Letter from the Producer LIVE Part V (02/21/2013)

[Reve]

The OF are the worst. Yoshi could implement a feature that cures cancer and they would bitch that cancer was their favorite part of any MMORPG "Like if you agree."

[Saxon]

The OF are the worst. Yoshi could implement a feature that cures cancer and they would bitch that cancer was their favorite part of any MMORPG "Like if you agree."

And people wonder why gaming in general is in a really bad place. Every gaming community has it's vocal "minority" spouting shit everywhere. Yoshi needs to listen to people with valid points and not people being stupid as fuck. That's all I ask for in XIV.

[Grey Jorildyn]

So far that appears to be what he is doing. I just cross my fingers every time I see a new letter posted that he is staying that course.

[Gulkeeva]

What he should do, remove the english section, don't allow any people from the NA post.

For bugs they get, they use some sort of multi menu option tool to "select" what their issue is
Graphic issue -> area -> npc > target NPC to report

For suggestions, they should just use multiple choice like their surveys, and depending on the choices go from there. Watching pages of people complaining about grass, or jumping should cost stamina, or other troll threads is a waste of time >.>

[Spira]

and people say that FFXI not having a place for the community to express themselves was a bad thing.
granted baransutakana wasn't much better himself, it wouldn't have (and hasn't really) changed anything

i think Yoshi is quite discerning where it comes to forum posts.. or maybe his community reps are doing a good job at filtering stuff out, in any language.

[Elcura]

And people wonder why gaming in general is in a really bad place. Every gaming community has it's vocal "minority" spouting shit everywhere. Yoshi needs to listen to people with valid points and not people being stupid as fuck. That's all I ask for in XIV.

Most people on the OF aren't thinking about the game and what it needs to be even marginally successful. They're just thinking about themselves and their own selfish desires to make FFXIV just like FFXI or perhaps even worse.

[Lucavi]

I don't even have to say it anymore... SE's "biggest fans" do my job for me over and over again.

[miokomioko]

That's just the horrible side effect of turning already massively popular console-based IP into a community-affected MMORPG.

[Stromgarde]

That's something that's been troubling me lately. Is Final Fantasy even something which can be considered popular these days? XIII only enjoyed mediocre success and if you consider XII to be the last one to enjoy wide acclaim, then it's been 6-7 years. Does the 'Final Fantasy' brand still command that much respect, particularly after the initial failure of XIV? Has the series gained or even retained fans these past few years?

[nekura]

I think it's still a title that people look to for an amazing example of visuals and maybe to see what crazy new gameplay systems they come up with, but I'm not sure it commands the respect that it used to, no. I actually laughed a bit during the PS4 conference when the Square-Enix guy announced that they were preparing to develop a new FF game... and that was it.

[Lordender]

That's something that's been troubling me lately. Is Final Fantasy even something which can be considered popular these days? XIII only enjoyed mediocre success and if you consider XII to be the last one to enjoy wide acclaim, then it's been 6-7 years. Does the 'Final Fantasy' brand still command that much respect, particularly after the initial failure of XIV? Has the series gained or even retained fans these past few years?

I would say the brand is at its weakest point, I grew up around very fanatic Squaresoft fans, every title was a day 1 purchase up until post FF7, they all checked out, stopped buying/playing FF all together. I was the only one out of around 10 people that continued on in my friends circle. These same friends still love RPG's, they still play RPG's, they just don't like SE or FF anymore. The writing got extremely bad over the years, FF13 is probably the worst written game and the most poorly told story I have ever seen by a triple A gaming company. Diablo 3 is second, poorly written, awful story telling but I knew that with Chris Metzen writing the story.

We could debate stories from each game all day. Tactics was the best told story, it had the most complex story and very well written characters. The game had beautiful music, it is the "Game of Thrones" of Final Fantasy, the game kept you guessing until the very end. The biggest knock on Tactics was it just got way too unbalanced late game.

[miokomioko]

Despite how weak or strong the brand is at this point compared to other points in time doesn't affect the fact that Final Fantasy a very well-known that a massive amount of people have some familiarity with and spans a huge demographic age range (read: range of stupidity) compared to something like Guild Wars or T.E.R.A. and, thus, generates a rather wide spectrum of different expectations and nostalgia due to their non-sequel nature. Being a predominantly console-based franchise also concretes this with a player-base that is much less attentive/privy to actual game development than those that require high-end PCs to run.

[Trocian]

That's something that's been troubling me lately. Is Final Fantasy even something which can be considered popular these days? XIII only enjoyed mediocre success

What?

FFXIII was a huge success, it sold faster than any other FF in its first week, and it's like 3rd in total sales. Just because people on the internet bitched about it doesn't make it less of a success.

[Stromgarde]

In terms of sales, you're right. Combining Xbox360 and PS3 sales, it even bested XII. Recouping development costs? The answer to that question is not quite so favorable.

Edit: The critical reception was the more problematic thing. While you say it's 'just people on the internet bitching', I never got more than 5 hours into it despite buying it at launch and I expect many more did the same.

[Lucavi]

What?

FFXIII was a huge success, it sold faster than any other FF in its first week, and it's like 3rd in total sales. Just because people on the internet bitched about it doesn't make it less of a success.

Commercial success, yes. I, like others, purchased the game.

Critical success, no. I, like others, did not finish the game, did not particularly like it as a collective whole.

Its actually quite different from the "critically and commercially popular yet one group hates it because its popular" crowd, like the Black Ops franchise. The game is quite literally a step backwards, in terms of excellence-to-era, than previous titles.

[Oreth]

Is there a video with english subs yet?

[Stromgarde]

I wouldn't expect the official one until Monday. I could have sworn I saw a fansubtitled version earlier, but now that I go to look for it, it's nowhere to be found.

[Spider-Dan]

Re: OF needs mode moderation

This game is rather unique in that any sort of moderation of the OF (at this stage) will immediately be spun as "They already failed once and they are censoring any critical posts in their official forum now... nothing has changed." I think Yoshi's best move in this case is to stay the course: let the OF continue to be a useless cesspool. This has the advantage of being the most media-proof solution; doing nothing is a non-story, while "SE censoring critical posts on their beta feedback forum" is a juicy Kotaku morsel.

[Sephiroth]

The problem with the OFs is you need an active FFXIV account to post in them, so anyone who can post is someone who was happy with FFXIV the way it was in V1, with all its flaws. Those aren't the audience SE needs to be listening to for ARR to be a success. Of course they're all legacy, so all in beta too. SE needs to ensure they send a healthy amount of beta invites to people who quit within the first 3 months, and people who never played at all.

The writing got extremely bad over the years, FF13 is probably the worst written game and the most poorly told story I have ever seen by a triple A gaming company.

That's weird, I thought the story was its strongest point and one of the best in a long time. But it's all opinions at the end of the day.

[freddiepines]

Game is looking better and better, really looking forward to this. Too bad I didn't get into beta, though.