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Final Fantasy XIV: Producer's Letter & New Poll
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Final Fantasy XIV Producer and Director Naoki Yoshida has penned a new letter that contains a comprehensive list of changes either newly added, planned or already implemented since his tenure began. Additionally, a new player poll has been posted for player input. The poll will not be up quite as long as the first but devs are looking for information from the game's player base.
I’d now like to speak about the battle system and its forthcoming changes. The tasks laid out for the overhaul of the battle system are being divided up and divvied out, and the office is a maelstrom as we try to settle upon the final specs for the system itself. Hardly a day goes by that we don’t have a battle-related meeting of some sort, and it is my strong hope that we finalize a direction to take as soon as possible after receiving your feedback and opinions from the second poll.
We are also looking into players using death warps (or blood warps, or whatever other name you wish to give them). We will be making a decision on how to address this following the release of quests. After all, having a bunch of adventurers committing suicide isn't very FINAL FANTASY-esque, now, is it?
Read more here.
Comments
I like where alot of the changes are going, but there are several I dislike, mainly consisting of quests markers, instanced content and possible removal of the claim system. Here are my thoughts too many of the forthcoming changes:
And it begins...le sigh {I'm sure you'll all know what I mean}
–NEW– Addition of icons to make quest NPCs easily recognizable
–NEW– Addition of quest NPC locations to maps
Nices, I've always enjoyed lots of on-screen woohoo when ya earn a level!
–NEW– Examination of dramatic effects when a new rank or level is attained
Excellent...one of the major changes I'm looking forward too are class specific gear like XI has. I just hope the rank required for said items are added along with this, which has been mentioned before.
–NEW– Addition of class-specific gear to enhance class uniqueness and goal-oriented play
I really like the maximum PT size of 8 thats planned! And the smaller 4 player too...
–NEW– Examination of maximum single party size
Changes aimed at improving battle balance
Saw this one coming...it'll be very welcomed though! {especially when you exhaust your bar and you're waiting for it to refill.}
–NEW– Auto-attack system
Awww, I like collision detection, though I'm sure it'll help when in large PTs and trying to move around and get near a mob.
–NEW– Removal of character collision
This will be a good one, too many enemy types that move too far away or {re}appear in odd placements.
–NEW– Adjustments to positioning algorithms of enemies in relation to PCs
Ah nice, fixes to those tiny blips in the terrain that snag your char. to a dead stop.
–NEW– Risk analysis of collision detection adjustments to improve movement response
Doh, as if its hard to explore or navigate as it is, even with the few areas that have mobs that aggro along the paths. Though if he means that there will now be some rather dangerous areas that require a PT to navigate...that could be great!
–NEW– Examination of free-ranging enemy distribution
Changes aimed at clearly defined territories and secure travel routes
Yeah, saw this one coming too, but it'll be nice not having to run back to the Aetheryte every 10min when playing with large spells that cost lots of mana!
–NEW– Addition of an auto-MP regeneration feature
Hoo boy, on one hand, wait no I don't like instance anything...it takes away from being a part of the community and well argh it just destroys the whole concept of an MMO funneling players away from each other...ARGH
–NEW– Instanced PvE Content (Dungeons/Raids)
And here are my choices regarding the Players Poll the Second:
1. What do you feel are the most significant issues with the battle system? (up to three answers)
Lack of class uniqueness.
Lack of party-based battle tactics.
Insufficient effect from attributes.
2. What type of class role would you like to use in combat? * {I like to play multiple roles, but my last favorite of FFXI was that of a Paladin, but I also enjoy being a White Mage too or Dancer/Blue Mage}
Tank. (protect allies by holding enemy enmity)
3. How frequently would you like to engage in party-based play? *
Weekends and weekdays. (more than 3 hours)
4. What types of game content would you like to undertake while in a party? (up to three answers) *
Ranking up.
Small-scale player versus environment (PvE) content.
Large-scale player versus environment (PvE) content.
5. What types of game content would you like to undertake while playing solo? (up to three answers) *
Ranking up.
Questing.
Small-scale player versus environment (PvE) content.
6. In addition to enhancing class differentiation with essential attributes and distinct appearances, we are also looking into introducing class and rank requirements for equipping gear. How do you feel about the implementation of such a system?
I am for it.
7. The fatigue system currently in place aims to prevent excessive “grinding” of skill and experience points. Have you felt the effects of this system while playing? *
Yes. ~ {I chose yes because I want the fatigue system abolished, its never really effected me yet, but I havn't played longer than 3hrs at a time in a given week thus far...but when these massive changes are made I prolly will play a great deal more!}
8. Would you prefer option 1, option 2, or the current system? *
1. Removal of the bonus point system, and the addition of automatic allotment of attribute points based on class
2. Removal of physical levels, and the addition of class-specific allotment of attribute points for each class based on rank.
Option 2. ~ Damned skippy, a skill based system definitely!
9. If the current target claiming system were done away with, would you be in favor of a system that rewards skill, experience, and loot only to the party that first deals damage to an enemy? Or would you be in favor of skill, experience, and loot being distributed amongst all parties that contributed to an enemy’s defeat? *
Skill, experience, and loot going to all parties taking part in an enemy’s defeat. ~ This is a tricky question to come up with a good answer too, because I actually prefer the claimed enemies system, never liked some yahoo to run by and attack the mob I am fighting...drives me nuts! Or sticking around and beating the crap out of it for ya. Though I do greatly enjoy a player stopping and asking, "do you need help?" and/or tossing a cure{s} or buff{s} on you. At the same time though I wouldn't mind a system that allows for a little gain when say a solo player or even a PT losing control of a mob and are on the brink of death, and should they yell for help, instead of all XP and loot lost a la FFXI, still reward the players, but also give some XP/Loot to the player{s} that helped as well!
10. If the current target claiming system were done away with, would you prefer for content such as dungeons and battle to be converted into instances as much as possible?* (“Instances” refer to those events and areas that can only be occupied by a single party, or certain characters, at once. This serves to prevent players from competing with one another for the same enemies, for example.)
* “Instances” refer to those events and areas that can only be occupied by a single party, or certain characters, at once. This serves to prevent players from competing with one another for the same enemies, for example. *
No ~ Absolutely not...I despise instancing as is! It greatly destroys the entire purpose of the moniker of MMO. The open dungeons currently are plenty large enough to house dozens or large PTs, and when they get broken down to the sizes of 4 or 8 max there will be even more room. The community just needs to be respectful to one another and not try to steal/claim mobs from each other unless its an NM. I rather enjoyed the thrill of the hunt/camp of NMs against other players...I guess you could call it my version of PvEvP content that doesn't entail hitting each other!
11. Please tell us what you feel would benefit the battle system, or any features you would like to see implemented. (up to 400 characters)
Keep the claim system, but allow rewards to players that help others that "yell for help" with some SP and loot. Bring back the Weapon Skill Chains from FFXI. Do make this a skill/class based system, with class specific gear you must quest for! Remove the silly fatigue system. Allow leves to be chosen from the Aetherytes of each camp and abolish the 36hr cooldown, make it like the FoVs in XI!
The new changes on the list I feel will improve the game by a lot. And no I'm not talking about quest icons over npc's head. But it slowly will become a more FF game than it is now.
"Awww, I like collision detection, though I'm sure it'll help when in large PTs and trying to move around and get near a mob.
–NEW– Removal of character collision"
^^ this is your biggest game playing boost you will get regarding performance..
Lazy to not fix it but it shows if they are removing that then there are serious issues with the engine..... Or they are fed up with the lower end pc market bashing them..
Character collision detection in mmo's is a massive resource hog.
I didn't like most of the items listed. Why change the max party size from 15 to 8? He will have to rebalance the difficulty all for the sake of arbitrarily reducing party numbers. Please for the love of god no Auto attack. Write an auto attack macro or buy/make a bot is you are lazy and dont want to play your character. I have an idea why doesnt this producer pull his head out of his arse and fix the market ward crashes and reduce gear degredation and add content!
My theme song.
He explained why the max PT size is being reduced... The max was 6 in XI and worked quite well, so 8 in XIV should be just as well. It'll also help a great deal in getting all players around a particular mob instead of having too many overlapped once the collision detection is removed. {Most of the mobs are rather small, and when you have 15 characters trying to get in and around say a marmot or ladybug, cactuar, bomb etc...its just too crowded} With 8 you'll have 2-5 melee, 2-3 ranged and 1-3 magic based....sounds good to me.
Of course, we're still on the fence a bit about balancing the degree of difficulty for fifteen-member parties, but I personally am of the opinion that everyone playing together is what makes the game fun. And so that is the direction in which I would like to take the game, and take it as quickly as possible. It was for that reason that I opted to balance the skill and experience points rewards first, with the intention of later tackling the difficulty level, rather than vice versa. Further balancing adjustments are ongoing, and are being based on the new designs in place for a maximum party size of eight members, as well as the smaller four-member party, both of which I've added to our list of intended changes.
I'm loving the new planned changes. I'm glad they are putting markers over npc heads, I don't have time to waste talking to every npc I pass, it's just a needless time sink.
Glad for the auto attack. I hope they don't do instances though so I picked on the poll keep it the same just change claiming rules and spawn times on mobs.
Glad for the class specific gear, it just makes it easier to focus on what to wear etc. Glad for the stat changes too, they need to make sense and be something to look for on gear.
Still want an auction house though, I can't stand the retainer system at all. Can't wait to see this stuff get implemented. Wonder how long it will really take to do it all and when the game might start seeing pop increase due to the changes.
My point is dont fix what isn't broken.
My theme song.
It makes perfect sense to set an optimal group number, and it makes even more sense to set two. It doesn't make sense to be able to keep adding more players until 15 cap and get more SP that way. It makes sense, however, to make it so 4 and 8 get you optimal SP and optimal results, yet adding more than 8 or 5-7 players instead of 4 won't hurt you.
I think this number was already in-game, but it was hard to notice. They're making it easier to understand.
Only one change is keeping the Marketplace (not retainer) system away from being an AH- ability to buy items from the search screen. Wanting an AH when they can just enable that feature to the existing system would be kinda useless, imo.
Retainers hold your items for you. AH can't do that. Just wanted to make that clear.
I think they operate on a 2 month schedule, so what we saw in late January would be implemented in early April or so. What we see now would be implemented in early-mid May or so. At least according to their schedule. Just a guess anyway.
It is broken though, which he even explained that too, did you read his letter? Sure behests are not everything, but even I tend to spend most my time doing those for my PT fix when I play, and I'd rather do them with as few players as possible cause over 8 you earn considerably less XP, plus its all over in just a few short mins. {I enjoy 3-5max}
Its easier to balance the game based on a smaller number of players per PT and then add in optional large scale raid content for 9-15 players. {which already exists in the form of the current NMs}
I kept a close eye on how things went for the week or so following the release of 1.15a. Not surprisingly, the maximum number of members and levels of difficulty for behests were less than ideal. Therefore, in the coming days we'll be looking into further improvements to bonuses awarded when participating in groups of nine or more. For now, I'd be happy to think that we've already taken care of some balancing issues that relate directly to future content.
the list looks good. its what they shouldve done to start with..silly emo devs
is it still F2P?
I dont even think it will be possible to take down at least 1 of the NMs with only 8 people. They can always adjust the difficulty of Leve mobs and sp to match a 15 person group and give equivilent sp bonus for the increased difficulty giving people a reason to run leves on 5star instead of 3 star because of how crapy the sp scales past 3 stars.
My theme song.
Then you can have another party of 8. Not a hard concept.
So you want to have 2 parties of 8 and go through the hastle of add a step and creating an allience.. like this game doesnt have you take enough extra steps already?
My theme song.
Can't please em all, but 3 PTs of 6 in FFXI to form an 18-man alliance doesn't take but a few seconds to form.
But the system in place now is just a more simple version of that....
My theme song.
Many of these changes worry me quite abit.
NPC Quest Indicator and World Quests: I do not want this game in any shape, form, or fashion to turn into another NPC bouncing quest grinder Like Aion, LotRO, WoW, etc. We already have 10k of those, and many of them do it better than FFXIV will ever be able to. The leve system has the potential to be a fantastic system if streamlined and expanded upon properly.
Auto-attack: FFXIV has zero use for this. In my opinion, it would completely bork the turn-based feel the system currently has.
Character collision: I hope they don't remove this. I like the feeling of soliding it gives people and creatures in the game.
There's nothing that will cause me to drop this game faster than it turning into YAT (Yet-Another-Themepark). Most of the changes are great, but the three above irk me quite a bit.
Hopefully quest indicators can be turned off for you type people
Just because it may have auto attack doesnt mean you have to use it.
If removing character collision imrpoves performance and reduces greifing then its ok.
You sandbox people are all about freewill and doing things on your own.. How about limiting YOURSELF, turn off quest marks, walk where ever you go, fight with one hand behind your back and blindfolded.. why do you need for the game to do these things for you and to you? lol
lol...
I think game is moving towards WoW a like, rather than FFXI a like...
What a shame.
Guild Wars 2's 50 minutes game play video:
http://n4g.com/news/592585/guild-wars-2-50-minutes-of-pure-gameplay
Everything We Know about GW2:
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/287180/page/1
oh FFXIV the little engine that couldn't.
I'm with you on this one.
My theme song.
Yes, if it means players will understand the optimal sizes better.
It seems that it's moving towards both FFXI and WoW a like.
What a damn shame indeed. I don't want to play neither of those games all over again. This director lacks originality. He could be a developer for a Western MMO company and I wouldn't notice a thing.
I think we already get it.... All it is going to do is hurt the people running Leves for SP. Which from what I can tell is how SE wants us to do it. Hell there isn't anything else to do besides grind Leves.
My theme song.
All I can see is that you are against it due to some dumb principle. It was broken and uninformative, it is being fixed, deal with it.