Comments from the Devs

[Meko]

It's sad that a year after the fact, we are still trying to care about this game and yet it's been 3 weeks and nothing but silence from SE. We'll all likely end up at least trying the game again when 1.18 comes out but I'm not sure why.

[Lordender]

It's sad that a year after the fact, we are still trying to care about this game and yet it's been 3 weeks and nothing but silence from SE. We'll all likely end up at least trying the game again when 1.18 comes out but I'm not sure why.

Personally I think they have until Guild Wars 2 comes out to get their shit in order, by then most westerns probably won't even give a fuck/bother about 14 much after that. A next gen MMO with just a box price is going to steal lots of people at least until the hype wears off after a few months which is enough to cause damage.

Not saying GW2 is going to be a great game, or a bad game, but the F2P monthly aspect is gonna rake in players from all MMO's.

[Dooom]

I still feel, as I always have, that there's an awesome game somewhere within FF14. I just don't know if we'll ever get to play it; the dev team is too busy playing catch-up, and I feel that the botched release has really hurt potential populations. I've been playing a lot more recently - my playtime in the past week probably matches that of several months prior - and enjoying it for a free MMO, I just wish more of my friends had stuck around.

[Alkar]

Gathering gimmicks don't need to be mandatory. Weaking a boss can easily be optional and everyone can change class if needed.
Tank, healer and 1 DD are all you need to keep the enemy busy while Botanists chop down some parts of it.
I'm just saying either remove DoL completely and make them activities instead of classes or try to do something cool with them.

[Corrderio]

I still feel, as I always have, that there's an awesome game somewhere within FF14.

Same. I do think this game could have more potential than XI ever could (And I'm not talking limitations or other crap either) but a lot of damage has been done, and there hasn't been a lot of concrete info. We still don't know exactly what's all coming in 1.18 despite it being about a week away. And all we got so far just seems to help appeal to fanboys (OMG we're bringing jobs back and Materia!!!!)

[Hyan]

Personally I think they have until Rift to get their shit back in order.

Doubt we'll see the patch before the 20th myself. Although if they can split it up like with 1.17, who knows!

[CrstyCptSteveWitherspoon]

Although if they can split it up like with 1.17, who knows!

Sweet! so they can make us download 300megs and only give us "Fixed an issue with one gnat not attacking players when the other was engaged during Necro: Lightsome".

[Takiwaki]

"Auto-attack is being implemented for the Disciples of War. Will auto-gather be implemented for gatherers?"

"That might be a nice idea for an ability."

I don't even. .

[Tomino]

Personally I think they have until Rift to get their shit back in order.
Doubt we'll see the patch before the 20th myself.

Irony being the first huge,new raid content for WoW, Firelands, coming on June 21st.

[Kaylia]

I still feel, as I always have, that there's an awesome game somewhere within FF14.

I wish I could see it. With the painfully slow system, the server issue, the lack of interactive content, the boring wasteland, I just can't imagine anything decent coming out of this.

[CrstyCptSteveWitherspoon]

I feel like I'm playing fallout 3 when I run through thanalan lol.

[Corrderio]

Next part is up for the gathering Q and A, sounds like Tanaka was the one that responded to it. Never seen so many "We'll take it into considerations" in one post.

[CrstyCptSteveWitherspoon]

They used "looking into it" 5 times and "take into consideration" 10 times as answers.

[Alkar]

To be fair most of those questions are retarded and quite a few are similar to those posted the other day lol. Crossing fingers for tomorrow, Yoshi needs to release another letter already

[Lordender]

well they got around till like 5AM cst to spill the beans, that puts it around 7PM or so there and usually when info is posted.

[Lucavi]

To be fair, they haven't answered the non-retarded questions either, so people were probably scraping against the bottom of the barrel. That excuse doesn't really hold up when SE gives the same answer for -every- question, regardless of how "retarded" one might be.

[Cichy]

I rather them answer 1 question the way blizzard does than 50 "we look into it"

[Jamison]

I don't think your idea is a bad one, but I think its terribly ambitious for a company like SE that's never done anything close to resembling it in the past.

Good point. There's a lot of potential out there, I'm not sure SE is the company to bring that to fruition.

Adjustments the gathering classes need: 1) more sp per node 2) "gathering fatigue" should be be fully replenished every 12 hrs instead of 24. Everything else is asking far too much for this game right now when they can't even get combat right.

My issue is the lack of targeting items while gathering tied to the 'fatigue' not being reset for 24 hours. At least in XI I could tell what I had on my line and drop it to save my fatigue(the way the fish fought learned over time by fishing a lot). Right now fishing sole I get tiger cod, hammerhead sharks, and kelp with no way to tell whats on my line until I hit the 'sweet spot'. When I do hit the 'sweet spot' I automatically reel up the cod or the kelp and usually the hammerheads too, so there's no way to prevent fatigue loss. I usually hit fatigue by my 2nd stack of sole to which I then also have 1+ stack of kelp and 1-2 stack of hammerheads. I'm sure miners/bots can share my frustrations. I think asking for a message telling you what exactly you're about to harvest/mine/catch is a bit much, but at least having my fatigue reset every 12 hours I could spend more time getting the stuff I need.

Biggest problem is that you have to limit the number of items that are created into the economy. Presumably if you let someone gather twice as much, you have to halve the number of items you get per success. I don't want to do twice the work (and twice the time) to reach a daily goal. I think the better alternative is to have some additional way to earn more SP after you've reached fatigue for the day. I really think 1-2 hours/day is a perfect amount of time to be expected to gather. I do wish, however, that fatigue were not on a (approximately) daily reset but a weekly. It would work far better if I could do 2-3 days worth at once when I do have the time, and let that reset on days when I'm busy with work, rl, or other in-game stuff.

Lol it just sounds stupid as hell to me:

"oh, our rank 50 miner/bot, isn't on, we can't do x event tonight."
"LS recruiting rank 50miner/bot for X event!" Causing your LS to be stuck until you can find one.

I know I'm in the minority though, I think its just a bad idea and really reaching to get gathers/crafters involved in battle related content.

I wouldn't suggest it be required to have a gathering class at an event; just that you could make the battle a little easier as a reward if you did have someone with the class; and the group had the skill to pull it off effectively.

I think it was stupid in the first place to even have you be able to create a character as a crafting "class". there is no way you can experience the game in its totality by not being a combat class, that was the stupidest thing they ever thought possible, its not even something final fantasy ish..

Yeah, if they could have held to the promise that gathering/crafting would be a fundamental part of the game/endgame, at least there's some logic in that. It's still a stretch, and now that they've said those goals have changed, it really is quite stupid.

I think it would've been a great idea if they'd done separate storylines. Crafters/Gatherers have one mission path, Fighters another. I'd love to see that, but dreaming of this kind of thing right now is pointless considering it takes them 2 months to create 5 simple quests that tell you to go kill 3 mobs down the river >.>
.

I had that idea a while back. It would be awesome if they came up with "alternative storyline" quests for crafters/gatherings to have a "part" in the story as a whole. I just don't ever see them investing that much work into it though with the game in the sorry state it is in. Most people will still do the "main" storyline but for those who want to just do gathering/crafting, they are still a part of what's going on.. and for those that do both, they get the most story and flavor out of the world around them.

[Lucavi]

I rather them answer 1 question the way blizzard does than 50 "we look into it"

Seconded. Just answer one question to the best of your ability a week, if nothing else. No "we'll look into it" bullshit; write a few freakin' paragraphs and go in-depth.

I never understood this about a company like SE. They make it seem like they don't know anything that we don't. You're the freakin' creators of the game; you have ALL of the resources and information about the game. There is literally -no- way you can know absolutely nothing about a legitimate question that someone is asking. To see them dance around questions and issues with this pedantic and patronizing reverse psychology responses ("Ah, really? Wow, we'll take that back with us!") is incredibly annoying. They make it seem like its a chore to do; that's not the attitude that a company that has failed this hilariously in little under two months after their release should be adopting.

[miokomioko]

They have definitely declined in their communication/personability since the "removal" of Tanaka. It was looking promising when Yoshi stepped up, but I feel like we're falling back to square-one.