Heated Endgame Discussion

[NynJa]

I think someone was testing out to see how serious the SSJ effect was.

[Xavier]

I don't think it matters how strong it gets, its not serious if it takes an hour to get there, lol.

[Priran]

Am I imagining things or was the purpose of rage timers to prevent holding, not to make the NMs harder?

[NynJa]

I think a mix of both.

[Xavier]

Am I imagining things or was the purpose of rage timers to prevent holding, not to make the NMs harder?

That might be true, but generally speaking, the hardest part of most HNMs is the claim these days, and most people generally bring a lot of people to try and increase their chances of claiming. One hour is just far too generous. Linkshells are still able to claim Fafnir, hold him for 45 minutes, and kill before his rage timer happens.

[Medivac]

idk if this was in SE's playbook or not. but by actually not fixing things that are broken quickly; they have made it so that when things do get fixed people praise SE for fixing it when in fact that "fix" was long overdue. if se had origanally fixed every little thing, every time, it would be only a matter of time before somthing was broke that they couldnt put a quick fix on, and would lose customers. but by being slack they have given all us players a lowered expecation, and now one really bitches when thigns dont get fixed because, hey its what we are used to.

[Coren]

Those that are left, yes we expect very little every patch. I'd like to see some updated statistics, but there are FAR FAR less people that play ffxi now, and far more that play other things like wow. I'm really hoping they are learning from their experiences (blizzard listens to their base, gets more people, SE ignores their fanbase except allakhanoob and loses their subscribers) so that ffxi-2 really rocks.

[Ninjiz]

I apologize for this long post in advance.

Its mostly that SE is a japanese company, and we are U.S players. Which adds to another factor.

Many Japanese companies are notorious for having the attitude of "we know best" while "most" American companies have the "The customer is always right". So you already have a Japanese company that is stubborn, and think they know whats best despite people being against it. But then you have the fact that theres a communication gap. Most of us dont speak japanese, and have no real way of communicating with the actual development team. Wasnt it like last year the first time the Dev team actually visited the US and attended a discussion panel?? Most of our supposed communication is through SE U.S.A Henchmen, who have very little power in the compay anyway. Most of them are just Yes men. And hey, perhaps even the actual Dev team doesnt listen to them much.

Its already known that JP companies with U.S branches STILL have a ton of internal communication problems, and the U.S. branch has really little to no power. So i kinda think the same holds true for SE. So we may not even know how often the U.S liaison get to even speak to the actual Dev team. Which makes it even harder for our concerns to be addressed by a JP dev team.

The JP players are more connected in the communication then we are. They get to SPEAK to the actual dev team at their events, MORE interviews on the game are held in magazines and sites WITH teh actual dev team. Whiel we here get to speak with liaisons who say "i will bring this up to the dev team when i get the chance" with us not knowing if that person actually did so, brought the hard questions, or sugar coated and edited things.

But in all my years of playing, I seen more changes to this game with ToAU alone then any other expansion. SE "seems" to be making an effort now. Maybe they finally realize that they are losing players, and teh subscrition rate isnt what it used to be. So maybe they are actually trying to listen to player s "little" more. The most recent example would be all teh job chnages they made in the last year.

So what im saying is, its completely ridiculous to tell people "you dont like it, stop playing" when SE "seems" to be listening a "little" better now. We can easily say "you like it? then stfu and be quiet when people discuss a problem" because outright abandoning it when you want to address a problem is pointless, and gets no one anywhere. Its pointless and stupid to argue against progression, and making your player base happy. More happy players = more subsribers = win/win all around. Its ridiculus to rain down on peoaples parade who want progression after 3+ years of the same conetent.

Does the fact that SE "seems" to be listening a little better mean every problem will be fixed?? No, not at all. But it seems to decline in its player base, and its inability to really break 500k users in 4 years while WOW came way after and has 8 mill+ was a wake up call to SE, and it might have went something like this:

Dev guy 1: WTF how does wow get 8 mil subscribers??? What do they have that we dont have?
Dev guy 2: They add more content throughout the year, and they actually have better commnication with their playerbase to see what they "want".
Dev guy 1: What you mean we have to LISTEN to our customers needs??? Thats absurd!!! We clearly know whats best.
Dev guy 3: Clearly 8 mil+ subribers vs 500k- begs to difer
Dev guy 1: ....... well maybe we should give this communication thing a try???... just a little...

Like i said, ToAU has brought MORE updates in ONE years time then both The original game, Ziliart, and CoP combined imo. In Ziliart there werent that many updates except patches maybe? no real additional content added after initial release window that i can remmeber. CoP brought some new things, but the updates added were mostly the next chapter of the CoP mission story, as well as Diabolos, a few whm, pld spells if i remember. ToAU brings stuff, and then it seem sliek every other month theres a new update that adds more content, and adjusts jobs.

So it seems they are putting forth more effort then they ever have before (maybe to keep its player base). Thats not saying much, but its a start hopefully. They made GM policy public, the Dev team seems to try to commuincate a little more with us U.S players, by stating they wish to make the effort, and the fact that many owners of community sites have been invited to some sort of SE funtion recently shows it. (maybe?) Adding salvage despite its headache, has some sweet rewards was a god start. Now they need to focus onother issues like better rewards that are superior to the 3 kings from like 3 years ago, the current bottle necks, and a better concept of time vs reward. Only time will tell how far this new attempt at Basic level customer service will go. Im sure Drks are still waiting for this update that gives them a reason to prefer Sythe again that they said so long ago.

[Rentwokay]

So what im saying is, its completely ridiculous to tell people "you dont like it, stop playing" when SE "seems" to be listening a "little" better now. We can easily say "you like it? then stfu and be quiet when people discuss a problem" because outright abandoning it when you want to address a problem is pointless, and gets no one anywhere.

People who are happy with the game speak up when others make suggestions because they're afraid of having the game turned into something else.

For every intelligent person on BG that suggests that Abjurations be placed in KSNM fights with lower drop rates, there's an ultra-retard on Allakhazam or Killing Ifrit posting in the feedback sections about giving a BLM access to the Meteor spell, eliminating SMN perpetuation cost, suggesting some sort of instant-kill ability (and usually giving it to a job like DRK), or proposing some other insignificant game change that would twink out their main job and make another completely useless.

I, personally, do not want to log in one day and find out that this game has been given a NGA to make it more like WoW, as is what happened with Star Wars Galaxies. SOE has enough of a hold on Square-Enix to make it happen if the pressed on SE's temples hard enough, despite the fact that FFXI is never going to see subscription numbers that break one million subscribers, much less the eight million that WoW has.

And even if that were possible, I doubt they'd even buy the extra hardware they'd require to support such a load. They'd just blame it on ToS attacks and tell people to keep reconnecting.

Edit: What the hell is up with having to go through a hundred Preview screens every time you post something?

[JMunin]

I apologize for this long post in advance.

Its mostly that SE is a japanese company, and we are U.S players. Which adds to another factor.

Many Japanese companies are notorious for having the attitude of "we know best" while "most" American companies have the "The customer is always right". So you already have a Japanese company that is stubborn, and think they know whats best despite people being against it. But then you have the fact that theres a communication gap. Most of us dont speak japanese, and have no real way of communicating with the actual development team. Wasnt it like last year the first time the Dev team actually visited the US and attended a discussion panel?? Most of our supposed communication is through SE U.S.A Henchmen, who have very little power in the compay anyway. Most of them are just Yes men. And hey, perhaps even the actual Dev team doesnt listen to them much.

Its already known that JP companies with U.S branches STILL have a ton of internal communication problems, and the U.S. branch has really little to no power. So i kinda think the same holds true for SE. So we may not even know how often the U.S liaison get to even speak to the actual Dev team. Which makes it even harder for our concerns to be addressed by a JP dev team.

I'd like to add that bad customer service is universal and not limited to Japan. SE could use improvement, but I don't think their example condemns every Japanese company.

FFXI is the first time that SE and players have had the chance to dialogue about a game. All previous FFs were made with limited outside input (be they from focus groups or cultural trends). SE's inability to change the game isn't because they're Japanese, it's because they're SE and, up until this point, the game was theirs to make. They had to become used to the idea that, despite being one of the top game makers, they might not have all the answers or the best solutions.

Otherwise, yes, I believe most of ToAU has been progress on SE's part.

[Similli]

Rage timers were made to prevent holding the NM's to keep them in your timezone. It arose after a BRD held Roc? for something like 6 hours to move it to JP time. This was back before NA really did endgame and this was one of the hardest/best item drop NM's NA would camp/kill so a lot of people got pissed. Then NA started doing kings and started holding them for hours to keep them in NA time. The JP population at this point dominated endgame and claiming mobs so the only small chance NA had of getting kings was to move them to NA time. Around this time SE made the rage timers but didn't start how long until they raged. So the first few days after people still tried to hold nq kings and found out after an hour that they would just fuck up everyone. It didn't take them an hour to kill nq Behemoth, people just wanted to see if they could still use this tactic to keep NM's in the correct time zone.

But fyi back in that day it did take a lot of new NA ls's 45+ min to kill Faf lol. People getting under 30 min was amazing.

[Ninjiz]

I never said bad customer service s exclusive to japan. I commented on the mentality that the difference in culture presents when you are approaching customers. I did emphasize the word "most" American companies etc etc. As the mindset you are trained to do if you want to have a sucessful business is "supposed" to be listening to your customers, finding out what they want, and then providing what they want. Not making a new product and just "hoping" people will like it regardless of what it is. Thats just a common busniess "practice" in America. Whether they are successful at it or not depends on the company, and usually the most successful are the ones who "listen" to demand.

But whether their custmer service is lacking or not, wasnt the point. It was the "approach", and if anyone has ever attended a busniess class thats the approach youre trained to take. Both cultures do not always take a busniess approach in the same way. FFXI had a very slow start in Japan, and one of the main issues was the lack of communication from SE with its players. SE cav ed in a little in japan, and this the player base grew, that is a fact, and many magazines in the past commented on that.

I never said Japanse companies have the patent locked on bad customer service. I said japanese companies (mainly talking about game companies in this thread) are NOTORIOUS for not listening to its player base, ESPECIALLY its American ones, since NA was mainly secondary for japanese companies. It was a comparsion with Western game companies who usually bend over backwards "trying" to please players to sell more copies. Im not bashing japan, im simply commenting on the difference culturally on business approaches. And in THIS case the gaming companies. Its a fact that th evast majority of japanese devlopers do not communicate that much with american players directly, and its also another fact that the majority of jp developers dont visit the U.S that much. Even Tomonobu Itagaki says this, for he visits the U.S. on a regular basis, and in fact is in the U.S. right now. Keiji Inafune even commented on how many japanese games dont sell as well in the U.S because many jp companies approach to game releases in NA is "buy air time for commercial, and magazine ads, and let it play out". But with Lost planet they took a "community+ads+commercial" approach. Released a demo, helped fans create official fan sites, visited NA media outlets, held events, ha da release party, got people excited. Something VERY few JP game companies do here in the US.




-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And on another note, MANY japanese companies are changing their business appraoch. For decades they mostly had the mind set, of only focusing on japan, and simply hoping whatever they made sold well in other regions. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didnt. Western companies focused on two regions, mainly NA, and UK. For decades JP games were of superior quality to Westrn games for the most part on consoles, and dominated the sales charts. But in the last few console generations, US and UK companies have gain the upper hand. They also communicate with its player base more with offcial forums on their websites and othet methods, and see what people want to try to reach the most people thus making newer and better games. OR they did this by whoring themselves to teh masses and releasing endless trains of PORTS. (Im looking at YOU EA "though it made them the number 1 publisher revnue wise)

For some of you that dont know, and regardless of what "your" favorite games are, of teh 3 regions NA, UK, and JP.... JP is now the smallest market, that is fact. And many Jp develoeprs will easily admit this. Thats why many of them are changing their focus, and have had numerous press releases saying they plan to change their develoment process from a japanese focused one to a global view.

Capcom did this recently as well, and thus devloped "Lost Planet" and "Dead rising" which they were targeting western market. The decision makers at Capcom almost canceled both games, because they were not Japanese focused games, and they were unsure of the result. But the head developer Keiji Inafune had to fight with them till the very end to get the two games released, and they were blockbusters quickly selling over a million units. Many other japanese companies are following teh same approcah, and an indication of this are the new number of japanese companies who are now licensing the "Unreal engine" to develop games (middleware being a more western develoment pratice)

Whether we like it or not, for the "most" part theres always been a disconnect between japanese developers and their american branches, thus effecting its secondary american players. But it seems as Jp companies try to take a more global view to not be left behind by western developers (which is happening) the docconect may decrease.

[JMunin]

You said that japanese game companies are notoriously bad at listening to their player base. Could you give me some examples and point me to some articles, since I've never heard that before--outside of SE and FFXI--and would enjoy the reading.

I never said bad customer service s exclusive to japan.

I wasn't accusing you of doing so. Sorry if it looked like that. I just wanted to riff on your point and mention SE's monolithic status in its own and the gamer's mind. It's difficult to communicate with a monolith.

[JMunin]

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And on another note, MANY japanese companies are changing their business appraoch. For decades they mostly had the mind set, of only focusing on japan, and simply hoping whatever they made sold well in other regions. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didnt. Western companies focused on two regions, mainly NA, and UK. For decades JP games were of superior quality to Westrn games for the most part on consoles, and dominated the sales charts. But in the last few console generations, US and UK companies have gain the upper hand. They also communicate with its player base more with offcial forums on their websites and othet methods, and see what people want to try to reach the most people thus making newer and better games. OR they did this by whoring themselves to teh masses and releasing endless trains of PORTS. (Im looking at YOU EA "though it made them the number 1 publisher revnue wise)

For some of you that dont know, and regardless of what "your" favorite games are, of teh 3 regions NA, UK, and JP.... JP is now the smallest market, that is fact. And many Jp develoeprs will easily admit this. Thats why many of them are changing their focus, and have had numerous press releases saying they plan to change their develoment process from a japanese focused one to a global view.

Capcom did this recently as well, and thus devloped "Lost Planet" and "Dead rising" which they were targeting western market. The decision makers at Capcom almost canceled both games, because they were not Japanese focused games, and they were unsure of the result. But the head developer Keiji Inafune had to fight with them till the very end to get the two games released, and they were blockbusters quickly selling over a million units. Many other japanese companies are following teh same approcah, and an indication of this are the new number of japanese companies who are now licensing the "Unreal engine" to develop games (middleware being a more western develoment pratice)

Whether we like it or not, for the "most" part theres always been a disconnect between japanese developers and their american branches, thus effecting its secondary american players. But it seems as Jp companies try to take a more global view to not be left behind by western developers (which is happening) the docconect may decrease.

Thank you. Information like that was what I was looking for.

[Ninjiz]

Could you give me some examples and point me to some articles, since I've never heard that before--outside of SE and FFXI--and would enjoy the reading.

I wish i can find the ones with more perfect examples. You see i read magazines all the time, and read game sites ever day, so its kinda hard to remember what issue or link had the exact comment. Here are a few things i could find with google though.
http://international.xboxway.com/interv ... x_360.aspx

This one is interesting, while not dealing with "customer service" directly, its sorta hinted at. Some of the comments in the commente section below the article are interesting, though a lot are silly lol.
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6156473.html


another interesting read, though again not focused on customer service.
http://www.joystiq.com/2007/02/10/lost- ... he-indust/

I think THIS one is the BEST i could find, and the closest i can get to what i was talking about. Jun Takeuchi producer of Lost Planet does address the trend when Japanese "developers choose to ignore everyone outside of Japan". he says:
"And even though some Japanese companies may still think they're on top, all you have to do is look at the data and you see that Japanese games only account for 1/3 of the market share in the US and Europe. So I wonder why some developers choose to ignore everyone outside of Japan"
and this one is also interesting, because you can kinda apply it to FFXI in the player base frustration
"But one thing I think Japanese developers need to learn from western developers, and this includes Capcom but I think we are already trying to learn, is basically the definition of entertainment when it comes to video games."
http://www.gamepro.com/news.cfm?article_id=95548

And the thing about THIS interview is that here you have the JAPANESE PRODUCER of a game talking DIRECTLY to a Lost Planet Blogger. (The dev team helped people set up official fan sites, by releasing site buidling kits with Lots of Lost planet material liek banners, artwork, and other things you need when trying to create a fan site.

i think that above article speaks for itself

[Luke]

(kinda long post, was bored><)
I definetely agree that this game is based on luck..

Dynamis: Person A could go to Dynamis-Xarcabard and not see (w/e AF2) for 6 months much less obtain one. Person B could go to 1 Dynamis-Xarcabard and see four drop and obtain one.

3 Kings: Paladin A could kill 20 Nidhoggs and never see M.body drop. Paladin B can kill 1 Nidhogg and see 2 M.body's drop. It's possible to never see your wanted item drop.

Sky: Sky is designed very well (sans Ullikummi); NM's don't have rediculous pop timers for the most part; Gods have guaranteed drops (abjuration, seal); Kirin very rarely drops no abjuration, fairly guaranteed reward but it's still possible for your wanted item to "never" drop. Pre-RMT, you could farm sky all day and get many pop sets easily.

Sea: LS A could kill all the pre-JoL NM's and receive full drops and have a full set for JoL. LS B could kill the NM's and not receive the next tier pop items in 10 kills, much less get the 2nd-tier pop item.

Khimaira: Some servers have not seen a sword drop while others have ~8+. Reasonable repop time, unreasonable drop rate.

Tiamat: Decent drop rate on gaiters, some argue these are not a worthwhile item, though I believe otherwise and the multi-LS's who have mules checking its pop apparently think otherwise too (or there's just nothing else to camp).

Crafting: Crafter A could craft 3 for 3 (insert expensive, rare HQ here) in a row, while Crafter B could craft 50 NQ's and never make an HQ.

This game doesn't take into account the amount of work a player puts in for most things, the reward vs time ratio for most events is horribly imbalanced. LS's exist to attempt to fairly distribute items to its members; which is what I think makes or breaks this game. Yeah Kings suck if you camp all 3 of them just because not every single member of your LS doesn't have all items; it's impossible to finish so it's nothing but work. But if your LS lets each member choose only a few items that they really want, then you have a goal to work towards to. A personal example, is my LS and dalmaticas, not everyone has one (but close), but everyone who "really" wanted one has one. After that, we stopped camping Aspid. Pretty sure that counts as progress.

I don't want this to turn into a LS-system derail but I think a LS's system has a huge impact on if this game is enjoyable or not. From what I see, most "do-everything" LS's burn their members out by forcing them to particpate in events the members have no interest in, no matter how much they've contributed already or what they hope to gain; they are forced to participate or they get kicked/punished. This is where people say the game sucks but they play for their "friends", because that's all they can play for.

Meh 2AM rambling ftl, I hope some of what I said makes sense to someone

[Kaylia]

Many other japanese companies are following teh same approcah, and an indication of this are the new number of japanese companies who are now licensing the "Unreal engine" to develop games (middleware being a more western develoment pratice)

Unreal engine has nothing to do with their change of approach toward NA market. It's simply because it's the best and most powerful graphic engine out there.

[Ninjiz]

Unreal engine has nothing to do with their change of approach toward NA market. It's simply because it's the best and most powerful graphic engine out there.

You didnt get the point i was talking about.

Japanese companies in the past for the MOST part do not use middleware. They all developed their own engines from scracth, which costs a ton of money. While many western companies shed costs of that dev time, by just licensing an engine. Saving money, increasing profits, and lower dev time. This was a Western approach to game design. NOW jp companies are follwing this approach to create games to receive the same benefits. There have been plenty of middleware engines before Unreal3 engine, that was "the most powerful" out there. But JP companiws still didnt use them. They never fully adopted the concept of middleware. So my comment was more about them adopting Western business practices when it comes to making games.

It doesnt matter that its the most powerful engine out there. If all jp companies STILL chose not to use middleware, it wouldnt have mattered. They arent using it JUST because its powerful. They are using it, because they are searching for a more western approach to game design, AND its powerful AND will save them millions of dollars, and dev time buidling their own engines from scratch. Something western devlopers have been doing forever.

[Kaylia]

You didnt get the point i was talking about.

Japanese companies in the past for the MOST part do not use middleware. They all developed their own engines from scracth, which costs a ton of money. While many western companies shed costs of that dev time, by just licensing an engine. Saving money, increasing profits, and lower dev time. This was a Western approach to game design. NOW jp companies are follwing this approach to create games to receive the same benefits. There have been plenty of middleware engines before Unreal3 engine, that was "the most powerful" out there. But JP companiws still didnt use them. They never fully adopted the concept of middleware. So my comment was more about them adopting Western business practices when it comes to making games.

"Capcom did this recently as well, and thus devloped "Lost Planet" and "Dead rising" which they were targeting western market. The decision makers at Capcom almost canceled both games, because they were not Japanese focused games, and they were unsure of the result. But the head developer Keiji Inafune had to fight with them till the very end to get the two games released, and they were blockbusters quickly selling over a million units. Many other japanese companies are following teh same approcah, and an indication of this are the new number of japanese companies who are now licensing the "Unreal engine" to develop games (middleware being a more western develoment pratice) "

If it's the case, you didn't word it correctly in the post I quoted. You were talking about game like Dead Rising targetting western market, then said the licensing of "unreal engine" is an indication of the change. Both are completly different changes.


I understand perfectly the benefit of buying an engine, it just have nothing to do with the targetted market.

[Ryko]

Rage timers were made to prevent holding the NM's to keep them in your timezone. It arose after a BRD held Roc? for something like 6 hours to move it to JP time. This was back before NA really did endgame and this was one of the hardest/best item drop NM's NA would camp/kill so a lot of people got pissed. Then NA started doing kings and started holding them for hours to keep them in NA time. The JP population at this point dominated endgame and claiming mobs so the only small chance NA had of getting kings was to move them to NA time. Around this time SE made the rage timers but didn't start how long until they raged. So the first few days after people still tried to hold nq kings and found out after an hour that they would just fuck up everyone. It didn't take them an hour to kill nq Behemoth, people just wanted to see if they could still use this tactic to keep NM's in the correct time zone.

But fyi back in that day it did take a lot of new NA ls's 45+ min to kill Faf lol. People getting under 30 min was amazing.

>_> Dude rage timers were added august of 2005, that's well after the point our server even had a dominating JP presence.