Random Complaint Thread. No white knighting allowed.

[Hyan]

There will be no such thing with 2 weeks timeframe between the updates.

[vadre]

Don't quote me on this, but I'm fairly sure they aren't developing all the content that goes into a patch in the two weeks between one patch and the next..

1.15a was simply the first bunch of things that could possibly be put into the game in the timeframe, so who knows how big the size of coming patches will be depending on how quickly they finish content. There could still be that miracle patch.

Even so, I don't think it makes much sense to hope for some miracle patch anyway, if I was looking at the game I'd be much more interested in consistent improvement that shows potential to carry on into the future than one gigantic bandaid to fix up the systems in the present, then have to wait and see what the future outcomes are.

[The Q]

I gave up on the notion of a miracle patch. There's just no way for them to develop enough real content to have enough to even think of competing with any other major release already on the market, just released, or releasing soon. This is especially so considering the evidence that very little to no content was actually in the works at the time the new team took over. There just hasn't been enough time or enough manpower. Maybe in a year this game will be able to compete with other MMO's releasing at that time but as for right now and the immediate future I can only foresee a trickle of content coming in over the months at best.

Of course I would like to be wrong about this, in a positive manner.

[Hyan]

I'd say they have about a month if we assume that there is a team working on content and a team working on adjustments, instead of everyone changing their duties every 2 weeks, since that would be ineffective. Obviously larger projects have their separate teams since they would take longer than a month to develop in the best case (Hamlet defense, Jumping function, larger UI rehauls to name a few) . It's all about balancing these larger projects with the implementation of quests and smaller UI adjustments so that there'll be something to implement every month.

This patch was quite small considering the mid-December patch came around a month and a half ago (which could be caused by the changes in staff and the development schedules and priorities, as well as the holidays) but it is still possible that they simply focused on getting those quests ready instead of adjustments and the real meat of the month & ½ of development is coming in a few weeks, or this is one of those "filler" updates mentioned above.

But needless to say, I am extremely skeptical about that. They had a slow start for logical reasons and are about to pick up the pace (or at least attempt to do so). No miracles to be seen here, but hopefully extraordinary effort to bring the game up-to-par and beyond other games in the genre in a ~years worth of time.

[Elrina]

I'd say they have about a month if we assume that there is a team working on content and a team working on adjustments, instead of everyone changing their duties every 2 weeks, since that would be ineffective. Obviously larger projects have their separate teams since they would take longer than a month to develop in the best case (Hamlet defense, Jumping function, larger UI rehauls to name a few) . It's all about balancing these larger projects with the implementation of quests and smaller UI adjustments so that there'll be something to implement every month.

This patch was quite small considering the mid-December patch came around a month and a half ago (which could be caused by the changes in staff and the development schedules and priorities, as well as the holidays) but it is still possible that they simply focused on getting those quests ready instead of adjustments and the real meat of the month & ½ of development is coming in a few weeks, or this is one of those "filler" updates mentioned above.

But needless to say, I am extremely skeptical about that. They had a slow start for logical reasons and are about to pick up the pace (or at least attempt to do so). No miracles to be seen here, but hopefully extraordinary effort to bring the game up-to-par and beyond other games in the genre in a ~years worth of time.

I'm with you for most of that. What I think most likely is that, just like those larger features require groups dedicated to working on them for a longer stretch in time, all of the smaller/alternate features and adjustments also take a variety of time. When balanced with what they do and what's prioritized on the different lists, each patch will likely just contain whatever has been put together and tested and is ready for the patch. Each one will have stuff because features will gradually be completed regularly, so each month they just take stuff from the adjustments side that's ready and prepare that for the patch, and the stuff from the content side and prepare that for the patch. If it doesn't make the cut, it gets pushed to the next one. And they just do like you said, they gradually implement stuff to form a larger overall change and quantity of additions over time.

And they may or may not have some of those larger team guys working on larger scale content, or may be waiting till some of the other big adjustments/additions are completed before setting up a bunch of them to work on it. Either way, I still don't think we'll be seeing any really major content additions along the lines of sky/limbus/salvage/dynamis/etc. until just before/around the time they start charging sub fees (which may or may not coincide with the PS3 release to some degree). It just makes too much sense that they would drop that in once they have everything else, all the other changes and adjustments, prepared to accommodate and complement the larger scale content. And at that point they should be ready to start charging people if they're ever going to, so ~

I could see maybe the Hamlet Defense getting in before then, possibly. As far as I know, there was never any solid information as to what it was actually going to be, was there? It sounds like some kind of mini-campaign type content that could be scattered across level ranges. But other than maybe that, I wouldn't expect anything more than quests, mini-quests and maybe some varied types of new leves or something till then. Maybe some world NMs at varying levels, just reskin some mobs of varying levels and give them some slightly above average, re-skinned gear that's not really special at max rank, but works for a given range and maybe has some kind of special features like enhanced durability or something since they're NM drops. That way it's nothing broken like O kotes and Peacock charms that they'd have to contend with later, but it gives some quick and easy stuff they can throw at people to help keep them occupied.

Regardless, this is going to be a process not a miracle, hopefully each patch will just give little reasons to want to play like this last one with the much improved SP gain. Some people may feel one way or the other about it, and worry about whether it will be balanced or not in the end, but it can't be denied that it makes a lot of people happy with the new rate of SP gain. If they can give a little bit more reason with each patch leading up towards a couple big ones and knock out some really cool larger scale content (or at least the framework for it that they can expand upon after they start making money off the game), then start marketing the hell out of it with the "changes and improvements" for the PS3 release (which will be pretty vital, and subsequently alert people to the existing PC release), I can see it competing with the newly releasing MMOs in fall or so.

[Sephiroth]

I'm for the increased SP rates to stay, or close enough as to make no difference. I've been keeping my mouth shut, because I haven't really felt like getting into it with anyone regarding the issue.

The reason I quoted you is because that specific comment is extremely suspect. Every player of FFXIV should be able to have at least one crafting class at max rank without it upsetting the game. They should be able to have several if they choose. These aren't crafting professions that get tagged to your character across classes anymore, they are main classes. The SP rate, especially when having to solo all the way to max rank, should be fast, and how fast you could skill a craft in XI has nothing to do with it. Before Abyssea and the cap increase I knew people who could level 1-75 in XI in two weeks no problem, without astral burning, and this equates to that. The crafting class should not take substantially longer than the combat class, if they are both main class options.

It shouldn't be about balancing the SP rate to reduce the amount of max rank crafters, it should either be about changing the whole fucking system to drastically reduce the emphasis on crafting, or making it work. As long as they remain main classes, they should be able to be raised just as fast (at least, on average) as any combat class, from 1 to max, and everyone should be able to raise one or more crafts to max. Cock blocking people because they can't balance the system properly is stupid, they either need to make the damn crafting system work with the economy, or remove/change it.

You make some good points but the whole idea of crafting classes being main classes is retarded, same for DoL. The sooner SE scraps that the better. Having to balance shit around main classes that can't fight is why the story missions aren't challenging. They will never be challenging as long as SE continues this path. The latter Zilart and CoP fights were some of the best in XI were they not? I don't want this solo cutscene crap we have now. It was a good concept on paper to have all classes be able to do them but bad in practise.

If SE can balance the economy to support everyone having a craft at cap I'm fine with that. But the market is already dead on almost everything with less than 10 at 50. When making gil and repairing is the only thing your "main class" can do the economy needs to support it.

[Hyan]

You make some good points but the whole idea of crafting classes being main classes is retarded, same for DoL.

They can still be considered main classes even if they are not treated completely equal with the combat classes. Some diversification is necessary at this point.

It'll likely end up as a similar situation with PvE+PvP games where one audience may complain that the other is getting too much/little attention, but it's not like the crafting playerbase in this game is too small to matter. Obviously combat comes first now and in the future, for the simple reason that its still the main activity for the majority of players. Some compromises need to be made and ideas scrapped, like the idea of parleying through the main scenario. They can compensate for it with larger variety of crafting based quests or something if they want to.

Slightly irrelevant to the discussion, but I find it hilarious and a bit sad how people have this idea that "feature X needs to be scrapped, feature Y needs to be destroyed, feature Z is not how I envisioned it so they should just drop it". That's some dumb shit. Very few features if any in this game are not worth salvaging.

Makes me wonder what Yoshida is thinking about the UI overhaul Tanaka was planning. Delayed, or scrapped entirely? Does he think the current UI is worth salvaging? Bold, if so.

[Corrderio]

You make some good points but the whole idea of crafting classes being main classes is retarded, same for DoL.

I really don't think having DoL/DoHs as main classes was bad, the issue allowing story progression on them.

[Lucavi]

You make some good points but the whole idea of crafting classes being main classes is retarded, same for DoL. The sooner SE scraps that the better. Having to balance shit around main classes that can't fight is why the story missions aren't challenging.

Bingo. Its so stupid just watching your character do absolutely nothing in every CS, because they have to account for joe-blow gardener who has absolutely no fighting experience.

I understand what they were trying to do; I really do. It just doesn't work when the only form of progression in your game is through cutscenes, and not even semi-interactive ones like in Mass Effect.

[Elrina]

You make some good points but the whole idea of crafting classes being main classes is retarded, same for DoL. The sooner SE scraps that the better. Having to balance shit around main classes that can't fight is why the story missions aren't challenging. They will never be challenging as long as SE continues this path. The latter Zilart and CoP fights were some of the best in XI were they not? I don't want this solo cutscene crap we have now. It was a good concept on paper to have all classes be able to do them but bad in practise.

If SE can balance the economy to support everyone having a craft at cap I'm fine with that. But the market is already dead on almost everything with less than 10 at 50. When making gil and repairing is the only thing your "main class" can do the economy needs to support it.

I agree with your post almost entirely.

The story missions should definitely be combat-player oriented. There's no reason whatsoever for them to be "toned down" to compensate for people who don't have combat classes. If there was a group crafting ability, and there were some type of "crafting challenges" that weren't completely based on RNG that the person or group could participate in, they could diverge sections of the story to allow you to choose a combat or crafting approach at different parts. It would require more work, obviously, yet would make a lot more sense than what they've done to compensate currently.

As is, they should just focus on all combat fights in the story quests to be geared towards combat classes, just like you (and just about anyone else that has commented on the subject) have said. Doing otherwise was, and is, stupid.

As far as crafting being main classes ~ I don't know. I don't know how they would ultimately balance the economy to account for it, but I do know that they shouldn't have them as main classes as they are. There should be group oriented content, and just like combat classes, should have their own types and forms of content. Like Hyan mentioned, it will end up in a situation where they're either developing content for combat or crafting, but they if they're going to keep them like this they really need to. Regardless, both sides of it need group oriented content as well as the ability to do certain things solo. And crafting classes need content that lets them have more purpose to using their class than simply repairing gear or grinding an item for HQs/money, just like combat classes need more to do than just grinding on mobs.

That's the thing I don't think they realized when they decided to go ahead with this, is that having so many crafting classes as main classes isn't just about balancing the economy (although that's vital to do). They need to have persistent content available for people in both a solo and group oriented atmosphere, otherwise it's just a glorified profession that's no different than any other game that has too many annoying quirks that are supposed to make it seem more than what it is. If they can't and/or won't, then they should deemphasize them as main classes, adjust the damn mat rank requirements to coincide to make them less interdependent, put restrictions on how many can be capped, possibly charge for crafting leves, and return them to simply craft/profession skills for the character rather than central main classes. They wouldn't even have to get rid of the leves entirely or change how they actually craft.

They have a lot to worry about and work on right now, but they ultimately either need to make this system actually work and have purpose, or like you said, scrap it and gradually break it down to allow them to focus all their attention on other forms of content that will affect the rest of the game. For now, until and unless they do change how crafting/gathering is dealt with, they should still be assumed as and treated as main classes. Meaning the game and economy needs to be balanced to allow for it, and that content for them is just as important to have (even if it's implementation is secondary in priority) as content for the combat classes.



Edit: Man, just thinking about how they could do story missions with diverging combat and crafting emphasis. I could totally also see later missions that require groups of both, maybe 3-4 combat and 2-4 crafters, where the combat players need to hold off enemies while the crafters build special items or siege equipment or whatever for the combat players to use against the enemies or help fend them off. Just picturing how it would work, the current trade and interaction functions just wouldn't be able to handle it at all, but it would actually be a cool way of setting it up.

Don't have the normal crafting interface, have some kind of time based challenge approach with it being more like a puzzle mini-game for multiple people to piece together the item(s) and then toss them to the combat players (without a clunky trade interface bogging it down, maybe throwing it on the ground so they can just pick it up?) so that they could be used to actually fend off/destroy the enemies.

Them just popping out standard to progress a synth and doing a "normal crafting process" and trading it while the others are trying to fight would just be slow, clunky and unintuitive and destroy the potential such a dual purpose encounter could provide. Now that would be a cool way to handle quests/missions that put both together, rather than the weak ass escort quests/leves they'd been talking about late last year.

Because that's another thing, being able to solo all the story related mission content is stupid. That's one thing XI had right for sure, at the beginning maybe easier/possible to solo, but story/missions should require groups to work in concert to actually achieve victory. There's nothing grand or epic or satisfying about being able to face down the enemies of a nation solo and destroy them single handed. This isn't Dynasty Warriors.

[Enygma55]

I've also thought alot about how to incorporate crafters into main battle scenarios. Not sure about DoLs but there could be some fights where it takes part in stages like Omega/Ultima CoP fight. And like how the mammets drop items where you could possibly craft into items or weapons that would be extra effective on the main boss or disable it.

Not to restrict it to just 1 crafting class but maybe have the recipe be grouped into the metal crafts (armorer, blacksmith, goldsmith), the light armor crafts (weaver, leather, wood) and maybe alchemy/cooking for meds/foods that boost performance or grants special effects that help or prevent enfeebles.

This would also mean they'd have to beef up boss AI and abilities to make them nasty enough to handle.

General idea is you would somehow acquire the mats within the battlefield, and craft items that fall into the loot pool to be distributed properly to be used accordingly. I believe you can swap weapons within 1 class during battle but not into another class and that changing penalty is temporary.

Just throwing ideas out there. I want some epic battles damn it !

[Yoli]

I agree that the ffxi battles were more fun (to be fair, I haven't 100% finished the missions here yet, and I /am/ enjoying the storyline.... also to be fair the zilart and AA stuff wasn't in at the very beginning. Well... it was for us NA players, but it wasn't /really/ there at the begining. So it's natural to have the first story line be a tiny bit less epic whether that's caused by catering to crafters or not.)

Grouping for stuff like CoP etc was certainly burdensome at many times, but I really do think it was worth the burden. And I got to meet a few interesting people along the way. My adventuring companion here might be a nice enough taru, but it's not the same. I do wonder if we'll see a change though, in the future. The new dev team seemed to "get" that people wanted to party more and do stuff together. Hopefully they can extend that line of reasoning to the next quests, whenever those are put in down the line.

[Sephiroth]

I'm starting to doubt that SP is too fast now. Consider this...

11-20 is more SP than 1-10.
21-30 is more SP than 1-20.
31-40 is more SP than 1-30.
41-50 is more SP than 1-40.

If the game follows this pattern that means

51-60 will be more SP than 1-50.
61-70 will be more SP than 1-60.

So getting to 50 would only be 1/4 of the way to 70 and we all know that won't be the highest cap. We already know getting to 51 requires 110k, which is a big increase for one rank. Getting to 50 in XI was easy too even in its early days of 4k per hour being a great party.

Perhaps SE is planning for a cap rise in the next few months to fix whatever can't be fixed with the 1-50 economy. Although any cap rise is a lot of work for the DoL/H additions they would have to make. It would make sense to develop any end game content with a cap rise in mind because it will become less challenging when they do increase it to fix the economy.

[The Q]

Honestly they need to worry about fleshing out 1-50 before they even consider raising the cap. The abilities we have are, for the most part, VERY lackluster and then start to repeat themselves. If they had already run out of ideas this soon I'd hate to see what it'll be like for BIGGAR NUMBARS!

[Sephiroth]

There's little point fleshing out 1-40 when you can get there in two weeks now. Then if they add 40 content it will be obsolete a few weeks later when you hit 50. I rather they focus on 50 content than add shit that's going to go largely unused. I suppose they could add 50 content that's easy to port over to lower ranks. I'm sure they could add low rank hamlet defence scenarios pretty easily just by changing mob ranks for example.

[Cureslime]

They needed to worry about fleshing out 1-40 months ago but they fucked up and now it's too late. Sp grind hamlet defenses and maybe some level capped NMs are all they should bother with as far as battle content for 1-40 goes. They have too many other things to work on.

[The Q]

I'm talking about character abilities.

Anyways maybe, hopefully, this big change to the rules that has been foreshadowed will rearrange the level placement. Or something.

With this mindset why even have levels 1-40 in the game? Besides, just because you and some people you know are relaxin' and maxin' doesn't mean everyone is, or that there won't be new players incoming down the line. Need to have content interspersed to keep them around rather than the old bullshit "THE REAL GAME BEGINS AT ENDGAME" and nothing til that point.

[Hyan]

They have now, what, 50k or so active players? From their standpoint and from mine, I'd say "fuck those people" as far as catering to them with content goes. They need to aim higher than to simply keep those players around.

Of course they can kinda cater to both, which may seem silly to the current players but should be feasible. Similar to how they spaced CoP, content needs to start early and have level caps so that one can't really "outlevel" it. It also has to be spaced so that you can get to the next "milestone" within one week's worth of SPing without hitting the fatigue. There should be different content for every "week". In addition, doing the lower rank content should be a pre-requisitement for the higher rank content (not always, but often). To not make it seem like a bother to do lower rank content, the rewards should also be unique enough that they will be useful universally and not just within a certain rank range. Access to a new area, new situational ability/trait, etc.

Not to mention because I firmly believe that most of that shit should be done in a group setting, some kind of additional reward should be available for helpers (the first 3 XI add-ons come to mind).

It seems what I said above applies mostly to quests and such, but that's not the only way to do it. Content like hamlet battles and company system and whatever else they have in mind should start at a certain rank and last through all ranks above the required rank. Therefore Companies will still be relevant at rank 50 even if you get access to them at rank 30, and hamlet battles will still be around at rank 50 even if you get access to them at rank 20. Structural diversity should be important here. Company system should be different enough from Hamlets, and so on. Even within different systems there can be diversity, like being able to participate in NPC based company quests and content at rank 30, and being able to build and join a player-made company after rank 40 as well as getting to participate in a different type of company content around then, like the PvP battles.

Either way, it is foolish to say that it is too late to add low rank content. The content simply won't be designed solely for rank 50's.

[Kaylia]

I really don't think having DoL/DoHs as main classes was bad, the issue allowing story progression on them.

Yep. Main class or not is mostly a cosmetic choice for the UI and to a lesser extent, for the lore.


I agree they shouldnt be threated on equals ground for mission thought. Saving the world with pebbles is just not very interesting.

[Cureslime]

They're still going to need another 3-4 months to fix broken systems in the game and change the UI/combat as they see fit. Then they're going to either have to release a bunch of rank 50 dungeons or raise the level cap and add a bunch of crap to do from 51-75 when they start charging. They've done zip in 11 months as far as content goes because they just don't have the time when they're in scramble mode. When we get the March content update we'll see where they're at but the more time goes by the less 1-40 content matters because more people will pass it by completely. Better to just have people zoom through it and pretend it never existed and work on what will influence the greatest number of people to recommend the game to their friends. The media isn't going to help S-E market the game when they have such an easy target to skewer.