Has Tanaka Finally Lost His Mind?

[Armando]

Re: Has Tanaka Finally Lost His Mind?

CoPs didn't have an accessibility problem any more than Nyzul Isle did.

Yes it did. The accessibility problem I'm talking about has nothing to do with difficulty; it's all about time sinks. Getting through dungeons took 1-2 hours at a minimum, and you HAD to win the BC because they didn't have the courtesy of giving you a checkpoint. If you fail to clear it before someone has to go, you have to go through it all over again. Not to mention the item farming that precedes that. With all of that tedium your odds of getting a pick-up group are next to zero; not that it'd do you much good since a pick-up group has a good chance of failing and wasting 3 hours of your life. In Nyzul you just show up and go.

EDIT: Not to mention CoP required even more meds than Nyzul. Reraise Earrings are costly at low levels, and pre-Level Sync there was the additional hassle of cap gear.

[Malacite]

Re: Has Tanaka Finally Lost His Mind?

You're missing the point Ice, it's not that it's anything new - it's that the new devs seemed to finally break away from that shit with Abyssea, and now it's back to business as usual - so much so that many suspect the old devs are back in charge after they fucked up XIV so badly.

[Raydeus]

Re: Has Tanaka Finally Lost His Mind?

Note: You can skip to the bolded part to avoid the rant, that is what my main peeve in all of this is about.

If anything raising the level cap allowed people to finish old content they weren't able to complete the Tanakas way. I know I did.

And WotG was closer to CoP that it was to ToAU, which was more linear. But the problem as always was simply lack of people to get things done. In my case I'm stuck on nation quests because I was never able to find anyone who was at the same point I was. And probably never will, because according to Tanaka I should not be able to complete anything on my own.

Also, it must be a luck thing because I was never able to complete Nyzul even after trying to set up statics. Show up and go? Maybe the first few months when it was introduced, but after people were done they never wanted to set foot in the place again unless it was to fight the boss levels for armor, it was that much fun. Wanna talk about an accessibility problems? Why not allow players to record groups of floors they've cleared in any order rather than having to go from the ground up if it was all random anyway? What about how retarded it was that people were only able to record progress on the leader's disc while the rest of the people got screwed and had to climb again to get their floor 100 registered? How about all the hours you lost simply because the random setups made your pickup party time out and you had to do it all over again with yet another pickup? Care to try going up all the way right now? Let's see how long it takes you to find anyone willing to try nowadays, because there is no alternative for you to ever get this content done, none at all. Is either the Tanakas way or you are SOL. And that is bad design because again, that imaginary band of brothers hasn't existed for more than 5 years if it ever did.

Aby on the other hand allowed me to get all the boss and Caturae wins (except for Rani) with pickup groups and on my own, same with trials. I would just show up and join the fun in an alliance composed of Japanese, NA and other players all teaming up together instead of trashing each other and competing like dogs to see who botted faster. And if I couldn't get a party I could just go kill stuff on my own and I would eventually complete my trial. Faster with other people, but also doable on my own, that's good design. And the new level cap actually allowed me to get to the point I am in WotG because I was able to solo or duo all the stuff up to that point.

You know, having fun actually getting things done (with other people or on my own) instead of just waiting for that static that would never come.


And it is only now that the Tanakas were back that the trials and quests have gotten worse as time passes, as if someone wanted to punish people for trying to get things done.

Want to polarize and fragment the community again? Start asking not for kills like the first awesome trials that brought the community together, but for drops the only one player could obtain at a time. It's like those morons relish in seeing the community fighting like dogs for NMs VNM etc. and meager drops to get things done, that is the Tanaka way. And that is what bad design is.

[Yellow Mage]

Re: Has Tanaka Finally Lost His Mind?

Raydeus, I almost agree completely with your point, but . . .

Tanaka

[Raydeus]

Re: Has Tanaka Finally Lost His Mind?

*Tanakas

Team Tanaka go!

[Icemage]

Re: Has Tanaka Finally Lost His Mind?

You're missing the point Ice, it's not that it's anything new - it's that the new devs seemed to finally break away from that shit with Abyssea, and now it's back to business as usual - so much so that many suspect the old devs are back in charge after they fucked up XIV so badly.

Hold on, Abyssea is a whole different thing than end-game best-stuff-in-the-game approaches. The way I see it, Square-Enix has been gradually dumbing things down to make the "typical" player happier, because you no longer have to be in an omgl33t linkshell to get a crack at equipment that is at least shouting-distance comparable to the best gear in the game (started with Nyzul Investigation in WotG, and continued when they added Abyssea and raised the level caps). The direction with relic/mythic/empyrean gear, on the other hand, is for that small minority that plays obsessively and will blow through any "normal" quest or requirement in a matter of days. What else are those hardcore players going to do to stay "the best"?

I would understand being annoyed if you actually own one of these items, but if you don't... what's it to you, other than just one more thing you're not going to ever do anyway?


Icemage

[cidbahamut]

Re: Has Tanaka Finally Lost His Mind?

It's not that we're irritated by the prospect of having to do it (those of us who aren't directly affected), it's what it represents in terms of overall game design. It says to me that SE thinks it is ok to continue producing content that is not only a completely undisguised grind, but that it is perfectly ok to produce a grind of that magnitude. When you start talking years to complete a single stage of a weapon that has already taken an unhealthy amount of time to initially build(hi2UmythicWeapons), there's just something that screams out on a fundamental level to me that this is not being designed with the intent of being enjoyable content for the player. Game content should be enjoyable, period. Any game content that isn't enjoyable is fair game for criticism.

[Malacite]

Re: Has Tanaka Finally Lost His Mind?

I have a Masamune, and was working on several others before I quit.

Like you said, that stuff keeps the hardcore players going. Doing Empyreans was about the only fun thing left for me, but then SE went and took the requirements way the hell too far. Not only that, but now Empyreans are arguably the WORST of the 3 when they were the best (or close to). So much for "Gods among weapons" or "Ultimate Weapons" as Tanaka had referred to them at Vanafest.

[ShepardG]

Re: Has Tanaka Finally Lost His Mind?

SE, and more specifically the current FFXI development team (Tanaka runs this, and as far as i know, has final say in the things that are implemented) is exactly like Phillip Morris. Seriously.

From the moment I steped into Abyssea, on release day, my 75 dancer, and my friend on his relic Ninja, had nothing but fun. Litterly seeing a chest, clicking on it, then dieing to a mimic while everyone on vent was asking us what it was like, and me and him are just fucking laughing. no reraise, just Home point and press on lmao.

But with all the fail that was FFXIV and then the producer/lead dev change that happened a couple months after 14 came out, It was all about tanaka. He was the one who gave up 11 for 14, and he was the one who came back to 11 after 14 flopped. I think the community is justified in pointing the finger at him. We don't know ALL the inner workings of what goes on with SE, however, we see the games and how they have been changing.
Tanaka doesn't understand how to make money with video games. He has visions about what a game should be, and he litterly can't be swayed by even the people who play the game, and you can see this in the things that he O.K's for implementation into games.

He is fat that should be cut from the company, until he can understand that producing/developing something that only apeals to 4-5k players is not the kind of thing that a company should be striving for.
I played a few voidwatch battles before i hung up my chapeau for good. They were crap. I litterly had no fucking idea what I was doing because the chat box was just full of spam about the "pearlescent light level" or the "stagger crap" and I litterly could not follow what was even going on.

I just realized at that point that it was pointless (like smoking cigarettes) that all the folks who still garner excitment and pleasure from grinding 3-5 hours a night and more on the weekends, have addiction problems. And a bit of masicism to boot. going 0/100+ on a drop while other folks go 5/10 is just fucking stupid.

After trying out rifts (which i no longer play, but would again if i had some friends ask me to play with them) I realized just how bad SE was at making video games online. They litterly; DO. NOT. ADAPT. to the market, to the playerbase, to technology (hi2u ps2). and the only light at the end of the tunnel i can see is Yoshi's direction for 14v2.

[Rostum]

Re: Has Tanaka Finally Lost His Mind?

Which is what I did . . . and what you promptly ignored.

No, you were being a smartass about it; no way in the real world should human interaction equate to what you did. It's not my fault you don't understand what Tanaka's role in the development process of this game is. He's the producer, he's directly responsible for what direction this game is heading. Whether he has input from a whole team or not, he takes on the responsibility.

I agree with ShepardG's post. Though here I am, still playing - I like to tell myself it's because of the friendly people I play with. If more than half of them decided to leave, I'd probably go with them.

[Malacite]

Re: Has Tanaka Finally Lost His Mind?

If I'm not mistaken, he is (or at least was) the Director of XI as well, which means not only does he have final say but is the driving influence of the game's direction.

[Yellow Mage]

Re: Has Tanaka Finally Lost His Mind?

No, you were being a smartass about it; no way in the real world should human interaction equate to what you did.

Are you certain that you didn't completely overlook my earlier post on the matter, thus provoking the comments with which you had objection by making a completely dismissive comment with which I had objection?

The FFXI community has taken to completely demonizing a single person to no end with justification that's shaky at best. What about this is rational? What about this is reasonable? What purpose could this possibly serve? By what standards could this possibly be right?

[Armando]

Re: Has Tanaka Finally Lost His Mind?

Are you certain that you didn't completely overlook my earlier post on the matter, thus provoking the comments with which you had objection by making a completely dismissive comment with which I had objection?

Even if he didn't read your post, you don't have to be a jerk about it. Sure, he snapped at you, but your original post was so ambiguous that it couldn't look anything but bad - especially if he couldn't figure out the context, which is what I think he was actually trying to say.

Yeah, maybe people are focusing all their ire on a single person when he's not necessarily the only one making the bad calls. Still, that's what you sign up for when you assume responsibility for a project. You made your point in your rant already; people can disagree with it or choose to ignore it.