Comments from the Devs

[Dooom]

While I agree it wasn't the greatest thing since sliced bread, as someone who does enjoy gathering... at least now I know where they stand in terms of what won't be happening in the future.

Yeah, I don't do gathering much, but I think it's nice that they at least set some kinds of boundaries down in terms of what might or might not be expected in the future.

I'm just happy at the mentality that gathering is no longer 'equal' to combat classes as with Tanakas retarded vision. Solo side-distractions, as they should be. Finally.

Absolutely, compared to where we were six months ago this is a big change, and one I think everyone will be glad for.

The Q&A might not have been all that great, but if these were the "best" questions that could be picked out then it's no surprise. I especially liked the one about Motion Capture.

[Meko]

Woot...oh wait, got my hopes up...again.

The FINAL FANTASY XIV Forum maintenance scheduled to end on Jun. 8, 2011 0:00 PDT has been completed at Jun. 7, 2011 22:45 PDT.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

EDIT: At least this means they are still kicking over there.....

[Hyan]

I read between the lines and got pretty hyped.

Server related adjustments will fix EVERYTHING!

[Kurokikaze]

These guys are most likely using E3 as a distraction..

[Shuichi]

Alrighty Yoshi P. and crew, it's time to pull out the hype wagon and start getting people excited to play FFXIV with the release of patch 1.18. Get to it. Been silent for a bit too long now.

[Katlan]

I guess lack of update notes means the patch is going to be delayed? Patch is due in 1-2 weeks and no news of any sorts is odd

[Kurokikaze]

I'm more surprised that the patch is soon and I still no jack shit about combat besides Auto Attack. I mean seriously.

[Zettofaia]

Which probably means the changes are extremely underwhelming, but one can hope...

[Meko]

Who cares Kuro?! You don't need to know! Just wait!

[Shuichi]

Now would be a good time to release some vids hinting at new combat system/dungeons/whatevah. Could do like one video or something a week or whatever. Just get your player base engaged and get their attention. Then again, at this point, they might not even care about PC FFXIV'ers and are now targeting PS3'ers since this is what the majority of Japan will be playing on.

/twizzlers

[Dooom]

I read between the lines and got pretty hyped.

Server related adjustments will fix EVERYTHING!

Haha, indeed. I think the dev team is putting as much hope on those as the players are! I do so hope they can at least not smash those hopes into tiny, laggy pieces.

[Hyan]

I still think the patch itself should hype people up if anything. Let it speak louder than anything the devs could say. If it fails, well, hype wouldn't have saved it.

We know a lot more about it than just AA, but that feature is the most obvious one. The first QA had quite some nice details in it, although I'm not going to expect anything groundbreaking still.

[Tomino]

Would that be so time consuming, so never-before-seen to have one page every 3 days with a class changes preview? Just plain text and a few screens.

During the whole of FF11, they kept releasing teasing informations before any major update. It really helped fans and followers to ease the wait.

[Kaylia]

Was a pretty lame Q&A, but mostly because the questions sucked and I doubt they could answer specifically anyway given how conceptual some of these features must be.

No one force them to limit themselves to the question. I agree most were subpar, but it's not an excuse to not read between the line. Instead, they should aknowledge (or not) the issue raised by the question (or one that encompass the question), they should explain their visions, and in the end, explain their plan in the near future. That's what we want to know. Yes/no answers like they doesn't tell us anything we want to know.

Also, instead of giving us 30 bad answers, they should have picked 10 that were more meaningful.

[Katlan]

Especially since this is a major patch that I believe will be the make or break point for ppl. Speaking for myself... I haven't touched the game since like 2 months after release. While there were numerous things that bothered me, the most pronounced was the terrible combat system and how tedious it made things that should be simple (having to open / close the action bar UI to do anything and having to choose between AoE or single target for any spell being the major annoyances for me).

Having said that, I have been anticipating this combat system change as something that would hopefully make me want to play the game again. I will be 100% be giving the game a try again. But lack of them hyping it or even talking about it worries me. It needs more then auto atk to be good

[Elcura]

No one force them to limit themselves to the question. I agree most were subpar, but it's not an excuse to not read between the line. Instead, they should aknowledge (or not) the issue raised by the question (or one that encompass the question), they should explain their visions, and in the end, explain their plan in the near future. That's what we want to know. Yes/no answers like they doesn't tell us anything we want to know.

Also, instead of giving us 30 bad answers, they should have picked 10 that were more meaningful.

I think you're expecting way too much from this. They could possibly just not have the answers. The devs might be planning, or just thinking about it, you'd be surprised how many concepts/features/ideas just float around in people's heads or on a loose scrap of paper that turn out to be big things.

If they did pick 10 meaningful questions and did intend to answer as you specified, there's the possibility that the answers would be the same just based on a lack of current info. Judging from the QA, there's a lot of stuff going on and gathering isn't the focus of most of it.

The point is to not put too much stock on these answers, if it was a QA about battle stuff I'd expect a lot more detail.

[CrstyCptSteveWitherspoon]

They've hinted on a bunch of stuff to come; dungeons, new battle system with AA, jobs, materia system, server fixes, but we've been given so few details that I doubt hardly any of this will be in 1.18. I think we pretty much can assume we'll be given AA and two dungeons (one 30, one 50). Other than that the job and materia system has been so hush hush I bet we'll see the job system maybe in July and the materia system in August. What worries me is stuff like "Will materia have it's own tab or take up regular inv space?" and our answer is "We're thinking inventory space". If they haven't gotten that theres too much damn stuff taking up inv space, and haven't hinted that they'll increase our inv space, then they really need to take a step back and pull their heads out of their asses.

[Katlan]

Inventory would be fine if there wasn't +1, +2, +3, +9 of everything. That was a horrible design

[Meko]

^^^ No doubt. I like the idea of HQ crafts but random drops being +X etc is just more inventory problems. They already have issues with inventory and how it's handled. I really thought they would have your gear removed from your 'bag space' when you equipped it but apparently....too hard.

[Kaylia]

I think you're expecting way too much from this. They could possibly just not have the answers. The devs might be planning, or just thinking about it, you'd be surprised how many concepts/features/ideas just float around in people's heads or on a loose scrap of paper that turn out to be big things.

If they did pick 10 meaningful questions and did intend to answer as you specified, there's the possibility that the answers would be the same just based on a lack of current info. Judging from the QA, there's a lot of stuff going on and gathering isn't the focus of most of it.

The point is to not put too much stock on these answers, if it was a QA about battle stuff I'd expect a lot more detail.

Nah, I'm not expecting anything from SquareEnix, I just find this exercice to be harmful when it's done poorly. They are the one who decide what they are putting in these posts, and if they really have nothing interesting to say, they should just pick a different one.

Just compare this to the weekly Q&A Blizzard do about various topic
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2649805301

They filters the question with a rate up/down system, and then give a complete answers to most questions. It's usually satisfying to read, and you will learn a lot about their vision.