Development Team Interview Questions.... Answers.

[Taskmage]

Re: Development Team Interview Questions.... Answers.

You didn't follow up with "What if I wanted to search with a lvl 75 job, a lvl 50 job and a lvl 20 job? The search function does not help at all in this case."
Failure on a massive scale.

Yeah, that's really the problem, isn't it? Search comments are totally useless for that.

But, I have a hard time believing they don't understand the issue if they play at all. They've probably just decided there's nothing to be done about it and are trying to justify it while dancing around the real problem.

[wrongfeifong]

Re: Development Team Interview Questions.... Answers.

Actually, wasn't the SL only added post-zilaat? I mean it came with zilaat.
The max rank was only 5. (then i did SL with a group of 56, it wasn't that bad. trust me. no need to storm the place...just need people that know what is a "prism powder" and a "silent oil")

[Taskmage]

Re: Development Team Interview Questions.... Answers.

No, it was pre-Zilart. You had to get rank 6 just to start ZM1.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Development Team Interview Questions.... Answers.

I share the teams bafflement as to why anyone would want to seek for multiple jobs at the same time. Its basically asking for a completely counterproductive feature to be added to the game.

You really want to let people know all the jobs you have available? No, you don't, you'll be an even larger victim to the pidgeonholing everyone already complains about so much on these forums.

If an option were give to let people see all the jobs I have levelled in-game, I'd turn it off. If I am seeking on a certain job, that is the job I am seeking to level, simple as that.

Apparently some of you have not had the joy of being asked to merit as your 75 BRD when you're seeking as a 55 DRG or something. People are that inconsiderate in this game. Tell me, what was meritting BRD do to get my DRG levels of experience? You can't even get people to call you by your name when you're on that job, you're just "the BRD."

Is it any wonder why I don't play a BRD anymore? If people could see all my jobs, my blacklist would fill out pretty quickly on my Taru because the BRD would always be asked for.

[Taskmage]

Re: Development Team Interview Questions.... Answers.

No, people want to be able to do something contructive on their 75 while they seek endlessly for invites on their level 40 DD job. Ideally you could flag one or more of your jobs as being seeking and then change your job to whatever else while your flag is up.

[Lunaryn]

Re: Development Team Interview Questions.... Answers.

You didn't follow up with "What if I wanted to search with a lvl 75 job, a lvl 50 job and a lvl 20 job? The search function does not help at all in this case."
Failure on a massive scale.

Ｉ agree that the underlying assumption in the excuse of using search comments is that people are wanting to seek on meripo and offer multiple jobs to a single given party. I think a lot of people are much more frustrated with the sparse seeking at other level ranges, and those who have multiple jobs to level would desperately like to be shown as available to parties searching wildly different level ranges.

I do however note that this is something they at least gave some real thought to in as much as they were concerned about the consequences of making seekers' job list fully public, though I would counter that most people are looking more to be able to flag particular jobs as seeking rather than just expose their full job list.

I appreciate bringing up the matter of the possibility of searching for extra information which might usually be put in comments. I don't know whether there are any options for this as long as they remain just comments which would be tremendously feasible, but even a string search might help (RDM42 or RDM43 or RDM44, PLD44, etc.), and it puts into the open the biggest flaw of search comments in this context: you have to already be looking at someone based on other criteria before you can weigh any comment information.

[Malacite]

Re: Development Team Interview Questions.... Answers.

I don't think it's so much seeking for multiple jobs at once so much as being able to do 1 thing on a lv 75 job while putting up a flag for say a dunes PT that someone searching for people within that level range will be able to detect.

It doesn't matter what your /seacom says, no one in the dunes is gonna be looking for a 75 PLD...

[Richie]

Re: Development Team Interview Questions.... Answers.

I share the teams bafflement as to why anyone would want to seek for multiple jobs at the same time. Its basically asking for a completely counterproductive feature to be added to the game.

You really want to let people know all the jobs you have available? No, you don't, you'll be an even larger victim to the pidgeonholing everyone already complains about so much on these forums.

If an option were give to let people see all the jobs I have levelled in-game, I'd turn it off. If I am seeking on a certain job, that is the job I am seeking to level, simple as that.

Apparently some of you have not had the joy of being asked to merit as your 75 BRD when you're seeking as a 55 DRG or something. People are that inconsiderate in this game. Tell me, what was meritting BRD do to get my DRG levels of experience? You can't even get people to call you by your name when you're on that job, you're just "the BRD."

Is it any wonder why I don't play a BRD anymore? If people could see all my jobs, my blacklist would fill out pretty quickly on my Taru because the BRD would always be asked for.

No one said "Hay SE! Let all teh peoplez see mah job levelz!" This this exactly what was asked: "What plans are being made, if any and how, to improve the search function to allow players to seek on multiple jobs or otherwise make it easier to find XP parties? How will any new adjustments work? Is there a time frame for the improvement to be implemented?"

And This was SE's reply (I'll cut it down because it was long and takes a lot of space) "Fking English PTs won't stop asking about my BRD"

While earlier I blamed the interviewer for not following this up correctly it's partly SE's fault for totally ignoring the question in the first place and going on a rant about why they shouldn't put any effort into fixing it.

How exactly is searching on my lvl 20 pld (because there aren't enough tanks at low levels) while searching on my 75 mnk going to tip someone off about my lvl 75 brd?


p.s. SE needs a new translator or they need to learn how to answer a question.

[LyonheartLakshmi]

Re: Development Team Interview Questions.... Answers.

You didn't follow up with "What if I wanted to search with a lvl 75 job, a lvl 50 job and a lvl 20 job? The search function does not help at all in this case."

Failure on a massive scale.

Yeah, when I read their response to the searching on multiple jobs issue, I got the feeling that these people have never had to play this game in a way where they either spent time LFG or trying to put a pt together (if they even played the game at all).

First they say that we can put multiple jobs in our search comment (which will only work if they're all 75 and we're offering alternatives for meritting). And then they say allowing us to narrow our search based on what's in a search comment would be limiting player freedom? How does that line of thinking work? Everyone has the freedom to put stuff in their search comment or not.

[Lunaryn]

Re: Development Team Interview Questions.... Answers.

I don't think it's so much seeking for multiple jobs at once so much as being able to do 1 thing on a lv 75 job while putting up a flag for say a dunes PT that someone searching for people within that level range will be able to detect.
It doesn't matter what your /seacom says, no one in the dunes is gonna be looking for a 75 PLD...

As someone who isn't level 75, I'd contest that somewhat. I actually do have multiple job priorities, and in particular if I have some leeway to level my main, but my sub isn't quite where I'd like it either, I'd love to be able to seek on both main and sub at the same time.

I've been giving some thought to prototyping some kind of off-line searching system to serve as a testbed and demo of how a completely overhauled search system might work... major design goals would be to work with players full job list as private info, divulge that selectively to searches based on the player's specified seeking interests, allow for the formation of two tiers of "Prospective Parties", the first being totally private to the potential leader, pulling people in based on specified interests to see how a party might look, and the second being more directly invitational, where seekers can come in and look at what's been put together, comment on it, discuss strategy or camps, etc., before the stage of {Gather together.}{Aht Urhgan Whitegate} has been reached. It should also allow for flagging of interest/disinterest in community-defined roles, though I suspect this in particular would require a lot of hashing-out and reimplementing based on feedback...

And of course, if it were to be useful as anything beyond a mere demo, obviously every result would have to be timestamp by the last time a player's data was updated, so you have some idea which results to distrust, as I'm not up to trying to implement a backend to the actual search system or anything.

On a side note, this would also be rather handy to integrate with tools like skillchain calculators, since I think what weapon types you bring to the table with a given job is also good info to have and expose as appropriate.

Of course, my PHP is pretty rusty, and who knows if I'll actually get around to it (oh, the wonderful programming projects I've neglected over the years...).

[Gentoo]

Re: Development Team Interview Questions.... Answers.

Thanks for doing the interview. While some people seem to be unsatisfied with the questions, I appreciate the fact that many of the questions were centered around design philosophy and inspiration. Trying to pin the development team on specific game developments would have lead to something like "we can't talk about that now."

My only wish is that IfritnoItazura's question about monster difficulty versus job power could have been fit in. It would have been an excellent follow up to their comment about being surprised by players beating SL at level 50.
(that's not a grouse, by-the-by.)

... One of our jobs is to try and not to make the jobs overlap too much, because then the single job loses its color. If all the jobs can do the same thing, what’s the point of having all of those jobs when you can just have one? So with more jobs, the more customized they will be, and in those cases, the jobs fall into those stereotypes. For example the Bard will be there for the Bard’s role.

This is the really interesting quote to me. They seem to acknowledge that things like /whm end up diluting the job of WHM/. It also explains why they've been so reticent in the past to introduce now jobs specifically designed to tank.

However, in the information that's been released so far, I'm not seeing a great deal being planned to make various jobs overlap less, nor do I see them creating environments where job diversity would be rewarded.

Pumping up RDM, for example, to make the job more melee efficient only serves to magnify the problem with RDM/whm. Now, not only do players have a job that is a better fit for main healing than WHM/, but they'll be able to speed up the kills even faster by having their main healer contribute to damage output.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Development Team Interview Questions.... Answers.

No, people want to be able to do something contructive on their 75 while they seek endlessly for invites on their level 40 DD job. Ideally you could flag one or more of your jobs as being seeking and then change your job to whatever else while your flag is up.

Who really wants that? I've not seen talk about this anywhere but the DiV forums. If I'm seeking on my 40 DD, then that's what I'm seeking on. Make a PT or deal with the wait, no one makes you seek.

Maybe its just that I have support classes at 75 and can more easily satisfy my merit needs due to lack of competition, but I just don't have an aching need to abandon the job I'm seeking on to play another. File this under "You should have known what you were getting into when you picked a melee."

I also find it disingenuous, what is seriously stopping you from leaving that level 40 PT if your DRK gets a merit invite? Those are hard to come by. Level 40 PT could be out of tank or a sixth member then and that's frustrating. I'd much rather people seek as the job they're advertising to the rest of the world than more excuses to be an asshat be added to the game.

Pumping up RDM, for example, to make the job more melee efficient only serves to magnify the problem with RDM/whm. Now, not only do players have a job that is a better fit for main healing than WHM/, but they'll be able to speed up the kills even faster by having their main healer contribute to damage output.

It won't happen. RDM is far too entrenched in their role as a caster to make an effective melee. If they're too entrenched in melee, they're not fulfilling the role they were invited for. This is why "frontline" spells for RDM will fail.

[Richie]

Re: Development Team Interview Questions.... Answers.

I have a feeling that something is being lost in translation. Michael-Christopher Koji Fox (Japanese-English Translator)

Q1/A1 - The ideals of developers and players are there, but it seems the staff interpreted the question as "why can't we be lolmelee-nonmeleejob" instead of "why can't I play as a Smn instead of a Whm?"


[/color]

I get the feeling that their translator has no experience with the game.

[Feba]

Re: Development Team Interview Questions.... Answers.

SA: Actually, would you happen to know if anyone took logs of what was being said in Japanese too? Could be hell for SE if someone bilingual found errors in the translation, since they'd actually have pressure to give a straight answer.

[Taskmage]

Re: Development Team Interview Questions.... Answers.

Who really wants that? I've not seen talk about this anywhere but the DiV forums. If I'm seeking on my 40 DD, then that's what I'm seeking on. Make a PT or deal with the wait, no one makes you seek.
Maybe its just that I have support classes at 75 and can more easily satisfy my merit needs due to lack of competition, but I just don't have an aching need to abandon the job I'm seeking on to play another. File this under "You should have known what you were getting into when you picked a melee."

Come on now, really? If you haven't seen people complaining about long waits for invites, especially as a DD and especially after level ~38, you haven't been reading. Maybe it's not as prevalent anymore, but I think mainly that's because the horse is so dead and beaten that the community grudgingly accepts it. And "you should have known"? Just because it's known that LFG periods can get quite long doesn't mean it's a positive feature of the game to have a bunch of players bored and sitting on their thumbs for hours or days waiting for the chance to make progress. And what are they supposed to do in the meantime when they're stuck on their middie job? Solo? Not on anything that gives experience, not with most jobs. Farm? Probably not anything that your level 75's farming ability wouldn't make you /facepalm at. Craft? Viable and possible to do just as well as a 75 if you don't believe elemental staves have an effect, but still not a passtime that appeals to a lot of the playerbase.

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My two cents on rdm melee: If I'm in a meripo where I have time to melee between casting and resting, they don't need a rdm. Still appreciate the frontline buff for non-merit small group type activities and soloing.