[Jackel]

Alpha

• Aiming for 5000 players per server, 1000 players in one zone lagless
• Two approaches to zone congestion

• Display a message "too many players in zone, entry denied"
• Spawn instances of a zone to allow for more players

• still testing which one to take, as 1000 players in a zone is rarely happening naturally
• alpha is planned to continue till the second week of December
• they actually already have enough data from the stress tests and also enough feedback to be used for beta
• letting us into the alpha is only to test how far the performance will degrade because of the distance to the servers as well as to perform stability tests over extended periods of time (servers running 24/7)
• login counts are not falling, the devs have been telling Yoshida-san that "it's because YOU log in all the time!"
• he's very happy to be able to talk to players directly and already had numerous discussions [I hope we don't scare him away if he attempts to do the same with us... seeing how our "discussions" usually go]

Mounts

• Apparently, the sprint ability introduced in alpha makes mounts seem slower
• All mounts have the same speed

Misc

• Starting city is fixed depending on your first job, but once you reach the quest to go to another 2 cities, you can freely chose which city's quests you want to do first.
• Legacy characters will start at a different place, the one where the hero party drops from the void. [I'm reading it as legacy = created before end of the era, not legacy = created on a legacy account, but I'm not sure]
• Legacy characters will still be able to take all the quests just like non-legacy players, he says to think of it as a "stronger new game" [i think he means kinda like you can start a new game but keep all the items in some RPGs]
• Arcanist will be available at release, Summoner could make it too, but there seem to be delays on the battle side of things, so it might not make it.
• Wedding quest involves exchanging the rings at some point.
• After you get your ring, you can get married.
• Beta content not yet finalized, but he plans to include all the core story
• Arcanist's "hitting with a book"-animation is being worked on, he plans to show it the next LIVE letter, if possible
• No plans to novelize FFXIV's story, nor release some goods for now. Not until after release, when the community has grown and the game is successful enough for such investments to be worth it.
• There might be an offline event where players will be able to fight against the dev team, he's thinking about doing it about half a year after ARR release if the game is successful. [I hope they will still do online events too, else people outside Japan are left out again...]

Credit goes to Soukyuu for this translation

[Aerin]

This is nice to wake up to.

[Catlady]

Jackel, on 22 November 2012 - 09:48 PM, said:

Alpha

• still testing which one to take, as 1000 players in a zone is rarely happening naturally
• alpha is planned to continue till the second week of December
• they actually already have enough data from the stress tests and also enough feedback to be used for beta
• letting us into the alpha is only to test how far the performance will degrade because of the distance to the servers as well as to perform stability tests over extended periods of time (servers running 24/7)
• login counts are not falling, the devs have been telling Yoshida-san that "it's because YOU log in all the time!"
• he's very happy to be able to talk to players directly and already had numerous discussions [I hope we don't scare him away if he attempts to do the same with us... seeing how our "discussions" usually go]

What kinda "discussions"? I take it he gets a lot of flack about the game. Did the Japanese not complain at all while the Westerners and Europeans gave all the bad publicity?

[Jackel]

facattack, on 24 November 2012 - 06:28 AM, said:

What kinda "discussions"? I take it he gets a lot of flack about the game. Did the Japanese not complain at all while the Westerners and Europeans gave all the bad publicity?

Remember that for many the game got progressively better over a two year time period. Most of the initial disdain and frustration with the game was rectified within the first year or so, but even then people had certain reservation about how long they could hold out just rebuilding a "bad" product.

The discussions he's referring to are with Japanese players (or rather players in Japan) who have been invited into the Alpha to test the game in it's current state. The issue the game had originally (back in 2010) was that player feedback was pretty much just a way to make it look like community interaction was in place.

My only take on it this time around is that Yoshi-P seems to be serious about investigating issues players have with the game. It's clearly up to those who will be picked to test the game to do their part in reporting issues or aspect of the game they feel won't work well. If they want something specific tested and instead the majority of players are off doing their own thing..they're not helping the cause any.

Oddly enough I think Yoshi-P has done "his part" in building the foundation for us. It's now up to us to offer how we the players want the game molded and shaped.