EDITORIAL: The Silence of the DevsFollow

To be honest I think WAR goes a little too far in Developers working with the Community. They listen to the vocal minority and nerf/buff classes based on what is popular on VN boards. That being said however, SE doesn't go far enough and almost never listens to the playerbase, or at least doesn't appear to.

At risk of starting a flamewar, why is ACP considered a failure? I have been having a good time with it in what I've done so far. It expands on a story I was already interested in and provides me with a cool little piece of gear at the end. Yea, farming Seeds or whatever was kinda lame because it was time consuming but it wasn't a total flop. I keep seeing people saying that ACP was a failure but provide no evidence as to why that is. Did it not sell well? Were people disapointed with the story or the lack of gear? I just don't understand. You pay 10 bucks for some missions, cut scenes (the initial cut scene was worth the price IMHO) and a nice piece of gear.

During the December Developers Interview, the question was raised about the length of time it would take to complete the add-on content. They said that it would take two weeks, maybe less for hardcore players and up to 2 months for casual gamers. That set a very high expectation that the missions were going to be longer or at least have JP midnight blocks in between missions. However, due to players expectations that came from that interview, a majority of the player base was disappointed when they were offered fetch quests killing low level mobs and very short missions. There were people who beat ACP no less than 8 hours after the servers went back up.

So with this, you have a lot of people who consider ACP to be a failure, however, I do wonder if money had not been involved, would people still feel the same way about it.

I don't think there is one person in my ls that things ACP was a success, they all believe its junk, but they want the final piece, most of them if not all believe they paid 10 dollars for a piece of armor.

I think people that beleive acp is good have very low standards, SE is capable of doing alot better then that, I really do expect more from them, the missions were just thrown together BS, but I knew it would be just a bunch of time sinks.

despite a pain to say claim a gob, we have 7 people in party farming gobs, killed well over 50 gobs, only 2 people got the key item. Thats not fun,or a challange unless you consider the challange restraining yourself from tossing a mug through your monitor.

if this was free,then its free peopel wouldnt have complained as much, but SE straight up Lied to get your $10, I can't see how anyone can say they didnt. They falsly advertised their product, and if they were in the states they probably would have been sued, and they would lose.

Edited, Apr 21st 2009 2:48pm by xbobbobx

If you want them to do something, email them via POL. >.> This thread has over 100 replies, but probably less than 10 people have actually emailed SE about it. If everyone who complained here actually emailed SE, there might be a reaction




Pikko, I know the thread for this was long gone as of several months ago, but thats the one thing you guys need to ask them. Why do NA's (and other non-jp's) get sub-standard treatment? We don't get a built-in IME translating tool (not auto translate) and we also get the short end of the stick with interview answers.

Once again, why can't we rate admins up?

I'd guess that if you asked them how long it would take a "hardcore player" to reach level 75 in a job, they'd say even longer than 2 weeks. Yet when expansions come out, we hear about people getting 75 in the new jobs a lot sooner than that, usually within a day or so.

In other words, SE taking the conservative route with their estimates doesn't seem that unusual to me for some reason.

Well written Thayos.

It's not just RDM/BLM that got nailed by this nerf. I'm not sure the entire scope of the BLU/COR/BRD impact (though it sounds pretty bad on BRD from what little I've read so far), but don't forget DRK has the same Enfeebling Magic cap that WHM does, and only 5 skill levels difference from BLM (C as opposed to C+)

It's bad enough even with 4 enfeebling merits and macroing in my two pieces of Enfeebling gear I sometimes didn't stick sleep at a critical point before, but not knowing if it's gonna wear fast doesn't help anyone's stress levels any. Especially when any other job with access to a sleep spell wasn't handy and I'm the only possible enfeebler there to begin with. (I will also admit most of my Binds have been crap in duration before this update).

I have to second this, the silence has been deafening. As for some of the anecdotes of GM convos, I'm wondering if it's a case of they don't know, they think they know but aren't sure, or they're not allowed to tell us.

This isn't exactly filling me with the utmost of confidence. Square-Enix, if you are reading this, you need to let us know something and let us know soon. Is this a bug? Is this intentional? Are you unsure and still investigating? Maybe someone didn't carry the 2? This debate is not going away until we get a satisfactory answer.

I saw Square Enix Community on the recent visitors list a few minutes ago. I'm willing to bet they read this thread. Hopefully now they will see they can't just give us the silent treatment and have us sit and take it like good little dogs. We will be heard!

That's just not true. I'm not saying that the BST nerf was 100% bad, but it was a nerf. Leveling a job isn't the only way to establish if it's a nerf or not. Look at RDM and BLM, the enfeebling nerf doesn't hurt XP parties as much as it does endgame stuff.

BST's used to fight Tiamat by making a zoo and spamming pets on him. A zoo is now impossible because the pets depop. In the old days, the pets would slowly regen and walk back to their pop radius giving you time to pet swap. So yeah if anything, BST zoos were destroyed by the nerf.

For most XPing and FoV, it's not that bad.The /JA 'Stay' helped a lot too. But compared to pre-nerf Tiamat, nobody can say that wasn't a nerf because it was. It was on par with the end of BRD tanking using the exploit hate tool from the 2 mazurka. But again, SE didn't nerf mazurka because of BRD tanking, they nerfed it because people were using it to steal claim and MPK...*cough* Spike Flail.


Edited, Apr 21st 2009 4:04pm by ShadowedgeFFXI

First off, why isn't this editorial on the News Page? It would get a lot more attention that way.


Secondly, I just wanted to post these comments:


I've noticed that it's not just SE that acts like that. I'm reminded of Konami's release of Suikoden V, and how the English release came with a tiny art booklet, but the Japanese players got a strategy guide sized one filled with details, stats and a lot of extra art of each character... I think they just feel it's easier to pander to the people who are closer to home... or that it's required to keep them happy, where it isn't with people that live half a world away.


While reading this thread, this comment made me think of something. What if they were purposely messing with monster resistances as part of their plan to force mages to the front line? Basically, mages would be less effective so parties would be forced to invite more of them to compensate for the loss. This would make a loss of melee power, which would mean letting RDMs and WHMs (with their new armored cures) melee and/or inviting nukers to cover the extra support/debuffing need while still doing damage.

It's a stupid way of thinking, and I'm probably up way off on it, but it does seem like the kind of skewed thinking that SE sometimes shows.



The milkers are no doubt, the same people who insist on getting every last drop out of FFVII. There are people who care, but they often end up leaving large companies when the companies start having a bleed-it-dry mentality and don't want to move on. That's how Xenosaga started. While SE is creating a decent amount of new stuff, they seem hellbent on re-releasing as many old games over and over again and making as many FFVII spinoffs as possible. How many years have people been waiting for them to make Chrono Break? It doesn't matter, because selling a DS port of Chrono Trigger was an easier path to money. How many different releases of the original Final Fantasy have there been? At least six. They do this because they know people will throw down money to buy the re-releases as long as they add a small extra dungeon or updated graphics.

While I really do love FFVII, I agree that it was where Square started going downhill. Since moving to the PlayStation, every release in the series has been more about showing off fancy special effects and graphics than it has been about writing a good story that people will love. (I'd say that the exceptions to this were FFIX and FFXI.) Fancy graphics and special effects just seem to attract more customers than good storywriting... the same goes for movies these days. I don't even go to the movies anymore, because it seems like all the writers put about a half hour to an hour of fight scenes riddled with special effects in, just so they have to write less. Going back to my FFVII spinoff thing, that's exactly what the last half of Advent Children was: a long fight scene with nothing really happening. The entire last half of that movie could have been summed up properly in under ten to fifteen pages if it had been a book.

But hey, why spend money making new content when it's easier to pretend to make it or to re-invent the wheel instead.


I could see this happening, but I hope it's not the case. If they force people to dislike FFXI by marring it until it's unrecognizable, I doubt too many people will come crawling back to say "Please sir, may I have another?" Most people would just find another MMO or quit online play altogether, so I really hope that's not what's happening.

I wanted a story that made sense. Thats all.

The story if you pick it apart was weak and if you compare it to SEs more recent works it just comes off as below the new FFXI standard. When Zilart seems to make more sense than ACP, you know that the story is weak. The whole thing comes off as disjointed and pointless - the conclusion only helps to fortify that feeling.

SpoilerThe end of the story invalidated everything. We get led to believe we'd FINALLY reunite Aldo and his sister and BAM you get denied yet again. What was the whole point of ACP then? Why couldn't we get some resolution? Who are those people around Young Aldo on the cover?

In typical SE fashion they have applied an enfeebling nerf and refuse to comment on it. Don't they realize how much respect they'd get from players by just stating they know its a problem and are working hard to fix it or actually come out with the logic behind the change? Doesn't seem so.

Blizzard has tons of problems with World of Warcraft but one thing i cannot fault them on is the responses they give to players via their forums. The answers may not be always what you want to hear but if you had SE reps talking to players on Alla you'd see alot less SE bashing than we see here.

Maybe the updates wouldnt be so hit-or-miss if they actually focused and catered the updates on what players wanted. The game is old enough to start doing it.

Edited, Apr 21st 2009 4:27pm by SparthosofLakshmi

Pikko i don't think your job stops at being a mouthpiece for the dev's marketing pleasure. In a fair world you should also be our voice towards them and have no qualms about bashing on their door until you get us a reaction. (That goes for any premier site management)

I'm hoping this isn't just cuz they hit a popular job that everyone's rallying maturely instead of loling at gimped fringe jobs as past nerfs have gone down. MAybe now the community is starting to understand nobody is immune to this random nerfing from SE, and we should send a message it won't be tolerated anymore on any class.

Edited, Apr 21st 2009 4:36pm by RattyBatty