FFXI Interview August

[othellojr]

I just have one big concern:

CoP:

The most frustrating thing for me and maybe the majority of the player base (guessing most people feel the same on this) is the low drop rates. Why can they not fix this? Is there a reason to make pop items/drops from the Lumoria NMs so low that players give up on sea and some even quit the game with how disappointing CoP turned out? Does the SE CoP team enjoy making the playerbase frustrated to a point where some will just quit? It should not be hard to increase the drop rates on the Lumoria NMs, hell, they should also make them pop easier (Ix'Drk anyone?); and nothing is worst than spending hours upon hours farming chips(grah M chips)/organs (euhvis can go fuck themselves), using said items to pop a jailer, to see it not drop anything other than a weapon...

I actually can say I love the fights in sea, they are a nice change of pace, but I hate the fact that my ls has killed the Ix'Aerns numerous times and only has had 1 cape drop out of many kills, we have killed as many jailers and torques are something we hardly see, and when we finally poped JoL we received weapon (guaranteed) and the torque, no earrings (again low drop rate and we have thfs in each of the parties that has dds/blms)..really SE, why the low drop rate, I like playing this game, but I feel that I am not receiving the enterntainment that I am paying for, I feel as if I am paying to get kicked in the nuts everytime we spend countless of our RL hours to get hosed on drops.

[bercus]

Please ask Sage Sundi to finally reveal the mystery of Treasure Hunter. We know that you don't have to do the killing blow, as TH is effective in the party but:
- does it apply to the whole alliance?
- how does Thief's Knife and Assassin's Armlets work (they both give Treasure Hunter+1, but study on over 3000 drops showed that it means Drop rate +1% - so sucks pretty much)
- will more THFs in a party contribute to higher TH?

Don't waste valuable question time on questions they won't answer.

Well i wont ask him those questions prolly in detail, since they have answered so many times "find it out" or stuff like "we cant tell you that". Plus we already know that TH doesnt stack (at least from the tests i read and heared) as well as iam sure it applies to the whole Alliance.

I prolly ask him if "he wants to say something about Treasure Hunter" or so but yeah i will note down everything and then see what iam going to ask as well as upload the .wav from the interview.

[ircgeek]

Pretty sure I've already seen interviews where they addressed a few of these questions. The inventory issue comes to mind, as well as the thing about more AH slots.

[Vobent]

2. Characters:

Many of us have been playing the same character for years and it is a lot to ask to lvl a whole new character as that can take forever. Are there any plans to allow a one time race/toon change for those who are sick of having to look at the same toon day in day out? Or along those lines are there any plans to ever make a 6th race and would old players get a chance to change their toon to that race as a one-time-only option?

This would contradict the storyline.

I fought with prince trion in the rank 10 sandy mission, and he doesn't recognize me in toau. The storyline is already contradicted.

He's a bubble head though....

[Artemuller]

I like Lordwafik's Questions as well as Teffy's concern
on raising the amount of items to put on ah.

To add on to the questions I'd like to ask the following:

1) In the last interview, it was revealed there will be job adjustments.
There were some done like pld's shield mastery and auto-refresh
as well as adjustments to tp. However when are the other job-specific
adjustments and additions be in place? According to the development
timeline is seems way overdue.

2) Abjurations - we all know it was intentional to make these rare
in comparison to relic weapons. Problem with this is dedicated
players spend years without attaining this goal. Has SE considered
bringing alternatives with a challenge at the same level to give
more opportunity for rare abjurations to hard-working players?
Like a special BCNM, etc.

3) Player Immigration - The last world shift was done in purpose
to balance server populations. With the servers upgraded to
meet technology demands, has it been considered to set up
a world immigration system with conditions and terms. Many
other mmo games have adapted a system like this. Basically
my concern is I have friends who immigrated to another server
and later regretted, if SE can consider making a system with
a one-time exception rule it would be nice.

4) Lastly, is on the entertainment side of the game. In the past SE
has adapted a cross world feature evident in many games, like Kingdom
Hearts. Could SE consider something like this for FFXI so that players
can fight against square legends? Like a bcnm, or mini-quest oriented
to xi culture so that it doesn't interfere with storyline etc.

-Arte

[MisterBob]

1) In the last interview, it was revealed there will be job adjustments.
There were some done like pld's shield mastery and auto-refresh
as well as adjustments to tp. However when are the other job-specific
adjustments and additions be in place? According to the development
timeline is seems way overdue.

They've already answered that. According to the timeline, it is NOT overdue, and should be coming in this July update.

[Stromgarde]

Try to bring a few pictures with you from various servers about the situation at Ulli so it might be marginally less likely that they'll dismiss it out of hand and claim it's not a problem.

Good questions so far, for the most part.

[Artemuller]

I overlooked that somewhere in the announcements.
Mostly what I read were the expansion updates like
chocobo mog locker expansion. I sure hope so
be nice to have something new to make jobs more
appealing :D

[Julian]

How do you pop Goblin Wolfman? At least a hint... <__<; That's all I would like to know.

[Tencteri]

1. Why did you (Sage Sundi) lie about ToAH being a expansion for low level jobs when yet it ended up being an expansion just for higher levels?

2. From research that I have done and sources that have come foward to me, SE is actually affiliated with IGE and supports the RMTs. I want to know why SE supports the RMTs when yet SE claims they are fighting RMTs. (I will only say who my sources are if the higher people of SE confess to this)

3. Why don't the new wyrms drop any abjurations like the gods or the other NMs that drop the abjurations when yet the wyrms are much more difficult to defeat than the other monsters that can drop the abjurations?

[SassiAsura]

q: Even with 3 peek time zones for play (JP, EU, NA) end game content is congested. With RMT farming sky actively almost all day on some servers and not being policed. With nearly 4+ Shells camping kings. With LS conflicts for Dynamis (even RMT groups are attempting this as of lately too).

Since server wide bans for RMT groups will most definatly not be happening, does SE plan to address this issue by:

-Tweaking the pop conditions for certain nms (Ulli among others)
-Drops from sky gods (lets face it, if ignots, claws, hides and cloths weren't as common in sky it wouldn't be as profitable for RMT)
-Creating gear which could be as effective/desired (lets face it nothing comes close to certain items)
-Adding a whole lot of HNMs in new areas
-Adding instanced Dynamis (much like assault)

[MisterBob]

(I will only say who my sources are if the higher people of SE confess to this)

Some random guy in your LS who claims to be the cousin of the gay lover of the VP of the packaging department in SE is not a source.

[rahskala]

Another thing to remember when proposing questions: Sage Sundi is not a developer, he's the PRODUCER. His job is very high-level and he will not be able to answer questions about game mechanics very well. You can't ask the person who owns a hockey team about what drills the team is going to be put through next practice, because he doesn't decide that/care about that except in a very general fashion.

[Mifaco]

2. From research that I have done and sources that have come foward to me, SE is actually affiliated with IGE and supports the RMTs. I want to know why SE supports the RMTs when yet SE claims they are fighting RMTs. (I will only say who my sources are if the higher people of SE confess to this)

Stop asking retarded questions like this. Good god, we only get a chance to communicate with the developers a couple of times a year and you want to ask them about your personal conspiracy theory?

[rahskala]

*starts passing out tinfoil hats*

[layoneil]

please don't ask useless questions like what Tencteri said. it's an interview not an interrogation.

you should really emphasize Wafik's question. tell him fixing old stuff can appeal just as well to the players as new content.

Other things that can be "fixed"
1) Garrison - variable level cap, increase loot pool (something drops on every mob)
2) Expeditionary Force - more direct influence on Conquest, treasure chest drops after each flag is cleared, CP reward proportionate to # of flags cleared.
3) Signet/CP - more bonuses like Sanction, more Rank 10 items

[MisterBob]

Questions to Sage Sundi should be generally broad, and generally about game CONTENT (IE, missions, CoP problems, Ulli being gay, etc) , if you want this interview to be useful.

Examples of bad questions:

1. IZ SE AFFILIATED WITH RMT? MY BEST FRIEND SAYZ SO. PLZ CONFIRM MY THEORY TO THE WORLD!

2. When facing 45 degrees south of the constellation of Odin while casting Sleep II, will the mob sleep for 11 more seconds?

3. How does TH work?

4. Does the DoT of Bio II change on darksday?


Examples of good questions:

1. What can we expect in the way of endgame content in ToAU? (Assuming it isn't out by then)

2. Are there any plans to tweak older content, like CoP, 3 Kings, and the pop time of mobs like Ulli?

3. What types of enhancements towards "x" system can we look foward to in the future?



Ask questions he can actually answer, so we can get something useful out of this please.

[Devek]

Another thing to remember when proposing questions: Sage Sundi is not a developer, he's the PRODUCER. His job is very high-level and he will not be able to answer questions about game mechanics very well. You can't ask the person who owns a hockey team about what drills the team is going to be put through next practice, because he doesn't decide that/care about that except in a very general fashion.

The owner of a hockey team would be interested if his employees sucked balls.

I've spent the last 2 years forwarding code, tools, and advice through various SE channels(snail mail, phone, email, GMs) only to be ignored and at one point threatened with a ban.

[rahskala]

The owner of a hockey team would be interested if his employees sucked balls.

I've spent the last 2 years forwarding code, tools, and advice through various SE channels(snail mail, phone, email, GMs) only to be ignored and at one point threatened with a ban.

Well, it's not a perfect analogy. The point is that a guy like Sundi probably has more important things to be concerned about than the intricacies of high-level itemization, such as making sure the art department is on schedule for the next live update, or revising a design document, or something.

[SephYuyX]

Pretty sure I've already seen interviews where they addressed a few of these questions. The inventory issue comes to mind, as well as the thing about more AH slots.

Yes, they already covered those previously.

Both questions are answered by server space. I think an example they gave was something like: Imagine (a really big # here representing the number of people that are playing FFXI) times 7, plus their inv, storage, and MH safe, and you can realize how much data that is being held on the servers. Now add 3 more per each onto the (really big #) of players.

Or something, too much extra data to be blunt.

*bored*

Lets say there is 2million people playing. At maximum they have 7 AH slots, 60 inv slots and 80 MH slots. and lets say for shits and giggles each slot is 1mb.

2,000,000*(7+60+80)*1 = 294,000,000GB

And that calculation can be adjusted, maybe its 5m that are playing, and maybe it takes 5mb per slot. Thats 3,675,000,000TB which is a fuck ton of data.

Honestly, I say get rid of the storage and that stupid ass toau rent a closet, and add that shit onto inv and MH.

Which actually brings up a question.
Maybe its dumb, maybe its not.

But, ask him something like, will there ever be a way to subtract storage from other places (storage, toau room) and add it to your mh or inv?

It wouldnt be so bad if rent a closest was a one time fee, but screw paying once a week.