FFXIV Random Speculation/Question thread VI: Phase 3, FFXIV is still on the rag!

[Spork]

I try not to expect a smooth and awesome release. Even WoW had it's problems at release. As long as it's playable.

Quick question regarding the beta, is it possible to drag and drop items in inventory, crafting windows etc. ?

The mouse will only do functions that a game controller is able to do. You can move the camera with it, you can click menu options with it, but you are unable to do any other traditional mouse like things like drag and drop.

You can't even click a name on the party menu to target a player.

[Lithiani]

More games than not are doing this, but for different reasons. AoC was largely in part due to impatient shareholders that wanted a return on their investments (which was retarded on their part - you'll get a fat return when the game is polished and sits atop the sale charts, not bottom-feeding because it was rushed out the door due to deadlines); Warhammer rushed to get in front of WoW's expansion, and was totally unfinished as a result. I have no idea why Aion launched so poorly, but I suspect that again, it was an attempt to grab up as many subs from competitors as possible.

I haven't heard anything about SE's financial backers, so I'd rule out a hasty release to appease some stock assholes, but it does look like they want to do the Warhammer and beat WoW to the punch. I don't really understand why, since the games are apples and oranges, but if they're going to follow in the footsteps of other games before them, they're going to suffer for it.

The majority of players nowadays simply will not put up with a buggy launch for long, and while MMO players of all genres are more tolerant than single player fans, we have limits as well. No MMORPG will be perfect right out of the gate, but the previous 3 biggest MMOs to launch (Star Trek Online doesn't count, because that was niche right out of the boat, but hey, it was a buggy mess of shit as well! Go figure.), AOC, WH, and Aion, are all on life-support due in part to terribly buggy launches that people eventually got sick of.

SE needs to realize that people are far less patient now than 10 years ago, when you had EQ, Ultima Online, and Asheron's Call as your flagship products.

I entirely agree that they seem to want to launch ahead of the next wow expansion. I think it's a mistake, tbh; A wow expansion is always going to draw people, because once one person from a community goes, more will follow. I would honestly say that it would be better for long term subs to wait - not only do you get more months to refine the game, but then the community shift effect works in your favour. Batting second has its advantages.

FWIW, Warhammer simply had a flawed game conception; I can see where they wanted to go with it, but it just doesn't work. I think it would have been immeasurably improved by the addition of FFXIs "lock" and controls, but there you are. Age of Conan was always going to be a bugged POS, as it's a Funcom game, and Funcom are small-time chancers in a big fishes pond. I'll never play another Funcom game, as I remember Anarchy Online far too well. Sony Online Entertainment also get put in the "never again" category - how's that for a reaction to poor release policy?

Buggy launches are not a recent thing in MMO games, and go back much further than the recont crop. There is a lesson to be leant from the fact that the most successful and long-lived MMO games (remembering here that Longevity = Profit for an MMO) are the ones which grabbed their userbase at launch and held on to them.

I just hope someone at S-E realises this.

[Spork]

I entirely agree that they seem to want to launch ahead of the next wow expansion. I think it's a mistake, tbh; A wow expansion is always going to draw people, because once one person from a community goes, more will follow. I would honestly say that it would be better for long term subs to wait - not only do you get more months to refine the game, but then the community shift effect works in your favour. Batting second has its advantages.

I agree they should not rush the game out to beat the WoW expansion but I can see where they are coming from.

If they release before WoW they will probably sell more boxes to bored MMO players. Sure these players will probably ditch the game for WoW in Nov. (unless SE can pull off some amazing patches), but at least SE got the box sale.

If they release shortly after WoW (Dec-Jan), WoW players are going to be balls deep into the new expansion and not even think about FFXIV.

The only other option is to wait until around May 2011, and I really don't wanna wait that long do you?

If they had everything done and released FFXIV in May of this year I think that woulda been perfect. I know that's when myself and many other people I know got bored with the current WoW expansion and quit. That also would have given them 6 months of patches before Cata to make the game amazing and keep them hooked.

Oh well

[Pooky]

Slight derail.

More games than not are doing this, but for different reasons. AoC was largely in part due to impatient shareholders that wanted a return on their investments (which was retarded on their part - you'll get a fat return when the game is polished and sits atop the sale charts, not bottom-feeding because it was rushed out the door due to deadlines); Warhammer rushed to get in front of WoW's expansion, and was totally unfinished as a result. I have no idea why Aion launched so poorly, but I suspect that again, it was an attempt to grab up as many subs from competitors as possible.

Aion had a fairly strong launch numbers wise, but they ended up moving servers the day before launch causing some slight lag (from my experience). The real "problem" with Aion's launch, and the main "problem" that the game has now, is the fact that most of the playerbase wants to be spoonfed everything: they wanted the game to be almost a direct port of WoW with a graphics update, which is almost what they expected because of how everyone touted the game as a "WoW clone" as soon as the first Korean gameplay footage dropped. Naturally a severely mismanaged (NCwest are fucking idiots) Korean grinder won't be popular to the flock of WoW kids.

And to whoever was talking about Aion's "Community Reps:" Fucking LOL. I pity them, having to deal with a whiny playerbase while having ZERO tools to fix issues, run real live events ect.

FWIW, Warhammer simply had a flawed game conception; I can see where they wanted to go with it, but it just doesn't work. I think it would have been immeasurably improved by the addition of FFXIs "lock" and controls, but there you are.

I disagree, WAR was a great game concept-wise (and incredibly fun to play) that suffered from extreme pressure from the publisher ( EA ) to launch easily 6 months ahead of schedule. The game wasn't given the time to be properly tested, and released missing at least 4 classes while plagued with a slew of bugs that should have been hammered out the first month of beta testing.

[Odesseiron]

I know this has probably been said 100 times already, but I laugh at all this bitching. I mean just looking at all those changes to FFXI in the first, I dunno year, hell 6 months, there are going to be patches galore. It looks like there were patches every other day sometimes with XI, and I expect it to be no different from this game.

It even says right in the one of the first notes that SE said players were leveling too fast because there was not much else to do. I don't expect FFXIV to be a "complete" game at release by any means. They'll be adding stuff constantly via updates and inevitably, expansions. Looking at what JP's had to work with in the beginning of XI, it seemed like a pretty boring game. 5 Ranks, 50 levels, and really.. not much else. There weren't even NM's til a later date. This will be a game where you're gonna have to invest time to see the rewards just like XI.

Not trying to come off as a SE Defense person, it should just be common sense like with any other MMO.

[Pooky]

I know this has probably been said 100 times already, but I laugh at all this bitching. I mean just looking at all those changes to FFXI in the first, I dunno year, hell 6 months, there are going to be patches galore. It looks like there were patches every other day sometimes with XI, and I expect it to be no different from this game.

It even says right in the one of the first notes that SE said players were leveling too fast because there was not much else to do. I don't expect FFXIV to be a "complete" game at release by any means. They'll be adding stuff constantly via updates and inevitably, expansions. Looking at what JP's had to work with in the beginning of XI, it seemed like a pretty boring game. 5 Ranks, 50 levels, and really.. not much else. There weren't even NM's til a later date. This will be a game where you're gonna have to invest time to see the rewards just like XI.

Not trying to come off as a SE Defense person, it should just be common sense like with any other MMO.

There's where your logic fails. A large portion of the MMO playerbase (read: WoW casuals) will expect 5 years of content at day 1, then whine and unsub as it doesn't live up to their biased expectations. Just look at almost EVERY thread on Aionsource or Aion's Official Forums dated ~Sept-Nov of last year.

[Odesseiron]

I see your point. I guess the casual player base and those unfamiliar with MMO's will expect a full game on the street date. It doesn't really bother me any as I already know what to expect, but it should hopefully weed out the whiners by the time it matters.

[omegaB]

I know this has probably been said 100 times already, but I laugh at all this bitching. I mean just looking at all those changes to FFXI in the first, I dunno year, hell 6 months, there are going to be patches galore. It looks like there were patches every other day sometimes with XI, and I expect it to be no different from this game.

It even says right in the one of the first notes that SE said players were leveling too fast because there was not much else to do. I don't expect FFXIV to be a "complete" game at release by any means. They'll be adding stuff constantly via updates and inevitably, expansions. Looking at what JP's had to work with in the beginning of XI, it seemed like a pretty boring game. 5 Ranks, 50 levels, and really.. not much else. There weren't even NM's til a later date. This will be a game where you're gonna have to invest time to see the rewards just like XI.

Not trying to come off as a SE Defense person, it should just be common sense like with any other MMO.

this is basically what i realized after reading the patch, its not gonna be a perfect game on launch, and there will be a lot of changes, and the most hardcore people will hit cap early, thats apparently the way it is in most mmos

[Pooky]

I see your point. I guess the casual player base and those unfamiliar with MMO's will expect a full game on the street date. It doesn't really bother me any as I already know what to expect, but it should hopefully weed out the whiners by the time it matters.

Don't get your hopes up, Aion's been out for almost 11 months now....nothing can stem the tears.

[vrumpt]

There's where your logic fails. A large portion of the MMO playerbase (read: WoW casuals) will expect 5 years of content at day 1, then whine and unsub as it doesn't live up to their biased expectations. Just look at almost EVERY thread on Aionsource or Aion's Official Forums dated ~Sept-Nov of last year.

last i checked blizzard burns all old content with every expansion and then goes and makes every previous patch irrelevant with every new one that comes. They don't have 5 years of content, they have 5 years of experience. Aion was a fucking terrible game and NCSoft is a terrible company who leeches new MMO CEs every so often to make a quick buck, and then does it again. Not only that Aion was already out for a year in Korea before it launched in NA and had a year of patches to bump it along, and it still failed miserably.

You only need the right amount of content to keep your consumers happy, not 4 expansions worth of course but still enough to keep them going. FFXIV shouldn't fail here, look at XIs endgame content and try to tell me with a straight face that XIV will lack in that department. Biggest threat to XIV right now is a miserable experience, combination of bugs, bad controls, and poor balancing.

[Odesseiron]

last i checked blizzard burns all old content with every expansion and then goes and makes every previous patch irrelevant with every new one that comes. They don't have 5 years of content, they have 5 years of experience. Aion was a fucking terrible game and NCSoft is a terrible company who leeches new MMO CEs every so often to make a quick buck, and then does it again. Not only that Aion was already out for a year in Korea before it launched in NA and had a year of patches to bump it along, and it still failed miserably.

You only need the right amount of content to keep your consumers happy, not 4 expansions worth of course but still enough to keep them going. FFXIV shouldn't fail here, look at XIs endgame content and try to tell me with a straight face that XIV will lack in that department. Biggest threat to XIV right now is a miserable experience, combination of bugs, bad controls, and poor balancing.

Agreed. Comparing Square to NCSoft is like a slap to the face. Every NCSoft game I've played is pretty much the same damn thing as the last one. They're all ripoffs of whatever's hot at the moment, which in every case is WoW. Every time they fail. Their games are fun for a couple of days and then they get boring as fuck.

I agree that the things listed above are a threat, but I think SE has a big enough fanbase to be alright. I'm sure after the initial hysteria the population will die down, but I suspect there will definitely be a higher following than FFXI.

[Kaylia]

There's where your logic fails. A large portion of the MMO playerbase (read: WoW casuals) will expect 5 years of content at day 1, then whine and unsub as it doesn't live up to their biased expectations. Just look at almost EVERY thread on Aionsource or Aion's Official Forums dated ~Sept-Nov of last year.

Except they have every right to expect content. It's not hard to design a few dungeons or events. If they can't design a proper "endgame" right away, FFXIV is just going to turn into another Aion.

[Alderaan]

Biggest threat to XIV right now is a miserable experience, combination of bugs, bad controls, and poor balancing.

This i agree with. Fix the basics and worry about content later. I'm assuming that's what they're doing, but who knows with SE. I do like the way most MMO's are going now a days with community managers and i wonder if they're utilized in Japan at all.

I don't think anyone's worried about having 5 years of content at launch, at least i'm not. I do however hope that there's more to do than just grind leve's and exp. I'm more looking forward to exploration than anything else, but i'd also like some side questing for fame or whatnot. This is also where i think the lack of pvp hurts, as people can entertain themselves, but that's another topic for another time.

[Croy]

this is basically what i realized after reading the patch, its not gonna be a perfect game on launch, and there will be a lot of changes, and the most hardcore people will hit cap early, thats apparently the way it is in most mmos

Yep its going to be far from perfect. I also have feeling that no matter how much 'time' they wait for a release, it still won't come close to perfect for anyone. No MMORPG (even WoW) has escaped the plight that is an MMO launch in an already crowded world. If you like the basic principle and direction of game, try to stick with it a couple months or more and see if it gets better. If you don't like it then move on. People can toute 'shot in the foot start' all they want but the basic knowledge for an MMORPG launch is its ALWAYS a work in progress. Those that don't think in such a way are destined to be disappointed every time.

I expect the game to launch with lots of random bugs, problems with servers (the first 2 weeks at least) and since the game is mostly server side stuff, things like lag on all functions of the game will still exist. Crafting and Game related content will be about 3 times the amount at retail compared to beta but it will still be lackluster in comparison to already estabilished games etc. The game will probably have a fairly mediocre end game for a good 3 months before the first true content patch (Along with extremely fast 'get to end game' people that happens in all MMORPGs. BG prepared to be disappointed at launch for stuff to do after max level).

Here is the thing though... the worst thing a game can do is launch with gamebreaking bugs that won't be fixed in a couple months... but the next worst thing? Leaving it in endless beta testing where testers mind will change at the drop of a hat on what they feel is best for the game. Find out what they want changed to the core design and then make a stable release with enough content to support people for a couple months, and then get it out the door. Once permanence is made, they can actually do some building on the overall content because they no longer need to worry about constantly changing the very framework of the game. Furthmore in beta no one can really get attached to a character because of constant wipes. Once the game releases people will care more about any grind or accomplishment where there might be no such satisfaction in beta.

[Cjskater]

Ok so I got 2 more Leves with 414 Conjurer Marks. Even if you guys don't think so... I think there's a method to it. 60% of my playtime is Conjurer, 20% is Thaum, and the other 20 is the lower leveled stuff.

Edit: Guess I'll be getting One With Nature (Conjurer Affinity) and one of the JAs. Curious what the first one does exactly... but I honestly would've rather gotten Thaum or Archer Marks (-enmity).

[Darte]

Edit: Guess I'll be getting One With Nature (Conjurer Affinity) and one of the JAs. Curious what the first one does exactly... but I honestly would've rather gotten Thaum or Archer Marks (-enmity).

I suspect that spells not native to your class get gimped in some way or another. This Job Trait most likely would ungimp said spell by X amount (presumably up to a cap).

[Kaiyoko]

Ok so I got 2 more Leves with 414 Conjurer Marks. Even if you guys don't think so... I think there's a method to it. 60% of my playtime is Conjurer, 20% is Thaum, and the other 20 is the lower leveled stuff.

Edit: Guess I'll be getting One With Nature (Conjurer Affinity) and one of the JAs. Curious what the first one does exactly... but I honestly would've rather gotten Thaum or Archer Marks (-enmity).

There is nothing to it. I'm 80% MAR and 15% crafting, 5% random jobs and I got glad x2 and pug x1. Random shit is random.

[Nartosar]

I'm actually looking forward to LITTLE content at release. I want to look around, do what there is to do and get comfortable at it. Then grow into more content.
Yay!

[BlackheartX]

I entirely agree that they seem to want to launch ahead of the next wow expansion. I think it's a mistake, tbh; A wow expansion is always going to draw people, because once one person from a community goes, more will follow. I would honestly say that it would be better for long term subs to wait - not only do you get more months to refine the game, but then the community shift effect works in your favour. Batting second has its advantages.

FWIW, Warhammer simply had a flawed game conception; I can see where they wanted to go with it, but it just doesn't work. I think it would have been immeasurably improved by the addition of FFXIs "lock" and controls, but there you are. Age of Conan was always going to be a bugged POS, as it's a Funcom game, and Funcom are small-time chancers in a big fishes pond. I'll never play another Funcom game, as I remember Anarchy Online far too well. Sony Online Entertainment also get put in the "never again" category - how's that for a reaction to poor release policy?

Buggy launches are not a recent thing in MMO games, and go back much further than the recont crop. There is a lesson to be leant from the fact that the most successful and long-lived MMO games (remembering here that Longevity = Profit for an MMO) are the ones which grabbed their userbase at launch and held on to them.

I just hope someone at S-E realises this.

Actually what makes sense is that they want to release FFXIV before WOW Eclipses it. Grabbing whatever fair-weather friends they can get their hands on to at least try their game before they jump to WOW seems to be their goal. What doesn't make sense is them believing that the game in it's current state will draw those people just because it's new. As far as their reasoning I'm going to have to go the Fanboy route and say super secret build that's being ironed out for retail that will make everything wonderful. However as it stands this is beyond unlikely when this hit's the market I expect a patchfest like any and every other mmo. On a broader note *Equip Body "Flame Suit"* I don't see any reason as of yet that would indicate this game is going to draw anyone who disliked XI or an influx of people who are tired of WOW switching over to this game seems highly unlikely, without some miracle build in the works. This game needs work and September is around the corner, they may be able to compete with a few releases but not "TopDogs", not this year maybe August next year the game will take on a form of it's own. As it stands the spirit of the game is still XI a very very pretty XI.

[Lordender]

Not to be doom and gloom because the game is still in beta but what does anything matter if they don't communicate with the playerbase?

Showing up to game shows every 2-3 months to talk to the media and fans doesn't do any justice. They should be posting information everyday talking about changes/what this or that does and have people translating it to the various languages the game is supporting.

I can promise you if they don't start the process of communication and letting the players know whats going on this is going to be "same shit different day" scenario all over again. I have to believe that SE has learned something since XI.

Having the attitude of "ancient japanese secret" when it comes down to explaning things is not going to fly in 2010.