Letter From the Producer Live XXIII

[Carth]

Everyone complains. The big difference between BG and OF is BG doesn't have nearly as many white knights as any other forum does (OF, reddit, ffxivrealm, etc.), so if you want to vent frustration, BG is the best place to do it.

And honestly, saying stuff like "I don't do things I don't like" is idealistic at best, and silly at worst. Idealistic because no matter what you are going to do, you will do things in this game you don't like but simply tolerate (this is true for any game). Silly because it feigns ignorance to the bigger picture at play. More than likely, everyone on BG wants to enjoy all content. Chances are, all players here enjoy getting glamour and ponies as much as any other player. The difference is, at least on BG, that's not what is going to keep people playing for months/years to come.

Ultimately everyone here are number crunchers because optimizing battles have always been a hobby on this forum. Regardless though, people just want this game to be the best it can be and the fact that XIV prefers to dumb everything down for the casual crew is alienating. The roleplay community will eat whatever shit SE throws at them but I'm sure even the casual crew will get bored of only getting ponies or going through the same thing over and over again, they're just not aware of it yet. Longevity is the problem here and it's only a matter of time before SE will have to address it.

[Ramset]

Very well said Carth, and Seravi.

I especially agree with your longevity point, Carth. Everything they're doing works in the short term, and so long as they turn out content quickly they won't have a problem. But eventually they're going to slow down, and eventually even the most casual players are going to grow tired of the same formula. They're stagnating here.

Also like has been said...most people here rant so much because they DO enjoy the game and want to see it succeed. We complain and spout our ideas because we want to enhance the experience of the game. Sure some people straight trash talk, but I believe the majority have good intentions with their rants about the game.

[lilbubbles]

Sometimes people get a little pretentious though, like SE has their best men who understand English reading the forums intently just waiting for good ideas to fix everything.

[Ratatapa]

And then when it's time for the live letter they just the worse questions, just to make sure they don't lose face

[Ramset]

I think that's a cynical point of view, Bubbles.

I think everyone here is aware that SE doesn't read BG posts. They're discussions between experienced and ravenously opinionated, passionate players.

[Vaspinne]

I know I'm terrible with my Geirskogul use, but sometimes I feel its not worth it unless Blood of the Dragon is back up or you're sure you can get 3.5 GCDs in the remaining time - 10s. Is the mob going to die and you have to walk to the next one, and Blood is still on cooldown? Don't use it, or have fun doing 2.0 rotation again.

If they did at least one of these, I'd be happy:

* Make F&C and Wheeling procs. As in, you can get the ability proc, start your next combo and save them until you can do the position without breaking a combo.
* Make the non-position potency equal to one of the combo starting abilities so it's not a complete waste when you can't get the position right.
* Remove the random so we can actually plan ahead.

Removing the random would be really nice.

I try to simplify my Geirskogul use as much as possible. Essentially whenever I have more than 22 seconds of BotD it means I can get a full rotation in with enough time to get a boost in my BotD time, so I use it whenever it's up and I have 22+ seconds. And than yeah, if the mob is about to die, BotD will drop before I get to the next mob or if I have the BotD ability up again, than I just use it then too.

There are videos online showing how you can use it "perfectly" for maximum DPS, but the game is faaaar too situational to have perfect usage really. But to counter, not using it at all is basically like not using Jumps/Leg Sweep/Mercy Stroke/etc for free damage whenever you can, which is just silly.

[gaira]

well it took 7 years or so before XI had a forum or any meaningful communication with its non-Japanese speaking playerbase, and even then, it was mostly just there for show.

even with a new game, different dev, and a little more transparency in XIV, expecting SE to be as frank with players as BG wants them to be is simply never going to happen. sometimes people just want their concerns acknowledged, even if they don't lead to the exact result they were asking for.

[lilbubbles]

I just assume the jp playerbase are not morons and vent the same concerns I have.

[Cichy]

This last letter confirmed to me that they just want to play safe because that will bring them most money. They can pump out expansion like this every year and sell statues because most players are satisfied with the basic format. I've been away from the game for a while and came back for the expansion which in my mind is just a very standard rehash of 2.0. I'm not gonna say I've been having bad time because nowdays I'm a filthy casual and I'm one of those people who actually enjoys crafting and gathering and for most part that's what I've been doing. I leveled one job to 60 and see no desire to level anything else but crafts in near future. I'm disappointed that they did that they took zero risks. All the battle content is super easy and repetitive. There is not one thing when it comes to some sort of endgame content that they even tried to develop differently. I never beat final coil and we one shoted all Alexander turns besides the last turn which took us two tries. It seems like the whole expansion is geared towards the new players. I guess if I was more of a veteran I'd be pretty pissed.

[Adajer]

Fucking copy paste wow battlegrounds PLEASE

WSG, AB, fuck AV, but AV, EotS

GIVE ME!!

[Ramset]

Fucking copy paste wow battlegrounds PLEASE

WSG, AB, fuck AV, but AV, EotS

GIVE ME!!

Yeah that would be pretty awesome. Would certainly make PvP a lot more fun and interesting than it is now.

[Cutriss]

And then when it's time for the live letter they just the worse questions, just to make sure they don't lose face

I won't disagree that they use bad questions, but then they also have this mysterious habit of picking a question, getting an officially translated answer, and then translating the question to some generic inoffensive language and there's frequent occasions when the translated question and the translated answer don't even line up properly.

There's multiple failures there, between the community management team, the localization team, and of course whoever does the communication between the community team and the dev committee, which I think is some other amorphous group of people that also decide on contest winners and come up with dumb shit like the Twitter chocobo races.

[Patriarch]

This last letter confirmed to me that they just want to play safe because that will bring them most money. They can pump out expansion like this every year and sell statues because most players are satisfied with the basic format.

Truth

[Destinye]

I just assume the jp playerbase are not morons and vent the same concerns I have.

Considering I partake in the Japanese community as well the concerns are the same in many areas but they also don't cry about wanting everything nerfed and handed them in a vague manner like the NA playerbase - e.g

NA Playerbase: "Think about the people who have families, don't have time to grind content, it's ridiculous you make content you expect people to form statics to complete."
JP Playerbase: "Well, create more incentives to keep people making practice parties in the Party Finder because we use the Duty Finder for clears only."

(It's true, you're expected to clear the content if you load the duty finder on JP servers.)

So both major bases have their complaints..but I'll say the JP ones are more about the game as a whole and not just personal desires, some mirroring wanting them to change things up as well. Very rarely does SE create something for XIV that both JP and western playerbase agrees on that should change, but in this case...I'll promise you that you'll find more whining about insignificant stuff in the NA base than you will in the JP playerbase. While there's no short of MOAR MINIONS! in the JP playerbase, they don't make it out to be as important if not more important to the game's survival like the general NA playerbase does.

[Zzsark]

I never beat final coil and we one shoted all Alexander turns besides the last turn which took us two tries. It seems like the whole expansion is geared towards the new players. I guess if I was more of a veteran I'd be pretty pissed.

Do people not realize that the Alex that has been released is not the Coil Tier Alex?

[Adajer]

No Alisaie, not real content

[Shenrien]

Don't worry, in another week they'll come here posting bitching about how its too hard and they don't understand basic mechanics.

[Cichy]

So you guys are happy with some extra mechanics + being able to dye normal mode gear endgame? You guys are the perfect customers.
I really don't care about savage mode but I think that they should've put some sort of effort to go beyond all that rehashed shit for you hardcore raiders.

[Detzu]

It's something that Tornado Kick could/should have been a lot more like.

TK isn't really something you wanna spam. The loss of GL3 makes mnk lose more dps than anything a drg could experience.

[Detzu]

I guess I just never understood complaining about games. Asking for new features and content or tweaks to existing ones is one thing, but outright complaining, especially in the rage-filled, offensive ways people do it in places like the official forums and BG seems like such a waste of time to me.

I play games to enjoy them. If I don’t enjoy them then I move on – chances are the game just wasn’t for me. I don’t waste my time by sticking around hoping that things will get better. If there’s something I enjoy more then I’ll do that instead. Even in FFXIV I only do the things I feel like doing. You didn’t need max ilvl to beat Coil in its entirety, so after a while I stopped capping my weekly tomes. I thoroughly enjoyed hunts at the start of 2.3, but after a while I moved on to focus on PvP instead. In Heavensward I’ve been mainly doing my daily Hunts and I’ve already capped i180. I didn’t feel like doing all too many side quests while leveling to 60, so I spread the leveling process over 8-10 days doing only what I enjoyed and got to 60 with almost no grinding.

But here it seems like people purposefully do things they don’t enjoy just so they can have something to bitch about. Why do people here watch the Live Letters anymore? You know what to expect, hell you’ve been complaining about them for the past year and a half. By all means provide suggestions or ideas on what you’d like to see added to the game, but if you want to avoid being compared to the official forums then you’ll want to be a bit mature about it.

I know this is BG and the internet, but am I missing something? Do people really like doing things they don’t enjoy? Do they really like tearing other people down to pass the time? I’m not sure I’ll ever understand it.

That's your way to react, and it's perfectly sane and comprehensible. Nevertheless, when people like something and this thing doesn't go the way they would like to, it's also perfectly sane and comprehensible to complain.