Expansions, Updates, SOMETHING?!Follow

It's not about going through all the storyline, or getting the best armor, or defeating the toughest monsters. What irritates the community is the fact that there are bright, glaring, christmas-light-decoration-landslide-on-neighbors-yard problems that have been around since god knows how long, and other companies would of fixed it in patches when the problem presents itself, through SE rather acts like they just "oh, we never noticed that before" (cough SMN Avatar loses ability and MP if mob moves too far away cough). Myself, I feel like they work / develop the content, but no one ever plays it to test it out, or even plays the game themselves. If a developer leveled his fishing from 0 - 100 with the fishing system now, they'd probably be like "wtf is this crap..." and we'll probably get a fishing change. I mean, we all know they don't play jobs like SMN, PUP, DRG, WHM, BLM,... but I'll be damned if the whole staff plays SAM >_>;

Sometimes it just really seems like other MMOs listen to the community and are like "you know, you're right, let's look into this and see what we can do" yet SE tosses riddles at us in developer interviews making us (or at least me) feel like they believe "this is the way the game is suppose to be, suck it up, adapt, or go play something else". Honestly, how long did it take for us to get a Moogle in Selbina?....

Edited, Feb 25th 2009 11:40am by Alisaye

Would be nice, yeah, but I'm not so sure about the grass being so green {Over there}. Not that I've experienced how other companies run their games, but my friends who play That Other Game (guess which) always complain about bugs getting never fixed. If it's not game breaking, companies take their sweet time fixing it (and while adding more content there may be bigger bugs that need fixing first..)

From what it sounds like, it may be an asian mindset.

what i'll really pe'od about is if this update comes and rdm's and smn's get crapped upon again.

I think its simpler than that. This business model works because people are generally satisfied with the game.

Yea, FFXI has problems, but good god, its a great game. It seems the most complaints are over getting gear that you simply DONT NEED to play.

I don't have a relic, or kraken club, or a mythic, and I never will. BUT the game is designed in a way that you don't need them.

You can beat any mob in the game with stuff off the AH, or easily done assaults, campaign, or quests, except maybe the absolute top mobs (PW & AV), whose drops you don't need for anything else anyway.

Thats why this business model works, how pissed off can you really get over **** you simply don't need.

Youre right that this is a very solid game in its core, but there's plenty to be unsatisfied with. Namely all the EXTREME timesinks that are just rediculous in the way they didn't think of the player's experience at all. All they thought about is "STALL EM STALL EM". For example :

******* drop rates
-NM pop system that demands you stare at empty space for hours, instead of make most of them pop item style.
-Slow movement speed combined with needlessly large areas
-"wait 'til JP midnight to continue this mission or get your item"
-"You must wait longer to perform that action"

I could go on but you know what i mean. It's a good game yes, being held down by all these "we hate you players" decisions that are made by the higher ups to draw everything out and in their minds make money longer. I'm sure it's actually been responsible for keeping people away more than anything.

These may indeed be true (I don't know enough to prove/disprove them), but #1 & 2 aren't necessarily presumptions to rest business models on. Treat your customers like s*** and the bad service or bad views of the products will spread around. Higher population means more potential customers, but have a crappy reputation and people will steer clear of the company. How long did it take Jack and the Box to recover from its salad scare, where's Peter Pan PB at and what about all the other peanut products now, same goes for Tylenol after the 1982 tampering deaths?

As for #2, while having a sense of entitlement when it comes to corporate interactions may be an American mentality, it's bad business to ***** your customers. What's going on here is, let's say SE makes something and they always send an advance notice a few weeks ahead of time when they can expect their shipment, now, there's no word and the date they usually send it is fast approaching. You wonder what's going on? Reliability has nothing to do with entitlement; it's an advisable practice to make a business seem professional and not like some fly-by-night operation. They're supplying people their video game fix and people & companies usually expect suppliers to be able to provide them a constant or dependable periodic supply.

It reallyyyyyyyyy runs so much deeper than that. Ever since Dungeons and Dragons 30 years ago or more, Western gaming has always included the player heavily and not underestimated their contributions and their voice. The people who play this genre are likely just as qualified, or more qualified to suggest improvements and offer suggestions.

Don't believe me? Dungeons and Dragons, the entire premise of the game is built on respecting player input. You have a Dungeon Master who uses all of the tools the developer uses and creates his own adventures. In many cases, popular player created content gets adopted by the company who invented the game and the game evolves.

Yet another example, all PC games that had Mod sets that come with it. The players literally make their own versions of the game, oftentimes with amazing content (See every Bethesda RPG since Morrowind).

For as long as I have played Final Fantasy, SE has severely underestimated their player base. They could honestly release update notes with mathematical equations detailing exactly what they did to adjusted damage formulas and the players would instantly know what they meant and appreciate them for it. We still don't even really know what all the basic attributes do, we have an idea but it's not even in the instructions, it's just a complete mystery.

Add to this their policy on updates that barely is even functioning at this point. Contrast this to any major Western company and you'll see a colossal difference. Western game companies are actually building and nourishing communities that they can mobilize to support their games. Check out Valve. Check out Bethesda. Check out BioWare.

Add to this the statements from Capcom in a recent video game conference speech that said that Japan accounts for 6% of their sales right now. 6%! Do you want to see how quickly they are adjusting and communicating with their playerbase? Watch the new trailer for Lost Planet 2 on XBox Live if you have it. It's literally a video of the leader of the project explaining the game and introducing it personally, communicating to his audience.

Edited, Feb 26th 2009 3:59am by JingWoo

They used to overestimate the playerbase, but CoP was "too hard" for people.

Very interesting read, sir.

I didn't think people could be that analytical about ... games.

While I do agree with the author that "CRPG"s are little more than strategy games with stories, that's actually what I like. I don't like acting and pretending to be someone I'm not.

"I could go on but you know what i mean."

Here's another one:

Go take your item to a spot on a full moon and wait for clear weather that probably wont happen and full moons are like 3 days apart so you could sit in one spot for about 8 hours every 3 days or so and accomplish nothing. Yay for random necessities!

This is a great example on how there are just aspects of the game that need updating.. like Delkfutt's key. Seriously, we can't make it a key item? I wish we could make a giant list of small things in Final Fantasy XI, that us, the players, notice on an everyday basis. We could sent this list to SE for them to realize that "Hey, any reason why 80% of the armor / food items in this game are totally useless?" or "Why can't we only get fangs from tigers sometimes.. shouldn't they all have teeth? Is that normal to have tigers killing players by guming them to death?"