LIVE Letter (05/24/2014) Summary and ScreenshotsFollow

Pretty clever way of keeping CT relevant, TBH.

I thought you only needed Ifrit Extreme's win to get both Moogle and Leviathan Extreme? I'd figure they would follow that same pattern.

I'm sure I'll complete the story part of it and kill baby Ramuh and never see EX just like Levi so no worries :)

btw shouldnt 2.3 noes also mention further continuation of Zodiac weapons? since it was originally supposed tp be 2.25 then 3.0...



does delaying i to 2.28 make 3.0 out of he question now?

incorrect:

proof of relic increasement patch rate

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/678050-final-fantasy-xiv-online-a-realm-reborn/68831868

proof that relic was originally supposed to be 2.25:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/162520-Letter-from-the-Producer-LVI-%2804-23-2014%29?p=2054173#post2054173

no basically what im\ asking is will the next relic upgrade come with 2.3 as mentioned in the past or will that last one being pushed from 2.25 to 2.28 effect the upgrade that 2.3 was supposed to bring?

Thanks for pulling together the summary Arcari!

Trying to remain positive and non-abrasive here...

Things that are Rehashed:
2 Hardmode Dungeons
Party Roulette

New things:
Ramuh
Hullbreaker Isle
Chocobo Breeding
Individual FC Private rooms.

What we haven't heard from that is conformed 2.3
Hunts/Zodiac Quest expansion
Frontlines
Further Information as to Guns/Daggers as new classes/jobs.

I can understand a growing disinterest in the game. But please try not to generalize so much.

As far as Personal Housing, they haven't given a date. They have, however, said that they had to delay and watch how Free Company Housing expansions went and weigh in it all first. Its coming, but no solid timeframe.

Ramuh is just another primal battle same o same o...

Choco breeding might be fun I liked it in FFXI...

Im sorry but updates go like this :
A couple new hard mode dungeons
A new primal.
About 3 to 5 hours of additional story.
A hour of hildy questing..
A new party mode..
More weapon upgrades..


pretty much the same thing everytime.. It not enough to pull me back..
whats really new other than choco? really...
Tired of primal battles.. I want something completely new. I rather skip the dungeons and primals and give me more story.
Choco and gardening would be cool if I had my own place.

You're saying that as if it wasn't clearly outlined to us at the start. We literally got told that was the course of updates between expansions with explanation of 2.1 Except along with that set, we get new features

Like Frontlines.
Like Chocobo Breeding.
Like Hunts.
Like (Possibly) New Classes/Jobs

The rest, you guys were told up front. If you're still lingering around for some groundbreaking changes to the game, you're waiting till at the very least expansions, and that should be absolutely nothing new to you, Lebarge, We didn't get Sky or Dynamis till post Zilart, we didn't get Limbus and Sea until Cop, and so forth.

My advice to the two of you at this point is to unsubscribe and buy a new video game every 3 months. This may be more productive to your expected gaming habits. However you'll often pay out an additional 15-20 dollars a game. However you'll likely be more satasfied until the expansion comes around, in which case the majority of the content that will be generated between now and then will be easier/faster to move through, but still compounded enough to occupy your time for a longer span than if you sat with an active subscription, consuming content as fast as possible every time there is a new patch.

You cannot, in any way, shape, or form, expect content to last you three months without a severe stalling mechanic, and players area already very angry at the current stall mechanics in the game (Atma, Best Gear only in Coil, Bottle Necks in progression such as Titan Extreme, etc.)

This simply does not seem to be the genre for you, at least not with a consistent playstyle, not if you can't entertain yourself with the content available.

I had similar problems with FFXI later on in its life cycle, and had adopted a similar habit to the one I've described to you. And I can tell you I enjoyed my pass-time much more.

The change for me that enabled me to enjoy FFXIV more was simply incorporating my roleplaying habits in to the game, which I realize may not work for you guys if you're not interested in that sort of thing. However I do disagree with the idea the the game is responsible for the entirety of your entertainment. Listing 2 recreated Dungeons (which they've so far done excellent job of making each Hard Mode Dungeon feel different than its original in playstyle, yet keep a certain atmosphere involved. I absolutely ADORE Halitali, that was the smartest progression of storyline I've seen in a while.) And the third new one as something expired in an hour and a half, completely disregards the replayability of that content. For me, it takes far longer to burn out on runs I personally have fun on. This is the same for Primal fights.

Then there's the challenge sector. Just as a point of courosity, have either of you cleared Coil 5? (I'll leave Second Coil alone in this.) I'll tell you right now, my group has not. That content is still live to my group and I, and there's still the entirety of the content after that. Same with Ifrit Extreme and Leviathan Extreme, and Good King Extreme. I've just yesterday got my Atma weapon. So we have to get into the conversation of content you're ignoring/not passing, when you start making arguments about lack of content or lack of new content.

There is so much to challenge in a simple generalizing statement that it makes it very hard for me to even engage conversation, when you try to put new content in question. Honestly, however, as I stated before, it just feels like you two are not playing to your approprate style. You prefer your content in large chunks and don't wish to revisit things. I feel as if your time and money would be best spent elsewhere until an expansion comes out, and you can consume content to your hearts content when you return, and when you're done there, you can leave again, spend your subscription costs on new games coming out, and return again.

Nothing wrong with this playstyle, I genuinely believe you guys will be happier for it.

You should know by now that Trials have infinite staying power so long as a Roulette is for it. Hardmode Trials have staying power, even without trials, so long as players desire a Relic/Zodiac weapon. And you'll likely see a Extreme Mode Roulette in the future, especially seeming how this content is gated to one another. Therefore the longevity of the content itself is as long s SE wants to.



Staying power to whom? Again, higher ilvl players are enticed by roulette. Lower ilvl players must go through lower end content to meet the ilvl requirements for higher content. The Zodiac quests have shown that they want you to revisit dungeons of old, and there will likely be more flashback quests for that to come. Heck, my group still occasionally goes through Haukke Manor normal for the furniture piece sets.

I still get Pharos on roulette by the way. Sad they nerfed it, but awell.




Calling this out as a jaded remark with no grounds. We haven't even seen the preview of it yet. As far as the "everything must be accessible to everyone" comment, Sands and Oils of Time would like to have a word with about these last three months. You have no idea how annoyed I've been about the whole 'weathered' tag on virtually everything I buy with currency these days.



Please speak for yourself here. To those of us in the RP community, this is goddamned lifesend for those of us who couldn't afford a mansion. The usability of our FC houses just went up a whole hell of a lot regardless of the size.

And again, there is no conversation of 'the long run' in an MMO environment. All things are subject to changes and edits. Just like how Small Houses got a basement.




For the PVP crowd, that's content. For thsoe who were interested in PvP earlier, and was not satisfied with Wolves Den, this is a potential way of getting back into it. Or for those, like me, who were curious, this is something potentially great. Donno, we haven't even gotten a preview.



What? Arcanist wasn't a new class?

And before that? The class revamps and the introduction of jobs?

Done with work, posting what I got, will reply more when I have more time. Sorry I couldn't address everything here Hio.


Edit: Home safe and sound, replying before obligatory nap before raids.



Again, this is entirely assuming that everybody is on the same skill level, starting at the same time, with the same desires and rates to the game.

Put bluntly, there is always, always going to be people complaining that there's nothing to do about that - it's entirely based off of subjective opinion. You're going to get those who create party finder groups only grinding the first two bosses of Brayflox Hard, and those who absolutely detest such groups, or, like me, are impartial to both.

I'll tell you right now, the top Free Companies of this game, the ones that are actually clearing the hardest content - they're not complaining about being bored. The people who are complaining, are those who are willfully ignoring content with longevity in trade for pursuing the path of least resistance and complaining that such paths are short or full of repetition.

Are we to appeal to this sort of playstyle, and honestly, on a limited budget and timeframe, how can you? As I said before, there's no real way to sustain that sort of content consumption without massive cheap time-sink, and for the patches we've gotten so far, there's been sizable chunks of repeatable, varied, content each time. It's just that their rewards aren't best in slot, so they go ignored.

I find myself annoyed here. We're really talking about a narrow but vocal demographic in our overall population as if it's the most important. We're also piling on different kinds of complaints of, honestly, opposing natures, thinking they're all the same base. We really cannot have our cake and eat it too in this circumstance, and some measure of being realistic in our expectation has to be established here before we can really have a conversation. Just how much resource do you think should be thrown where and why on these matters. Because, from what I've seen, I'm hearing a lot of very general complaints, without much in the way of ideas towards solutions, or expressions of what was really desired.



Edited, May 27th 2014 8:30pm by Hyrist

If chocobo breeding is anything remotely like it was in XI, it'll take you three generations of bird breeding before you end up with a decent creature. I nicknamed my first chocobo, which was black and hatched from an egg that dropped in an Assault or something, "Hood Ornament." He was beautiful and totally useless. It wasn't until a year later that I had a bird that ran as fast as the rental chocobos.

Depending on your datacenter, you'll run into many, many more people who will immediately quit Lost City than you will who will willingly and want to run it in terms of content, same with Pharos, even with it being nerfed (not that it was hard at all if you didn't tunnel vision) people will immediately quit, you don't see PF for it and they've pretty much stated that unless it's main raid content or story related, the content won't be progressive and thus kills the staying power. Roulettes help fill in the gap for those who are trying to get into it, which is why as the week goes on, the late runners aside you will notice seek time for dungeons like CT/PS/LC/Moogles and so on get longer and longer depending on your DC grouping and class, even as tanks it can get pretty lenghty later in the week.

The killing part is though. not having people wanting to run the dungeon hurts those who want to run it, which is why the less staying power it has as general content, the harder it will be to honestly run it as roulette in no shape or form guarantees you'll get x specifically, just something within that bracket.



Direct statement from Yoshida and Community observation, not only from ARR but MMOs in general, so it's not groundless, if you observe any MMO community these days when a developer release certain types of content you have to "work for" you'll get a massive outcry saying it's not fair and should be accessible to everyone, look at the people who complained about the glamour system, it does nothing special but let you run around naked basically (let's be real, that's the main reason people want vanity systems), and when they realized they potentially couldn't (you need a mastery book to make it) there's was an outcry that it's unfair to those who didn't craft and so on and that they'd have to buy what should be "free".



These are accessible to everyone as no one is barred from this unless they simply can't get past content and quite honestly, if you still can't get past T5 and been trying to, even with 15% buff..this definitely shouldn't be accessible to you, and I mean "you" as a general statement, hence why it's a reason they're adding it to CT2.



Well, would SE be able to sustain ARR on the RP community? There's a lot more people who'd prefer higher funcationality than those who just want RP fodder, which is my point that Housing and Individual housing is pretty pointless currently, they really do nothing for your gameplay, which is why they're setting out to add items that gives buffs akin to FFXI furniture in concept (place item, get buff from it.)



Technically, no. It was in the dats since 2010, it was originally a trap user and mechanical staff user, so we knew Arcanist would be coming sooner or later but it was reworked. The Jobs also had data in the .dats which weren't specifically tagged as such (e.g DRG) but we knew already, also Jobs in this game are specializations more so than actual new entities.

The Arcanist in ARR is a combination of everything 1.0 THM and CNJ but with a pet, so it is yet isn't new at the same time. THM had even more DoTs than ACN does lol. So 4 years later we're finally hearing about potentially Musketeer, something that was actually "new" in comparison to the other classes existing.



This is the other issue, Yoshi has said himself he doesn't want new people starting to get so far behind or there to be such a huge gap between old and new players which is why the content design is what it is, so it wasn't just a baseless statement, people will cry if x,y,z isn't accessible to everyone which is why they moved Sands/Oils to additional areas since CT will be far more accessible (unless they throw a curve ball) and on the off hand, extends the life of that content through 2.4.



This depends, since like any MMO, the "hardcore" won't complain even if they are, they're too focused on trying to get "world first", doesn't mean they're always having fun or satisfied, some do it out of commitment. Not to say no one has fun doing that, but you won't always hear it because some treat it like work and whether you're bored of work or not, you have to do it. The only ones I've honestly seen that would ignore content are those who want to "have a lot to do and take it at my pace" and are 2-4+ patches behind, aside that I usually see people who go through content fairly quickly after patch goes live and only the farmable content survives or the locked out content, e.g coil/ct. Primals do serve a purpose, but you're not going to see anymore hardcore push to do them once you're done with Relic (no reason to ever have primal weapons, Titan's being debatable until Zenith) and Extreme Primals those weapons are ok, but in some instances, Allagan (T5) is better, but even that is weekly lockout, so it's lasting artificially.



This is what I hope for but what I mean by it being maimed out the gate. This is why our barding does nothing special, he doesn't want to create ANY kind of gap that can potentially show up.

So while not to the point of having a useless choco, having varied chocos beyond color will never happen unless of course by some magical fairy spell Yoshi changes his mind we'll actually get special chocos from breeding, but it will probably be a glorified "reset button" for our companion.


Edited, May 27th 2014 6:13pm by Theonehio