FINAL FANTASY XI Roadmap for October 2011 – March 2012 (10/20/2011)

[Khamsin]

I don't really count MMM as a dungeon crawl since it's so much randomass quest shit and stuff. The closest it really got to any kind of traditional dungeon crawl was the exp mazes, and they didn't have any bosses.

The eventual NM stuff they added was just bc's.

Nyzul has probably been the closest to the spirit of a traditional dungeon crawl. You enter, you progress through the dungeon, activating waypoints along the way so you don't have to start from the beginning each time, and every so often there's a boss.

However, there are some things that detract from the dungeon crawling experience. Namely, the time limit and lack of true exploration. Sure, you find your way around a mini-maze each floor, but there's not much in the way of choosing paths and exploring your way down one path, finding whatever treasures there are down there, and coming back and clearing out the other path. It's all fairly linear. And a true dungeon crawl should allow you all the time you want to explore and clear out every nook and cranny.

Hopefully their dungeon crawl thing won't be a time-limited instanced thing, but rather a freely-explorable zone where you can enter as often as you like and stay for as long as you want, with no fee to enter. Something you can enter, fight your way through a bit more natural and organic feeling layout (as opposed to sterile cubes of random walls) with various paths to explore. Something that's also so big that it has confluxes after each boss, so you can activate it, leave, and come back later as you progress deeper into the dungeon.

[Hyan]

So rather releasing frequent mini updates that gets the content to us faster, we'll just prolong it and give you one big fat update every 3-6 months.. Makes perfect sense if you try not to think about it for to long!

Well, you could also think about the logistics and having to plan and prepare each of these mini updates would perhaps slow things down a bit (more)...

But let's not think about it for too long.

[Hyan]

I'm glad I didn't donate

[Septimus]

Tanaka has and always was the PRODUCER of FFXI.

The dude who is the current director is also the director that over saw all 3 abyssea add-ons.

Good point, he is the producer.

An internal producer is heavily involved in the development of, usually, a single game. Responsibilities for this position vary from company to company, but in general, the person in this position has the following duties:

• Negotiating contracts, including licensing deals
• Acting as a liaison between the development staff and the upper stakeholders (publisher or executive staff)
• Developing and maintaining schedules and budgets
• Overseeing creative (art and design) and technical development (game programming) of the game
• Ensuring timely delivery of deliverables (such as Milestones)
• Scheduling timely quality assurance (testing)
• Arranging for beta testing and focus groups, if applicable
• Arranging for localization

In short, the internal producer is ultimately responsible for timely delivery and final quality of the game.

So if that is any indicator, he would be in charge of making sure that updates come out on time.

[Byrthnoth]

Is there any easy way to get an animator on the test server (easier than doing the PUP quest?)

Edit: Also, does anyone have a guide for what frames get what % damage reduction? It changes.

[arshesney]

Is there any easy way to get an animator on the test server (easier than doing the PUP quest?)

Edit: Also, does anyone have a guide for what frames get what % damage reduction? It changes.

If you have PUP unlocked there's a taru in WG that will sell you one for 10k, can't remember if he is right outside the automaton shop or in the upper part across the Imperial Palace.

Can also get Animator +1 with Ichor in Nashmau

[Khamsin]

Is there any easy way to get an animator on the test server (easier than doing the PUP quest?)

Edit: Also, does anyone have a guide for what frames get what % damage reduction? It changes.

I'm not on the test server, but I thought you could obtain storable stuff from the porter moogle? The animator is storable on the AF1 slip.

[Plow]

Nyzul has probably been the closest to the spirit of a traditional dungeon crawl. You enter, you progress through the dungeon, activating waypoints along the way so you don't have to start from the beginning each time, and every so often there's a boss.

However, there are some things that detract from the dungeon crawling experience. Namely, the time limit and lack of true exploration. Sure, you find your way around a mini-maze each floor, but there's not much in the way of choosing paths and exploring your way down one path, finding whatever treasures there are down there, and coming back and clearing out the other path. It's all fairly linear. And a true dungeon crawl should allow you all the time you want to explore and clear out every nook and cranny.

Hopefully their dungeon crawl thing won't be a time-limited instanced thing, but rather a freely-explorable zone where you can enter as often as you like and stay for as long as you want, with no fee to enter. Something you can enter, fight your way through a bit more natural and organic feeling layout (as opposed to sterile cubes of random walls) with various paths to explore. Something that's also so big that it has confluxes after each boss, so you can activate it, leave, and come back later as you progress deeper into the dungeon.

Well, if by "traditional" we mean EQ/AC dungeon crawls, I would say the closest thing to that would probably be the sea mission where you fight the paladin at the end.

I would still consider most of assault to be dungeon crawling, as well as most stuff like salvage, dynamis, limbus, etc. (i.e. almost everything good lol) to be. Even sky and sea could be considered dungeon crawling in some ways, just not nearly so linear as others.

Anyway, yeah I have no idea what to expect from it at this point, but I honestly wouldn't be surprised by anything from another abyssea/dynamis type field to a whole new assault type system.

[Kohan]

This isn't going to quote the Wikipedia portion correctly, but I'm incapable of giving a shit. That said...

Good point, he is the producer.

Originally Posted by Wikipedia
An internal producer is heavily involved in the development of, usually, a single game. Responsibilities for this position vary from company to company, but in general, the person in this position has the following duties:

Negotiating contracts, including licensing deals
Acting as a liaison between the development staff and the upper stakeholders (publisher or executive staff)
Developing and maintaining schedules and budgets
Overseeing creative (art and design) and technical development (game programming) of the game
Ensuring timely delivery of deliverables (such as Milestones)
Scheduling timely quality assurance (testing)
Arranging for beta testing and focus groups, if applicable
Arranging for localization

In short, the internal producer is ultimately responsible for timely delivery and final quality of the game.

So if that is any indicator, he would be in charge of making sure that updates come out on time.

To be completely fair, he is also responsible for communicating as to whether the originally cited milestones can be kept or not. While overseeing the development of the product, if he realizes they're not going to be on time for one reason or another, it's his responsibility to let people know and adjust his plans accordingly.

A producer does their best to push designers, directors, developers, etc., to create a final—or, in the case of an MMO, an updated—product on time, but they are limited by the multitude of factors affecting every one of the many teams they are responsible for overseeing. They, usually, do not sit down and program anything comprehensive, do not participate in any major design pow-wows, never choreograph actual testing, and so on, so forth.

To say that it's the producer's fault is extremely short-sighted, and to say that they're doing their job poorly by reporting a delay is simply incorrect. While I'm not saying that Septimus implied that specifically, anyone who thinks that does not understand what the producer's job is and how it works.

[Lordender]

I think thats the last thing FFXI players wanted to hear about is any delays at all given the fact content is painfully slow with XI due to a skeleton crew. I don't know if anyone really cares who is responsible, the fact remains this is a common theme with this company. People are upset because the customer feels like they're being lowballed for whatever reason.

[Kohan]

I think thats the last thing FFXI players wanted to hear about is any delays at all given the fact content is painfully slow with XI due to a skeleton crew. I don't know if anyone really cares who is responsible, the fact remains this is a common theme with this company. People are upset because the customer feels like they're being lowballed for whatever reason.

I must confess that this is something I don't understand at all. As mentioned recently, I've played FFXI since its domestic release, and I've never done absolutely everything there is to do. Furthermore, I cannot see a distinct difference between its updates and those of other online games. Where is it? Has anyone actually comprehensively researched the difference between the frequency of FFXI's updates, taking into mind the quantity of things contributed and the quality of content, and those patches of other MMOs on the market?

It seems that there is a lot of "it's common sense" talk, but to me, it is not, and I actively work in the industry. "EverQuest" having expansions was mentioned, but its amount of subscribers is still minimal, therefore meaning the quality of its additional content is probably nothing special, so its frequency is meaningless.

I suppose this is a challenge to those who QQ to do something constructive and actually determine whether this is legitimately disappointing, industry standard, or exceptional.

[Priran]

on an unrelated note, as predictable as it would be for SE to make a big announcement concerning FF11 on 11/11/11, it wouldn't surprise me if they have nothing up their sleeves and this really is it for the next ~6 months

[Hyan]

I must confess that this is something I don't understand at all. As mentioned recently, I've played FFXI since its domestic release, and I've never done absolutely everything there is to do. Furthermore, I cannot see a distinct difference between its updates and those of other online games. Where is it? Has anyone actually comprehensively researched the difference between the frequency of FFXI's updates, taking into mind the quantity of things contributed and the quality of content, and those patches of other MMOs on the market?

It seems that there is a lot of "it's common sense" talk, but to me, it is not, and I actively work in the industry. "EverQuest" having expansions was mentioned, but its amount of subscribers is still minimal, therefore meaning the quality of its additional content is probably nothing special, so its frequency is meaningless.

I suppose this is a challenge to those who QQ to do something constructive and actually determine whether this is legitimately disappointing, industry standard, or exceptional.

Go to any other MMO forums barring the one exception and people say the same damn things everywhere. Maybe compared to XIV (250+) its a skeleton crew, but it would be great to hear what these better devs do with their time for a <300k sub and supposedly newer game that make Square-Enix and the community scapegoat look bad in comparison.

[arus2001]

I must confess that this is something I don't understand at all. As mentioned recently, I've played FFXI since its domestic release, and I've never done absolutely everything there is to do. Furthermore, I cannot see a distinct difference between its updates and those of other online games. Where is it? Has anyone actually comprehensively researched the difference between the frequency of FFXI's updates, taking into mind the quantity of things contributed and the quality of content, and those patches of other MMOs on the market?

It seems that there is a lot of "it's common sense" talk, but to me, it is not, and I actively work in the industry. "EverQuest" having expansions was mentioned, but its amount of subscribers is still minimal, therefore meaning the quality of its additional content is probably nothing special, so its frequency is meaningless.

I suppose this is a challenge to those who QQ to do something constructive and actually determine whether this is legitimately disappointing, industry standard, or exceptional.

I can't exactly give the "when" of things happened in Rift since I stopped playing it at the end of March, but since going back a couple weeks ago, they've added new PvP zones, instances/raids, quest lines/dailies, solo/duo dungeons, expert mode for some dungeons (imagine more on the way), LFG/Dungeon tool, new rift events/campaigns, veteran rewards, FREE server swaps, a sort of merit system for those at 50, and of course the expected stuff that goes along with that like gear and other rewards as well as class tweaks (granted some not all for the better) and other tweaks to existing content and some released along the way.

All of this basically came about through people paying their expected sub and no mini add-on cash grab or three-year-drawn-out-expansion ploy. I haven't looked into whether or not Trion is actually planning an expansion right now, but I certainly wouldn't be surprised if it's at least in the preliminary stages. Of late, they've been running a new event on their test servers, but I haven't looked into it since I've been focusing on playing and catching up.

Comparing that to the April to October push in XI, it's basically miles apart, and I'm not just saying this because I have "new things to do" with Rift. No new zones, some events/locations tweaked, expected changes like cap increases and more magian trials, but the general fail surrounding Voidwatch as one of the few "new" things SE's pushed hasn't left many happy. I guess you could say WoE has seen its own degree of disappointment, too. FoV/GoV isn't really anything new, and in small part, is basically SE catching up to the rest of the MMO world with grind kill "quests". Seriously, I want FFXI to be better than it is now, but it's hard to feel that kind of hope when it's like SE's deliberately neglecting the game.

Anyway, digging up what Rift is working on for their 1.6 patch, I've found the following...

Spoiler: show

CLERIC
JUSTICAR

Just Defense: Now absorbs 50% of the Cleric's maximum health. Removed ranks 2 and 3.
Resplendent Embrace: Now also increases the Cleric's maximum health by 20%.
Thorvin's Law: Now causes Precept of Refuge to reduce non-Physical damage by 9-18%.



MAGE
ARCHON

Purification: Ability will no longer be available to cast, and will be greyed out, if the Mage's target does not have a Curse debuff on them.
Illuminate - New Ability: Illuminates the weak points on a target, causing each attacker to deal additional Physical damage on 1 attack every 3 seconds for 20 seconds. Obtained after spending 14 points in Archon.


CHLOROMANCER

Nature's Cleansing: Ability will no longer be available to cast, and will be greyed out, if the Mage's target does not have a Curse, Poison, or Disease debuff on them.
Living Shell: Fixed an issue where this would not return Mana if used while Entropic Veil was active.


DOMINATOR

Deny: Ability will no longer be available to cast, and will be greyed out, if the Mage's target does not have a Curse, Poison, or Disease debuff on them.
Haunting Pain: Fixed an issue where the damage or duration in the debuff tooltip would display as 0.
Improved Charged Shield: Fixed an issue where this was not correctly affecting the damage of Charged Shield and Mass Charged Shield. Updated description to indicate that it affects Mass Charged Shield.
Fixed an issue where Traitorous Influence and Mass Betrayal would not drain Mana or Energy if cast while a Charge-draining ability, such as Internalize Charge, was active.
Fixed an issue where Ineptitude and Call of Spring were incorrectly affecting the ability and tooltip descriptions for Incompetence.
Thunder Blast: Will now trigger Quick Thinking when cast.


ELEMENTALIST

Swarming Flames: Reduced cooldown to 2 minutes.
Velocity: Now has a 100% chance to debuff enemies hit by Crystalline Missiles.
Elemental Fury - New Passive Ability: Successful critical hits by the Mage's Elemental pet will increase the Mage's Spell Power by 15 for each point spent in Elementalist at 40 and above. This buff has a 15 second duration. Obtained after spending 40 points in Elementalist.
Planar Expansion: The damage bonus now affects Earth Elemental pets in addition to the currently affected Air and Water Elementals. Now increases Elemental pet damage by an additional 2% for each point spent in the Elementalist soul above 31.


NECROMANCER

Mass Grave: Reduced cooldown to 2 minutes.
The Skeletal Knight's Bone Shatter ability will now force enemies it successfully taunts to attack the pet for 3 seconds, in addition to its previous effects.
Deadly Collusion - New Passive Ability: Successful Critical Hits by single target spells will increase your Undead pet's Attack Power and Spell Power by 30 for each stack of Deathly Calling on the affected target. Attack and Spell Power boost lasts for 15 seconds. Ability is gained after spending 40 points in Necromancer.
Epidemic - New Passive Ability: Successful Critical Hits by the Mage's Undead pet will reduce the casting time of the Mage's next Plague Bolt within 10 seconds to instant-cast. Obtained after spending 44 points in Necromancer.


PYROMANCER

Due to the below changes, characters with Soul Points spent in Pyromancer will receive a free Soul respec.
Fire Storm: Now deals damage every 1 seconds, down from 2 seconds previously. Damage per tick has been reduced so that the total damage of the full channel has not changed. It will no longer deal damage immediately upon casting. Duration of the total channel has not been changed.
Glyphs of Power: Updated the buff tooltip to match the ability description, indicating that it only buffs the Mage's Fire damage.
Smoldering Power: Fixed an issue where this would not consume Charge if used while Internalize Charge was active.
Fiery Concentration: Now reduces the amount of pushback suffered while casting single-target spells by 33-100%.
Improved Smoldering Power: Combined into the base Smoldering Power ability, removed the Improved Smoldering Power ability.
Burning Bonds: Now instant-cast.
Improved Burning Bonds: Removed.
Unbreakable Bonds: Now requires points spent in Burning Bonds.
Backdraft: No longer has Fire Storm as a prerequisite to obtain.
Fire Shield: Now a single-point branch ability.
Improved Flame Jet: Now a two-point branch ability.
Heat Wave: No longer reduces the global cooldown.
Spark - New 5-point branch ability: Reduces the Mage's global cooldown by 0.1-0.5 seconds. Unlocked after spending 20 points in Pyromancer.
Ignition: Now reduces the casting time of non-Fire spells by 1-5%, in addition to its original effect.
Philosophy of Flame - New branch ability: Increases the Mage's maximum Charge by 5-10. Unlocked after spending 10 points in Pyromancer.
Burning Fury - New branch ability: Each time the Mage fails to critically hit a target with a single-target spell, they gain a 15 second stacking buff. This buff increases their Spell Critical Hit chance by 3% per stack. A successful critical hit on a target will consume all stacks. Unlocked after spending 5 points in Pyromancer.
Combust: Renamed to Improved Combustion.
Glyphs of Power: Now increases all spell damage instead of only Fire damage.
Improve Combustion: Now appears in the combat log as its own ability, no longer attributing the damage to Fireball and no longer deals damage based on how much damage Fireball does. Now increases the chance for Fireball to proc Combust again on the target by 10-30%.
The Combust damage-over-time effect now deals damage as soon as it is applied, and every second after. This is decreased from the previous 2-second interval.
Fireball: Now has a base 20% chance to proc a Combust damage-over-time effect on the target.
Countdown: Damage now increased by 5% for each stack of Combust on the target.
Improved Flame Bolt: The buff effect now increases all spell damage by 10% instead of just Fire.
Wildfire: Now gives Flame Bolt a 33-100% chance to proc Combust on the target, in addition to its previous effects.
Pyromancer's Armor: The chance for this ability to proc is now increased by 1% per point spent in Pyromancer above 40.
Withering Flames: Now deals Fire damage and applies a stack of Combust each second while channeling. Withering Flames damage is increased by 20% for each stack of Combust on the target.


STORMCALLER

Due to the below changes, characters with Soul Points spent in Stormcaller will receive a free soul respec.
Hypothermia: Increased the duration of the Hypothermia debuff to 15 seconds. Duration of the Snare effect is unchanged.
Building Storm, Favorable Conditions: Abilities removed.
Storm Shard - New Ability: Tier 3 branch ability with 3 ranks. Gives your Air spells a 33-100% chance to make your next Icicle cast within 10 seconds an instant cast, and gives that Icicle a 100% chance to critically hit with increased critical hit damage bonus of 100%. Cannot occur more than once every 10 seconds.
Lightning Conductor: Now causes Electrocute, Thunderbolt, Raging Storm, and Forked Lightning to deal 10-30% more damage if the target is suffering from Hypothermia.
Watertouched Soulstone: Fixed an issue where this was not correctly working with AoE abilities.
Lightning Rod: Now reduces the pushback caused by damage attack by 50-100% while casting area effect spells.
Eye of the Storm: Damage increased.
Icicle: Damage increased.
Permafrost: Ability removed.
Severe Weather - New Ability: Increases damage done by area effect spells by 10-20%. Tier 5 branch ability unlocked after spending 20 points in Stormcaller.


WARLOCK

Devouring Shadows: Now deals damage every second, down from 2 seconds previously. It will no longer deal damage immediately upon casting. The duration of the channel has not been changed, but the damage and charge generation per tick has been adjusted to maintain the same overall damage and charge from a full channel of the ability.
Neddra's Influence: Now increases both Death and Fire damage dealt by damage-over-time spells.
Improved Warlock Armor: Renamed to Improved Mage Armor. Now increases the Mage's damage by 2-10% when they have any Mage Armor buff active. Updated icon.
Void Decimation - New Passive Ability: Increases the Mage's Void Bolt damage by 1% for each of their Death damage-over-time spells affecting the target. This bonus increases by an additional 1% for each point spent in Warlock above 40. Obtained after spending 40 points in Warlock.

ROGUE
BARD

The requirement where players can only have 1 Fanfare per Bard has been removed - the Bard can now buff the entire group with all 3 Fanfares.
Coda of Jeopardy - New Ability: Unlocked at 14 points in Bard. Plays a Coda that uses Combo Points to put the enemy in jeopardy, causing each attacker to deal additional Physical damage on 1 attack every 3 seconds for 30 seconds. Additional damage taken increases with Combo Points. This ability is similar to the Warlord’s Spotter’s Order.
Extended Grief: Ability now also increases the duration of Coda of Jeopardy.


BLADEDANCER

Weapon Barrage: No longer turns on auto attack which causes Incapacitate and Lost Hope to break.


MARKSMAN

Electrified Munitions, Silver Tip Munitions, Vampiric Munitions: No longer have a 1 second internal cooldown when using AE attacks. The proc chance is reduced for AE attacks based on the number of targets affected. For example, Electrified Munitions has a proc chance of 100% on a single target. Using Fan Out that affects 2 targets will reduce the proc chance to 50%. On 5 targets, the proc chance is reduced to 20%.


RIFTSTALKER

Due to the below changes, characters with Soul Points spent in Riftstalker will receive a free Soul respec.
Guardian Phase: Now gives the Rogue a chance to deflect attacks, reducing their damage taken based on their deflect rating. Deflect rating is increased by Dexterity.
Annihilate: Now unlocks with 2 points spent in Riftstalker. No longer grants an Attack Power buff. Additional rank added.
Guarded Steel: Now unlocks with 6 points spent in Riftstalker. Changed to a passive ability. Increases armor by 30% after using Annihilate, lasts for 30 seconds.
Blighted Steel - New Ability: Unlocks with 8 points spent in Riftstalker. Increases Attack Power by 15% after using Annihilate, lasts 30 seconds.
Rift Guard: Changed to a passive ability. All Plane Shift abilities and Annihilate trigger Rift Guard, absorbing 15% of all incoming damage for up to 50% of the Rogue's current maximum health. Lasts for 30 seconds.
Rift Barrier: Functionality changed. 20-60% of the damage Rift Guard absorbs is reflected back on the attacker.
Shadow Guard: Functionality changed. Reduces Physical damage taken by 1-5%. For every 400 points of base Armor, you take 1% less Physical damage, up to a maximum of 20% reduction.



WARRIOR

Spell interrupt shared cooldown has been increased to 8 seconds to match interrupt ability cooldowns.



CHAMPION

Having both Overrun and Blitz for Bull Rush no longer double-dips on diminishing returns.


PALADIN

Aggressive Block: Tooltip no longer references this ability being modified by Strength, which it isn't.
Aggressive Guardian: In addition to increasing the threat generated, now also increases the threat generated from Retaliation abilities, modified further by Endurance.
Touch of Life: Cooldown reduced to 5 minutes.
Preservation: Cooldown reduced to 5 minutes.
Improved Reverent Protection: Now increases Reverent Protection by 10-20% plus an additional 0.02/0.04% per point of Endurance.
Hardened Will: In addition to the base 3-9% Magic mitigation, now also increases Magic mitigation by 0.12-0.35% per point spent in Paladin above 30.
Impassable Guard: Now also reduces non-Physical damage by 15%. No longer blocks spells.
Scales of Justice: Threat generated has been increased significantly.
Sweeping Strike: Shifted to more of a threat-generation role. Threat generated has been increased significantly, the number of targets it hits increased to 10, cooldown reduced to 10 seconds, and no longer requires a target to be used. Because of these changes, the damage has been reduced slightly.


REAVER

Increased the threat generated from all Reaver damage over time abilities.
Power from the Masses: Fixed a bug causing all points spent in this ability to cause the same percent chance to trigger.
Sinister Intent: Threat enhancement is now modified by Endurance.
Crest Mastery: In addition to the 3-9% Magic mitigation, now also increases Magic mitigation by 0.12-0.35% per point spent in Reaver above 30.
Wasting Away: Ability changed - Successfully hitting with Soul Sickness, Blood Fever, or Necrotic Wounds reduces the damage that the target does to you by 3% per stack for 5-15 seconds. Applies separately for each ability to a total of 9%.
Flesh Rot: No longer reduces chance to hit on the target. Now reduces the damage the target deals to the Reaver by 2% when under the effect of Flesh Rot. Value is increased based on the number of Reaver damage over time abilities the target has on it, to a maximum of 5.
Cyclone Strike: Shifted to more of a threat-generation role. The threat generated has been increased, the number of targets it can hit is now 10, cooldown increased to 10 seconds, Power cost has been increased, now generates an Attack Point, and no longer counts as a Finisher ability.


RIFTBLADE

Surging Energy: Fixed a bug causing 1 point in this ability to reduce the Power cost of the next ability by 75% instead of 25%.


VOID KNIGHT

Fixed a bug causing Efficient Conversion to not properly alter the Power cost of certain abilities.
Fixed a bug where damage shields such as Warlock Armor would trigger the counter on Fusion of Flesh, but not trigger the heal.
Fusion of Flesh: Fixed a bug causing this to stick around after death.
Surge: Now generates threat to nearby enemies when using Pact generating abilities. Due to this change, the damage of Discharge, Tempest, and Unstable Reaction have been increased slightly to make up for the loss of the increase Surge previously gave them.
Rift Summon: Now acts like a taunt. Due to its high point requirements and long cooldown, it does not share an internal cooldown with other single-target taunts.
Discharge: Significantly increased threat caused by this ability.
Singularity: Damage reduction is reduced from 50% to 35% but now reduces all incoming damage, not just Magical.
Accord of Emptiness: Damage reduction lowered, now also grants the Void Knight a Pact every 10 seconds.
Ravenous Defense: No longer increases Armor. Reduces incoming damage, with the reduction amount increased with additional points spent in Void Knight.
Ravenous Strength: Now increases Strength based on how many points you've spent in Void Knight.
Tempest: Shifted to more of a threat-generation role. Threat generated has been increased, cooldown reduced to 10 seconds, and no longer requires you to have a target to use it.


WARLORD

Spotter's Orders is no longer a Call and no longer generates threat from Battlefield Awareness.
Locked Down: Cooldown reduced to 30 seconds.
Dramatic Presence: Now increases the self-effects of all Calls and Commands.
All Aspects have been increased to meet their previous numbers due to the change to Dramatic Presence.
Killing Field: Threat generation has been significantly increased.
Battlefield Awareness: Threat generation rebalanced to fit into an intended role as an ambient threat generator. New burst-threat generators have been added to other abilities.
Promise of Steel: Shifted to more of a threat-generation role. Threat generated has been increased, number of affected targets increased to 10, cooldown increased to 10 seconds, damage slightly reduced, and no longer requires a target to be used.



ITEMS

Pulverizing Stonesource and Igneous Stonesource were giving an incorrect amount of Spell Critical Hit bonus and have been corrected.

New Sourcestones to be added:
http://img7.mmo.mmo4arab.com/rift/im...er_essence.jpg

Browse at your leisure for some Ember Isle stuff (new zone).

Not sure when it'll be put out, as 1.5 was end of September, but I'd estimate before the end of the year and who knows what else they might wiggle in before that.

[Lordender]

A lot of games seem to roll with a 3-5 month major content patches, I know at one point Rift was around every three months or so, WoW has fallen to about 5-6 month patches but lets face it, its a 7 year old game plus WoW content patches are ridiculously huge compared to XI's, even the lame 4.1 patch in WoW offered more than SE's patches for XI and 4.1 was horrible for WoW standards.

XIV seems to be rolling stuff out every 3-4 months and a lot of those patches are including reworking of systems and is still putting in content.

[Hyan]

A lot of games seem to roll with a 3-5 month major content patches, I know at one point Rift was around every three months or so, WoW has fallen to about 5-6 month patches but lets face it, its a 7 year old game plus WoW content patches are ridiculously huge compared to XI's, even the lame 4.1 patch in WoW offered more than SE's patches for XI and 4.1 was horrible for WoW standards.

It should be 20x (30x) in size compared to XI's if we count by the money they're pulling in. But no, it isn't, because they put in exactly as much effort as they need to.

If we want to 'face it', XI is even older and smaller by a gigantic fucking margin. Rift just came out and they want to tap that target demographic while they're still relevant. I do wonder whether they've managed to keep their playerbase or if they will be forced to F2P the shit out of that game soon.

[Kohan]

Yes, I hadn't thought of this while writing my original post, but I'd consider newer MMOs like "Rift" to be exempt from the comparison. Every MMO that's ever been released—excluding quickly cancelled crap—has been pumped full of new content shortly after its debut, largely because they're new and truthfully still in development at that stage. FFXI, WoW, etc., all benefited from the same thing when they were fresh-faced.

Everything else mentioned thus far, and all I have ever observed, points to an about identical flow of updates in any respectably successful MMORPG. While WoW updates may have more content, it is not so drastically different as to be night and day, and as clarified, they don't come about as frequently as they used to.

Furthermore, a lot of criticism was lobbied toward Cataclysm for being too little content. Blizzard said that a lot of the work that went into it wouldn't be immediately obvious to the end-user (e.g., making it so flying mounts could be used everywhere, which took a ton of work). This didn't mean that they spent less time working on it than other expansions, but rather, a fair chunk of its content would not be appreciated nearly as much by people who simply, well, wanted more to do.

While making the whole world navigable by air was a functional modification to WoW, I am reminded of the fantastic cutscenes in WotG, and how they—to me—made all the waiting worthwhile; I was fascinated from a technical standpoint by the fantastical direction and smart uses of the existing game engine (in addition to the animation of entirely new models, such as Lilisette's). To most people, however, this was too slow and therefore unwelcome, despite the impressive amount of effort that likely went into each part's production, especially when their having a small team is taken into consideration.

My musings won't change the collective opinion, but from my point of view, Square Enix is doing a respectable job of updating their MMO that isn't at all separate of the industry standard. Those words don't come from me easily, either, as I have never been a fan of their company, nor do I care for the Final Fantasy franchise as a whole.

For a game that's nearly ten years old, new content every year would be passable, though poor; on the other hand, more material every six months would be expected, and acceptable. What we're getting is increased community involvement, a test server, and more frequent updates than that...

I really don't see anything to be unhappy about.

[dannyl]

However, there are some things that detract from the dungeon crawling experience. Namely, the time limit and lack of true exploration. Sure, you find your way around a mini-maze each floor, but there's not much in the way of choosing paths and exploring your way down one path, finding whatever treasures there are down there, and coming back and clearing out the other path. It's all fairly linear. And a true dungeon crawl should allow you all the time you want to explore and clear out every nook and cranny.

Yup.

A successful 'dungeon crawl' concept should allow a player to kill everything and explore every area without any time constraints. When I think of a dungeon crawl, I think of the days when I used to explore Oblivion or even FallOut. I'm talking about how you randomly encountered an unexplored area, you enter it and when you come out it means you've killed everything and found everything you can benefit from it. I highly doubt SE will implement any of these dungeon crawls without some form of time limit. I think time constraints is part of their design since its a MMO.

[arus2001]

Yes, I hadn't thought of this while writing my original post, but I'd consider newer MMOs like "Rift" to be exempt from the comparison. Every MMO that's ever been released—excluding quickly cancelled crap—has been pumped full of new content shortly after its debut, largely because they're new and truthfully still in development at that stage. FFXI, WoW, etc., all benefited from the same thing when they were fresh-faced.

Why exempt a new game, though? I mean, you could subscribe to Hyan's bullcrap philosophy of how a MMO should only function off as a little as possible with money it makes not going back into it out of priority, but the reality is these aren't static console titles, they're games meant to be constantly updating and evolving, essentially striving to retain their "new" status. This isn't to say we should be expecting a "2.0" every few months, but to run with your fondness of WotG, some cutscenes aren't going to appease people for long. Much as I hate to say it, stories/plots are secondary to the MMO experience for many. The gameplay needs to be there, at its core and with subsequent additions. Unfortunately, with FFXI's history of "PS2 limitations" or other excuses for why something can't be done that players want (even if done in other games), SE isn't putting themselves in a good place by cutting back the size of the dev team, and by proxy, the amount of money going back into XI.

As for WoW and its degrees of failures or incompletions, I'd call it more of a reality check that everything Blizzard does doesn't automatically print gold. I never got too deep into the game because the aesthetics bothered me as well as the PvP emphasis even on the PvE servers, but seeing things like Pandarans being announced is like the biggest fucking trollface.jpg I've ever seen. All we need now is to find out the females are wide-hipped lolis that wear next to nothing. Either way, we don't know how much Blizz's parent company sucks out of their profits, and apparently staff bounces between games for testing and the like so they maybe had a bit of a similar dynamic going on between XI and XIV with SC2, D3, and whatever their Titan project is. Even so, WoW being 20-30x XI's sub base isn't me saying 20-30x more content should be expected. More than XI gets, yes, but people have their limits on what they can do, especially the casuals. The hardcores that munch through content in a couple days/weeks and whine loudest about nothing to do are probably the worst types of players for any dev team to appease, though. But yes, even Blizzard makes mistakes.

[Toth]

I think people need to step back and understand why the game is operating on a smaller development team. SE has not said they are giving up on the game AT ALL. They are simply using as many of their resources to salvage 14 and 11 is an unfortunate side effect of the situation, since some much of their 11 talent is working on ff14.2. That is why this year's update theme was fixing/revamping old content. Old events made anew. Voidwatch was probaly conceived as a stopgap since the programming is already there (in abyssea). I am confident 11 will have more people working on it again, especially if the Vita rumor is true. The potential base that could develop from such a venture would bring even more capital and subs in.