Randomly Ridiculous FFXI to FFXIV

[Kaylia]

Me not being able to do something I want to do = shitty planning from the developper
Unused content = shitty planning


It's an issue with the game, but obviously, it's not for you. It's squareEnix fault for not giving players a freaking carot as an insensitive to do these missions/quests.

[Hyan]

In an MMO, good luck planning all the content so that you can do everything at all times. What if there's no tank/healer/dps lfp when you want to do PUG? Shitty planning.

These people are addicted. They don't care of the game anymore, only the rewards it offers. It's much better, for them, if not for the company, if they quit. SE is doing them a favor, by not offering the carrot they strive for. If you still like the game, rewards don't mean as much- you'll do the content regardless.

[Kaylia]

Not being able to find anyone over the course of 3 weeks, shouting in town for hours multiples times and trying to drag the ls = shitty planning

Not being able to find a tank for 30 min = unlucky coincidence.
Not being able to find a tank 2 days in a row to do something as casual as xping = shitty balance

These people are addicted. They don't care of the game anymore, only the rewards it offers. It's much better, for them, if not for the company, if they quit. SE is doing them a favor, by not offering the carrot they strive for. If you still like the game, rewards don't mean as much- you'll do the content regardless.

So, SE made a game no one like?

You're fine with this?

Isn't there anything they could have done to make a game people enjoy? Why is it not better to make a game people enjoy playing? I don't follow you here.

[Hyan]

Not really shitty planning, as much as it's not catering to the majority of the current playerbase, addicts. And I'm not sure if those people should be catered to in the first place.

Like many of the games problems, a lot are developers fault- the developers from 2002 that is. As the game was designed, the mistakes from that era reflect the situation today. And that is simply due to devs lack of experience. Sucks, but that's what it comes down to.

At this point of the game, there are not many who really like the game for what it is anymore. Addicts, craving for items populate the areas. It's hard to find those who'd like to play the game for what it is out of that bunch. After 8 years of service, long ass time, it's not surprising that this happened. Some took less playhours to get to that point, some took more.

[Kaylia]

Ooooooh, now I understand what's wrong with you. You convinced yourself that Squareenix is developing content for -you-, instead of catering for the majority. Because of this, you feel special and will defend them with your body and soul until your death.


No but seriously, it's the impression I get right now of you. There is no reason why SE wouldnt want to cater the majority of its playerbase.


[edit]

Mistakes are fine, it's the pace at which they fix it that is not, especially when the solution is obvious and relatively harmless.

[Hyan]

Oooooh, let's make up reasons to make my points invalid because it's too much for your mind to accept that what I'm saying has validity to it.

No but seriously, that's the impression I get right now of you. But let's keep insulting each other because that really moves the debate forward. You're next~




You'd be surprised about the layers you can find from the game if you look far enough. Nothing is "obvious" and "harmless". You might think that it can't be anything but harmless solution, but you don't know everything. Is it obvious to fix something that would take the entire dev team 3 months to work on, and this time instead of a content update we'll get one, bigger fix that might create new problems in the end. Is it worth it? It's so obvious, it's so cheap to fix, why isn't SE doing it?!

[Kaylia]

The debate hasnt moved a single inch since the beginning. Your vision of what a company should be and how they should threat their customer is aliens to me, and probably everyone. Resorting to insult has probably a bigger chance to make it move forward than anything.

You'd be surprised about the layers you can find from the game if you look far enough. Nothing is "obvious" and "harmless". You might think that it can't be anything but harmless solution, but you don't know everything. Is it obvious to fix something that would take the entire dev team 3 months to work on, and this time instead of a content update we'll get one, bigger fix that might create new problems in the end. Is it worth it? It's so obvious, it's so cheap to fix, why isn't SE doing it?!

Except that it's not the case. Adding a chest at the beginning of salvage isnt " a whole team for 3 months". Upping spawn rate in sea isnt "3 months". Adding a better reward to mission isnt "3 months". Some issue like windower are relatively big, but they are so important that if it takes 3 months, they should spend 3 months on it.

"But they have to make sure it has no side impact?". Really? While it's true to some extent, they have taken pretty drastic measure in many case (thief knife, mass banning, some merit addition that force people to change their build). Most fixes are "obvious". Obvious here doesnt mean it doesnt have to go through a "decision taking" process, but we shouldnt have to wait 6 months or 2 years to see a change, it should be addressed within a week or two.

Typically, there is 2 things mmo developper will look for:
1) What impact it will have on the economy
2) How long the content is going to last

Economy can be trickier, but none of these questions are particularly hard to answer when you have drop rate at hands and other parameters. It's a simple min/max statistics problems.

[Hyan]

Except that it's not the case. Adding a chest at the beginning of salvage isnt " a whole team for 3 months". Upping spawn rate in sea isnt "3 months". Adding a better reward to mission isnt "3 months". Some issue like windower are relatively big, but they are so important that if it takes 3 months, they should spend 3 months on it.

"But they have to make sure it has no side impact?". Really? While it's true to some extent, they have taken pretty drastic measure in many case (thief knife, mass banning, some merit addition that force people to change their build). Most fixes are "obvious". Obvious here doesnt mean it doesnt have to go through a "decision taking" process, but we shouldnt have to wait 6 months or 2 years to see a change, it should be addressed within a week or two.

Typically, there is 2 things mmo developper will look for:
1) What impact it will have on the economy
2) How long the content is going to last

Economy can be trickier, but none of these questions are particularly hard to answer when you have drop rate at hands and other parameters. It's a simple min/max statistics problems.

Like I said, there are many layers. If it's not the time used, it's something else. You can't see it, tough luck. You'll just keep being upset with the people not at fault, and that's something I don't want to do.

2 things? You serious? I'm glad you're not the one developing games for us, that much I can say.

What's the impact with other jobs if you go and buff job X? What happens if you raise drop rate in one area of the game? Will players finish content much faster, forcing us to make more content at a more rapid rate? What will happen to item availability? Some items are going to be hard to get, some piss easy.. there will be a massive overload of some items in the economy, and we might not be able to handle it.. How many events do we need to fine tune now because of this one change?

What if we give better rewards to Ballista? Players will start asking for job balance there too, because it suddenly matters. What was an "easy fix" became a huge burden on the developers, when there's PvE balance to take care of too.

Is it worth it to develop an event this complex, or should we go with something less complicated but offer more small things as well? Maybe it's too simple then... And what about difficulty? It's gotta be hard enough to be interesting, but not too hard. And how does the difficulty change the drop rate? If it's too easy and drop rates too high, we'll have to nerf it... if it's too hard and drop rates too low, we'll have to buff it...

Min/Max that.

[Kaylia]

Like I said, there are many layers.

Do you think a company that has developpers talk to players on forum has the same kind of layers? Just asking?


I don't understand why you excuse this structure? If something is uneficient, you change it. If there is too many layers to go through to make a change, than remove what is uneeded.

What's the impact with other jobs if you go and buff job X? What happens if you raise drop rate in one area of the game? Will players finish content much faster, forcing us to make more content at a more rapid rate? What will happen to item availability? Some items are going to be hard to get, some piss easy...there will be a massive overload of some items in the economy, and we might not be able to handle it... . How many events do we need to fine tune now because of this one change?

Everything bolded is already included in the 2nd point. You just reworded the same things 4 times


Jobs balance is a 3rd question I could have added. None of the issue I used so far involved job balance, so I didn't add it, but if you are doing change to job...then yes, that's your main question.

What if we give better rewards to Ballista? Players will start asking for job balance there too, because it suddenly matters. What was an "easy fix" became a huge burden on the developers, when there's PvE balance to take care of too.

Don't make content your game can't support it. It's the first question any developpers should ask himself before proposing new content. If they didn't want to deal with PvP balance, they shouldn't make pvp. If your game doesn't allow you to make any chocobo racing, then don't make a chocobo racing system that no one will use because it sucks...


To your question, a "team bonus" would be a more appropriate solution if they dont want to deal with individual balance.

Is it worth it to develop an event this complex, or should we go with something less complicated but offer more small things as well? Maybe it's too simple then... And what about difficulty? It's gotta be hard enough to be interesting, but not too hard. And how does the difficulty change the drop rate? If it's too easy and drop rates too high, we'll have to nerf it... if it's too hard and drop rates too low, we'll have to buff it...

Min/Max that.

I never came close to "maxing" a group of people in FFXI, so there is a lot of room to play

[Sup3rB4d]

Ooooooh, now I understand what's wrong with you. You convinced yourself that Squareenix is developing content for -you-, instead of catering for the majority. Because of this, you feel special and will defend them with your body and soul until your death.


No but seriously, it's the impression I get right now of you. There is no reason why SE wouldnt want to cater the majority of its playerbase.


[edit]

Mistakes are fine, it's the pace at which they fix it that is not, especially when the solution is obvious and relatively harmless.

When you say playerbase do you mean current playerbase or possible playerbase? These are two entirely different things. A lot of these so called "problems" that 99.999999999999999% of the playerbase can not stand have been there from the beginning. FFXI was always a high effort little reward game with sidegrades and slow content updates. This is why it has such a small usergroup when compared to WoW. If these are the problems you had with FFXI then you should have never started playing. SE IS in fact developing for a niche group of people rather you like it or not. Is it a smart business model? I can't say for sure but they have been doing it for years.(Shooter games are dominating in case you didn't know and RPGs are a very small % of video game purchases.)

[Kawfee]

I think what you are both arguing has validity - that the delays in "fixing" things are related to three things:

1. It takes a long time to change things in FFXI, rumored to in part be from a poorly designed engine. Being their first MMO, it sounds like they didn't do a great job of building it in a modular style, allowing for easy changes and expansion of code.

2. They have been understaffed; it seems pretty clear that SE approached FFXI with a dev team and support team designed around their old model of a single player game, and tried to tweak it for an MMO. Prior to the WOW times, they could get away with it, but it seems obvious now that they are trying to beef up their team and get the community involved from the beginning.

3. They are arrogant in their design approach, as evidenced by AV/etc/etc. I have seen some movement along this front over the last two years or so, and with the way they are describing FFXIV, but the arrogance is still there. However, I don't mind this as much, simply because it helps reassure me they aren't going to make a WOW clone or AION clone or whatever, but their own vision of FFXIV, and their design direction hasn't really let me down on any of their games to date.

[Hyan]

Do you think a company that has developpers talk to players on forum has the same kind of layers? Just asking?


I don't understand why you excuse this structure? If something is uneficient, you change it. If there is too many layers to go through to make a change, than remove what is uneeded.

Hmm yes, I don't see why that would make a difference.

MMO's are games with many layers by default, because they are so massive. We don't want the games to become too simple, do we?

Everything bolded is already included in the 2nd point. You just reworded the same things 4 times


Jobs balance is a 3rd question I could have added. None of the issue I used so far involved job balance, so I didn't add it, but if you are doing change to job...then yes, that's your main question.

Those 3 are the main questions, but answering them is more often than not so hard that the developers can only guess. At the core that's what the developers are going to ask themselves, but the layers can make the answer almost too hard to predict.

Don't make content your game can't support it. It's the first question any developpers should ask himself before proposing new content. If they didn't want to deal with PvP balance, they shouldn't make pvp. If your game doesn't allow you to make any chocobo racing, then don't make a chocobo racing system that no one will use because it sucks...

Sometimes these things are figured out too late in the process.. at which point it's better to just finish it than scrap it. In concept the game could support the content, but it's never that black and white :/.

To your question, a "team bonus" would be a more appropriate solution if they dont want to deal with individual balance.

Which one is easier to handle, team balance or individual balance? Not just 20 jobs to balance, but a mix of every job combination there is...


And yes Kawfee, all of those points make sense. There are just some things they're not going to do, no matter what. It's a bad thing, and a good thing. But as long as their arrogance is justified (they can create a good game even if the players aren't controlling every step of the process), we'll see more good than bad come out of it. We have things like AV (or hopefully post-update PW) but we don't have a WoW clone, and never will.

[Lucavi]

Stop replying, go away from your pc and think about everything you said until now.

Think about your own definition of "game","fun", and "balance". Spend 10 minutes to draw the line between "addiction" and "entertainment", and add another 10 minutes to figure out what you consider "original", and what is a rehashed material. Try thinking about the concept of "accessibility to the content" and the issue it creates.


Your reply always consist of "no" with a "it's was super fun/perfect/balanced" rebutal, and it's getting old. Not everything was bad about FFXI, but to go as far as defend weakness everyone had issue with...you should think twice about it.

And he had the nerve to call -me- an addict. Hyan's addicted to this thread, and addicted to the notion that keeping people in the dark and ignoring their frustrations is the most successful business model, and that it will continue to hold up in 2010. He also calls the modern MMO gamer "spoiled" by actual customer service and for feeling like, by paying their monthly fee, they also get to feel like they have a hand in the process of the evolution of their game.

Kaylia, I have fun debating with you, so it pain me to see you doing this. Just give it up, and save it for another poster in another thread. I haven't seen such a hard-nosed poster since my Alla days.

[Lucavi]

And yes Kawfee, all of those points make sense. There are just some things they're not going to do, no matter what. It's a bad thing, and a good thing. But as long as their arrogance is justified (they can create a good game even if the players aren't controlling every step of the process), we'll see more good than bad come out of it. We have things like AV (or hopefully post-update PW) but we don't have a WoW clone, and never will.

So, you've somehow equated engaging the customer and listening to them as creating a WoW clone. Wow. That sounds exactly like some Neocon twit likening overhauling the medicare system to instituting socialism.

Gogo slippery slope logic - it always works to rile up the lower-class, uneducated masses: lets apply the same thing with MMO-speak! Unbelievable.

[Kawfee]

So, you've somehow equated engaging the customer and listening to them as creating a WoW clone. Wow. That sounds exactly like some Neocon twit likening overhauling the medicare system to instituting socialism.

Gogo slippery slope logic - it always works to rile up the lower-class, uneducated masses: lets apply the same thing with MMO-speak! Unbelievable.

Hyan was quoting me as saying "WOW-clone" in a context unrelated to customer service, from my above post.

[Kaylia]

Sometimes these things are figured out too late in the process.. at which point it's better to just finish it than scrap it. In concept the game could support the content, but it's never that black and white :/.

Your understanding of a what a development team is doing is beyond my grasp...

Planning a game from scratch isn't simple, but planning this kind of stuff isnt remotely difficult. A professional development team shouldnt make obvious mistake like this.

What is hard to plan is impact on a long run, but events like chocobo racing that are standalone arent an issue, since they don't have many.

Which one is easier to handle, team balance or individual balance? Not just 20 jobs to balance, but a mix of every job combination there is...

Look, you talks about pvp without defining anything and go on a retarded tangeant every posts.

If you want a complete pvp experience, then yes, you need job balance and everything, and team balance will be complicated. If you want to make a "casual" event like ballista, rewarding every attendant the same is more appropriate to avoid issue (badge, experience, points or w/e).

[Whaleporn]

And he had the nerve to call -me- an addict. Hyan's addicted to this thread, and addicted to the notion that keeping people in the dark and ignoring their frustrations is the most successful business model, and that it will continue to hold up in 2010. He also calls the modern MMO gamer "spoiled" by actual customer service and for feeling like, by paying their monthly fee, they also get to feel like they have a hand in the process of the evolution of their game.

Yeah, little dude has Stockholm syndrome.

NO. SQUARE LOVES ME. IT MADE PANKRATION JUST FOR ME! I don't need this I have LOTS OF FRIENDS WHO STILL PLAY *summons NPC* c'mon Rykosheela, we can make our own MMO where we implement boring and quickly processed content.

Seriously: There's shit in FFXI that needed to be addressed the moment it was patched in. The best example is aggro changes for beastmasters: they took an already frustrating solo job and made exping with it even worse, then literally did nothing in regards to leveling the job for years. In the case of a technical problem where one solution to an issue (Training mobs) creates another problem which may easily be addressed (give charmed pets massive NPC monster regen if they don't take damage for 15 seconds, basically copy-paste the code from regular monsters + remove the pet exp nurf) but isn't for years.

It. Literally. Took. Them. Years. To say 'oops we broke this job haha better do something' This isn't endgame content, or a player bitching about gear. It's sloppy development.

Same with lowering exp loss when you get raised. Liking a feature because it's shitty and scares away people who are not 'serious' or you feel are 'spoiled' does not make it good. Losing levels because you die is retarded. I played FFXI for 5 years and hit 74 once on my main but every 2 hour exp party I had to recap exp and earn some merits I always had the same thought on my mind "This is retarded."

Seems they only noticed the above when people started ditching FFXI! Woops! *slide whistle*

Many of the adjustments in the game could have been done years ago and would impact how 'fun' it is to grind to 75 very little. I left probably 6 jobs in the 45-65 range before I quit because of how boring exping is. They keep adding these little exp boosters and 'solo' exp events and once an hour quests because... duh duh dum dah: they've known FFXI's grind is shitty and unfun for a long time. Why? Because we told them back when RoZ was new it was boring and unfun. Bad game design is to say 'That's how it SHOULD be you need to EARN being powerful'

Good design is to make it so skill and game mastery allow you to move through older content quicker. Good game design also recognizes that in a service based game (IE where you put down money) the player is investing in your development costs for patches and playtesting. If square does the exact same breakdown of funds as it did in FFXI, the only sensable thing to do is play 14 for a month then cancel and wait for ff17, since that's where the money is going.

Also If you want PvP... *looks across MMO room, makes eye contact with the current leader of the pack, looks away blushing*

[Whaleporn]

Hmm yes, I don't see why that would make a

Which one is easier to handle, team balance or individual balance? Not just 20 jobs to balance, but a mix of every job combination there is...

If you have people actively looking at your Meta-game, it's actually pretty easy to slowly adjust jobs (and even team roles) into places where they are well matched in PvP. Team composition is always going to be important and almost nobody thinks you need to balance a PvP game so that 2-6+ of the same jobs/characters will be an effective team.

1v1 World PvP is almost always going to be dominated by the damage dealers: even in balanced games being able to lay down a large chunk of someone's life before they have mentally prepared to fight is a huge advantage. It's the hardest part of the game to balance if team PvP is important and balancing it is a low priorty because, in general, most modern games don't give significant rewards to running around griefing people.

It's not impossible: DotA is basically a team PvP game with 100 different characters each with 4 different skills. Every few weeks the mod makers churn out huge list of both minor and major changes to 20-30 classes. Minor changes might be adjusting how fast a unit runs or when their attack actually happens in their animation, or simply shaving off or adding minor amounts of damage to particular skills. In 1v1 play there are certain picks that will be stronger given two equally skilled players, but even at 3v3 (with 5v5 the intended mode) any 3 given classes (out of the 100) are balanced enough that it's hard to say that any given single choice is flat-out better.

Of course, to make it work you'd have to make PvP something you planned from the start and it helps not to have hyper specialized classes that cannot put up a fight in any meaningful way. It also helps to have actually interesting PvP situations instead of trying to tack it onto a quiddich match.

[Kawfee]

Screw PVP, not needed in this discussion since it's not going to be in the game (or will be in it in a marginal way like Ballista) as the dev's have already said.
Also, PVP in any way that affects PVE balance can go screw itself.

[Eaglestrike]

Screw PVP, not needed in this discussion since it's not going to be in the game (or will be in it in a marginal way like Ballista) as the dev's have already said.
Also, PVP in any way that affects PVE balance can go screw itself.

I do agree with this. While I enjoy PvP in WoW from time to time I also enjoyed Ballista/Brenner in FFXI. Sure some things were OP but generally there is always some response to them (spam dispels on brd/blu or rdm/blu) and really I enjoying playing it a lot. The biggest issue was a lack of interest outside of JP players and pretty terrible scheduling of matches.

If they can get a better schedule out for a little game of PvP I'd be all for it, but don't change things in PvE just to suit PvP, keep skills working differently like they do in FFXI for those two aspects of the game. The idea of wanting all abilities to work the same in PvP and PvE is a major issue WoW has.