If the interview in any way represented player sentiment, the entire interview would have been 'when are you sorting out the bleedin servers?' 'when are you sorting out the bleedin servers?' 'when are you sorting out the bleedin servers?' 'when are you sorting out the bleedin servers?' 'when are you sorting out the bleedin servers?' Repeat and accept no deflection with fluff. I don't think anyone cares about unicorn mounts if they can't play the game they've paid good money for nearly a week after launch.
1. Queue system should have been in at launch. Hell, it should have been in during closed beta. The fact that it's not in, and that they're only considering it, makes me wonder what planet these devs are living on.
Just to clear things up, and i do agree with almost all of your statement, this little tidbit has to be fixed. There was a queue system in Beta2, Beta 3, and Beta 4. I was there and enjoyed the fact that it was there. They took it out after the Duty Finder took a shit and locked people out of all instances, preventing progress. We sat around for hours trying to use both the duty finder and just forming regular parties to attempt to get into Ifrit to complete it. The servers went down after that and when they came up they were hard locked at 5k users with no qeue and the lovely 1017 error.
Well, if these guys can't even fix their server issues 10 days after prelaunch and are still looking for it "during the week" i doubt there'll be a fix before mid to end September. That's in 2013 where hardware is not an issue for any company anymore.
They have coded their game in the worst possible way, making it almost impossible to fix quickly, probably due to the fact that they redid everything in one year, their source code must be a mess.
Now the game itself is completely unbalanced and 200% generic too, whenver u get the chance to play it :
- Chain fates to lvl like everyone cuz the other quests are totally pointless, just do story, class and fates then u win.
- Tanks don't work properly, especialy aggro. And i don't even want to consider PVP... Imagine the huge diff of power in PVP between a WAR and a PLD... No, PVP is going nowhere in FF.
- Dungeons are the easiest and most boring i've seen so far, especially since some games did very good job with them (like TERA, RIFT or GW2) here it's like being back in FFXI in 2000s.
And when u see that they are working on stuff like snowboarding and trading cards, when there is so many things to work on first... I mean adding "super hard" Ifrit is not really adding content, u got alreayd "hard" Ifrit...
But well, the most intriguing thing about this game is how J servers are empty... I guess SE didn't think that EU/NA people would be more interested than their J counterpart so they sized their servers accordingly and miserably failed.
Hope this game works well for the people interested, maybe it's just cuz MMORPGS as a whole are old story to me but i just can't get hooked to it.
You're a Hardcore Survivor!
You not only survived the zombie apocalypse, but did it with style! Your mastery of zombie knowledge, survival tactics, and weaponry is nearly unmatched. Congratulations, for you are hardcore!
Your games servers are a disgrace, you and your staff at Enix should be taking out and flogged in public!
This has been a worse launch than SWTOR and that's saying something!!!
Even if you do get on, FFXIV is full of holes... A good example would be crafting, whiles it's fun it is handicapped by things like only being able to mine/forage in set areas, try going to another city to mine and you'll find it's areas are empty, then add to that the fact that you need to travel to the different cities to craft as the quest givers / crafting master is only found in 1 (yes, one!) place.
Oh, and as I've hinted on quests, that's another fun issue. There isn't enough, try to level another path/class... lol good luck!
The build up some people are giving this game is a joke, they clearly are very dumb, blind or just zombie fanbois! This is a good advert why MMO's should be on PC, and PC only!
/rantover
What you see as problems with the crafting is really a good system to create interesting choices. Yes, you need to make an economical calculation to see if it is worth going to another city to mine or if you just stay at your current city. This encourages planning ahead so that you do not only go to new city for mining but also for other things.
- Tanks don't work properly, especialy aggro. And i don't even want to consider PVP... Imagine the huge diff of power in PVP between a WAR and a PLD... No, PVP is going nowhere in FF.
- Dungeons are the easiest and most boring i've seen so far, especially since some games did very good job with them (like TERA, RIFT or GW2) here it's like being back in FFXI in 2000s.
Lol, someone's mad because he doesn't know how to play a tank, and probably hasn't even made it to Brayflox yet. Cute you'd get mad at some level ~15 introductory dungeons as being too easy. The fights have mechanics, not a single one that is tank and spank which is good. Teaches the casuals how to play, preparing them for end game. Which based on all thepeople I've grouped with most aren't ready after fighting Garuda Hard mode.
I have not seen a better put together MMO since WoW. Get to level 20-30ish and see for your self. And do your self a favor and level a few classes. They play do differently and the cross class skills are so much fun.
God help them, though, if they haven't ironed everything out by the end of this week.
Or what?
We'll all have to wait another week?
Every major gaming site on the planet is watching this game. As a (pseudo-)reviewer on this site has said, you rarely get a second chance to make a good first impression.
Early Access? Failed.
Release? Failed.
If they don't have everything running smoothly by the end of this week, after their much-ballyhooed server upgrades, they will have done what no other publisher has managed to do in almost 12 years. They will have stolen the crown from Funcom for the most failed launch of a game in MMORPG history.
In other words, I strongly suspect that most of the devs, including Mr. Yoshida, are very worried about their job security right now. Because if I were a stakeholder in this company, I'd be screaming for blood.
At the moment, the only saving grace (and the reason that so many people are as pissed off as they are) is that FFXIV:ARR is a great game. I've only scratched the surface, but everything I've seen so far impresses me. It's just unfortunate that the EA/launch experience has turned a potentially great community into an angry mob.
1. Queue system should have been in at launch. Hell, it should have been in during closed beta. The fact that it's not in, and that they're only considering it, makes me wonder what planet these devs are living on.
Just to clear things up, and i do agree with almost all of your statement, this little tidbit has to be fixed. There was a queue system in Beta2, Beta 3, and Beta 4. I was there and enjoyed the fact that it was there. They took it out after the Duty Finder took a shit and locked people out of all instances, preventing progress. We sat around for hours trying to use both the duty finder and just forming regular parties to attempt to get into Ifrit to complete it. The servers went down after that and when they came up they were hard locked at 5k users with no qeue and the lovely 1017 error.
As I've already mentioned, I only jumped onto this ship the Friday before EA, so I've only been able to read about the beta experience from others.
Let me see if I understand what you're saying, though...
You're saying that the current server limitations and errors existed IN BETA, and yet they continued to market the game and launch as scheduled, knowing FULL WELL that the servers were broken BEFORE release?
If that's the case, then they've just made the jump from incompetent boobs to disingenuous turds.
Originally posted by Joekra Not sure I like the part about combining current classes for a new job. A job based on for example marauder wont be that much different to warrior because most of the warrior abilities are still marauder abilities. They would have to add a whole chunk of new job specific abilities or new class abilities to have a distinct playstyle on a new job.
Scholar and Summoner are both based on the same class. Their differences are mainly because of the new pets they get but at their base they are both Arcanists.
A DPS Job based on Marauder would likely have a stance to reduce enmity(to counteract the attack skills that have increased emnity) and then 4 new attacks skills.
Adding entirely new weapons for a Job is not entirely feasible because all melee attacks have original animation. So, doing a complete animation set for one Job would be very costly and time consuming.
But combining classes for a new Job is how FF14 works, its how it works right now. Its the core of the Job system. So, adding new Jobs using the same system only makes sense.
Yes I know all of that, but it's still something to think about. Another point would be having 8 base classes and just adding jobs will cause you to be level 50 on every new job that might release instantly after it's patched in, you will just do few quests for abilities but you are max level right off the bat, which takes the feel I get in other games when they release new classes.
That is exactly my concern. Adding a new class or race or starting zone to a game typically breathes new life into the game several months or years after release. It can usually give players another hundred hours or so of gameplay to enjoy on the side, whenever they're not working on "end game" stuff but still feel like playing. If they're unwilling to add, not just one, but eventually several new base classes and instead just want to work with the ones they have as much as possible, that would amount to a lot of development time spent on something that's only going to provide minimal additional hours of gameplay for players.
Instantly being given a max level new job because I already have its base class leveled is also not very fun, in my opinion.
As I've already mentioned, I only jumped onto this ship the Friday before EA, so I've only been able to read about the beta experience from others.
Let me see if I understand what you're saying, though...
You're saying that the current server limitations and errors existed IN BETA, and yet they continued to market the game and launch as scheduled, knowing FULL WELL that the servers were broken BEFORE release?
If that's the case, then they've just made the jump from incompetent boobs to disingenuous turds.
Oh i agree. They said that they grossly underestimated demand and the rest of the apologies were full of the same lip service. The game itself is amazing but there's a ton of us that can't play it and it falls on them. As an above poster stated, i'm concerned about the effect these very decisions have had on the community. During the betas the community was pretty amazing, but now....this whole thing has turned a once wonderful group of people into a toxic cesspool. I'm unfortunately feeling the strain as well and must agree with your last sentence. Not sure what's going to happen, but if they screw this week up, it will be a failure of next level proportions.
It's good to finally hear people will be compensated for time lost.Though I think Those who have been patient should be rewarded with more than just that personally.
It also still does not excuse the poor launch no matter what fans of the game think but it is at least a step forward to putting that behind.
Yeah, especially considering my FC has progressed to the final mission of the main story arc. Less than a week after its re-release, and they're already there. I was never even able to get Sastasha done before SE's incompetence caused thousands of people to be locked out of the game.
People are getting to level 50 in 3 calendar days' time by spamming FATEs.
Awesome. Another shallow cakewalk of a MMO where people will have run out of content within their first month.
Way to go, Yoshi-P. You strove to emulate the "standard, modern themepark MMO", and by golly, you did it. Poor content design, pacing, and all.
Not to mention the ever so thoughtful individuals who did their part for this -cough- awesome community -cough- by staying AFK all those hours, making it even worse. I hope my sarcasm came through on that.
So, no matter what Naoki does to "make it up" to the players in terms of time, he can't deliver on my ability to experience all that new content for the first time with my FC-mates and in-game friends. So, for all his apologies and promises of "reimbursement", Yoshida comes up far too short.
And no, it's not realistic for me to expect them to "wait for me". That would put me in the same category as the AFK'ers... and I, thankfully, wasn't raised to be that ignorant or self-centered.
Giving people more time as reimbursement is a given. It's the absolute minimum any halfway decent company would do. It's nothing to jump up and down over. What would be really great, and really demonstrate that Yoshida actually gives a crap is to give all those who've been unable to log in at all (going by their last login date and play time - which they can track), an extra month.
Meanwhile, the people who've been AFK'ing shouldn't get squat. After all, they've been playing the game all along, at everyone else's expense, by contributing to a bad situation, making it even worse. They haven't been inconvenienced at all.
as for new jobs using the existing classes: primary/secondary/tertiary
Dark Knight = Marader/Thaum/LAN
Samurai = GLD/ARCH/PuG
Red Mage = LAN/CNJ/THM
Ranger = ARCH/GLD/CNJ (replace GLD with THF of they add one)
one of the biggest drawbacks to the job system is the inability to support secondary weapons as a means of defining a job or class. For example, The samurai's primary weapon should be the Katana but they should also have a bow as a secondary weapon.
ranger primaries with a Bow and carries daggers as a secondary weapon.
Ninja would obviously have the Nijato, but what about throwing stars or a blow gun? I guess they could be a skill.
I must admit that the jobs get a lot easier and better if they did make a Thief and Mustakeer class.
gunblade = MSK/GLD/LAN
ok, random brainstorming over. Definitely want more jobs!
Frank 'Spankybus' Mignone www.spankybus.com -3d Artist & Compositor -Writer -Professional Amature
God help them, though, if they haven't ironed everything out by the end of this week.
Or what?
We'll all have to wait another week?
Every major gaming site on the planet is watching this game. As a (pseudo-)reviewer on this site has said, you rarely get a second chance to make a good first impression.
Early Access? Failed.
Release? Failed.
If they don't have everything running smoothly by the end of this week, after their much-ballyhooed server upgrades, they will have done what no other publisher has managed to do in almost 12 years. They will have stolen the crown from Funcom for the most failed launch of a game in MMORPG history.
In other words, I strongly suspect that most of the devs, including Mr. Yoshida, are very worried about their job security right now. Because if I were a stakeholder in this company, I'd be screaming for blood.
At the moment, the only saving grace (and the reason that so many people are as pissed off as they are) is that FFXIV:ARR is a great game. I've only scratched the surface, but everything I've seen so far impresses me. It's just unfortunate that the EA/launch experience has turned a potentially great community into an angry mob.
But the game itself did not.
How do you know all this other stuff? Sounds like a lot of assumption to me. Seriously, the game is a huge success and all they have to do is fix it soon and this launch will be brought up in future discussions as nothing more than a little side note.
Worried about jobs? No I don't think so. Yoshi has done what he was supposed to do. He's a developer, he probably has nothing to do with the data center infra-structure anyway. That's the networking guys' jobs. Sure, fire them and replace them but nobody even knows who they are anyway. Besides, they probably did their jobs. Setting up the infrastructure based on the estimates. Now, Maybe we can fire who ever set up the initial estimates. But, they probably did their jobs appropriately based on the projected sales. I know, we can fire the guy who's crystal ball didn't accurately predict how big this game would be.
Its awesome that they were able to rebuild an MMO in a year but its a bit disappointing that some features that were talked about numerous times before are several still updates away.
Its even more disappointing that they are willing to devote some time and effort to fixing Quality of Life issues. Yeah, server issues come first but I doubt that the programmers that would add quest tracking back into the game(for some stupid reason it was removed in phase 4 beta) would be the same people upgrading server queue system.
Also, disappointed to hear that they are unwilling to look at Fates. The experience gains from a full party chaining Fates is practically an exploit but the attitude suggests they are going to ignore it and hope it goes away.
Im really liking FF14 despite the issues but there are definite problems that need fixed and not everyone is going to patient and wait until some future update.
We dont want promises or apologies, we want action.
More like 2.5 years, and they cut a lot of corners also. The zones were decreased in size to like 1/50th of their original size. They REMOVED 90% of the original cutscenes and never put in replacement ones. Most of this is probably just a result of ps3 limitations though, to be fair. i guess there's only so much they could have done.
Comments
Or what?
We'll all have to wait another week?
Well, if these guys can't even fix their server issues 10 days after prelaunch and are still looking for it "during the week" i doubt there'll be a fix before mid to end September. That's in 2013 where hardware is not an issue for any company anymore.
They have coded their game in the worst possible way, making it almost impossible to fix quickly, probably due to the fact that they redid everything in one year, their source code must be a mess.
Now the game itself is completely unbalanced and 200% generic too, whenver u get the chance to play it :
- Chain fates to lvl like everyone cuz the other quests are totally pointless, just do story, class and fates then u win.
- Tanks don't work properly, especialy aggro. And i don't even want to consider PVP... Imagine the huge diff of power in PVP between a WAR and a PLD... No, PVP is going nowhere in FF.
- Dungeons are the easiest and most boring i've seen so far, especially since some games did very good job with them (like TERA, RIFT or GW2) here it's like being back in FFXI in 2000s.
And when u see that they are working on stuff like snowboarding and trading cards, when there is so many things to work on first... I mean adding "super hard" Ifrit is not really adding content, u got alreayd "hard" Ifrit...
But well, the most intriguing thing about this game is how J servers are empty... I guess SE didn't think that EU/NA people would be more interested than their J counterpart so they sized their servers accordingly and miserably failed.
Hope this game works well for the people interested, maybe it's just cuz MMORPGS as a whole are old story to me but i just can't get hooked to it.
You're a Hardcore Survivor!
You not only survived the zombie apocalypse, but did it with style! Your mastery of zombie knowledge, survival tactics, and weaponry is nearly unmatched. Congratulations, for you are hardcore!
What you see as problems with the crafting is really a good system to create interesting choices. Yes, you need to make an economical calculation to see if it is worth going to another city to mine or if you just stay at your current city. This encourages planning ahead so that you do not only go to new city for mining but also for other things.
Lol, someone's mad because he doesn't know how to play a tank, and probably hasn't even made it to Brayflox yet. Cute you'd get mad at some level ~15 introductory dungeons as being too easy. The fights have mechanics, not a single one that is tank and spank which is good. Teaches the casuals how to play, preparing them for end game. Which based on all thepeople I've grouped with most aren't ready after fighting Garuda Hard mode.
35 hours. 2 scripts. Well over 1000 login attempts.
Roughly 8 different errors along the way.
Still not logged in.
YAY UNICORN MOUNTS!
speaking of crazy hours,
i've played over 100 hours so far.
Every major gaming site on the planet is watching this game. As a (pseudo-)reviewer on this site has said, you rarely get a second chance to make a good first impression.
Early Access? Failed.
Release? Failed.
If they don't have everything running smoothly by the end of this week, after their much-ballyhooed server upgrades, they will have done what no other publisher has managed to do in almost 12 years. They will have stolen the crown from Funcom for the most failed launch of a game in MMORPG history.
In other words, I strongly suspect that most of the devs, including Mr. Yoshida, are very worried about their job security right now. Because if I were a stakeholder in this company, I'd be screaming for blood.
At the moment, the only saving grace (and the reason that so many people are as pissed off as they are) is that FFXIV:ARR is a great game. I've only scratched the surface, but everything I've seen so far impresses me. It's just unfortunate that the EA/launch experience has turned a potentially great community into an angry mob.
As I've already mentioned, I only jumped onto this ship the Friday before EA, so I've only been able to read about the beta experience from others.
Let me see if I understand what you're saying, though...
You're saying that the current server limitations and errors existed IN BETA, and yet they continued to market the game and launch as scheduled, knowing FULL WELL that the servers were broken BEFORE release?
If that's the case, then they've just made the jump from incompetent boobs to disingenuous turds.
That is exactly my concern. Adding a new class or race or starting zone to a game typically breathes new life into the game several months or years after release. It can usually give players another hundred hours or so of gameplay to enjoy on the side, whenever they're not working on "end game" stuff but still feel like playing. If they're unwilling to add, not just one, but eventually several new base classes and instead just want to work with the ones they have as much as possible, that would amount to a lot of development time spent on something that's only going to provide minimal additional hours of gameplay for players.
Instantly being given a max level new job because I already have its base class leveled is also not very fun, in my opinion.
I came across this old interview with Mr. Yoshida from November, 2012. Interesting read.
Too bad he didn't take his own advice.
Oh i agree. They said that they grossly underestimated demand and the rest of the apologies were full of the same lip service. The game itself is amazing but there's a ton of us that can't play it and it falls on them. As an above poster stated, i'm concerned about the effect these very decisions have had on the community. During the betas the community was pretty amazing, but now....this whole thing has turned a once wonderful group of people into a toxic cesspool. I'm unfortunately feeling the strain as well and must agree with your last sentence. Not sure what's going to happen, but if they screw this week up, it will be a failure of next level proportions.
Yeah, especially considering my FC has progressed to the final mission of the main story arc. Less than a week after its re-release, and they're already there. I was never even able to get Sastasha done before SE's incompetence caused thousands of people to be locked out of the game.
People are getting to level 50 in 3 calendar days' time by spamming FATEs.
Awesome. Another shallow cakewalk of a MMO where people will have run out of content within their first month.
Way to go, Yoshi-P. You strove to emulate the "standard, modern themepark MMO", and by golly, you did it. Poor content design, pacing, and all.
Not to mention the ever so thoughtful individuals who did their part for this -cough- awesome community -cough- by staying AFK all those hours, making it even worse. I hope my sarcasm came through on that.
So, no matter what Naoki does to "make it up" to the players in terms of time, he can't deliver on my ability to experience all that new content for the first time with my FC-mates and in-game friends. So, for all his apologies and promises of "reimbursement", Yoshida comes up far too short.
And no, it's not realistic for me to expect them to "wait for me". That would put me in the same category as the AFK'ers... and I, thankfully, wasn't raised to be that ignorant or self-centered.
Giving people more time as reimbursement is a given. It's the absolute minimum any halfway decent company would do. It's nothing to jump up and down over. What would be really great, and really demonstrate that Yoshida actually gives a crap is to give all those who've been unable to log in at all (going by their last login date and play time - which they can track), an extra month.
Meanwhile, the people who've been AFK'ing shouldn't get squat. After all, they've been playing the game all along, at everyone else's expense, by contributing to a bad situation, making it even worse. They haven't been inconvenienced at all.
I want Muskateer back!
as for new jobs using the existing classes: primary/secondary/tertiary
Dark Knight = Marader/Thaum/LAN
Samurai = GLD/ARCH/PuG
Red Mage = LAN/CNJ/THM
Ranger = ARCH/GLD/CNJ (replace GLD with THF of they add one)
one of the biggest drawbacks to the job system is the inability to support secondary weapons as a means of defining a job or class. For example, The samurai's primary weapon should be the Katana but they should also have a bow as a secondary weapon.
ranger primaries with a Bow and carries daggers as a secondary weapon.
Ninja would obviously have the Nijato, but what about throwing stars or a blow gun? I guess they could be a skill.
I must admit that the jobs get a lot easier and better if they did make a Thief and Mustakeer class.
gunblade = MSK/GLD/LAN
ok, random brainstorming over. Definitely want more jobs!
Frank 'Spankybus' Mignone
www.spankybus.com
-3d Artist & Compositor
-Writer
-Professional Amature
But the game itself did not.
How do you know all this other stuff? Sounds like a lot of assumption to me. Seriously, the game is a huge success and all they have to do is fix it soon and this launch will be brought up in future discussions as nothing more than a little side note.
Worried about jobs? No I don't think so. Yoshi has done what he was supposed to do. He's a developer, he probably has nothing to do with the data center infra-structure anyway. That's the networking guys' jobs. Sure, fire them and replace them but nobody even knows who they are anyway. Besides, they probably did their jobs. Setting up the infrastructure based on the estimates. Now, Maybe we can fire who ever set up the initial estimates. But, they probably did their jobs appropriately based on the projected sales. I know, we can fire the guy who's crystal ball didn't accurately predict how big this game would be.
More like 2.5 years, and they cut a lot of corners also. The zones were decreased in size to like 1/50th of their original size. They REMOVED 90% of the original cutscenes and never put in replacement ones. Most of this is probably just a result of ps3 limitations though, to be fair. i guess there's only so much they could have done.