Ask the Devs! (02/04/2011)

[Grey Jorildyn]

They could just tier repair kits much like they do the tailor's wards, but for each type...

Basic, Standard, Master <Weapon/Clothiers/Tailors/Armor/etc.> Repair Kit.
Basic 1-20, Standard 21-40, Master 41-50 rank armors.

Get on it SE. The repair shit is ungodly stupid sometimes.

[Hyan]

Tanaka's "grand vision" was broken and stupid; that's why he was fir... ahem, resigned.

And this is based on... what exactly? He didn't let his developers flesh out his ideas, essentially releasing a skeleton of a game, which is why he was resigned. This tells us absolutely nothing about his "grand vision" and you can be absolutely certain that any "vision" would have been met with the same reception if it were half-assed. There were few parts in his "vision" that could not have worked regardless of the time put into them, but those would have been changed along the way- if given enough time to do so.

All we know is that when you don't properly finish what you started, the end result is a disaster. Gee, that sure means everything about Tanaka's grand vision was broken and stupid. Dumbass.

You've also learned a valuable lesson during these few months, Lucavi. Nobody here has ever thought in extremes, except you. It's just that you need to apply that lesson in practice as well, but I'm sure you can someday do it.

[Lucavi]

The only lesson I've learned through these months is that shitty is as shitty does. You put out a shitty product; you get shitty results. I just didn't think the product would be this shitty. Its akin to selling a brand new house without windows, doors, or even proper structural support.

[Hyan]

I believe in you, Lucavi. You are learning, I can see it even if you can't. Slowly but surely.

[Patriarch]

Just put a zod rune in it

all is well

[The Q]

Weapons definitely need to be changed so that they decay AT LEAST at a quarter of the rate they do now. As it stands right now a dagger class weapon will last for about 1500 landed attacks at full durability damage (must do roughly 40% of a mob's total health per hit to reach this cap) against a soft target. Hard targets, such as the popular Coblyns drop this number significantly as they do upwards of FIVE TIMES more durability damage per hit than a soft target (marmots in this case). Running the numbers just now against a dagger (78080 durability) against full damage against a coblyn (259 per hit at max) the weapon will only last for 301 attacks. This isn't counting abilities and weapon skills which cost durability on their own, nor does it count parries which also cost durability.

TL;DR: Shit breaks fast. May as well be made of glass.

Also the damage thresholds need to be drastically reduced. 25% for damaged, 10% for severe wouldn't hurt anyone. Actually getting rid of the thresholds all together wouldn't hurt anyone. Just make the weapons ineffective when broke just like EVERY OTHER SANE GAME ON THE MARKET. When I read that not only do weapons become less effective but also TAKE MORE DURABILITY DAMAGE when they reach severe (was it for just damaged also?) I literally slapped myself on the forehead. Just another example of bad design compounding WORSE design. Holy fuck what were they thinking?

[Lucavi]

I believe in you, Lucavi. You are learning, I can see it even if you can't. Slowly but surely.

Whatever you say, man. Whatever you say.

[Blasta]

Hyan & Lucavi secretly love each other. I know it.

[Elcura]

It's a secret?

[Kurokikaze]

This is getting really old, really fast.

[Lucavi]

The hell am I supposed to do? Lol.

[Spider-Dan]

And this is based on... what exactly? He didn't let his developers flesh out his ideas, essentially releasing a skeleton of a game, which is why he was resigned.

He signed off on the retail version. The retail version was one of the worst reviewed major MMO releases of all time (if not THE SINGLE WORST). He "resigned." I'm not sure which part you're missing.

To be crystal clear: his "grand vision" of the game was one that appeared to have a primary goal of being different than FFXI, even in stupid and unproductive ways. For example:

- action-based SP gain
- server-side UI
- bazaar-based economy

To date, most of the major changes to the game have been to clean up the fundamentally broken initial blueprint.

There were few parts in his "vision" that could not have worked regardless of the time put into them, but those would have been changed along the way- if given enough time to do so.

When you consider that the "few parts" were things like the economy and the system for ranking up, it's fair to say that his grand vision was broken.

All we know is that when you don't properly finish what you started, the end result is a disaster.

Yes, because FFXIV is the first MMO to release in an uncompleted state, right?

It's well-known and practically expected that most major MMOs release with a "buy now, patch later" mindset. Even with that leniency, retail's fundamental design philosophy was so horrible that professional MMO reviewers (who are used to "buy now, patch later") raked XIV over the coals.

I don't understand what you are trying to accomplish here. Tanaka himself took "full responsibility" (his words) for the state of the game at retail. Why are you making excuses for him?

[The Q]

Honestly the philosophy behind the initial design "vision" had to have been "hindrance." Every bit of design from the ground up seems to have been built on that foundation.

[Blasta]

I don't understand what you are trying to accomplish here. Tanaka himself took "full responsibility" (his words) for the state of the game at retail. Why are you making excuses for him?

All I can come up with is the sexy moustache. That's what hes defending, It can't be anything else. I mean he never even met the guy, and hes talking about Tanaka's grand vision.

[Hyan]

Yes, because FFXIV is the first MMO to release in an uncompleted state, right?

Yes, because when thinking in a completely black and white mindset, there are only two stages for an MMO: "incomplete" and "complete". 2 years too early? 1 year too early? 6 months too early? Irrelevant. Every game is in the same state when released "incomplete", according to you.

Granted, the end result has most often been a disaster regardless of if the release was a year, 6 months or even 3 months too early. In that way it doesn't really matter how incomplete the game is. The scores may differ, but the end result is pretty much the same.

I don't make any excuses for Tanaka's decision to release the steak blood rare. No grand vision is perfect, most of them are quite shitty before player feedback comes into play, then they are changed accordingly. Usually before the game is released, often before the game is even shown to the public. It's not really a worthwhile criticism to make, as that is de facto for MMO's in general (although not many MMO developers have the guts to have their own grand vision, most use someone else's. ArenaNet comes to mind as an exception, and other MMO's in a smaller, feature specific scale).

And where did I pull his crap from? ArenaNet's interview/seminar/whatever from 2007 or so. They use outside testers from the very beginning of the development to test and give feedback on very rough concepts and ideas so that the shitty ones can be scrapped/changed and the good ones kept. The end result seems to be GW2. If they kept doing what they said they did with GW2, none of the features in that game did just pop out of the directors head and were implemented as-is. They were all tested until the end result satisfied both the devs and the testers, is my guess anyway. I highly doubt the developers didn't have to bend or change their grand vision during the development, but that's alright because that's a crucial part of the development as whole, and it applies to XIV as well as any game (in the worst possible way though, post-release and not pre).

Tanaka a) rushed the game and b) started taking player feedback too late in the game's development to correct his vision (SE's secretive policy bit him in the ass). That, in my opinion, is what doomed him. Not his grand vision, especially the post-feedback grand vision.

It's all irrelevant now, but I fear people are going to take it the wrong way and try to make it so this new "vision" is as far from Tanaka's vision as possible. In some cases that's a good thing, in some cases it is not. There is no middleground it seems.

[Blasta]

This grand vision shit is really starting to piss me off. I have a vision for you, get a job and move out from the cold & unhabitated area called Rovaniemi :D

[Elrina]

Tanaka a) rushed the game and b) started taking player feedback too late in the game's development to correct his vision (SE's secretive policy bit him in the ass). That, in my opinion, is what doomed him. Not his grand vision, especially the post-feedback grand vision.

It's all irrelevant now, but I fear people are going to take it the wrong way and try to make it so this new "vision" is as far from Tanaka's vision as possible. In some cases that's a good thing, in some cases it is not. There is no middleground it seems.

I agree with most of what you said, but I want to single this out specifically, because this is what I disagree with.

First, Tanaka has never taken kindly to feedback. What I mean by that is, he never cared about feedback, and rarely utilized it. He might have re-examined some aspects of XI, or XIV, but it never really made any kind of impact or noticeable change that mattered. I completely believe that the only reason the changes that were announced in October/November were decided upon at all is because of pressure from outside, as a result of the huge backlash after release. You yourself just said "most of them are quite shitty before player feedback comes into play", and that's what Tanaka's problem was, it was only ever his own feedback that mattered.

Tanaka always seemed to me, especially in relation to XIV, a guy who made games by the math. He knows the functions of a game, how it has to be balanced to run properly, what kind of features are necessary. But he doesn't know what fun is, and it doesn't really factor into what he does. He charts out the structure of the game, he decides what needs to be there and what doesn't, and what kinds of features can be added that will be balanced with other features. It's like he expands upon it like an advanced math equation, making sure it's balanced and the end result is a game.

But it's a game in form only. A lot of the ways XI was developed, and almost the entirety of how XIV was developed, was stuff that seemed good on paper. I don't even know that I believe he was pressured to release it early anymore, despite the fact that it was definitely released earlier than it needed to reach a point of completion that the market would be satisfied with. I think he actually believed, at the time, that what was there was sufficient. He had designed a game that would be balanced, would allow people to log in and watch some cut-scenes and kill monsters, rank up different crafts, and then trade things together in a bazaar economy; and it was balanced for what it was. It's like he never thought of putting anything in simply because it would be fun, and finding ways to balance it that also enhanced the fun. The game didn't have any soul, all it had was math, and that's what he does. He balances it so that it has the form and structure necessary, but he just doesn't really understand what it is MMO gamers want to be able to do and play for fun.

I worded that all badly, I think. I'm looking it over and it's expressing the idea I want to get across so I hope you'll understand what I mean, but it just seems badly written out. Maybe you or someone will understand, but be able to word it better if you/they happen to agree, if anybody cares to respond at all. Ultimately, his grand vision was a "game" with all the features it required to function, but without anything there to make it actually fun to play. Even his "post-feedback grand vision" was one of necessity, changes he was being forced to make, to accommodate to the player's wishes. I think he would have gone back to his natural process, one of paying little attention to feedback, and focusing mainly on what he did best if/after reaching a point where he satisfied people with the changes he was forced to make.

One of the reasons I like Yoshida so much is because he's an MMO gamer, he's personal with us in his letters while leaving it to the update notes to do the job formally, and he seems to understand what will make the game actually fun to play. Some of that will be copying other games, some will be adjusting what's there and drawing from Final Fantasy history, and some of it may not be necessary for this to be a good game but are now necessary just to help express the fact to everyone who hasn't endured it while it's bad that this is a different game than it was when released on the PC. That's going to be very important, I think, once they reach the point that they want to market and release the game to the PS3. Not only is it going to have to be relatively good, and ready, but it's going to have to be different. If it still looks mostly the same, and plays similar, no matter how much is added or changed people are going to associate with it badly.

Things like jumping and possibly even some instances, class name changes and possibly even gradually returning crafting classes to skills/professions rather than main classes. Aspects that will be readily apparent and affect the gameplay itself and let people know they're not playing the same game it was last September. I think he will aim for a balance between features in other games like WoW, and FFXI, and yet other games. I don't think we'll truly see what he's capable of in the way of originality until expansions, but I get the impression that originality is there and that he has ideas he wants to put in the game simply because he believes they'll be fun and exciting, and not just because they're aspects that will allow for a balanced game.

[Lordender]

The reason why this game is where its at is because Tanaka got too cute with it.

This game needed to be a more polished XI with a completely different endgame and focused on the balance issues they could never fix in XI such as a Skillchain/Magic burst system that would never be outdated. Making each class useful and bring something unique to the table so there isn't "loldrg" "lolpup" from day 1.

They put too much time into trivial things at the start like crafting, lets face it, the crafting system is more thought out than anything else in the game. I understand crafting is important to a lot of people but at the release of the game it should be on a back burner until the game is at least functional to the point where you can start filling in the gaps with content then expand the role of crafting. It seemed like they put a huge team on the crafting side of the game and put 2 people on the actual gameplay side of the game.

SE was way too paranoid about RMT which dictated server side UI and many other bad design choices.


All this game had to be at the end of the day was FFXI-2 that was updated to today's MMO standard that revamped certain things that weren't pulled off well in XI. They could of had quests, rich lore, leve's should have been epic and gave your character a sense of purpose. They didn't need to spend all that time telling me that if i want to craft a level 6 weapon I'll need 10smithing, 20GS and 15 weaving, thats just turrible. They also spent all this time into "Well if you use X weapon skill on X mob you can shatter the horn and get extra loot." This was another pointless thing that could have been added much later while the core issues were dealt with.

It just seems like everything was too much of a "gimmick" that was made to aggravate the player 10 different ways. I believe SE could have still made a very different game that would have been great by using the basics of what they built with XI and improving on everything that fell short in XI.

[shepardG]

Im still surprised I don't have to take my guy to the bathroom once every 12 hours. I feel this way when I have to fuck with repairing equipment. Maybe I should be thankful.... *shrug*

[Hyan]

All this Yoshida circle jerking is getting old. One update and some fluff posts = the man is the Nippon Jesus.

I'm also sorry you feel that way about Tanaka, but I don't agree. He always came across as the Uncle Scrooge of developers really. Can't let the budget get out of hand. Almost perfect balance of effort =/= reward. We give them exactly this much content and adjustments and we'll maximize our profits while cutting losses. If a situation arises we'll up the budget.

Feedback? May be the way you think, may not be. I have no reason not to believe that he listened to feedback within the limits of the budget he (or whoever) has allotted for the game. The larger the budget, the more the man can do about the problems. If the playerbase starts dropping rapidly, the budget is increased and the vision is changed accordingly (CoP > ToAU, Abyssea). If he can do it, he will drop the budget again until the balance is met. If your investments do not get sufficient returns, it is a bad investment.

I like your post, Lordender. For once. Even though I don't fully agree.