Letter from the Producer, X (05/20/2011)

[DakAttack]

Summary

• Dungeons
• Materia
• Job changes
  • Auto-attack
  • No more physical level
  • Revamped classes including unique animations
• Mount system, including chocobos
• Ifrit battle

If I read it correctly, it's mostly due sometime this summer. They're doing a lot of cost analysis, which means it isn't yet set in stone, but it looks like they have a lot of exciting changes in store.

Letter from the Producer, X (05/20/2011)

[Kailea]

Re: Letter from the Producer, X (05/20/2011)

there will be a 1.7b patch before this one, they want to implement the auto attack and some of the battle adjustment stuff ASAP.

[Etra]

Re: Letter from the Producer, X (05/20/2011)

So... This is all well and good... But, do I still have to whore Behest for 10 minutes then sit there for another 20 minutes until the next one after all this?

[Kailea]

Re: Letter from the Producer, X (05/20/2011)

that is what some players choose to do, even though it is stupid.

Some players are just rushing to 50....then have nothign to do but level another class to 50, I find that to be really silly, I am just taking my time, I do a behest if I am around when one happens, but I dont go out of my way to wait/join them.

[Grizzlebeard]

Re: Letter from the Producer, X (05/20/2011)

Sounds good and all but the boat has sailed on this game. They're not going to suddenly get a few hundred thousand subscribers if they polish up what the gaming community views as a turd of a game and that's even excluding the fact that people simply won't want to join yet another FF game where there's already an existing max level community who have established and locked down their own economy and crafting hierarchy. Also, with SWToR and GW2 on the horizon a re-launch, or launch where the PS3 is concerned, is looking less and less likely to attract anyone.

[Taskmage]

Re: Letter from the Producer, X (05/20/2011)

that is what some players choose to do, even though it is stupid.

Some players are just rushing to 50....then have nothign to do but level another class to 50, I find that to be really silly, I am just taking my time, I do a behest if I am around when one happens, but I dont go out of my way to wait/join them.

“[Games] teach us things so that we can minimize risk and know what choices to make. Phrased another way, the destiny of games is to become boring, not to be fun. Those of us who want games to be fun are fighting a losing battle against the human brain because fun is a process and routine is its destination.” —Raph Koster

“Many players cannot help approaching a game as an optimization puzzle. What gives the most reward for the least risk? What strategy provides the highest change—or even a guaranteed chance—of success? Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game. ... The reason to kill tank-mages and ICS is that a single, dominant strategy actually takes away choice from a game because all other options are provably sub-optimal. The sweet spot for game design is when a specific decision is right in some circumstances but not in others, with a wide grey area between the two extremes. Games lose their dynamic quality once a strategy emerges that dominates under all conditions. ... The designers don't want people to play this way; nonetheless, the rules inadvertantly encourage it. Again, designers often don't understand their own games as well as the players do. The problem with a gamer undervaluing her own time is that, while the easy rewards may feel good at first, eventually the amount of time required will slowly seep away the fun per minute, until the game begins to feel like a grind.” —Soren Johnson [source]

Players taking the most efficient path to their goal and then having no other goals to pursue isn't a failure of the player, it's a catastrophic failure of the game designer. Sure, others could play like you and extend their experience; they could make a game out of walking down hallways only touching certain tiles to make getting to their destination slower and more fun, but in the context of a game they've paid someone else to design on the premise that it will be fun for them, the responsibility for making the product enjoyable should be on the people who are getting paid to do it.

[Kailea]

Re: Letter from the Producer, X (05/20/2011)

Players taking the most efficient path to their goal and then having no other goals to pursue isn't a failure of the player, it's a catastrophic failure of the game designer. Sure, others could play like you and extend their experience; they could make a game out of walking down hallways only touching certain tiles to make getting to their destination slower and more fun, but in the context of a game they've paid someone else to design on the premise that it will be fun for them, the responsibility for making the product enjoyable should be on the people who are getting paid to do it.

well yeah I am not saying that the game is not fun because players are "doing it wrong" I am just saying that why rush, when so many things are changing? Hell SE is about to remove physical levels, and change alot of other things.

If this game completely tanked in a month, honestly I would not really care, I would just go play something else, it would be SEs fault. They are improving that they scrwed up with every patch, and honestly the game is turning out to be pretty decent and enjoyable.

[DakAttack]

Re: Letter from the Producer, X (05/20/2011)

I'm sure they're banking on the PS3 version's release to throw the marketing back into high-gear. I wouldn't be surprised if they went with a re-release with additional bonuses for purchasing the game the second time around.

It's not going to be too difficult to pull subscribers away from WoW, pretty much every other company is doing it. They just need to be smart and offer something they can't get with WoW, without changing up the overall experience too much.

Oh, and they need to settle out this payment stuff. I think that's step one in bouncing interested, potential subscribers.

[Kailea]

Re: Letter from the Producer, X (05/20/2011)

yeah I have to agree, the payment options suck hard -.-

[Malacite]

Re: Letter from the Producer, X (05/20/2011)

The recent PSN hacking isn't helping any either, but who knows - by the time the PS3 launch is ready for TV maybe people will have largely forgotten it.


What WOULD be awesome, is if they had some new trailers ready for E3 to show off how much the game has progressed. It'd be nice to see some of the news sites update their reviews as well, as those mediocre 4.5/10 and lower scores are still floating around. I'm constantly running into ppl on Bismark even, who say "Yeah I played the beta..." at which point I have to stop them right away, as there's a world of difference between now & then.


It's been what, 8 months now since release?

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Letter from the Producer, X (05/20/2011)

Players taking the most efficient path to their goal and then having no other goals to pursue isn't a failure of the player, it's a catastrophic failure of the game designer. Sure, others could play like you and extend their experience; they could make a game out of walking down hallways only touching certain tiles to make getting to their destination slower and more fun, but in the context of a game they've paid someone else to design on the premise that it will be fun for them, the responsibility for making the product enjoyable should be on the people who are getting paid to do it.

Be that as it may, when the player chooses to grind, grind, grind to the design of the game and then complain, complain, complain how the developer should do this or that, but never send said developer the input, one has to wonder why the player uses their time and energy so poorly.

That part is not the developer's fault. That's the player just being brain-damaged.

They could just go play another game, but they just sit around playing something they're clearly not enjoying to justify flimsy online social connections and money spent on the game. Meanwhile, they could just find an enjoyable game in something else. Or go socialize with people that aren't going yo forget about you when you stop playing the game.

[Taskmage]

Re: Letter from the Producer, X (05/20/2011)

After a mountain of input was discarded during the beta phase, one wonders why a player would spend their time poorly by sending in more. At this point the correct response is neither to waste time on poor design or poor designers but to walk away from the game and spend time and dollars on more worthy products, but clearly I have less faith in the organization than those who still play.

[cidbahamut]

Re: Letter from the Producer, X (05/20/2011)

What WOULD be awesome, is if they had some new trailers ready for E3 to show off how much the game has progressed. It'd be nice to see some of the news sites update their reviews as well, as those mediocre 4.5/10 and lower scores are still floating around. I'm constantly running into ppl on Bismark even, who say "Yeah I played the beta..." at which point I have to stop them right away, as there's a world of difference between now & then.


It's been what, 8 months now since release?

It doesn't really matter how long it's been or how much it's changed. The game had its chance to make a good impression and it failed so miserably that anyone most people who witnessed it concluded that whatever was going on in the design room was so horribly mucked up and foul that it would be better to simply avoid the game rather than prolong the distasteful experience in the hope that it would somehow improve. The beta was just that bad.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Letter from the Producer, X (05/20/2011)

After a mountain of input was discarded during the beta phase, one wonders why a player would spend their time poorly by sending in more.

Well, I think it would still rate higher on the productivity scale than someone playing something they hate and bitching about it. I'm sure they're taking input again from those still playing.

[Kailea]

Re: Letter from the Producer, X (05/20/2011)

the old lead director (or what ever he is) did that.... there is a new one now that seems to be getting the ball rolling.