Comments from the Devs

[miokomioko]

Sure as hell a better job than Tanaka was doing. ;/

[Takiwaki]

Don't mean to sound like a dick but thats not saying much. I mean anything over 0 is still positive right?

[Cichy]

I think this game is just an experiment in brand loyalty and SE is using us as lab rats after all...

[Corrderio]

Don't mean to sound like a dick but thats not saying much. I mean anything over 0 is still positive right?

True, but at least it's nice to see Yoshida actually care about our opinions/suggestions instead of Tanaka giving us the typical "We'll consider it" and that would be the last we ever hear of it.

Anyway, I do agree that Yoshida needs to give us more details. He talked about the crafting system, materia system, job system, a lot of things. I know he doesn't want to say something he can't deliver on, but some things he has to have finalized by now.

[miokomioko]

I'm sure it's a pretty foreign experience for a Japanese company, especially Square-Enix, to communicate with their customers. Even though there's plenty of room for more of it, improvement is improvement.

[Lordender]

The way I see it is the update is going down sometime in June, whether its mid or late, we know at the earliest its sometime in June. I have to believe with that being said a lot of shit has been agreed on in terms of which direction they decided to go with on all the revamping.

As for the silence on the matter, its possible they're way behind on progress.

[miokomioko]

I'm curious about what % of the tsunami/disaster "excuses" are legitimate for the companies outside the immediately affected areas. It didn't really seem like the XIV team was out of work for more than a week or so and after that, the extent of their energy-saving policies were pretty much turning off the AC and some lights. I can't imagine they should be this behind schedule, even if you compound the typical lateness of any uninterrupted update.

[Tomino]

I think their approach toward playerbase is still terribly lacking, must be a japanese thing.

Let's be clear : there's a whole development team working on FF14, and you don't handle such resources without a clear, well written and approved development PLAN.
This isn't a garage game where you reply "oh nice idea, we'll look into it" and then you *actually* look into it when you have some spare time.
Whatever changes they planned, they wrote them down many months ago so all their vague replies look just like a piss poor attempt to mimick Blue posts from Blizzard forums, to pick an example.

[Kurokikaze]

Unfortunately Blue Posts from Blizzard say more concrete things in one sentence than these guys do in 3 paragraphs.

Ban extended till Saturday overnight. It's like they're still going through all my posts. Infraction for replying with "LOL"

[Lucavi]

We've known all along that the Japanese lines of communication to consumers (IE: not stockholders; I don't even want to know how many bows are sent with each message there) has been nothing short of pathetic. To be fair, nobody challenged them in the past; if somebody had, they obviously weren't enough to break the Japanese blockade of tradition. A formidable wall, indeed.

That being said, its getting better. Its clear that when they're designing their own concepts, they lead the pack and make rapid gains, but when they have to follow the rest of the world, they're slow to gain any sort of traction. Its certainly better than XI, and I'll give them kudos as this is their first major foray (I've been trying to find any other game or form of media where they've actively engaged in this type of forum banter or whatnot and can't find anything - Gulk could probably do a better job on this) into actually maintaining direct lines of communication with actual consumers.

Its got a long way to go, but then again, this game has a long way to go as well. Maybe they'll grow rapidly together.

[Hyan]

I guess its useless to try to rationalize things at this point, but it is crucial that whatever plan or strategy they have is flexible. Its not just the garage developers that can make use of a strategy like Tomino described. Higher ups create a plan, we (and hopefully the developers) give feedback, higher ups change the plan according to the feedback. Rinse and repeat. The point is to constantly improve the strategy and the end product. Pretty basic stuff.

In addition, the larger the change, the larger the error margin will be when moving from concept to the actual implementation. Its certainly in their best interests to give us something concrete when there is something concrete to give. That time is getting close, but if they aren't there yet, there's no helping it.

[Gulkeeva]

You won't see really any JP company "open up" as much as SE is doing and talk with the public for feedback etc (unless you go with a hentai game where the developer will reply to just about any comment in any language ).

Until SE makes an NA office and have actual americans working there that can quickly translate and pass along info (and can quickly talk with any of the JP offices in japan in some way) you won't see much change.

What SE is doing now is probably already nearing the limit of what they can do and how fast considering the current game state, their resources, and what the priorities are.

[Hyan]

Until SE makes an NA office and have actual americans working there that can quickly translate and pass along info (and can quickly talk with any of the JP offices in japan in some way) you won't see much change.

Bayohne and Rukkirii work from LA... Its up to the management now. Although Ive noticed an improvement this week in the speed. Maybe its only temporary though.

Also lolgerman forums. Only french have an active rep it seems.

[Kurokikaze]

Probably not enough German players to give a scheiße.

[Draylo]

Still no new info? Terrible.

[Draylo]

I still want my 70 dollars back.

[solracht]

You're paying for FFXIV as we speak due to having a FFXI subscription yet you're double posting over $70? Think about where your FFXI money has been going for the past years, too.

Priorities, man. They're robbing you of way more!

[Kaeko]

I made a long post on official forums just for you Kuro (about dLVL).

Some people aren't worth continually arguing with (because they are trolls or just will never be convinced). I usually just ignore opinions or posts by people that I know aren't R50 in something yet. The scary thing is most of the players with high post count there fit this category.

[Meko]

Just read through your LJ and it's honestly refreshing to read something unbiased and informative. I'm still kind of waiting on this game to take off but I honestly don't see it happening. The PS3 might bring a surge but I don't know if it's enough to matter. I'm thinking of playing XI again but I've already put in my 300 days back in 2009 and I'm not sure I want to involve myself again.

[sruon]

You're paying for FFXIV as we speak due to having a FFXI subscription yet you're double posting over $70? Think about where your FFXI money has been going for the past years, too.

Priorities, man. They're robbing you of way more!

qft