player base get some perspective on the Devs.

Which I think helps in understanding some of the finer points of the games.
I know back from MUDs knowing the people in charge of development helped you to grasp what they execpected of the players they were developing for.

[Zilong]

We have as much knowledge about the development team as them to the actual game.

[Ohemgee]

http://www.iconbar.com/forums/attach...0/zoidberg.gif

[Kylen]

I know one of the original developers of FFXI, but he got switched off to work on different projects a couple years ago (he's currently developing a new Crystal Chronicles game for the Wii).

I think he got his RDM to 30 or so before he got bored and quit playing. He told me I should quit too when I saw him 2 weeks ago and he found out that I still play.

[Avé]

I'd be interested in hearing their answers to these types of questions. It'd be a much better interview than having them just dodge questions the whole time.

[SeraphusRagnarok]

In one interview the devs were asked what they would rate FFXI and they said 4/10. I'll try and dig it up.

[Nazrious]

lmao 4/10 I'm sure hes the person who forgot to put AA in...

[skurlover]

[img]http://rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=A9gnMihzrE9HoDQAxxGjzbkF/SIG=12lnv4be2/EXP=1196490227/**http%3A//evilvegeta.wordpress.com/files/2007/01/funny-star-trek.jpg[/img]

[Gere]

That picture is ruined by them misspelling "Ensign".

[Fallso]

And he's not an Ensign, he's a lieutenant commander?

[Gere]

He's not talking to Data, he's talking to the random ensign driving the ship.

[Fallso]

He's not talking to Data, he's talking to the random ensign driving the ship.

Needs a comma between "Mr. Data" and "Ensign" then!

[Nazrious]

Fo-Shizzle and Star Trek don't mix!

Don't ruin a good thing by linking it with crap.

on another note.

It would be cool if the player community made up some questions not directly linked to game play and SE had some of their Devs reply.
I bet we would get a response faster then the one they are giving us to "Hey how do you kill AV?"
Though I think if the Devs made a video of themselves trying to kill AV that be some funny as shit.

Chronicles of Dev AV assualt Team.

Dev1: Umm why the fuck did I say we would make a vid about how to kill AV?
Dev2: Cus the boss was talking to you about game balance and what we were doing about it and you wanted to take his mind off it.
Dev1: Oh yeah...
Dev2: Umm we said we would show a video of us defeating AV so why dont we make a NM with the same exact name and graphic and give it like 1hp and no defence also no 2hours or anything else. Be better then having to ninja in some bogus way to defeat AV in one of the upcoming patches.
Dev1: Intern... Make it so!

[Cameron]

Gere wrote:
He's not talking to Data, he's talking to the random ensign driving the ship.

They draw straw's on who gets to fly the ship and then draw again to see who gets to wear the red shirt. xD

*huggles you all*

[vegetaa]

It would be cool if the player community made up some questions not directly linked to game play and SE had some of their Devs reply.
I bet we would get a response faster then the one they are giving us to "Hey how do you kill AV?"
Though I think if the Devs made a video of themselves trying to kill AV that be some funny as shit.

Chronicles of Dev AV assualt Team.

Dev1: Umm why the fuck did I say we would make a vid about how to kill AV?
Dev2: Cus the boss was talking to you about game balance and what we were doing about it and you wanted to take his mind off it.
Dev1: Oh yeah...
Dev2: Umm we said we would show a video of us defeating AV so why dont we make a NM with the same exact name and graphic and give it like 1hp and no defence also no 2hours or anything else. Be better then having to ninja in some bogus way to defeat AV in one of the upcoming patches.
Dev1: Intern... Make it so!

Dev team and game-life/testing/balancing team are two different sets of people. The dev team develops the game mechanics and provides tools to the testing/balancing team, who's in charge of tweaking most of the parameters of the game mechanics.

Sundi is the leader of the game-life/testing/balancing team, not the dev team.

You can work as a developper on FFXI for years, and have no idea who AV is. Developpers are the people who would tell the community about why it would be so hard to switch to DirectX 9+ or revamp the UI. But 99.99% of the player-base just wouldn't understand what they're talking about.

[BRP]

The one who does maps likes to collect armor and items.

[vegetaa]

The one who does maps likes to collect armor and items.

See, we DO know them !

[Lordender]

Sundi is the leader of the game-life/testing/balancing team, not the dev team.

This is why their balancing team is made of pure fail. It took 3 updates to correct their 2h changes(counting undoing guillotine and pentathrust acc nerf). I think it didn't even appear as if the balance team took 2h'ers out to exp on mobs to test if the 2handed damage was balanced/unbalanced and should have before releasing such a game changing update for 2h'er melee's.

If i was interviewing their "balance team" i would laugh everytime they brought up game balance. In a balanced game you wouldn't loljob's, they would all have something positive to bring should you end up inviting a certain job and not slow down the entire party.


It also took the balance team five years to figure out there was a problem with 2handed weapons.

[Nazrious]

Dev team and game-life/testing/balancing team are two different sets of people. The dev team develops the game mechanics and provides tools to the testing/balancing team, who's in charge of tweaking most of the parameters of the game mechanics.

Sundi is the leader of the game-life/testing/balancing team, not the dev team.

You can work as a developper on FFXI for years, and have no idea who AV is. Developpers are the people who would tell the community about why it would be so hard to switch to DirectX 9+ or revamp the UI. But 99.99% of the player-base just wouldn't understand what they're talking about.

And thats why something as Simple as a MUD will always have better player base intuitiveness (sp? is it even a word?) then FFXI there is the problem right there.
SE force your Devs to level 1 job to 75 and put that person in charge of working on balancing that job.
that or force your balance team to actually level some jobs to 75 and test them.....

you know what just make a video of the daily "Job" of a Dev and umm i ges they would be called "Balance Testers"?

I'm sure your player base will be happy to point out what there doing wrong.

But back on Topic this only makes it even more important that we find out just what the SE employees Devs, testers, janitors or who ever is in charge of FFXI really knows/thinks/care/hope for FFXI to become/hates when it comes to FFXI.

Cus what I know right now is that there are really 2 teams that help bring content, changes etc to FFXI and that the theory of "@ heads are better then one" doesn't seem to hold true.

[vegetaa]

The main problem with FFXI is that there are two very different communities sharing the same game :

- 490.000 noobs + casual players
- 10.000 end-game players

In the end, even if the end-game players are full of great advices and awesome ideas, they still are a tiny portion of the game audience. And S-E, as a big company, may not always listen to the tiny share of people, no matter how vocal they can be at times :/