LIVE! Letter from the Producer (09/28/2011)
http://sqex.to/qhR
On October 4th there will be a live chat with Yoshida for the next Letter from the Producer. So we'll all have our opportunity to ask him questions, I guess?
Also FINAL FANTASY XIV will celebrate its one-year anniversary on September 30th.
"... and so I close, realizing that perhaps the ending has not yet been written."
Due to the number of questions that would likely get asked, I imagine that it will be pre-selected questions or only questions that he has an answer to, but it's going to be very interesting to see that level of interaction from SE. I'm pretty sure this is a notable step forward when it comes to user interaction from their end... I wonder what WK might have to say about it all. *bugs him*
Also, I wonder how it will be translated to multiple languages as I can only imagine he will be speaking Japanese.
Bow before the mighty Javoo!
Translated using a translator.
They better not be just pre-selected and ones they only have answers for. Through FFXI's history we've been incredibly sick of similar events like this and all the answers for anything important are "We cant say at this time".
"... and so I close, realizing that perhaps the ending has not yet been written."
Well, I'd rather they only answered questions which they do have answers for. If they don't have an answer for it, why bother with responding to the question? And if the questions are 'live' (which I highly doubt) then most of them will be questions which will likely not have answers yet, such as "When will we see Ishgard?" and "When will we get Triple Triad?" and "When will the PS3 version be released?"
Bow before the mighty Javoo!
Yeah I guess. I would rather they just be more transparent to be honest. As in, if they don't have an offical answer just say what they know so far rather than just "we can't comment right now".
"... and so I close, realizing that perhaps the ending has not yet been written."
Since BoB poked me about this, I think the number one question I would be asking would be "Why do you think XIV failed?" I feel their response would reflect if they are on the same page as the fans. When the director/scenario writer of XIII and Kitase were asked why XIII had such negative feedback in the West, they were asked a similar question and simply responded that Western fans just didn't understand it, which told me they are completely clueless about what makes a game fun and completely oblivious to how bad some of the design in XIII really was. Granted XIII-2 appears to be on the right track and has addressed a lot of the grievances with XIII but their was a good year before Kitase and Wada openly admitted that XIII was actually flawed and the fans were right.
I would be wondering how the producers of XIV are approaching the resurrection of XIV and see if they understand and agree with fans on what the problem is. I'm still expecting someone to pipe up and admit that XIV was rushed out of production a year before it was ready. I just want to know if SE is on the same page as everyone else cause I really feel that SE has a really warped idea of what their fans actually like about the series.
True beauty exists in things that last only for a moment.
Current Mood: And it's been a long December and there's reason to believe. Maybe this year will be better than the last. I can't remember all the times I tried to tell myself. To hold on to these moments as they pass...
I have no doubt questions like that will be asked. It's been on the community's mind for quite some time.
"... and so I close, realizing that perhaps the ending has not yet been written."
I highly doubt the questions being answered will be to do with the past. I'm pretty confident that they will be focusing on the future. To answer a question like "Why did this game fail?" is to talk about it in a past tense and to concede that the game has failed entirely, which means there is absolutely no purpose in continuing with the game. That's definitely not what they're going to be discussing in the live letter. The letter from the producer has always been about what is happening at the moment and what will go on in the future - the questions about the past are not for Yoshi-P to address as far as I'm concerned. If someone came up to me and asked why my role in staff was a joke because of what the previous person did (and to be blunt, yes, they were a joke, they didn't know what they were doing at all), I wouldn't waste my time with them. That's not my fault and it's not my concern, my concern is to fix things, not to talk about how the past person smurfed up as if it was something I had any control over or any responsibility for.
This is not Square Enix fielding an open questions day. This is Yoshi-P doing a letter from the editor in which he will reply to questions, and that he will be replying via YouTube, live. That doesn't suggest any kind of danger - he could have the whole thing scripted as if he was typing it out as he usually does. It just shows that SE - or at least, Yoshi-P in particular - is making a real effort to try to be more "in touch" with the playerbase.
Perhaps asking you to reply to this thread was a bit naive of me considering you probably don't keep up with FFXIV. I was more interested in your thoughts as to whether this is a step forward for SE - to have 'live' YouTube videos where the producer addresses the future of the game. To my knowledge, this has not been done before, but I could be wrong.
They have already conceded that they failed, but that was someone else's mistakes and right now the general opinion amongst players of FFXIV* is that is has improved dramatically since it's rather horrible debut. It's making leaps and bounds now and to talk of the failures of a year ago, for me, would be a mistake on their part and in all honesty I doubt any of the players of the future will be interested in what happened a year ago nearly as much as they will be interested in what the game is going to be in a month or a year from now.
* Going by my experience of the FFXIV forums and from talking to those who play the game.
Bow before the mighty Javoo!
I was more talking about the new direction of the game and if Square understood what the majority of not only the current user base but the market they want to tap in to want, but anyways it appears he'll only be talking about patch 1.19 and then later in the month they'll do another one where he'll talk about patch 1.20 and the future of the game.
FINAL FANTASY XIV, The Lodestone
Questions will be asked via Twitter and answered via YouTube.
"... and so I close, realizing that perhaps the ending has not yet been written."
No, I don't really follow XIV, after my foray into XI, I determine that I just don't care for MMOs as a game genre, so I pretty much ignore XIV's existence (and all MMOs for that matter) until someone brings up an article about how awful it is and only slowly getting better. I would argue that the awful banner this game has been branded with still makes my question valid, even if its a new team, I would like to know if they know what they are doing, and not simply just saying "yes we'll fix it like you want it" to every bit of criticism that comes its way. I don't think anyone wants to see XIV devolve into a prettier version of XI, but rather see it become a new experience. Besides, its only been a year, that's not the past, that's relatively recent. Asking how Sakeguchi feels about Spirits Within and its impact on Squaresoft and his career, now that is digging up the past.
As for whether its a good thing for SE to be doing these live feedback sessions. It's certainly good for PR, and creating an idea that SE cares about what its fans think but it comes down to how they handle their fans criticism and implement it that will tell if its actually useful for fixing XIV. Until SE finally starts bringing up subscription fees and we witness how that transition works, will we finally see if an of this has been truly fruitful or whether SE should have just pulled the plug.
True beauty exists in things that last only for a moment.
Current Mood: And it's been a long December and there's reason to believe. Maybe this year will be better than the last. I can't remember all the times I tried to tell myself. To hold on to these moments as they pass...
It looks like there's no translator, which is a shame considering they went through the trouble of announcing the even in English. Maybe we'll get a translated write up or something. :\
"... and so I close, realizing that perhaps the ending has not yet been written."
Wow, what a massive letdown. Rather than getting a boost in PR, they've actually shot themselves in the foot by informing the rest of the world what they're doing without noting that it will be entirely in Japanese with the only translations being done on Twitter.
Bow before the mighty Javoo!
Well they are showing stuff still, and are translating via their Twitter account it seems. I guess it's better than nothing.
Edit: Maybe we've missed something, but that was very lackluster in terms of information...
Last edited by Rostum; 10-04-2011 at 02:31 PM.
"... and so I close, realizing that perhaps the ending has not yet been written."
The weapon and area design looked nice, also I think he said something about a PvP zone which would be cool.
That was pretty annoying though. I rushed around making sure that I was free just to find it all in japanese with no translation.
Putting aside the lack of "good enough" English translation for a moment
Not sure exactly what to think. I mean, on one hand, it was better than a standard "Letter from the Producer", so I'm glad for that.
But on the other hand, I can't help but wish more was revealed. Maybe next time...
Bow before the mighty Javoo!
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