Phase 4 Woes

[Aeni]

Re: Phase 4 Woes

I prefer data wipe if it means the game launches more smoothly. If the data wipe occurs and the launch is even worse than 1.0 and FFXI put together, I'm going full-Rambo with the pitchforks and torches. But I'll still play what's left of the game as it sits in a pile of smoldering ruin.

[Melody]

Re: Phase 4 Woes

Paid transfers open, I think they said about 2-3 weeks after launch; when asked about whether players would be able to move off legacy servers to a non-legacy--they pretty much said "we'll announce more details when available!". I'm pretty sure players will be able to move to legacy servers if they're on a non-legacy...though I could be wrong.

They're not up right now, so no fee is known for how much.But from what I'm guessing it will be 30 dollars still but then again with the recent servers, I think players should be given a free world transfer if it happens again during launch.

[Hayde]

Re: Phase 4 Woes

I prefer data wipe if it means the game launches more smoothly. If the data wipe occurs and the launch is even worse than 1.0 and FFXI put together, I'm going full-Rambo with the pitchforks and torches. But I'll still play what's left of the game as it sits in a pile of smoldering ruin.

It seems to be a loss-loss scenario for SE. It seems (someone who has better understanding of Japanese please feel free to correct me) that the connection issues plagued primarily the NA/EU servers, as I didn't find info about it on the Japanese twitter or forums (then again, I'm relying on very limited knowledge + Google Translate here). If they only wipe the NA/EU characters, then there's bound to be someone saying that the Japanese gets an unfair advantage and 'headstart', that SE favors the Japanese. If they do a global wipe and the Japanese were largely unaffected, then they are going to be pissed too.

Data wipe or not, I just hope they actually figured out why these connection issues are occurring. I know SE and, Japanese companies have not had the experience that companies like Blizzard, Trion, and dare I even say, Bioware had in comparison, so that's understandable. My biggest concern was they finally decided to do the stress test like 5-6 days before early access and it's likely too late for them to tell retailers "Hey, I know the copies of FFXIV are being sent to your warehouse, but we're going to delay the game for another month!" so they pretty much have until what, Friday night to fix any issues that plagued them this weekend on top of any last minute additions, post level 20 content they haven't finished yet.

If they delay early access any further, then that's a pretty much a giant "fuck you" to anyone who pre-ordered for the sole sake of EA--and I know plenty former 1.0 players that did just that.

I really wonder if they have any expert technicians working at the Montreal (NA/EU) server hub. I know that sounds ridiculous but I can't help but notice how quickly issues were noticed and updated on the Japanese twitter, while we were lucky if the NA/EU forums/twitter even acknowledged anything. My instance group got slapped with the 3102 error on Saturday evening, around the same time most players got hit by this and the English twitter didn't even acknowledge the problem until almost 24 hours later. Sure, if you were lucky to get the beta forums to load and hopped on the tech support forums, you'd see a sticky post by a community manager--but tell me, why on Earth did he not post on the twitter? Did he expect the thousands of new accounts made after the 17th to browse the forums for info, especially given how often it crashed?

Mmkay. Rant done.

[Aeni]

Re: Phase 4 Woes

It seems to be a loss-loss scenario for SE. It seems (someone who has better understanding of Japanese please feel free to correct me) that the connection issues plagued primarily the NA/EU servers, as I didn't find info about it on the Japanese twitter or forums (then again, I'm relying on very limited knowledge + Google Translate here). If they only wipe the NA/EU characters, then there's bound to be someone saying that the Japanese gets an unfair advantage and 'headstart', that SE favors the Japanese. If they do a global wipe and the Japanese were largely unaffected, then they are going to be pissed too.

The JP players on those NA/EU servers (and there's some, because I've come across a few so far) would be just as impacted. As for the "head start", the NA/EU players would need to get their collective heads out of their rear ends because the population is already fractured along regional lines with "regional" data centers. Most players would prefer to play with "like language" players and that would mean English speaking players would play with other English speaking players, etc. I really see no issues here with that bit of trivia.

Data wipe or not, I just hope they actually figured out why these connection issues are occurring. I know SE and, Japanese companies have not had the experience that companies like Blizzard, Trion, and dare I even say, Bioware had in comparison, so that's understandable. My biggest concern was they finally decided to do the stress test like 5-6 days before early access and it's likely too late for them to tell retailers "Hey, I know the copies of FFXIV are being sent to your warehouse, but we're going to delay the game for another month!" so they pretty much have until what, Friday night to fix any issues that plagued them this weekend on top of any last minute additions, post level 20 content they haven't finished yet.

My friend with a vast knowledge of network programming and I, with some fairly limited knowledge (albeit a bit outdated) have both come to the same conclusion: that there is a very funky setup SE put together between the lobby server and the actual world servers. Their programming is weak (no surprise there) in that they didn't put in enough checks to ensure that a disconnection would not result in an account being permanently "hung". There are flags in place that governs the accessibilities of an account on a server world, which also puzzles me, but it's probably there to prevent multiple players from logging on to the same account with a different character on the same world.

When these flags get tripped up before the connection breaks and before the player successfully completes zoning in, or what I'd like to call "transiting the void", the account will then sit in perpetuity waiting for the all clear from the client which is also sitting in perpetuity waiting for a "hand shake" response from the account server. The lobby server is caught in between, unsure how to rectify the situation. This is where weak programming comes into play.

SE could've elegantly provided a solution in which, after a 15 minute period (or whatever specified time that SE deems appropriate for security measures), the account server will be forced to automatically clear all flags on the account and then await for a "hand shake" response from the client immediately following a specified length of time longer than the account time period (e.g., Player A has to wait more than 15 minutes before attempting to log in or risk tripping the flag again) It cuts out the lobby middleman so that it can concentrate on actively delegating transactions for the other healthy account activities.

There's other solutions as well, but the fact that they didn't even think about this is a huge oversight considering that we had a situation in Phase 2 where they were forced to provide additional servers, and that they didn't learn a single thing from that experience.

If they delay early access any further, then that's a pretty much a giant "fuck you" to anyone who pre-ordered for the sole sake of EA--and I know plenty former 1.0 players that did just that.

What makes you think they will? Yoshi-P already made the grave mistake of putting his foot in his mouth at E3 saying "no way we're deviating from the deadline". E3 was months away and I think that SE was overly confident in their data centers (or partners, since Eidos is providing the data centers for them in NA and EU territories) and their network engineers. I made predictions in that other thread saying that P3 was the end and that P4 wasn't going to be enough for them to do much (and I was right, but not for the fact that P4 was shortened to an unbelievably stupid weekend long stress test)

They are already on the cusp of a major potential failure and harakiri drama aside, I don't think they have any choice but to move forward.

One other point ... my friend said that SE can only throw more money to the problem and he's right. SE needs to understand that Blizzard spent hundreds of millions on their server upgrades in the 2 years following the disastrous launch of WoW. SE needs to be prepared to do that, much to the chagrin of their investors, if they want to see this launch through to a successful end.

I really wonder if they have any expert technicians working at the Montreal (NA/EU) server hub. I know that sounds ridiculous but I can't help but notice how quickly issues were noticed and updated on the Japanese twitter, while we were lucky if the NA/EU forums/twitter even acknowledged anything. My instance group got slapped with the 3102 error on Saturday evening, around the same time most players got hit by this and the English twitter didn't even acknowledge the problem until almost 24 hours later. Sure, if you were lucky to get the beta forums to load and hopped on the tech support forums, you'd see a sticky post by a community manager--but tell me, why on Earth did he not post on the twitter? Did he expect the thousands of new accounts made after the 17th to browse the forums for info, especially given how often it crashed?

Mmkay. Rant done.

They underestimated the popularity of a F2P opportunity. The internet is crawling with vultures looking for some free entertainment and P4 was just that, an opportunity to score some fun, even if it was only for a weekend. Many of those players won't ever return, regardless of how P4 fared, as they have no intention of paying a single dime for the game and/or a subscription.

[Melody]

Re: Phase 4 Woes

They underestimated the popularity of a F2P opportunity. The internet is crawling with vultures looking for some free entertainment and P4 was just that, an opportunity to score some fun, even if it was only for a weekend. Many of those players won't ever return, regardless of how P4 fared, as they have no intention of paying a single dime for the game and/or a subscription.

Good. The trolls need to go and those who don't want to play this game don't have to, but I'm going to pay for my sub and everyone else can kick rocks. There were a bunch of old sore XI vets that were bitching on the server I was on, and I told them the XI retirement home still has plenty of room for you butthurt folks, don't come here swinging your old rusted gaming experience and disgusting tapioca pudding opionions.

[Malacite]

Re: Phase 4 Woes

Gotta love how people just naturally assume mainting 24/7 servers with GM service and regular updates just magically comes free. Not to mention pay 2 play weeds out some (though not nearly enough) of the "undesireables" in the community.

[Melody]

Re: Phase 4 Woes

There was a discussion on some youtube comments under an FF XIV video about which gaming structure is better.

Free to Play/Pay To Win

or

Pay To Play

The arguement? Free to play games have a better structure, due to people having to spend more money which will fund more updates for the game which will draw in new players.

Pros: Keeps the game well fed in terms of money, players pay for what they do and do not want.
Cons: Players who make these purchases often find that the in-game products they desire are ratio'd poorly and often 9/10 the item they get and use during an enhancement process follows up as a waste of money.
Messes up the economy of the game, increasing prices by usually 100% of their natural value. Also Cash Shop/Win Items/In-Game Store Items, drive up the prices due to supply and demand and forces players who do not normally engage in these types of gaming markets to struggle.
Usually a poor non-civil community, room for elitist and snobs.
GMs/Admins do not normally pay attention to players too closely.
Gold Sellers have easier access since they don't have to pay a monthly fee.

Pay to Play

The Arguement? Pay to play is easier to manage and keeps people coming in, due to having full access to content the game provides.

Pros: Paying for everything up front, with no hidden fees. Usually comes with months worth of content to keep the player busy.
Stable economy, players who usually find rare items usually farmed for them or bought them off the market, (i.e, Earned them.)
Better community, more versatile and usually squeezes out lesser age groups and people who can manage themselves/Lack of trolls.
Rare showing of gold sellers.

Cons: A monthly subscription. Monthly subscriptions usually add up over time and quickly bring a realization of how much you're spending over the course of 1 year.
The monthly subscription may not be doable for everyone, those who can't afford it can't play.
If the in-game content becomes too easy to do, players get bored.
Harder to convince people to join a game due to a recurring fee process.
Economy may wane, depending on S&D of an item (i.e - FF XI K-Club)
Gold Sellers - Harder to come by, but still viable.


My thoughts? I'd prefer to Pay to Play, simply because I know that if I am being harassed in-game by another play I can simply mock them, they're spending X amount of dollars to run amuck and cause havoc, then let them. It's not my money being wasted in being a total oaf. I also like Pay to Play because it pushes out a lot of uncivil people. Granted there are people who can afford to be that way and it is unfortunate that I deal with them, but that's why there is an ignore list and GMs. I also like pay to play because it's easier on the purse/wallet. Yeah I am paying monthly, but I've known people who spend 300 dollars a MONTH on a Pay to Win game because they end up fucking their items up. Also every item in a pay to play game can be earned, it just takes time to do so. Instead of paying like 300 dollars, I'd rather pay up with 300 hours.

Applying this to the Phase 4/XIV Beta/Release

I am honestly looking forward to XIV as a whole, yeah a game is going to come with bugs and everything, but that's apart of any game. It's to get the players to test and report these things to improve the overall quality of the game itself. Yeah there's going to be screw ups during the beta periods, but that's okay. It's more like a debugging moment for SE, a moment of lucidity if you will to say, "We need to fix this." Also on a more personal perspective I didn't run into a lot of errors as many people have, but I do think SE get's the point of what they need to do in order to make this game work. I also would like to say it must have taken some serious stones for Yoshi-P to step up to the play and say "I will take command." of a game that had a horrible reputation to begin with, took it apart, put it back together and is now putting his name out their and his reputation on the line to satisfy people. I have the utmost respect for Yoshi for using Raise on a game that was damn near dead when it first came out.


Your thoughts and opinions?

[Firewind]

Re: Phase 4 Woes

Good. The trolls need to go and those who don't want to play this game don't have to, but I'm going to pay for my sub and everyone else can kick rocks. There were a bunch of old sore XI vets that were bitching on the server I was on, and I told them the XI retirement home still has plenty of room for you butthurt folks, don't come here swinging your old rusted gaming experience and disgusting tapioca pudding opionions.

Wait was that in Middle La Noscea because I saw someone way something like that over the weekend.

[Melody]

Re: Phase 4 Woes

Wait was that in Middle La Noscea because I saw someone way something like that over the weekend.

I can't remember. I think it wasn't, I was in Gridania when I went on a rant and told people to shut the hell up, yeah the game was Free to Play before and people were bitching that it was like World of Warcraft and they liked WoW better. I told them stop wasting my time and wasting your time and go pay for your fucking WoW sub if you don't want to deal with XIV "shitty gameplay" I mean like god damn. I hate WoW players with freaking Ukko's Fury. It pisses me off, the lot of them. I mean yeah there are those who band wagon from WoW and are hush hush, that's fine. But what I hate are the WoW players who come from the game and then go on a bitching spree about what's wrong with the game. Kick fucking rocks will you.

[Hayde]

Re: Phase 4 Woes

FINAL FANTASY XIV ‏@FF_XIV_EN 4m
As we've announced previously, there will be no wipe of the Beta phase 4 data. That data will carry over to early access/launch.

[Aeni]

Re: Phase 4 Woes

FINAL FANTASY XIV ‏@FF_XIV_EN 4m
As we've announced previously, there will be no wipe of the Beta phase 4 data. That data will carry over to early access/launch.

BTW, anyone else had issues with not seeing the "Legacy" opening? It was suppose to be different from a normal "new" character. I saw a slightly different cutscene for one character in Gridania (Moogles), but otherwise it was the exact same thing as everyone else. But in LL and Uldah, there was no freaking difference and I feel really ripped off considering that I can't ever "redo" now that there'll be no data wiping. I sure hope SE fixes this.

[Hayde]

Re: Phase 4 Woes

BTW, anyone else had issues with not seeing the "Legacy" opening? It was suppose to be different from a normal "new" character. I saw a slightly different cutscene for one character in Gridania (Moogles), but otherwise it was the exact same thing as everyone else. But in LL and Uldah, there was no freaking difference and I feel really ripped off considering that I can't ever "redo" now that there'll be no data wiping. I sure hope SE fixes this.

I'm told if you didn't do all the main storyline events you won't see the cutscene (BlueGartr); there seems to be a conflicting point of opinion but at least every up to 50 (Future's Perfect or w/e) needs to be done, though some people are saying you had to the calamity events as well (To Kill a Raven Normal).

Here's the thread if you want to join the discussion or read into it a little more:

Bug with legacy characeter (I didn't mispell 'character' btw...it's just the name of the thread)

Either way, it seems that the intro difference is very minimal.

[Aeni]

Re: Phase 4 Woes

Then I won't worry about it. Yoshi-P didn't seem to detail this very well and many players were confused as to what they should be seeing. As I only have one character that completed Future's Perfect and participated in only SOME of the Calamity events, I'll probably just treat this as it never existed.

[Malacite]

Re: Phase 4 Woes

Eh? Mine was mostly similar too, only I didn't have the boat ride for LL - I appeared on that cliff we saw from the trailer and then just walked into LL.

Also, none of the NPCs seem to recognize me, and for whatever retarded reason, my character doesn't speak up about being a Warrior of Light - apparently I've got amnesia now and can't remember all these people I already knew and helped 5 years ago. So much for the different dialogue/npcs acting differently towards legacy characters.

[DakAttack]

Re: Phase 4 Woes

Your thoughts and opinions?

Free to play: all content is designed to get more money from you.
Pay to play: they already have your money, content can be designed more naturally.