Dev Tracker: Discussion

[Sechs]

I 100% agree they did NOT mean Tartarus to be like this. I'm just saying they retconned it in RoV to tie things up. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, most retcons are but in this case I think it was a right thing.

Fact #1: Tartarus is not an alternate Vana'diel.

I'm not sure about this, they never clearly state this. It IS an alternate dimension, but they never clearly say "it's NOT an alternate Vana'diel", it could be both.

Fact #2: Sehl'teus is gathering special energy for his protocrystal in other worlds.

I'm not 100% sure about this either, but I seem to recall that Selh'teus says he was specifically borrowing CRYSTAL energy from alternate dimensions.
I remember someone pointing this out to me here on BG some time ago and, out of skepticism, I went to re-watch the cut-scene and I had to agree with that guy in the end.
Here's the quote:

In the second set of missions, Selh'teus tells you in Al'Taieu that he's been visiting alternate Vana'diels and "balancing" them, while absorbing a fraction of crystals' energy from the worlds he visits. His plan all along has been to die ("return to the crystal") and use the magic he accumulated to become the backup crystal on Reisenjima all the while conveniently retaining his mind and sense of self. So Reisen Crystal is newly created, and incidentally the whole panopt culling was because he accidentally took out part of the shrine in the process and disrupted the local lifestream.

[Spira]

One problem we see in the story is the fact that it uses the terms world, dimension and realm interchangeably. And we should probably be mindful of it.

Tartarus is not a parallel dimension to Vana'diel. SoA quite explicitly explains that it's basically a whole lot of voidy darkness with no clouds or stars and shows Teodor walking through it. It also calls Tartarus an extra-dimensional space. So in that sense, it is another realm altogether. Unlike the true future, Abyssea, or Desuetia, this Tartarus does not appear to have parallel equivalents of Vana'diel (it doesn't look the same, or have the same people in it) so it is rather safe to say it is not a "parallel dimension" even though it exists in parallel.

Sehl'teus was gathering crystal energy from across dimensions, but there is nothing that says that a world must be like Vana'diel to have crystal energy. It does state that he did borrow energy from Tartarus though.

I wouldn't really call it a retcon because what they say in RoV about Tartarus doesn't change what was previously established as a fact (very little). Depending on the terminology used, maybe you could argue they changed it from a realm to a world (if there's even a difference to the story writers) but it certainly was never another Vana'diel.

[Sechs]

SoA quite explicitly explains that it's basically a whole lot of voidy darkness with no clouds or stars and shows Teodor walking through it. It also calls Tartarus an extra-dimensional space. So in that sense, it is another realm altogether. Unlike the true future, Abyssea, or Desuetia, this Tartarus does not appear to have parallel equivalents of Vana'diel (it doesn't look the same, or have the same people in it) so it is rather safe to say it is not a "parallel dimension" even though it exists in parallel.

I used to believe things like this as well, and I think this was their original plan too.
But in the end they barely talked about Tartarus and barely gave us details. We only know a couple of things which do not necessarily exclude other things. Like for instance being a Vana'diel where things went extremely haywire for millenia and that is the result.
It's never said or hinted (before RoV), but it *could* be.

but there is nothing that says that a world must be like Vana'diel to have crystal energy.

True, nothing says that so it could be.
And here's why I was talking about personal interpretation.
*To me* it makes more sense this way (even if clearly it was not their plan for Tartarus when they first created it)
I mean, personally I consider it a better narrative solution to present things rather than "Selh'teus jumps to a number of random heard or never heard world/dimensions to steal random energy through which he creates a clone of one of the legendary originally crystals created by Altana. A process that someone else over 10k years ago already tried to do but failed"
I mean, I dunno about you but personally I'd consider this as a much worse narrative trick
Just my tastes eh, don't get me wrong.

I wouldn't really call it a retcon because what they say in RoV about Tartarus doesn't change what was previously established

Well, without Selh'teus' pretty clear sentences I doubt me and other people would be led to think all of this honestly.

[Fwahm]

Again, that's not a personal interpretation, it's complete speculation with literally nothing in the story to back it up. It doesn't matter if one thinks something would be a better "narrative solution", or that it would make sense; if absolutely nothing in the story says it, implies it, or even hints at it, then by the nature of storytelling, one cannot even claim it to be likely, let alone true.

Selh'teus has the ability to traverse dimensions and worlds, unlike the Zilart 10,000 years ago, and his goal was much easier, with him trying to create a new mothercrystal, as opposed to the Zilart trying to recreate the original crystal. It's not surprising they failed while Selh'teus succeeded.

[Sechs]

with literally nothing in the story to back it up.

Selh'teus sentences led a lot of people to think that way.
Talking around I was surprised to see many other people came to the same conclusion.
Doesn't make it "right", just saying it's not surprising some people would go that path.

[Ligray]

A Word to All of Vana'diel's Adventurers (12/15/2015)

Greetings, adventurers! Matsui here.

I'd like to talk a little about our plans for FINAL FANTASY XI going forward on the development and management side of things.

So that adventurers can always look forward to a fresh and ever-changing Vana'diel, we will be continuing monthly version updates past April. Look out for new updates every month focused on battle and story content.

On the battle side of things, we will be adding new battle varieties each month to keep up the scale and ferocity of the epic battlefields enjoyed thus far viable for a wide range of jobs and play styles. Of course, we also have smaller content planned for solo and Trust-based play.

Fresh story content is also in the works to flesh out the lives of Vana'diel's many inhabitants. New Records of Eminence objectives will offer adventurers glimpses into these characters' side stories.

To ensure that adventuring through Vana'diel stays as fun and frustration-free as possible, we will continue to balance battle content and make adjustments and quality of life improvements wherever we can. We will also be continuing to run login and other campaigns in keeping with the needs and wants of the community.

We are currently busy preparing for monthly updates in the run-up to April, including a version update slated for February, which will introduce new augments for Relic, Mythic, Empyrean, and Ergon weapons.

As our plans for next year begin to solidify, we are growing increasingly excited for 2016 in Vana'diel. The team and I are committed to keep the magic of Vana'diel alive and will be putting in our hearts and souls to ring in another new and exciting year for FINAL FANTASY XI.

We wish you all a happy and safe holiday season and hope to see you all in Vana'diel in 2016!

Akihiko Matsui
Producer, FINAL FANTASY XI

http://www.playonline.com/pcd/topics...20/detail.html

[Ramzii]

classic SE

[Draylo]

Why did they even bother mentioning what they did in March? Either something is forcing them to rethink it or there was a huge translation error.

[Alkar]

Probably because the phone version is taking longer than expected and they have to come up with something to keep players in.

[Sechs]

Why did they even bother mentioning what they did in March? Either something is forcing them to rethink it or there was a huge translation error.

Maybe higher ups were forcing Matsui and his team to stop development, they were against it but couldn't rebel so they made the worst possible presentation to make a negative impact on the player base, hoping their discontent would trigger the higher ups to rethink their plans and give back Matsui's team the freedom they had just stolen from them?

Naaah, sounds too complicated and too logical for SE to make sense!



Regardless, I guess we can all rejoice things are going on, like the March announcement didn't even happen.

[Toth]

Such an interesting turn of events. Methinks that the reason is the slow development of the mobile app as well but hey, I'll take this

Story content does sound intriguing as well. I do think we do not need a large story at this point after RoV but small ones to flesh out some more of our favorite characters would be fine.

[Byrthnoth]

Well what the fuck

[Bukadan]

im pretty sure they were raised better than to lie!

[Kincard]

Preparing for a shitstorm over the RME decision. I can kinda see what they're saying (and the prospect of adding more real stats onto them softens the blow), but I can only see two outcomes.

Either they make the gap between the two paths not big enough, and people who made afterglows will feel like they wasted tons and tons of time, or they make the gap absurdly large appropriate of the time spent to accomplish the Afterglow objective before, and anger a lot of the people who built their RMEs "casually" and now just have it laying around. People like that would've wanted a simple quest to raise the skill so they could have an excuse to use it in battle again.

The JP responses to it so far are pretty uneasy.

As for the announcement for what's to come beyond April, it still seems like RoV will be the last big scale story we'll get. Does make me wonder what exactly is going on though.

[Byrthnoth]

At least my glowing Gjallarhorn will remain special.

Also, any increase in song duration on Carnwenhan is going to probably make it possible to keep permanent Troub'd songs up, including one with Marcato.

[Sechs]

Omg... Draylo is going to be so mad, and rightfully so.
Honestly this sounds like a pretty stupid choice.
You can kinda see what they're saying? How?
How is making a double path for each relic more than like what, 1 day of work? Are you guys seriously buying that it's "too much work"?
Plus Afterglow isn't necessarily a good thing, I remember it had a negative effect on other people's aftermath or something like that?

I dunno, how is this choice gonna make anybody happy?
People with normal RMEs (like, a large part of the population) is gonna be mad at the excessive strain of the grind required.
People with afterglow are gonna be mad because everybody else will soon have an afterglow just like them, etc etc etc.
I mean srsly, how is this gonna make ANYBODY happy? Help me understand please.

[Byrthnoth]

Afterglow does not have negative effects. They can only effect characters without an Aftermath up. You can make an incredibly tenuous argument involving picking a specific afterglow for your party and now being in trouble because other people are overwriting it, but if you have that issue then you have multiple melees with aftermath up and your argument is void. I guess it might be slightly valid for Ochain/Aegis?

[Kincard]

I own nothing but normal RMEs, but I guess at this point I really wouldn't mind if they added some absurd grind because the way I see it, it'd be a long-term goal for me to go for. At least I can lockstyle it while I'm working on it now which was never an option before- I mean, I think to some extent a lot of the people who got RMEs did it for the shiny unique weapon model and at least you can still see your character holding the thing even as you're working on it.

Another thing is the idea that they want to free up the augmenting space for new stats by getting rid of the tie to Trials- the idea of getting new stats on the RMEs is exciting to me, but given what they showed earlier in the streams it doesn't seem like that's going to make an appearance this time. I really hope that's more than just them throwing out a possibility.

Still, what I think they should've done is make one more upgrade with the two branches to bring the skill back up and simultaneously add in this big grind as a second portion if you want to be able to get whatever augments they have planned for the future.

[pancakesandsex]

Omg... Draylo is going to be so mad, and rightfully so.
Honestly this sounds like a pretty stupid choice.
You can kinda see what they're saying? How?
How is making a double path for each relic more than like what, 1 day of work? Are you guys seriously buying that it's "too much work"?
Plus Afterglow isn't necessarily a good thing, I remember it had a negative effect on other people's aftermath or something like that?

I dunno, how is this choice gonna make anybody happy?
People with normal RMEs (like, a large part of the population) is gonna be mad at the excessive strain of the grind required.
People with afterglow are gonna be mad because everybody else will soon have an afterglow just like them, etc etc etc.
I mean srsly, how is this gonna make ANYBODY happy? Help me understand please.

If they continue to make 2 paths, they have to continue to support the addition of afterglow later via the magian moogle, which is arcane to navigate as a player nevermind as a programmer. I had a feeling this was going to be what happened, but I'm not happy that it's going to be excessively difficult for non afterglows. I'm understanding of a difference in upgrade methods based on current progress, but don't completely fuck the majority.

Time to start working on dross again I guess.

[Lyramion]

Oh god pls dont make merit goblin part of the RME quest <.<