New 1up (Milkman) Interview

[Talint]

1UP: Since Final Fantasy XI is the only majorly successful MMO to ever hit a video game console and to survive for seven years, can you tell us what you think has attributed to FFXI's long-lasting success?

Hiromichi Tanaka: Actually, that's a mystery to us as well, why it's been so successful with the players. Seriously dude, what the fuck do we have to do to get you assholes to stop playing? We don't do shit about bots, king camps are as terrible as ever. When we saw that people liked Campaign, we totally fucked it up, and you dicks still haven't quit.

Koichi Ogawa: Do we have to spell it out to you morons? We hate you. We hope that you all die from herpes. We are astonished that you haven't caught the hint yet.

Mizuki Ito: Do we have to run your tardos over with the clue-mobile?

HT: Good one.

KO: So to reiterate, go out in a field and die.

1UP: Can I stuff all of the Nyzul weapons in my various orifices? And as a follow up, my I kiss your taint?

I literally fell out of my chair laughing at this.

Good show.

[Jimmayus]

About the smn "versitality" or w/e....

Sure, we have some pretty good bloodpacts. Sleepga is ok, Hastega is actually pretty good, Phalanxga and Earthen Ward got eclipsed by sch but that's ok, we still have relatively good versions of them. Yeah, these are all pretty nice.

Problem is, you can't access them all at once, and are limited to the current abilities your avatar has out, assuming you even have an avatar out. Sleepga is real fucking awesome with low range and 10+ second casting cost, unless you have Diabolos or Shiva out. What happens if you have Lev out to Spring water and something wakes up prematurely and you need to sleep it? Shit, wait 10 seconds while I unsummon and resummon, lets hope it doesn't run too far away!

When people say up versitality of these bloodpacts, they're not necessarily talking about the actual effects (I don't give a shit about shock or ice spikes, you can delete them and give me more worthwhile shit), its that, while we have these bps, they often would require a ridiculous "casting time" or "casting cost", simply because of unsummoning and resummoning. Also, you can't have your amazing curaga 3 if you used it recently. Ever been melee party healer at Fafnir? Its nice, but manual blindna is all you can do after you use your bp and it wings again. You also wasted your opportunity to do another earthen ward or hastega or ecliptic howl. Veristality is only as good as your speed and reaction time, neither of which summoner has.

ninja edit: before some smartass mentions a single thing coming from /whm subjob, think about your retort, long and hard. If you have to resort to your subjob to have versitality in a situation requiring speed, that's your main job not living up to what you need it to do. Anybody subbing whm has the exact same arguments you can use from /whm.

[Aldaris]

Veristality is only as good as your speed and reaction time, neither of which summoner has.

yeah, lol...and thats why I said above in short. "Another job can do it better" Which I hope SE really brings something different to the table.

[Gunitsoldier]

Since SE has always wanted us to keep our avatars out and melee, maybe this special avatar is build to focus on meleeing instead of on BPs.

[Thiefami]

Where does that leave all the previous avatars, that a SMN might actually want to use? Why not adjust abilities and stats of pre-existing avatars in addition to introducing new ones?

Seems pretty lame to finally get good use out of avatars at the expense of practical variety; basically trading one brand of suck for another.

I do not see any "good" summoner ever abandoning old avatars for new ones, more so using them all to make the most out of their job.

Everything is used out of practical variety, otherwise we'll all be playing the same job. Versatility is what makes jobs like SCH, and RDM win the game. The more versatile you can become the better you are at overcoming more situational instances.

It is your opinion that summoner currently sucks; we can all agree to meet the demands of the current game environment it needs a fix, but a lot of people would disagree with you as far as saying the job flat out sucks.

I don't think SMN sucks at all. I think the job is great at 75, with a lot of potential before then. That said, I certainly wouldn't play it either. My passion for it isn't strong enough to endure the job as it currently plays.

What I was criticizing was the utility avatars offer. Currently, it's rather lacking. Introducing one or two new avatar with utility that eclipses the others will effectively replace them, and any good SMN would shelve the less useful avatars for the more useful ones. Instead of simply introducing new avatars whose situational efficacy outdoes the previous, why not improve the efficacy of the current avatars, in addition to introducing new ones?

I agree with you on most except the bolded statement. As of right now there are a lot of situations where i'd pick and choose my avatar, you are aware that each avatar has a unique damage-type? Much like weapons they use slash, blunt, h2h, and pierce damage. I don't have to mention elemental differences. Let's break it down to bloodpacts, sometimes Hastega is needed, other times shock spikes with the occassional stun may save your life, or you can switch to an avatar when you have low MP and does decent damage for less cost like fenrir, shiva, or ifrit.

Name one avatar in the summoner arsenal that is completely useless. New avatars have been introduced before, fenrir, diabolos and just because they are new they didn't dethrone other avatars. Who cares if we gain a tanking avatar? It's something that we wouldn't have had before, and who cares if these new avatars have amazing abilities it will definately not take away from the amazing abilities the job currently has. What job "shelves" anything? You make the most of what you have.

Spell adjustments (which are what avatars are) are job adjustments. Saying it cannot change a job is ignorant, that's like saying giving summoner a castable refreshga would not completely change it's job.

[Seigfried Of Pandy]

none of the avatars use piercing damage, correct me if im wrong?

[Thiefami]

not for 70 bp, but there are piercing bp. Mahalo.

[Dezso]

none of the avatars use piercing damage, correct me if im wrong?

I believe the only one is Carbuncle: Poison Nails. Spinning Dive I believe was confirmed not to be piercing.

[Thiefami]

none of the avatars use piercing damage, correct me if im wrong?

I believe the only one is Carbuncle: Poison Nails. Spinning Dive I believe was confirmed not to be piercing.

Claw, crescent fang, poison nails

[Sixtail]

There's so much that could fix SMN that SE could do with little tweaks. But they won't and SMNs who know they won't, will simply beg for a new shiny creature to float behind them. I think giving us Elemental Siphon was the peak of fixes you can count on SE to do to SMN. Relic weapon will forever be a joke, range and pathing errors will never be fixed and you'll still have a job which other jobs are slowly outclassing.

[Ohemgee]

There's so much that could fix SMN that SE could do with little tweaks. But they won't and SMNs who know they won't, will simply beg for a new shiny creature to float behind them. I think giving us Elemental Siphon was the peak of fixes you can count on SE to do to SMN. Relic weapon will forever be a joke, range and pathing errors will never be fixed and you'll still have a job which other jobs are slowly outclassing.

There's little class involved for a job that you can practically do naked.

[Yutuyu]

Just for once I'd like to see an interviewer do their homework and never ask a question which has been asked before. The responses are pretty much always identical and always useless. People being surprised about what SE says over kings is truly amazing. And the next person that suggests more valuable time be wasted on AV questions should be castrated.

We'd do much better to ask questions glancing towards the future of FFXI and the "big picture" they're going for with the WotG expansion. We got a timeline for ToAU out fairly early in the expansion, and yet we have no idea what WotG will entail because people won't ask the proper questions.

What is the point of the WotG expansion? What is the focus/goal? What do we have to expect down the road of actual use from this massive waste of developer time and recycled crap?

[Plow]

Just for once I'd like to see an interviewer do their homework and never ask a question which has been asked before. The responses are pretty much always identical and always useless. People being surprised about what SE says over kings is truly amazing. And the next person that suggests more valuable time be wasted on AV questions should be castrated.

We'd do much better to ask questions glancing towards the future of FFXI and the "big picture" they're going for with the WotG expansion. We got a timeline for ToAU out fairly early in the expansion, and yet we have no idea what WotG will entail because people won't ask the proper questions.

What is the point of the WotG expansion? What is the focus/goal? What do we have to expect down the road of actual use from this massive waste of developer time and recycled crap?

It's kind of hard not to realize all this if you've been paying like any attention whatsoever to the story through like... the entire game.

Right now we have Caverns of Time: Boring parts of the old world.

Coming eventually will be Caverns of Time: Northlands.


And... that's about it.

[Max™]

*still has hope held out after the randomly awesome nature of the last bits added, that we'll get Cavern's of Time: Tavnazia*

[Zilong]

If that'd give my favorite loli screentime, then I'm all for it.

[Plow]

*still has hope held out after the randomly awesome nature of the last bits added, that we'll get Cavern's of Time: Tavnazia*

Tavnazia was used as a distraction, a decent sized battle was fought there, then some crazy beastman super weapon screwed up and exploded, and as far as the rest of the world knows, utterly and completely destroyed the entire peninsula. Would involve changing the stories of all 3 countries as well as CoP for us to really get involved.

[Max™]

If that'd give my favorite loli screentime, then I'm all for it.

Given how Lolisette turned out, I can see it now, Aphmau comes back in time due to some weird Odin tie in, Prishe shows up cursing about these loli's in her alphabit's, and then the guy who normally makes the CSes gets paid off by the Neko-Sentai forum posters to put in a gratuitous makeout-four way sex scene where your character gets turned into a mithra.


Also: I know Tav wasn't mentioned in WM storyline except maybe in random passing, but I mostly just wanna take part in the battle and have the lightbringer go off/get to run around in that spot you can see from blueblade fell.

[Zilong]

Also: I know Tav wasn't mentioned in WM storyline except maybe in random passing, but I mostly just wanna take part in the battle and have the lightbringer go off/get to run around in that spot you can see from blueblade fell.

Could make it like a mission fight for Tavnazia's last stand, I mean maybe cait sith can like port you there to make sure there is enough force to hold off the beastmen for the survivors to run into the safehold...with a desperate Rochefogne ending it with the lightbringer in the closing CS.

Though in the era we are sent into the past in, has Tavnazia already fall in the timeline?

[SeraphusRagnarok]

Tavnazia has already fallen in WoTG, because as you can see in the Campaign Region Map, the Tavnazian Peninsula has already been 'transformed' into the Tavnazian Archepeligo.

[Suteru]

Tavnazia has already fallen in WoTG, because as you can see in the Campaign Region Map, the Tavnazian Peninsula has already been 'transformed' into the Tavnazian Archepeligo.

This is the worst logic I've seen. All they did was copy/paste that map and remove sky.

It has not fallen, as the battle of Tavnazia was pretty late in the war if I recall correctly, and we're only at the beginning stages.