Comments from the Devs

[dfdfpp]

Thats why they need to fire the guy incharge of job balancing in XI, the guy sucks ass at his job, he is probably the worst in the entire industry. I mean shit, look at freaking WoW, all dps classes are pretty competitive within a few %'s of each other(in PVE content) where people who know what the fuck they're doing are going to pull nice numbers to contribute.

FFXI the same 3-4 jobs severely outperform every other job no matter how much "skill" you think you have. There is so much disparity in the jobs, 9 years later and they still have yet to figure out how to make each job completely competitive with each other. I can't even fathom how a person/team can be so out of touch with how the game is played to continue to allow that to happen.

The fact people say "THEY MADE LEVELING SO EASY NOW IN XI, JUST LEVEL A USEFUL JOB IN A DAY!" that blows my fucking mind, lol, tell that to people who spent all that time getting relics for a job they wanted to play that is now useless due to the way abyssea works. Can you really trust SE to make sure all classes/jobs will be able to contribute in meaningful content in XIV? color me skeptical.

I doubt anyone else shares this opinion, but having been on both sides of this thinking (or lack thereof) I kind of prefer XI's lack of "proper" balancing. I was one of those people who was terrible at XI and ALWAYS played the mentioned top classes, but if you check simulationcraft, even on WoW there's a test dummy difference of like 10-15% between the best few and worst few specs. And that's with almost constant tuning and retuning and basically changing classes completely between major patches. Even worse is the expectation that all of these be absolutely equal so when, for instance, Heroic Ragnaros falls you get a swarm of idiots yelling about x class y spec being completely worthless because they weren't in the raid comp for the world first kill.

To be really immune to this you'd literally have to level 5 characters (and rep with all of them, and level professions, etc.) - BUT AT LEAST THEY MADE LEVELING SO EASY NOW YOU CAN DO IT IN A DAY! Not that I would know, no siree! At least on XI if you truly cared about that difference you could level one job and be pretty much set for the rest of the game's existence. As long as that job wasn't SMN, teehee!

How tightly wound WoW is also sort of takes out any necessity for real experimentation. I stopped playing during ToAU *disclaimer*or whatever it was called, but I remember main tanks going from PLD/WAR to NIN/WAR to PLD/NIN and NIN/DRK in my LS (I even got a chance to do the hilarious NIN/BRD before they nerfed that runspeed song). In the same regard, RNGs got nerfed to hell for some reason, and then by next year melee classes were doing far more than RNGs ever could. Despite there being nearly no relevant changes to any of those jobs' mechanics (after all, we were wearing Zilart gear through CoP right!) and the standard way to do Kirin went from 2 hour kites to 10 minute burns simply because of people playing with the game in the background.

Also, for better or worse, I never felt that the player base got punished for breaking the game as long as stuff wasn't completely going wonkers. There are plenty of other things wrong with what I said up there and with XI in general, but I don't think that having a game very loosely tuned so that odd ideas are rewarded - especially when a large amount of cross-class swip-swapping is intentionally how you're supposed to play - is necessarily a bad thing.

[Aro]

dfdfpp, I strongly agree with some of things you said. FFXI was not my first MMO nor was it my last, but it was definitely the most memorable and unique to me. In a way, because things weren't so set in stone the players sort of "built" the world and the play styles, where in other games (most of the time at least) you're pretty much shoved into a certain play style. Using NIN as a tank, taking advantage of certain sub jobs, etc all made it feel like it was the players who "designed" the play-styles.

Of course there is uniqueness in other games, but I think long time FFXI players would agree that no other games really gave that same feeling. It might just be the hazy nostalgia glasses talking, but even when I try to think of it from an objective view point, yeah things were rough and there were lots of things wrong with the game... but that sort of gave it a certain charm?

[Lucavi]

I think you're absolutely right that rough-around-the-edges experiences have charm to them, but I don't know if those same old experiences can capture a large market-share of today's MMO players. I think its pretty easy to forget that SE is trying to make bank off of this MMO; I doubt they released a brand-spanking new MMO to capture the same subs as they currently have in XI, and that's part of the reason why I slam them as hard as I do. To try to somehow increase your market-share by somehow creating a far inferior product to the one you put out nearly a decade before is simply mind-boggling.

As I said before, XI gets a free pass. It was a great game for its time, and still has an extremely loyal group of players. The game is turning a nifty profit and continues to pump out content to its satisfied and passionate customers. I don't think any of us would be here if we didn't enjoy what XI brought to the table in some way, shape or form. XIV is not supposed to be XI, though, if they want to capture more subs than XI. There's no way anyone could argue that SE wanted to capture the same number of subs or even the same subs - they wanted fresh blood - and the fact that they put out a worse product than their original says a lot about where everything is going.

[Grey Jorildyn]

Eh, I disagree with a lot of things said on this page. Agree with some, but only mildly.

I think the fact that they put out a worse product than their original only says where they are at right now, not necessarily where they are going. You can infer that, certainly, but you can never know until we arrive at our destination.

[dfdfpp]

Well, I don't know about rough around the edges and general problems giving stuff a nostalgic feeling - the devs doing nothing about job balance is the only thing I wanted them to do less about, if that was even possible. (Princess jobs all the way, haha.) I mean, I did have friends who played those classes that had trouble finding utility in endgame and XP, but there's always someone mad at their class getting the shaft anyway. Might as well be mostly the same group rather than everyone on a rotating basis...

Oh, and that ToAU emphasis was just to say how long I've been away from the game. I would be pretty surprised if this wasn't the case, but I love picking on the poor SMNs (because so many people I knew played them and hated their life) and they are still terrible, right?

[Hyan]

I think you're absolutely right that rough-around-the-edges experiences have charm to them, but I don't know if those same old experiences can capture a large market-share of today's MMO players.

But what can...

Eh, I guess I'm an old fart in the scene by now, but certain amount of freedom does give an MMO more appeal (or rather a different kind of appeal) even if it is for the expense of rock-solid gameplay (lack of balance). If hard modes and bayonetta-level encounters give you a hard-on I'm sure that's a bad trade-off, yet I doubt most people give a fuck. The vocal minority isn't named the way it is for no reason.

If casuals is where the money's at, modern MMO's could do a lot better job at catering to them. Let them be free. There will be quite a bit of imbalance and the content is rather easy in comparison but I think most people still won't care. Make us be able to level many jobs, and be PvE focused so the downsides won't be so bad. Just like I did endgame on my monk although I also leveled PUP and DNC (because it was entertaining), and of course DNC'd the events I did with my close friends where the setup didn't matter and we were just chilling or trying out something different for shits.

And lastly if PvP must be in make it with different rules altogether.

People will find their way to play with people that have similar mindsets as them anyway.

Abyssea and Magian trials... I hope they'll aim for that. Shit, I'm a purist now.

[Gokulo]

http://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/2011/07...18-and-beyond/

Nothing too exciting (thought finally good to hear they are "working on" making NPC chat box movable, lol, dunno if it was mentioned before)

[Groovebox]

http://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/2011/07...18-and-beyond/

Nothing too exciting (thought finally good to hear they are "working on" making NPC chat box movable, lol, dunno if it was mentioned before)

Seems like he ducked an instance lockout timer question...

[kisada]

http://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/2011/07...18-and-beyond/

Nothing too exciting (thought finally good to hear they are "working on" making NPC chat box movable, lol, dunno if it was mentioned before)

thank GOD for that. i thought i was the only one who hated it.

[Corrderio]

I just wish they'd combine the NPC chatbox with the main one and pull something like XI's system where if the dialogue gets cut off due to spam a box would pop up with the convo in it.

[Reapz]

I just wish they'd combine the NPC chatbox with the main one and pull something like XI's system where if the dialogue gets cut off due to spam a box would pop up with the convo in it.

^This, would look so much better.

[Croy]

I'm kinda surprised this hasn't been posted here yet.

Bonjour !

Une petite information concernant les donjons. Le temps d'attente avant chaque nouvelle tentative sera uniquement de 5 petites minutes ! D'après mes informations il sera possible de terminer un donjon et d'entrer à nouveau juste après.

Hello!

A little information about the dungeons. The waiting time before each new attempt will be only 5 minutes! According to my information it will be possible to complete a dungeon and come again soon after.

[Gokulo]

I think Hyan mentioned it but w/o pasting that post.

[Kurokikaze]

Hmm... that doesn't even make sense. lol

[Arximiro]

5 minutes seems a little extreme, but I guess if the difficulty is high you can at least give it another go if you fail instead of waiting 3 days or something.

[Jamison]

They said there wouldn't be a quest-related lockout.. doesn't mean it might not take some other sort of entrance fee.. something that's not in unlimited supply...

[solracht]

They said there wouldn't be a quest-related lockout.. doesn't mean it might not take some other sort of entrance fee.. something that's not in unlimited supply...

Going to laugh if it turns out to be anima.

[Waraji]

I vote gil sink. Hell knows we need it.

[Corrderio]

I'm expecting the deaspected crystals myself.

[Jamison]

I'm expecting the deaspected crystals myself.

That's my guess as well.