Premier Site Summit Wrap-Up (04/04/2007)

[Darkblood]

http://www.playonline.com/pcd/topics/ff ... etail.html

Recently we held our very first Premier Site Summit at the Square Enix offices. We invited the heads of our Premier Sites to attend an all day event where we would discuss the state of the community, strengthen our communication, and participate in some fun in-game events. Two representatives each from Allakhazam, FFXI Online, Stratics, Warcry, FFXI Vault and FFXIclopedia were in attendance, as well as the Square Enix Community team, North American Producer Yasu Kurosawa and Global Online Producer Sage Sundi. The main topic of the summit was explaining just how the Community team researches the issues that are most important to our players. We discussed how we read the forums, e-mail and in-game feedback and how we are constantly reporting the hottest topics to the appropriate people. The Premier Sites got an extremely intimate look at the work that is done behind the scenes and were able to witness just how many people are involved in keeping FINAL FANTASY XI running smoothly.

We're extremely happy with how the event went and are hoping to continue strengthening our ties to not only the Premier Sites, but the community as a whole. Take a look at the wrap up reports below for more details about every aspect of the summit.

[Darkblood]

ffxiclopedia's version of the meeting

I have great news for FFXIclopedia and FFXI players. Ganiman and I, along with the other premier website admins were invited to an FFXI Summit. The big announcement from this summit came from Sage Sundi himself: FFXI Window Mode has been confirmed!
Sundi said that the window mode will be made available through an update. He made no comment as to the release date of the update, but they do plan to provide the information for the release at a future time.

The news came at the end of a daylong meeting. The Square-Enix Community Team laid down the groundwork for what will be a strong relationship between the community team and their premier web sites. If you haven’t guessed already, we were whole-heartedly added to that list of sites. Thanks to the hard work of everyone here, we will now join the rest of the premier sites on Playonline.

A good portion of the meeting was spent informing us of the Community Team’s role. We learned that part of their role is reading our forums. In fact, one employee spends the bulk of his day staying informed on community issues. So, to all those who say Square-Enix does not pay attention to the forums or player concerns, you can rest assured that they do in fact read these pages, and they consider our ideas for future releases.

With this is mind, we have decided to create a forum dedicated to reaching the Community Team. The forum will be used to make it easier for them to research community issues, hot topics, and questions. Keep in mind that Square-Enix staff will not be interacting in the forums, but they will definitely be reading our posts.

On to the cool stuff we got to do. Ganiman and I got to play in a special assault called The Gathering Storm. We were divided into 4 teams of 3. The mission: mass destruction. We had to kill as many mobs as possible in 5 minutes. The team consisted of a black mage, a blue mage, and a paladin. We were all given a very strong auto-refresh, auto-regen, and auto-tp. The mobs were significantly lower in level, but strong enough to kill me within the first minute. Ganiman faired much better in this fight. His team went on to beat the Square-Enix Community team at the end of the tournament, 33-24.

The final in-game event was called Heroine’s Combat. Several volunteers were picked to take on this 6-person bcnm. Ganiman and I were among the volunteers. We had four very powerful, and familiar NPC mobs. Only the original 6 job choices were allowed. We went in with a warrior, black mage, white mage, monk, thief, and red mage. It was a challenging fight, and we learned that they only had a 25% success rate at the Tokyo Game Show. Of course Ganiman and I, along with our friends from the other premier sites, proved our North American gaming skills by pulling off the win.

We gained some insight into future FFXI updates in the short question and answer session. We learned that there is currently no plan to update the drops from the Lord of Onzozo. However, there are plans to expand the linkshell community site. They are planning to update the linshell community site with ideas they have received online from sites like FFXIclopedia.org. We also found out that NPC’s cannot travel to Aht Urhgan zones because they don’t want these areas to become overrun with beastmaster and NPC parties. They also confirmed that another expansion will be released at some point. No details as to the exact date or even the name of the release were announced. Finally, they alluded to having a solution in mind for the current Windows Vista problems.

The Community Team seemed especially excited to work with us on translating the FFXIclopedia into French and German. When we move to our new servers, we will make these additions to the site.

[Darkblood]

About NPC weapons:

I forgot to add to our announcement an interesting piece of information regarding fellowship NPCs and their weapons that you won't find on other sites that attended the summit. I was speaking with Yasu, Sundi and Mocchi at lunch about NPCs and I brought up the question of NPC weapon upgrades and what they are for. Upgrading NPC weapons has no effect other than changing what weapon they use. Nothing. Nada. It's been a question running on these forums, so we can lay it to rest now. All it does is change the weapon your NPC uses, and at quite a high price sometimes. Apparantly you can still give your NPC (through Luto) a level 1 weapon upgrade. So if you want to change what weapon your NPC uses, you can trade any level upgrade.

Basically, if you want your NPC to use say... a Great Katana, and they already have one, there is absolutely no reason to upgrade. If you want your NPC to use an Axe and you currently have them set for a Sword, trade them the level 1 Axe and save yourself some gil. I for one have been wasting gil on weapon upgrades.

I did not ask if trading weapon upgrades increases your NPC bond. I know everyone pretty much assumed at this point that there was no real benefit to trading higher level weapons, but now we know for sure.

[Darkblood]

Millionaire's Desk:

I think the most interesting thing about our discussion was Sundi’s reaction to our Millionaire Desk question. We asked whether or not the Millionaire Desk had any hidden traits like treasure hunter or hq+. He got a very kitten with a canary look on his face and muttered something in Japanese to Mocchi. He then held his hand over Mocchi’s mouth and said something else I couldn’t understand. He answered our question by saying, “no comment”.

[StaplerGuy]

So... it told us nothing other than that they consider Octave Club a fine drop (which it is.) and that they won't tell us anything?

Though being the guy who gets paid to browse alla must be a very special kind of hell. Or maybe not. I mean, it's either awesome or shit, and I can't decide which.

[Mifaco]

BG needs to displace one of those featured sites, who the fuck visits ffvault or stratics?

[theo]

Millionaire's Desk:

I think the most interesting thing about our discussion was Sundi’s reaction to our Millionaire Desk question. We asked whether or not the Millionaire Desk had any hidden traits like treasure hunter or hq+. He got a very kitten with a canary look on his face and muttered something in Japanese to Mocchi. He then held his hand over Mocchi’s mouth and said something else I couldn’t understand. He answered our question by saying, “no comment”.

And this is interesting how? >_>;

Yay, now we know that it might have a hidden trait!

[Darkblood]

LFG and LS pearl trade:

The Community Relations Team also considered the concerns for the need to streamline the process in which players "look for groups" (LFG) to reduce LFG times, and the possibility to LFG under different jobs than the one currently selected on the character. Several possible solutions were considered including changes to the in-game party searching system, an offline LFG scheduling system, the Linkshell Community Search functions, and various tools and interfaces to be open to possibly all community sites, to assist players search for other players to party with presently and in near future time periods.

Other items addressed also include the possibility to allow for linkshells to be a tradable item (via direct trade only) to resolve issues with LS leaders leaving, and other changes to the Link Shell system to include additional features to make the linkshell system to be more robust.

[Darkslitter]

Millionaire's Desk:

I think the most interesting thing about our discussion was Sundi’s reaction to our Millionaire Desk question. We asked whether or not the Millionaire Desk had any hidden traits like treasure hunter or hq+. He got a very kitten with a canary look on his face and muttered something in Japanese to Mocchi. He then held his hand over Mocchi’s mouth and said something else I couldn’t understand. He answered our question by saying, “no comment”.

And this is interesting how? >_>;

Yay, now we know that it might have a hidden trait!

He was probably saying wow even I know that it does nothing

[Pergo]

We learned that there is currently no plan to update the drops from the Lord of Onzozo.

guess they missed the memo.

We also found out that NPC’s cannot travel to Aht Urhgan zones because they don’t want these areas to become overrun with beastmaster and NPC parties.

aside from the minimal opportunities for bst in the new areas... they're actually coming out to say it. cue the angry beastmasters.

[Priran]

Millionaire's Desk:

I think the most interesting thing about our discussion was Sundi’s reaction to our Millionaire Desk question. We asked whether or not the Millionaire Desk had any hidden traits like treasure hunter or hq+. He got a very kitten with a canary look on his face and muttered something in Japanese to Mocchi. He then held his hand over Mocchi’s mouth and said something else I couldn’t understand. He answered our question by saying, “no comment”.

And this is interesting how? >_>;

Yay, now we know that it might have a hidden trait!

He was probably saying wow even I know that it does nothing

roflius

[aurik]

We learned that there is currently no plan to update the drops from the Lord of Onzozo.

guess they missed the memo.

[quote:d0bda]
We also found out that NPC’s cannot travel to Aht Urhgan zones because they don’t want these areas to become overrun with beastmaster and NPC parties.

aside from the minimal opportunities for bst in the new areas... they're actually coming out to say it. cue the angry beastmasters.[/quote:d0bda]

GOD DAMN BEASTMASTERS RUINING EVERYTHING JESUS

[Antithesis]

We learned that there is currently no plan to update the drops from the Lord of Onzozo.

guess they missed the memo.

[quote:d9b5d]
We also found out that NPC’s cannot travel to Aht Urhgan zones because they don’t want these areas to become overrun with beastmaster and NPC parties.

aside from the minimal opportunities for bst in the new areas... they're actually coming out to say it. cue the angry beastmasters.

GOD DAMN BEASTMASTERS RUINING EVERYTHING JESUS[/quote:d9b5d]

[Nagamaki]

Actually beastmaster opportunities in ToAU areas are far from minimal, but who cares.

Would have been great to see questions and answers about something that matters. Like, something people aren't able to kill after its been in the game for 20 months... I can't quite think of the name here... Heh, must not be important.

[Lordender]

i bet their windower will be shitty, no enhanced macros or anything.

[Gere]

i bet their windower will be shitty, no enhanced macros or anything.

No shit?

[Antithesis]

i bet their windower will be shitty, no enhanced macros or anything.

No shit?

We cant expect SE to give us EVERYTHING we want now can we?

[Correction]

i bet their windower will be shitty, no enhanced macros or anything.

No shit?

We cant expect SE to give us anything we want now can we?

Fixed.

Good to know that these 'premiere' sites are asking all the hard-hitting questions about NPC weapons and millionaire desks that the community really cares about. GG journalism.

[Dank]

i bet their windower will be shitty, no enhanced macros or anything.

No shit?

Beat me to it. It won't include anything that will give an unfair advantage to PC players over PS2 players.

[Starr]

He got a very kitten with a canary look on his face and muttered something in Japanese to Mocchi.

"Wut?"

He then held his hand over Mocchi’s mouth and said something else I couldn’t understand.

"I don't know"