Ladies and Gentlemen. Answers to the Interview....

[Lordwafik]

BG would seriously turn into Alla if it became a premier site.

not if i'm around it wont >:

[aurik]

Let me get this straight. We are told that highly desired items will have new ways to be obtained, they're still planning changes to Ullikummi, sea pop item fixes are in the works, virtue stones will be quiverable, BST has some enhancements coming, along with a few other morsels, and people are complaining about the answers? The only problem I can see out of the deal was that there were a couple of misunderstood questions and they took way too long to answer them. What kind of answers would have made everyone happy, short of disclosing update details a few months in advance?

how about a commitment to pay attention to what the playerbase is saying, particularly where there is mass consensus that something is wrong and/or busted?

seriously, it's taken them 4 months to say "oh yea maybe ulli changes". We could have told them that in 2005 if they were to simply listen.

This whole "we know what you want better than you know" has some truth to it -- after all, look what happens when they listen to ZAM on beastmaster changes -- but when we're all saying the same thing about king spawns, king drops, ulli, sea drops, maybe there is some validity to our complaints.

[Quicklet]

Let me get this straight. We are told that highly desired items will have new ways to be obtained, they're still planning changes to Ullikummi, sea pop item fixes are in the works, virtue stones will be quiverable, BST has some enhancements coming, along with a few other morsels, and people are complaining about the answers? The only problem I can see out of the deal was that there were a couple of misunderstood questions and they took way too long to answer them. What kind of answers would have made everyone happy, short of disclosing update details a few months in advance?

Read the notes for any WoW patch in the last year and you will understand why those answers are a complete and utter slap in the face to anybody who was expecting a serious answer about what SE plans to do to improve the game.

Seriously, virtue stones being quiverable shouldn't even count! That probably takes all of 20 minutes to do. Fixing 2 or 3 of the probably 100ish things about the game that would take 15-20 minutes to do for each and make the game twice as fun to play is not progress. It is the "let's see if they swallow the bullshit we feed them this time" game, and I don't understand how anybody can look at those answers and act like it's some monumental change from the way SE has always been.

What kind of answers would have made everyone happy, short of disclosing update details a few months in advance?

The answer to this is simple: you don't disclose hard update details until you know for sure what will make it into the patch. What you do if you are SE is you publish a list of planned content additions according to "probable" / "possible" / "wish list". SE made it very clear that the chocobo raising/racing systems and the Coliseum were going to be included in this expansion. Why couldn't they provide rough details about concepts like Salvage/Nyzul/Halzalm to at least let players know they're listening?

Why can't they give concrete details about the direction they want to take endgame (or gameplay in general, not just side systems that are for messing around with)? You don't have to spoil the content to describe what you want to do. When sea NMs came out, SE didn't even acknowledge the addition of NMs to sea. What's so wrong about making a quest that says "I hear that there are these NMs in Al'Taieu, if you bring me back X organs I'll give you more information about where they are" instead of "LOL have fun trying 500 different trade combinations just to find out how to pop something only to find out you may get nothing in return." Sure, a lot of people just waited months for everyone else to do the work, but that shouldn't be a requirement to enjoy the game. If you want to work on new content, you should be forced into trying blind combinations to figure out what you're supposed to do.

SE dicked players around HARD for 90% of CoP, and it's unfortunate that they haven't even learned how to communicate with their players to understand that they lost a lot of players for a reason, a reason that they could have fixed (and still can if they want to).

[Luke]

It's a conspiracy! SE thinks they get players to join by visiting sites like Allah supported by IGE ads, so they leave Ulli broken to keep the RMTers in business to keep their fansites running!

They'll fix Ulli alright, just like they fixed it last time

[Lordender]

I don't expect much from SE and FFXI anymore just because they let me down every time I expected big things. The interview just shows me how much they don't know about their own game and how they don't understand their own playerbase. I really think they need to step it up quite a few notches and maybe this new dungeon theme will help unless its extremely full of gimmicks.

[Demosthenes11]

Next interview, would someone please, for the love of god, just stand up quietly, take off your hat, and tell the developers the 3 fucking kings are broken because of the claim system. If it was part of the design of the game that I can't fight kings because they are botted to shit and require 9 hours a day, they are fucking stupid. Someone grow a pair and just say straight up claiming should not be counted in the difficulty of a monster, nor the rarity of its items. I don't get why they don't understand this or why nobody has brought this up with them.

[Xavier]

Next interview, would someone please, for the love of god, just stand up quietly, take off your hat, and tell the developers the 3 fucking kings are broken because of the claim system. If it was part of the design of the game that I can't fight kings because they are botted to shit and require 9 hours a day, they are fucking stupid. Someone grow a pair and just say straight up claiming should not be counted in the difficulty of a monster, nor the rarity of its items. I don't get why they don't understand this or why nobody has brought this up with them.

I'm the perfect man for the job. I'd love to do this.

[Ploid]

JP users usually have a high claim record on certain NMs. They probably don't complain* to SE at all. We're pretty much the adopted children and the JP users are the biological children.

[NynJa]

JP users usually have a high claim record on certain NMs. They probably don't complain* to SE at all. We're pretty much the adopted children and the JP users are the biological children.

Maybe in 2005...

but since SE fixed a ping issue (an issue that never existed to begin with apparently), its been "which LS has more copies of FFXIAPP to space out the delay timers" instead of "which LS has more JP's".

[Lordender]

Let me interview them :D they will ask how a baseball bat is FFXI related.

[Rentwokay]

I love how everybody is saying the greatest thing about the interview was the mention of quivering Virtue Stones.

Hey, I see you got some Virtue Stones weighing down your Gobbiebag there. Luckily, I've got just the thing. I can throw those stones in enchanted bags to easy up your inventory burdens. Just trade me a full stack and a Sin of Indignation, which shouldn't be too hard for you to come by, and I won't disappoint you.

They're running out of flowers, after all.

[NynJa]

Just have Yurim (I think thats the name) give out a Virtue Sack to begin with...

[Zilong]

I love how everybody is saying the greatest thing about the interview was the mention of quivering Virtue Stones.

Hey, I see you got some Virtue Stones weighing down your Gobbiebag there. Luckily, I've got just the thing. I can throw those stones in enchanted bags to easy up your inventory burdens. Just trade me a full stack and a Sin of Indignation, which shouldn't be too hard for you to come by, and I won't disappoint you.

They're running out of flowers, after all.

Nah, they'd use something stackables that are flower related.

Like...euvhi organs...

[Shuvo]

(This is not directed to anything/anyone in particular, just something i've observed in my time lurking on this forum)

You guys have to realize that only a small percentage of the Vanadiel population are actually hardcore enough to do stuff like camp 3 kings and gear-grind all day every day. SE will not put all their efforts into making the BG community happy. Most 75 shells are social shells that do events once or twice a week, and for them all the last several major updates were excellent (I know i've been pretty happy with them). For these shells, mobs like Fafnir are still a big challange. I'm guessing that SE intentionally made all the recent HNM have average-ish drops just to give those shells a chance to do hnm.

Another thing I want to note: The game was designed from the core to be for the Japanese, and they are notorious for wanting games to be stupidley hard. Try playing the JP version of FF7 (the part where cloud climbs up the cliff, you have to SMASH your game controller to get past it) or JP marios brothers 2. That's why Fafnir etc is staying the way it is. Just be happy that they're slowly changing the design to accomodate everyone.

Also, what's up with people complaining about Salvage being too hard? I've seen the same people on BG change from going lolPup to bitching about how only PUPs and MNKs are useful in Salvage. Is it any wonder SE are reluctant to listen to us?

Finally..... for those non -developers out there. A 6man team handling something as huge as ffxi is TINY. Where I work we have about 20 developers working on a product that's about half as complex (Not a game), and we still find ourselves pushing deadlines.

[Xavier]

Also, what's up with people complaining about Salvage being too hard? I've seen the same people on BG change from going lolPup to bitching about how only PUPs and MNKs are useful in Salvage.

Take comfort in knowing I will never suggest PUP is useful.

[fantasticdan]

A 6man team handling something as huge as ffxi is TINY. Where I work we have about 20 developers working on a product that's about half as complex (Not a game), and we still find ourselves pushing deadlines.

Noone is saying FFXI was built from the ground up by six people, that's ridiculous. They are talking about the people that still actively develop new content and updates, which I would honestly doubt is six people. It's probably less.

[Skjie]

What I still don't understand is why everyone thinks it's their God given right for SE to listen to them in a personal one on one setting. Or, why it's your God given right to have the answers to your questions handed to you on a silver platter. They don't owe you answers to anything.


EDIT: I would like to note that in no way am I against people sending messages to SE about things they are unhappy with. I am against the people in this thread who are complaining that SE didn't give them the answers that they wanted to hear.

[DrObvious]

You guys have to realize that only a small percentage of the Vanadiel population are actually hardcore enough to do stuff like camp 3 kings and gear-grind all day every day. SE will not put all their efforts into making the BG community happy. Most 75 shells are social shells that do events once or twice a week, and for them all the last several major updates were excellent (I know i've been pretty happy with them). For these shells, mobs like Fafnir are still a big challange. I'm guessing that SE intentionally made all the recent HNM have average-ish drops just to give those shells a chance to do hnm.

Khimaira and cerberus are camped on my server. Hydra is still harder to walk up to and kill for the first time than fafnir.

[Eaglestrike]

Honestly, I like most of these answers. But maybe because my LS hardly ever focus's on Kings and only does sky once a week (and recently got another haidate the other day) it doesn't look so bad. New places to find top gear = nice. Increased sea drops = awesome. The 3 kings have never been a focus in my LS and never will be, we still enjoy this game a lot and have plenty of things to do yet. Maybe some people need to focus on other things in this game too?

[Ashira]

Also, what's up with people complaining about Salvage being too hard? I've seen the same people on BG change from going lolPup to bitching about how only PUPs and MNKs are useful in Salvage.

We practically never take MNKs to Salvage. If we do, they're being double boxed and get signed off after a few floors.

Salvage is still too hard; there haven't been many successful boss kills on areas other than Bhaflau at this point. And besides that, getting other needed things to pop etc is inconsistent; and it's extremely time consuming in general, often without highly desired results, which results in frustration and annoyance at wasted time.