2.38 Patch Notes are up!!Follow

That's a silly argument. When I compare the price of item 1 and item 2, I don't care what the price of item 1 was 6 months ago. I compare what the price of the item is at the time of purchase. Right now, the prices are the same.

I was here in these forums before launch(both of them) saying that the same problems we saw in open beta would be in the game at launch. All I got was a bunch of flame saying 'it's just a beta' and 'we're only here to stress test the servers, they will release some miracle patch that removes all the bugs once the servers are sorted'. It begs the question... if we were really stressing the servers then why all the server issues?

Betas can have completely different purposes depending on how seriously the developer takes it. SE took feedback for their first beta back in 2010, but it pretty much went into file 13. I think they actually paid attention to the feedback they got last year, but the testing phases weren't long enough(in duration and between launch) to actually do anything about it. Self inflicted wound.

Other games I have tested have and are taking the feedback and using it to make refinements to gameplay and mechanics. Yes, bugs will almost always slip through. However, there are tons of smaller things like UI refinements and QoL additions and adjustments that can be added in a fairly short amount of time and greatly improve the quality of the product.

Remember the 5 macros you used to make in FFXI for gearswapping and casting a single spell? 12 years later, FFXI now has a system where you can swap an entire set of gear with a single line command. I can't really say why it's taken so long(and I know that players who use windower have already found ways around it), but players have been giving feedback about things like this since the beginning.

Perhaps it's just a cultural thing. Western developers have more of a 'how can we make this your product' attitude and eastern developers just have an idea and you like it or you don't. Maybe we're starting to get spoiled, but the east is going to have to accept that if you want to appeal to the west(and not just rake in their cash), you're going to have to adapt to their ideas. I guess it just bothers me that despite their fan base being the reason for their success, SE has been so resistant until recently to move more toward taking feedback and involving the community in the process.

Exactly. You can't treat fluff content as an endgame and expect an amicable result. In reality, personal housing access probably should've come FOR FREE when selecting your GC. Instead, we get FC housing first (which isn't really in the spirit of housing people clamor for when wanting to get their personal digital feng shui on), the flawed concept of expensive personal rooms some months after that, and now finally personal housing under a system that apparently can't handle it, in part because FC housing exists and is munching up that real estate.

If I wasn't lazy, I could tally up all the plots per ward per area and multiply that per server and tell a certain someone that's not even close to placating the potential 1.5m+ users out there, but I guess it's far easier to assume everyone is in a philanthropic FC swimming in gil that allows anyone to edit anything within its walls. Even eliminating the demographic that doesn't give a deuce, we're probably still nowhere close. So, let's keep in mind, going 1-50 on that first job via questing and taking nothing but the gil rewards gives something in the neighborhood of 400k or so. That's nowhere close to buying any kind of house for a fresh 50, especially if that's what they're really after. So, in my book, we're back to content the majority can't experience even if there isn't much functionality or practicality to it.

The 1.0 launch wouldn't have been helped by a longer beta. The issue was that the design that took them years to implement was so flawed as to be unsalvageable, and they didn't realize this until the beta which is the last step before launch. To go back to the drawing board at that stage was to increase your costs astronomically, delay the game indefinitely, and admit to a severe failure. So, it was no surprise they gulped their pride, ignored their testers, and tried to launch it anyway, only to realize the public wasn't going to be fooled and they screwed themselves.

That's really what I'm saying here. Minor tweaks and bug fixes to your nearly complete game are what you should be doing in a beta, but major revisions are a crisis because you're going back several phases in the software life cycle in order to fix major issues, and in a game like an MMO, it takes years to get through those phases. FFXIV is the perfect example. It took three years to relaunch the thing with a new engine. Three years. It wasn't something you could fit in during a beta test.

And FFXIV:ARR didn't need a longer open beta, either. It was already in good shape, and the tweaks they needed to make were largely taken care of in the earlier phases. Yes, it did reveal a popularity they didn't expect, but at that point, I don't know what they could have done about it. Delay the game two weeks and tick off their customers even more? I think extending the free trial period while scrambling to add new servers was the better move, similar to what WoW did back in its completely swamped days.

To be honest I don't see how the content being locked isn't something both casuals and hardcore grinding population isn't interested in. In fact it is doubtful that there exists a kind of content that could be locked out from the majority without them not "suffering" from it in the short term at least. In that light the solution is either to not make content that takes more effort than what 50% of the playerbase can put in or to make such content as optional as possible (or not based on the most time spent). I simply don't see how the game would be better off if all content were so accessible that most players could get their hands on all of it. There is value in rarity and taking away that rarity would make the game bland in my opinion. Making the rare/exclusive grinding content fluff is the fairest option, outside of not having any rare things at all.

Edited, Sep 17th 2014 7:23pm by Hyanmen

There were only 8 months between closed alpha and launch of 1.0 version. I completely agree that longer beta wouldn't have helped 1.0, but to be honest there was nothing that could've salvaged that wreck. 1.0 was already kinda based on a wacky classless class system and it didn't help that much of the work was outsourced. There was literally nothing cohesive about any of the ideas presented in that game.

That said, they did have plenty of time to apply the brakes. I was a second wave alpha tester(thanks ZAM). It actually didn't matter if you were first, second or third wave because the client was broken for nearly 5 weeks following what was supposed to be the official start of alpha service. We all got in at the same time assuming we had the patience to P2P the client for (reportedly) over a day for some people. That was the first sign. The latency issues at that time were forgiven as even I thought that would be at the least improved, but they still persist some years later. We've gone through 3 other battle systems before finally settling into the 4th. Not my favorite, but at least it's acceptable. Point being, there were many people who were vary vocal about how poorly 1.0 would be received and all of them well before it was too late.

Yes, the game sucked then. It hurt to admit it as a fan of FF and I completely understand the backlash I received(and sometimes still do) here on these forums. What some people don't realize though is that when you care about something, you tend to be more critical of it than anything else. Many people sweep it under the rug or feel it's bad to talk about issues in XIV so they ignore it, but those voices are the engine for what has happened to SE in the past several years. You now have official forums(a lot of negativity and trolls, but still valid points and ideas as well as some good suggestions and a forum for feedback), there have been surveys taken with results posted for people to see and SE is much more forthcoming and transparent when it comes to what used to be reserved for their eyes only. Kudos for that.

I agree with you for the most part here. A longer beta would not have improved 1.0 simply because it should have been scrapped altogether. ARR would be much further along even that it is now(which is at least respectable) if they had just put it out of it's misery back then and started over on the mechanics. I would have sucked to go without anything at all for the time we had 1.0(at least for those who liked it), but at the same time we'd be much further along than we are if they hadn't put even more time into trying to float it. At best it's a wash because they probably did gain some valuable knowledge and feedback with what they did in that time.

I'm not suggesting that it would have been polished to perfection, but the time you spend refining a game while it isn't live is far more valuable then the time you can devote when the game is actually live. All you have to do is compare what Yoshi and crew were able to do with 1.0 in the time that it was live to what happened to the game between the final event of 1.0 and ARR launch while the game was offline. It's like night and day. When people aren't paying for service and you can take the game offline at your discretion, you can get a lot more done in the same period of time you'd use to run live servers.

Does FFXIV have test servers for upcoming builds yet? That's another avenue that wasn't explored at the time I left that could be of great benefit to them. There are many things that both XI and XIV lack or implement very slowly that would have come to light with more testing. A lot of times it's very small improvements that have a profound impact. Remember when you had to go through 5 windows just to sell an item? Remember when you couldn't sort your inventory? Remember when it was a pain in the *** to equip gear when you changed classes? These are all very small things that really make an enormous difference and as the days wear on you'll still see additions to XI and XIV that make you think 'why wasn't it like that all along'. These are all things I pointed out and read about in tester forums.

I noticed people just farming mobs near Mor Dhona while doing my quests there.

What exactly is that stuff used for, I've found a few pieces of it. Should I stick it up on the MB? Or should I save it?

That is what has been brought up by allot of people and some thought they would add something like that.. Basically apartment/condo type of thing with gardening either in pots or a balcony or even a community garden.. They could have community stables for those without FC.. These could have been cheaper than land/house type of thing... Honestly I dont know why there are not stables in town to take care of chocos..

Yea nothing for sure but in some research I did on this and these are assumptions based on what was said but in patch 2.4 marriage is supposed to be allowed and also the owner of the house is supposed to be able to give rights to other people.. So it is assumed the rights are for marriages. But these are assumptions ..
I guess it has been stated they are looking into giving permissions from the friends list too..I have found very little to back this up though.....


Edited, Sep 18th 2014 10:21am by Nashred