Development Team Q&A - May 2008

[Toth]

That wouldn't work because all tarus are fat and dumpy to begin with.

[Zaifa]

So how do we get Pixies to exist in the present zones? They're in the .dat files for them and they just said it was possible but uncommon. Does any server have Pixies in pre-WotG zones?

Looking at SE's comments regarding this it does certainly seem that it is currently possible to get pixies to exist in the present. I personally believe that it takes a large number of bottled pixies being released at the fountain. Whether this is offset by people kiling them i dont know, but clearly the only way to do it is to spend a week with your linkshell and your friends farming bottled pxies and releasing them.

When the first pixie appears in the present on any server, poeple will know, and it will cause a massive influx of interest and hopefully we can sustain the pixie population in the present. Then we can all get R3 and cureV's and be happy!

Another thing i'm thinking as i write this...
If pixies are in the dats for zones in the present then how will the game decide wihch zones in the present the pixies will appear?
Perhaps its related to where the bottled pixies were farmed in the past, so i would suggest that each server concentrates on one particular zone when farming in order to maximize the chance of them actually appearing.

[layoneil]

When the first pixie appears in the present on any server, poeple will know, and it will cause a massive influx of interest and hopefully we can sustain the pixie population in the present. Then we can all get R3 and cureV's and be happy!

except for idiots getting stomped by Serket, who else really needs Cure Vs and Raise IIIs in any of the equivalent present day [S] zones?

[Seraph]

Regarding the food stats. Why can't SE place a fat taru food connoisseur in the Tavern in Windy Waters, who will tell you the stats when you trade him some food (after giving some long-winded speech of how excellent/horrible the food was)?

This made me laugh so hard. I don't even think people would care about losing the traded item either if the responses before the stats were funny enough. SE put some cute descriptions in some of the HQ food items, I'm sure they could do something comparable with this...

[Kyreth]

Regarding the food stats. Why can't SE place a fat taru food connoisseur in the Tavern in Windy Waters, who will tell you the stats when you trade him some food (after giving some long-winded speech of how excellent/horrible the food was)?

Actually, that Tarutaru reporter who sits there stuffing his face at the resturant all day would be perfect for such a thing.

[Kimiko]

Totally BS responses

In response to the request, the following adjustments will be made:

* When a player changes nationality, access to previous outposts will be saved.
* In a new nation, a player will have to start out from scratch. However, previous records are retrieved upon return to the nation of origin and the player can then re-access saved outposts.

Equals HELL YES, though.

Yeah, this is hella win. Probably the best thing out of the interview (besides the lowered dynamis cost)

Yes, I can finally do the sandy/bastok storyline quests without having to lose an impossible amount of work getting windy outposts again.

[jaryk]

Or maybe I just think that arguing about something over the internet is kinda dumb. :/

NINJAR EDIT: I should note that I know what happened, I just don't care.

Please send me all of your money and I'll punch you in the junk, it'll be cool since you don't care and it's all kinda dumb anyway.

[Synergy]

I dont even play this game anymore and those answers pissed me off. Reading it I so get the feeling SE doesn't listen to players at all. I mean how many interviews and questions asked "Whats the deal with AV?" that they finally released a video? Seriously I read alot of interviews and it must have been asked over 10 times and thats with like 3-4 interviews in a YEAR. Maybe us Americans don't understand Japanese logic...

[Sunrider]

Maybe us Americans don't understand Japanese logic...

It's true, we don't. But they apparently suck ass at understanding our logic, too.

[XxSlusherxx]

Clearly they don't understand that we know they cheated in the video, that or did something off camera that was the actual key.

[Aksannyi]

Or maybe I just think that arguing about something over the internet is kinda dumb. :/

NINJAR EDIT: I should note that I know what happened, I just don't care.

Please send me all of your money and I'll punch you in the junk, it'll be cool since you don't care and it's all kinda dumb anyway.

Explain to me how you're going to punch me in junk that I don't have, lol. XD

[Xno Kappa]

Or maybe I just think that arguing about something over the internet is kinda dumb. :/

NINJAR EDIT: I should note that I know what happened, I just don't care.

Please send me all of your money and I'll punch you in the junk, it'll be cool since you don't care and it's all kinda dumb anyway.

Explain to me how you're going to punch me in junk that I don't have, lol. XD

I strongly disagree with this pseudo assumption that girls play FFXI.

[Aksannyi]

Well my sig does say "Proud Mama Gamer" so I didn't think anyone needed to assume anything. But he's welcome to try to kick me in the junk, though I don't really have more than like ten bucks atm.

[Lordender]

I dont even play this game anymore and those answers pissed me off. Reading it I so get the feeling SE doesn't listen to players at all. I mean how many interviews and questions asked "Whats the deal with AV?" that they finally released a video? Seriously I read alot of interviews and it must have been asked over 10 times and thats with like 3-4 interviews in a YEAR. Maybe us Americans don't understand Japanese logic...

They don't care about this game nor do they care about their players. The answers in this interview look so copied and pasted to me by now. How many times have you seen the same answers over and over again? Honestly, people shouldn't be surprised or have high hopes for this game cause it will just piss you off at how out of touch the dev team is with the playerbase.

Dynamis changes should of been done a very long time ago.

[ronin sparthos]

Maybe us Americans don't understand Japanese logic...

In what logic does years of stonewalling one solitary HNM make sense? I think the world-wide response to AV is one big 'AV is undefeatable' at this point. They dropped a hint, no one got the hint, its time to let the cat out of the bag - the players wont have it farm status anytime soon thanks to the pain and luck involved in getting him to appear. Way I see it, they will reveal the next 'hint' to AV on the anniversary of CoP sometime in the fall which may or may not stimulate the playerbase to care.

Redemption would be revealing the secret of AV and Almighty Apkallu in an event created for Summerfest~

[Luke]

This game is crack. It is also a huge timesink. Many players keep playing only because of the "well I came this far, might as well keep going" mentality. I even used that excuse a few times to keep playing.

Reading this interview, it's so obvious that SE does not care about putting real efforts into developing and supplementing FFXI at this stage in its life. Don't intend to turn this into FFXI vs "x" MMO, but just go and compare WotG up to this point with what WoW's next expansion is going to ship with and tell me that SE cares about you. FFXI is far far passed its prime.

They focus efforts into campaign because grinding exp is the bread and butter of the timesink in this game. Leveling new jobs means you have to repeat OLD content to gear them in most cases. SE really has it down good, they keep players busy (not necessarily happy) and string them along month by month with minimal effort on their end.

[Hyan]

FFXI and WoW expansions don't really work the same way, tho!

[Homsar]

An issue that is probably not often considered due to the rarity of it:

Do you think SE will ever allow us to have characters transfer accounts? After 6 years if sharing an account with my brother, I'm a little fed up with it. It could be just like server transfers.

[Shassira]

An issue that is probably not often considered due to the rarity of it:

Do you think SE will ever allow us to have characters transfer accounts? After 6 years if sharing an account with my brother, I'm a little fed up with it. It could be just like server transfers.

Nope, it won't happen any time soon because this requires two programers for 3 weeks straight and a team of 4 beta testers. Come on, they employed less people to create WotG itself and that's wayyyyy more than what they employ to the current developement of FFXI... geez, you players ask too much.

Seriously, the only reason i can give for this lack of quality for so much time is a small development team. I do not believe that the actual dev team is bad, i find it hard to believe that SE doesn't have tons of qualified people waiting at their door to be contracted, so the only excusse for the amount of abysmal quality update decisions and horrible implementations has to come from a really small and overworked group that simply can't do anything else. What are they doing with your money then? Obviously not keeping FFXI alive but investing it in their next MMO. Do any of you have any doubt about this? I sure don't, and although this is obviously normal, it is being ridiculously extreme as the quality is simply unacceptable. Even the "good" things have been half assed and some things are simply not there... you guys remember, right? "The effect of cure locking has been drasticly reduced". Right. Next we are gonna see is another "expansion" announced in four months xD

[SchuldigGER]

An issue that is probably not often considered due to the rarity of it:

Do you think SE will ever allow us to have characters transfer accounts? After 6 years if sharing an account with my brother, I'm a little fed up with it. It could be just like server transfers.

Nope, it won't happen any time soon because this requires two programers for 3 weeks straight and a team of 4 beta testers. Come on, they employed less people to create WotG itself and that's wayyyyy more than what they employ to the current developement of FFXI... geez, you players ask too much.

Seriously, the only reason i can give for this lack of quality for so much time is a small development team. I do not believe that the actual dev team is bad, i find it hard to believe that SE doesn't have tons of qualified people waiting at their door to be contracted, so the only excusse for the amount of abysmal quality update decisions and horrible implementations has to come from a really small and overworked group that simply can't do anything else. What are they doing with your money then? Obviously not keeping FFXI alive but investing it in their next MMO. Do any of you have any doubt about this? I sure don't, and although this is obviously normal, it is being ridiculously extreme as the quality is simply unacceptable. Even the "good" things have been half assed and some things are simply not there... you guys remember, right? "The effect of cure locking has been drasticly reduced". Right. Next we are gonna see is another "expansion" announced in four months xD

This man speaks the truth !

Also SE wont ever change Kings since they are the reason ppl keep playing. After so many years ppl are still after ridills e.bodys and loldramatica even tho there is other stuff might (not) be better.
Theres still so many Ls's camping kings and they wont stop any time soon...
AV is kinda the same problem, if the last frontier to ffxi players would be killed daily it would turn off players like when you beat a game and the replay it.
I guess that are the reasons for SE to not change these situations any time soon