New SE interview

[Marcatil]

WoW gets a lot more press time, too.

It even made it to Jeopardy.

LOL

That dude's freakin famous now XD

[edgarfigaro]

Yes it is. You can tell when theres maint or something, you might see an unclaimed faf walking around ready to destroy everyone. Same with Adamantoise, except that thing has crazy ass agro range.

Ada is not true anything, I have pictures of me chilling with him until Nergal showed up and wiped at 1% with a nin, rdm and 2 blms. I lol'ed

[Zigrah]

Wow will have a future as long as it takes for the next overly hyped game to be released with better graphics. Everyone will comment on how bad WoW is and how terrible Blizzard is as a company. It is a trend for people to hate the game developers of the game they play. Will think they dont get enough for their money and have expectations beyond what is possible, it's just a trend I have seen in every MMO I play.

WoW is fascinating to you because it's new. Every MMORPG has that feel. I think of MMO's like ciggarettes. They hook you, get you addicted and then you know it's bad for you but you continue to do it. MMORPG's don't have to care about end game because by the time you get there your already addicted.

Anyways, I think SquareEnix does a good job. The claim changes, Limbus, Dynamis, COP missions, Jailers(even though they are annoying) and future plans for more(from the interview) does not imply to me that they don't care. Some people just don't realize the amount of work that goes in and trying to appease everyone and listen to people ideas and try to make them work even though they have so many loose ends. I choose to be patient and make the most of what there is. How many people have been able to quit and say they did EVERY single thing the game has to offer.

Anyways, Darkfall and Hero's Journey look to me to be the ones that will put wow to shame when they are done. Wow doesn't have a future. It's just what's new for the time being. That's pretty much it's only quality except for PvP.

[Siatdiat]

FFXI for me: LVL1-10 blm no sub, a horribly slow grind, First good spell was bind at lvl 7, @10 i head to maze of shakrami til lvl 15, then to dunes. All the time im doing this b/c i think well when i get to so and so lvl ill have fun, b/c to this point i was mostly bored and irritated. Went to xp in dunes, managed to do sub job quest which was in no way fun, only annoying. lvled whm a job i didnt really care to play to 10, went to jeuno and did choco quest, which was also boring and annoying. See a pattern? In the last interview with SE they said something about discovering "sleeping content" i.e. garrisons, EFs, etc. Has anyone ever done a garrison? its not fun, what about EF? that also isnt fun, and the rewards for both are weak. lvl 50 55 60 65 and 70 limit breaks? only maat was interesting and even that was annoying to get the testimony. The quests arent fun in any way shape or form, standing in one place for 6 hrs to xp? not fun. I didnt really enjoy anything in this game til i joined PO at lvl 60 blm and killed serket/roc/sim. 60 lvls of work and annoyance and finally a pay off? The thing that keeps people playing ffxi for the most part is thinking soon they will have fun, or that they have come too far to stop, or they like their friends and want to keep playing with them. The game is overall very weak, at some point it has to become blaringly obvious to any ffxi player that they basically try to put as little effort as possible into the game.

WoW for me: Currently a 17 tauren warrior, At first quests are very basic, but are 10 times what is available in FFXI. They give money gear and xp rewards, they scale up and continue a storyline, and tell it in a manner that makes sense. I didnt do a lvl 5ish newb quest then go back and get a quest i wouldnt be able to do til i was lvl 40. I didnt go into a new zone just to find a bland landscape with nothing of interest in it, and alot of mobs too high lvl for me to do anything but run away from them or avoid them. Instead i do solo quests, group with friends for elite quests and instances, and all of it is fun. Searching for veins of ore is even fun, they can be pretty much anywhere, unlike 6 set points in a zone that are camped by miners constantly.

This is just a few random thoughts, all my opinion ofcourse, but people who use the "WoW is new to you" argument are full of shit. Would you erase your char right now and start over on ffxi? or even just start a new char and lvl it to 75, rather than lvl a different job on your main? I have a friend who is lvling the same job in WoW for the 3rd time, something i can never imagine someone doing with ffxi, its just too goddam boring and flawed to bother with. All the annoying irritating quests that take a lot of effort for little or no reward, or basically to let you continue on in the game are even worse the next time around. At lvl 50 SE could have made some fun quest that was difficult and involves a large group of people, but had a good reward for your effort, instead they made a shitty annoying time sink quest that completing allows you to *GASP* continue xping past lvl 50. Seriously, alot of people have to quit ffxi several times before it sticks, but its nothing created by SE that brings them back, 99.9% of the time its friends in game.

P.S. To all the haters, gtfo, if playing WoW is gay then i guess im a butt pirate.

[Surealistic]

has anyone considered that the way the sea drops are and how hard JoL and AV are, are that way on purpose? being in bg youve basically done everything so far, nothing left for you to do, you fly through and kill everything without even thinking about it now basically. so as developers (who i am pretty sure read the boards, may not comment, but they prolly do read them) what would you do, make something that even the most hardcore players cant just fly though, thats the way the whole CoP thing is, you cant just bumrush though it like ZM's, yeah, it may take a year before AV is beaten, because of how long it takes to farm the items just to pop JoL, and then beating him has only happened what, twice now? just cause something is hard, doesnt make it broken cause you cant do it yet, yeah, it may not have the best rewards in the whole game, but to quit ffxi cause you came to something you couldnt beat? hmmmm

[DrObvious]

You seem like someone who has not played as Thief, at least to level 35 where you get Hide

I'm going off of what people have told me and what I've seen people do in exp parties. If it's incorrect then I'm sorry, I'm apologize, I was wrong.

[Marcatil]

You seem like someone who has not played as Thief, at least to level 35 where you get Hide

I'm going off of what people have told me and what I've seen people do in exp parties. If it's incorrect then I'm sorry, I'm apologize, I was wrong.

Hide is not level 35 <_> Can't get via subjob~ Guess you haven't played as THF either, mine's only 15 :3

[raginbull]

I don't think Nynja understands the mechanics of Hide.

[NynJa]

I don't think Nynja understands the mechanics of Hide.

Elaborate plz ??

[Kuponut]

You seem like someone who has not played as Thief, at least to level 35 where you get Hide

I'm going off of what people have told me and what I've seen people do in exp parties. If it's incorrect then I'm sorry, I'm apologize, I was wrong.

Hide is not level 35 <_> Can't get via subjob~ Guess you haven't played as THF either, mine's only 15 :3

Meant 45 XD And my THF is 75

[KainMinter]

So perhaps you get people who say "give me more Limbus" without having finished the Zilart missions, or without having done Chocobo Racers, or without having leveled their NPC fellow. And what we're saying is that we'd really like you to enjoy what we've put so much time and effort into making before we overstretch ourselves on making new things as well.

LMAO @ SE
Who cares if someone doesn't 'enjoy' all of your sidequests and distractions you implemented? So they dont chocobo race, they dont fish for useless treasure maps, and they dont have a capped NPC. Some times you win some times you lose. Don't sulk about it. Just listen to the players! Most of them have already "enjoyed" the shit out of leveling 2+ jobs to 75 anyway. People who have invested so much time and money into this game deserve to be heard. Listen to what people want, and maybe so many once-loyal players wouldn't be packing their bags and heading for WarCraft.

..I wonder how many people they get in Al'Tieau and Limbus that don't have at least one nation rank 10 anyway..? lol

[Orfeo]

just the first step and we're planning to add more high level content.

from what some of the SE people told and showed us last summer in Fremont at the New Park Shopping Mall its-->Chocobo Knight, Pirate/Necromancer, Elemental Mage & Blue Mage are all the new jobs to come.

Necromancer would be so sweet...I loved that job in diablo 2: LoD. I had hmm...let's see... 7 level 99 necromancers (bone spear, bone spirit, poison nova, skeleton, golem, etc). I wonder if it would require MP though, and how important MP is to the job. If it was one of those jobs that is very dependant on MP I would have to start a taru

Has anyone ever done a garrison? its not fun, what about EF? that also isnt fun, and the rewards for both are weak.

Yea, I've done them both. They are actually amazingly fun, more so then any end game content I have played so far (and really the only end game stuff i havent done is sea gods). It was fun doing those with friends and having a good time trying to claim an area for san d'oria, but that's the problem; people are too focused on the loot pool rather then the fun.

Never heard of The Last Stand before. Sounds like some sort of garrison-esque defend the city type instance zone.

Something like that minus the instance type zone (instance=area created specifically for a group of people like dynamis right?) would be so fun. Mobs randomly attacking the starting cities, gigas and such invading jeuno from qufim..fun :D

[Alleya]

Gigas invading jeuno would be hilarious. After 2 months everyone would stop caring and all the bazaars/people afk at the acution house would get raped.

[ertyu]

i think whoever does that interview should avoid asking 2 questions at once, example:

1UP: You guys have obviously created new mobs, like Absolute Virtue, who people have recently stumbled upon. It seems like you guys are really good at creating monsters that are impossible to beat for an alliance of 75s, but that doesn't solve the age-old problem of Dragoons seeking in their mid-50s. Are you guys looking to find ways to equalize the desirability of mid-level melee jobs as well?

HT: Limbus was tested to some degree for mid-level players, or something less than what we consider "high level" players at first, but it was considered extremely difficult and just not fun, and that's when we decided to make Limbus what it is now and the level and difficulty it is now. However, what we noticed in developing Limbus as it is now is that lots of players seem to constantly ask, or at least people who are vocal enough to post, seem to ask for something newer without actually having experienced everything there is so far in the content up until then. So perhaps you get people who say "give me more Limbus" without having finished the Zilart missions, or without having done Chocobo Racers, or without having leveled their NPC fellow. And what we're saying is that we'd really like you to enjoy what we've put so much time and effort into making before we overstretch ourselves on making new things as well. So we're also looking for ways to point people back towards the content that's "sleeping" so to speak.

About experimenting with difficulty in game design, I know there's a lot of theories out there. But certainly the thing we don't want to do the most is err on the side of being too easy. What we've found over the years as we've raised the maximum level cap for characters, is that even when there's a monster set too high for a level of player to defeat, they always find a way to defeat him, and that's not necessarily with third-party tools. To know there are people out there makes it hard from a development point of view to find the impetus to make it easier for others who haven't really thought it out yet.

he COMPLETELY disregarded the question of balancing ~_~

[NynJa]

I don't think Nynja understands the mechanics of Hide.

Elaborate plz ??

[raginbull]

do I really have to explain hide mecanics ?

yeah you do....

[NynJa]

do I really have to explain hide mecanics ?

yeah you do....

At level 45, Thieves learn a job ability, Hide.
This JA is on a 5 min recast.
Previously, before a patch, which date I dont have offhand, all hide did was allow the user to render themself invisible. I believe it also allowed the shedding of all hate towards mobs who only track by sight. After the afforementionned patch was implemented, Hide allowed the user to use Sneak Attack from any direction, since Sneak Attack only works from the mob's ass.

You can Hide mid fight from certain mobs:
Mobs that track by sight, and not sound.
Mobs that track by sight and sound, while under the effect of deodorize.
Mobs that track by sight and sound, while in water (which deodorizes you).
Skeletons while in white HP.

Mobs that are True Sight/Sound are impossible to Hide from. No matter what you do, how far you run, you can not Hide from them.





come suck my dick now you piece of trash.

[Septimus]

has anyone considered that the way the sea drops are and how hard JoL and AV are, are that way on purpose? being in bg youve basically done everything so far, nothing left for you to do, you fly through and kill everything without even thinking about it now basically. so as developers (who i am pretty sure read the boards, may not comment, but they prolly do read them) what would you do, make something that even the most hardcore players cant just fly though, thats the way the whole CoP thing is, you cant just bumrush though it like ZM's, yeah, it may take a year before AV is beaten, because of how long it takes to farm the items just to pop JoL, and then beating him has only happened what, twice now? just cause something is hard, doesnt make it broken cause you cant do it yet, yeah, it may not have the best rewards in the whole game, but to quit ffxi cause you came to something you couldnt beat? hmmmm

There is a difference between fun an frustration. It is no fun to just run through something and get everything that you want in 2 minutes, but that is a far distance from sitting in sea for many, many hours just to come away empty handed without even an item to pop the next tier of monster.

If sea is not broken, the people who designed it are. Ix'aerns are ridiculous, getting to the first tier of jailers is a joke- sea is an utter mess.

If something is hard, it had better be worth that effort- time sinks have to lead somewhere. Square did a great job balancing the difficulty with the rewards of sky, even unlocking sea requires at least 5 times the effort of sky with maybe a 10th of the loot pool. Challenges are great and all, but for the extraordinary effort it takes to get to sea, the pay out is still not there.

[levish]

do I really have to explain hide mecanics ?

yeah you do....

At level 45, Thieves learn a job ability, Hide.
This JA is on a 5 min recast.
Previously, before a patch, which date I dont have offhand, all hide did was allow the user to render themself invisible. I believe it also allowed the shedding of all hate towards mobs who only track by sight. After the afforementionned patch was implemented, Hide allowed the user to use Sneak Attack from any direction, since Sneak Attack only works from the mob's ass.

You can Hide mid fight from certain mobs:
Mobs that track by sight, and not sound.
Mobs that track by sight and sound, while under the effect of deodorize.
Mobs that track by sight and sound, while in water (which deodorizes you).
Skeletons while in white HP.

Mobs that are True Sight/Sound are impossible to Hide from. No matter what you do, how far you run, you can not Hide from them.

come suck my dick now you piece of trash.

If you aren't on the mobs hate list you can also sata + hide from any direction.

[NynJa]

do I really have to explain hide mecanics ?

yeah you do....

At level 45, Thieves learn a job ability, Hide.
This JA is on a 5 min recast.
Previously, before a patch, which date I dont have offhand, all hide did was allow the user to render themself invisible. I believe it also allowed the shedding of all hate towards mobs who only track by sight. After the afforementionned patch was implemented, Hide allowed the user to use Sneak Attack from any direction, since Sneak Attack only works from the mob's ass.

You can Hide mid fight from certain mobs:
Mobs that track by sight, and not sound.
Mobs that track by sight and sound, while under the effect of deodorize.
Mobs that track by sight and sound, while in water (which deodorizes you).
Skeletons while in white HP.

Mobs that are True Sight/Sound are impossible to Hide from. No matter what you do, how far you run, you can not Hide from them.

come suck my dick now you piece of trash.

If you aren't on the mobs hate list you can also sata + hide from any direction.

Certain mobs just throw you on the hate list just from being in the party with someone on it.

ie: Darters in Aery, Lizards in Yhoator Jungle...