Letter from the Producer LIVE Part XXVI

[Shaano]

All I can imagine is some game grump ranting. Things just blown out of proportion and just looking for all the bad in the game.

Gonna give me a chub bein a grump fan.

[Lujei]

Wait, why are they creating content if they can't beat it completely?

I genuinely don't understand why they thought it was a good idea. They probably should have spent that further time testing and balancing, it would have made customers more satisfied.

[Alisha]

from reading that it makes me think they had time to test and tune a1s and a2s but ran out of time while testing a3s and a4s

[Sho]

Wait, why are they creating content if they can't beat it completely?

I genuinely don't understand why they thought it was a good idea. They probably should have spent that further time testing and balancing, it would have made customers more satisfied.

Are you expecting the developers themselves to be world class players?

The goal is to create difficult content that is challenging, not something that they would be partial to. It's obvious they are using very impartial and unbiased methods to create the battle content itself, tweaking it from the top down with Invincibility on (but showing damage I can imagine, i.e. gettign hit normally instead of for 0 damage).

If they were creating content around their skill level, it would likely be too easy -- ironically they will probably do this very thing with Alexander II.

[Lujei]

Are you expecting the developers themselves to be world class players?

The goal is to create difficult content that is challenging, not something that they would be partial to. It's obvious they are using very impartial and unbiased methods to create the battle content itself, tweaking it from the top down with Invincibility on (but showing damage I can imagine, i.e. gettign hit normally instead of for 0 damage).

If they were creating content around their skill level, it would likely be too easy -- ironically they will probably do this very thing with Alexander II.

That's exactly why I would expect the playtesters to be at least decent players, because they absolutely did not succeed at creating content that is the right difficulty (eg, Second/Third Coil). It's either too difficult or too easy.

I'd ask if the playtesters being competent is too much to ask, but yeah. I know the answer to that.

[Sho]

That's exactly why I would expect the playtesters to be at least decent players, because they absolutely did not succeed at creating content that is the right difficulty (eg, Second/Third Coil). It's either too difficult or too easy.

I'd ask if the playtesters being competent is too much to ask, but yeah. I know the answer to that.

More so a fault with the players, really.

The same exact trend is forming right now -- does no one remember the excessive clamoring of "First/T5 & Second Coil/T9 is too hard!"? -- they caught the nerf and released a much easier Final Coil. They should have just let it all lie, and let the eventual iLvL increase be the content's inherent and intrinsic nerf, instead of wasting development time tweaking and re-tweaking content to suit the whims of players. In this sense the dev team is waaaaaaaaaaaaay too soft on players.

Also the rewards need to be fleshed out more instead of being a recolor and the exact same iLvl to equipment that gets released a month later. Essentially what drops from current raid content should be the bridge and the leg up to the new season of raid content. For example they could have made all of the Gordian loot be i215 or i220 and made having that gear relevant for Alexander II (instead of a race to craft new sets of gear for a leg up). There's no real motivation to complete content when the gear it drops get invalidated 2-3 months later and subsequently made into glamour status.

[Prothescar]

Difference in difficulty between T1-5 and T6-9 was not even remotely close to as jank as A1 and 2 vs A3 and 4. Can't even be compared with a straight face. Would hazard a hefty wager that a lot of the people who did beat pre-echo 5 and 9 have yet to beat A3.

A1 and 2 are too easy, A3 steps up the difficulty far too much coming off of the snorefest that is 2, and 4 can be cheesed so hard that its primary fuck you mechanic isn't even a problem. Better playtesting would have made all the difference, and having more than four endgame raid zones every 6 months would allow for more increments of difficulty rather than having an enormous flaming wall of dicks to climb which, and this may shock you, doesn't do wonders for the morale of a majority of players. Most people like to feel as though they're making progress and not wasting hours worth of time rather than being anally butchered by the same barely tested garbage again and again.

It's also an issue of SE's incapability of designing reasonable difficulty steps. Normal mode for supercasuals, Coil tier difficulty for average raiders, Savage mode for hardcore raid 4-5 times a week "I want a challenge" raiders. It's the most logical system to appease everyone, but SE hasn't been able to grasp it and instead wants to stick with a binary 0=easy 1=hard motif while barely even rewarding those who do slog through the bullshit of their badly designed raids.

Why were Gordian weapons 210 again?

[Fiye]

Because Allagan weapons were originally i90.

But you probably had a +1 relic by the time you beat T5.

Also the ongoing thing with 3 tiers of difficulty is apparently they don't have the man power to design 3 tiers of difficulty.

[Shenrien]

Yeah it takes a lot of man power to tweek the attack range and HP range of a monster 3 times and ship out the same content, toggle certain effects to leave ground puddles and others to not and bam! that's like 800 hours of work, aint got no one to drop that workload onto.

[Appie]

People keep talking about "staff levels." Honest question: is XIV massively understaffed compared to 75-era XI? How about current XI? Either seems incredibly unlikely to me.

I think people mean compared to other MMO's they look understaffed. Other studios push out more content on the same 3 month cycle, some even with less revenue in monthly fees. To me it feels very much like that as soon as ARR was solid (2.1 or so?) every team that chipped in (KH3, whatever FF) went back to their game and XIV was left with a normal sized offline game development team.

I don't see how having a coil-level 24-man raid would even solve anything if it's still on lockouts. You'd be in the same situation you're in now, only you'd be stuck finding exactly 24 people to raid with instead of exactly 8.

Think he meant content that fits 8-24 where any number in between can get the job done too, which was awesome in FFXI.

[Elcura]

You say that as if more than half the people on this forum who were playing XIV regularly haven't quit the game by now because it sucks.

FACT NUMBER 1:

THE GAME SUCKS

FACT.

Oh shit, people keep touting their opinions on the state of the game as if it were true. The game doesn't suck, you might not like it after 2-4 years but please. Like you can't find fault/things to complain about in any game, but XIV you get people complaining above and beyond. Holy shit. Even more so if you don't play, and doubly so if you still do. And it's always the same people talking the same shit and nothing is being said.

Yeah, keep white knighting. I'm glad, truly, that you're happy with the state of the game and see good in it that I don't, please continue doing so.

And then we go back to "Don't be a white knight" when you say something that implies FFXIV isn't the worst thing ever created or is the Hitler of videogames. There's literally nothing white knight about this, but I can't remember the term for people who incessantly and constantly complain about shit.

More water.

All I can see is wasted potential in a game I desperately want to be good, but simply isn't.

You mean a game you desperately want to be for you, but isn't. I understand you on that, Yoshi-P doesn't give in to my rampant desires for more jobs or effective playstyles (I haven't really found a DPS I like compared to level 50). So here I am on BG forums yelling at the top of my lungs YOSHI P DOESN'T CARE ABOUT BLACK PEOPLE. I play the shit I wanna play, move on or come back. Everyone seems mad because they think XIV is supposed to be the perfect end-all MMO videogame.

[Destinye]

You say that as if more than half the people on this forum who were playing XIV regularly haven't quit the game by now because it sucks. Yeah, keep white knighting. I'm glad, truly, that you're happy with the state of the game and see good in it that I don't, please continue doing so. All I can see is wasted potential in a game I desperately want to be good, but simply isn't.

For real though, there's serious problems to the point even the most adamant person who chimed in with this game being perfect on the official forums and reddit are actually questioning things now.

Yeah it takes a lot of man power to tweek the attack range and HP range of a monster 3 times and ship out the same content, toggle certain effects to leave ground puddles and others to not and bam! that's like 800 hours of work, aint got no one to drop that workload onto.

It does take a lot of work. I mean look at PSO2 or GW2, they manage it but they have no content updates clearly and they're f2p/b2p, so therefore it should have LESS development than a game we pay a sub for and even have a cash shop thus people get double dipped! Seriously, a lot of people really buy into Yoshi's excuses and you can argue SE is SE but the XI team seems to be able to perfectly manage reusing assets for "new" content and tiers just fine, so if they'd stop making shit like Lords of Verminion or waste time on Void Ark (why even release i200 gear at 6ish months later?) they could probably reallocate some resources into making something pretty good.

Despite all the supposed money XIV is making, I wonder how much is funneled into the VII remake at this point since they chose to sit on their hands for that for so long.

Yoshi does use the excuse: "We have lack of staff and funding..oh and bad servers, don't forget those too" but the XI team is working on fumes in both development staff and development platform and they still seem to manage, so I think either upper management is being stupid, or the fact Yoshi made it a point to say XIV is his project to control he simply knows they're making money and don't need to do anything different. Who knows. We're fast approaching the time 3.0 development is no longer tied to 2.0, as per one of his excuses as to why it was "the same" since they worked on 3.x during 2.x era as well, so once 3.3-3.5 hits they hopefully should be trying to evolve the game.

[ronin sparthos]

This isn't a shareholders meeting, who gives a shit how much XIV is making.

The money being put in certainly isn't the money being put out in terms of patches. Time to milk microtransactions dry to feed other titles and pad profits. I appreciate the sound teams work and the level of polish that each patch brings to the table but it's like a photoshoot for food. Looks pretty but fuck if it eats well.

I plan to continue dropping in around patches to sample the food platter but crucial investment, I no longer am. Relic Keeper is more fun :3

[Cichy]

You mean a game you desperately want to be for you, but isn't. I understand you on that, Yoshi-P doesn't give in to my rampant desires for more jobs or effective playstyles (I haven't really found a DPS I like compared to level 50). So here I am on BG forums yelling at the top of my lungs YOSHI P DOESN'T CARE ABOUT BLACK PEOPLE. I play the shit I wanna play, move on or come back. Everyone seems mad because they think XIV is supposed to be the perfect end-all MMO videogame.

I personally never thought XIV was gonna be the perfect MMO. However, I do not think it's fair to say that Silenka is throwing out demands and he's mad that Yoshi is not listening. I usually read a lot of articles and interviews about XIV and one of the reasons that I kept the game on my computer till recently was that people were complaining and Yoshi seemingly had some changes in mind. There were mentions of stat adjustments and adding more meaningful gear to the game I remember so I had hope maybe they are working on something to mix things up. I'm one of SE battered wives and yet again I got suckered into thinking things will change.
I think we have at least a little right to be mad when Yoshi himself tells us he's the man of the people and will listen to the feedback and promises things he does not intend to deliver.

[ronin sparthos]

All I need to see now is the arguments for Tanaka's return and BG has come full circle.

[Rocl]

I feel like that has been done already, funnily enough.

[Eanae]

I personally feel A4S is the only poorly designed fight out of the 4. A3S is more than fine and was honestly a great fight in retrospect. But A4S the real way with Nisi. I wonder how many groups would be able to do it without the cheese strat. Probably not mine for sure. It already took us quite some time with the cheese strat. That was some poor design right there.

[Ragns]

Are you expecting the developers themselves to be world class players?

We usually have to create bots for our own games considering tester is usually a minimum wage job given to people that couldn't keep their job at McDonalds.

I often needed to code parts of games impossible to achieve because managers wanted to buy more dev time. Then you end up fucked up in the ass when the top players are actually better than your bot.

[Elcura]

All I need to see now is the arguments for Tanaka's return and BG has come full circle.

It already has multiple times. These are indeed dark, dumb days we live in. Dark, dumb days.

We usually have to create bots for our own games considering tester is usually a minimum wage job given to people that couldn't keep their job at McDonalds.

I often needed to code parts of games impossible to achieve because managers wanted to buy more dev time. Then you end up fucked up in the ass when the top players are actually better than your bot.

The fuck kind of testers do you know? Outsourced? Any tester worth their salt is already the best gamer at the company and can break RC builds like a motherfucker.

[Ragns]

The fuck kind of testers do you know? Outsourced? Any tester worth their salt is already the best gamer at the company and can break RC builds like a motherfucker.

I'm not saying they're bad and you always want them on your side during a lan party.

They also have to be good when they're forced to play the goddamn same game 100+ hours a week. The problem is that there's always a goddamn 8 years old asian kid better than them somewhere and that's our job to make sure that they shall not pass.