Tag Archives: Dear SE

Sent Armoire suggestion today

By | |
Leave a comment

“Please make exclusive items (various campaign rewards) able to store in Armoire.”

Dear SE, GM, Yoshida-san, development team and system designers,

Please hear our desperate plea! We who love you and your glamourable outfits, we who are loyal customers, we who went to great length to put utmost effort to fulfill your requirements (or pay extra dollars) and acquire your endless supplies of eye-candy, juicy-looking, extraordinary super special exclusive outfits….on many occasions.

We are, HOWEVER, in deep shit now because of the inventory crisis. Because almost all of those exclusive outfits cannot be stored in the Armoire.

Currently, we have to a) carry them around with us or b) keep them in a retainer’s inventory. With the current expansion, Stormblood, we are already in for a tough time with inventory space, due to the huge load of new crafting materials and items and outfit.

I find it outrageously ridiculous and senseless that we are not allowed to store the outfit such as Maid Attire, Butler Attire, Eastern Journey attire, and so on, in the Armoire. We all enjoy the glamours that these outfits provide, and of course there is no way we would want to discard these items.

So please, I beg of you, please consider adding these items in the list of equipment storable in the Armoire. As it is now, sometimes I can’t help but wonder if these “rewards” are actually a punishment in disguise. Please, pretty please add another category in the Armoire function.

Best regards,
A glamour enthusiast.

Please improve Market Board’s Advance search functions.

By | | ,
Leave a comment

Dear SE and the devs,

Please add more functions to Market board advanced search.

As the search only returns 100 hits for such items as Shards, Crystals, Clusters and many more, when we buyer, or browser, select to view the seller list on specific item. I have, recently, realized that we cannot navigate to next page of sellers. And this is highly inconvenient.

Why would one want to see the sellers who are selling at higher price? Because sometimes people sell things in bulk. Fire Clusters, for example, are listed as a pack of 1,000, or 999, or 500 at best. Sometimes we only need 100 clusters, but the search cap of 100 hits prevent further browsing, making it impossible to see the sellers who list items in smaller bulk, which happen to be at higher price.

Moreover, this problem happens when same person (or different person) sell in large quantity spamming. For example, one retainer is selling 999 clusters at the same price of 100 in 15 slots. I also suspect that the same player also uses a different retainer to list even more clusters at the same price, in same bulk size. This results in same person or same retainer occupying over 50% of the search result that came up.

To visualize the example, here are a few screenshots:

ffxiv_05032016_132434-cropffxiv_05032016_132506_cr

ffxiv_05032016_132443_cr
 ffxiv_05032016_132451_cr
 ffxiv_05032016_132455_cr
 ffxiv_05032016_132459_cr
 ffxiv_05032016_132503_crffxiv_05032016_132511_cr

As you can see, the current Advanced Search cannot help solve this problem.

So, I would like to suggest 2 new functions for Advanced Search menu.

  • Sort by quantity sold (descending/ascending) and Sort by price (descending/ascending)
  • Sort Filter (hide redundant results (and show only 1 of them))

Redundant results are those that are sold by the same retainer at the same price and are also at the same bulk size. This will allow buyers to be able to see more variety of choices to choose from in the search result.

It will also benefit sellers who sell items in smaller bulk, though at higher price. They now can also have some exposure to buyers, instead of getting the search results (100 hits) hogged by one or a few persons.

Please give these functions some careful consideration.

Thank you dearly,
Aleczan.

 

2nd letter of suggestion sent on 30 June 2018.

Dear SE,

I do love your “Display only HQ items” function in the Market board system. However, it would be splendid to have even more search filter options. Such as “Hide redundant results” (meaning same retainer, same price, same bulk size) and “Sort by quantity” (both ascendind and descending, please) and the reverse of the current sort, “Show most expensive on top” or something.

Let me elaborate how and why we needd those functions.

Case in point, the search result can only show 100 cheapest sellers, regardless of quantity or bulk size. I am having problems with someone selling 99 Twincoon. This person is selling with many retainers. Some of the retainers are selling 20 slots of Twincoon. I do not want to buy 99 Twincoon for 546 gil each. Because that would be a gil sink, having to pay 54,054 gil up front for the surplus quantity that I will not use.

I would rather buy 20 Twincoons, even at higher price, let’s say for example, 800 gil each, and pay only 16,000 gil instead of wasting with the surplus. But guess what? Currently, that option is impossible. Because someone (or many) is occupying and almost monopolizing the market on Twincoon. All the 100 search results are big bulk listing which I am unwilling to buy.

Please improve our quality of life by either expandding the search results (to maybe 200 results, please) or add more useful search options to the filter function.

Thank you very much.

 

Fisher, Folklore and Blue Scrips Token

By | | ,
Leave a comment

Sent this just now:

Dear SE and development team,

I’d like to make a plea to you to please look into FFXIV Fishing a little bit more.

Currently we Fishers have tougher time than other Disciples of the Land. Not only that we cannot right out select what fish we wish to catch, like BTN and MIN select slot of the specific node, we do not own any offhand tool and thus our stats suck and, despite all the effort in donning up to boost Gathering rating, the tougher fish can, and will, escape. While BTN and MIN can spend 250 GP (for +50%) and perhaps 50 more GP (for +50% +15% on top of that) to ensure 100% success rate, overgeared Fisher can still get “The fish got away.” message randomly.

While I am alright with these and see these challenges as an entertainment, there is other aspect of Fisher (or the lack thereof) that I am extremely unhappy with. The Folklore information on Fisher’s Fishing Log (or Fish Guide).

There is no way to tell, without going out of our way to farm 99 blue tokens to test it at the vendor, which tomes we have already acquired. Since the blue token cannot be exchanged for something else (as the other Blue scrips purchases are done by directly spending the Blue scrips) if now I have exchanged 99 blue scrips tokens, and find out that I actually have all the 3 tomes already, I am pretty much screwed. Because I would have 99 x 50 = 4,950 scrips that I can no longer spend anywhere in any way.

I know we can also check folklore we got by going to the folklore fishing spot to try to catch those legendary fish, and see if we could catch it or not. But this could take hours, because the target fish won’t always bite, and even if it bites, there is no guarantee that we could land it.

Unlike Botanist folklore page and Miner folklore page, we Fishers have no separated page for the folklore fish. The fish from folklore tome are put together, mixed, with other fish.

Please, I do not want you to pamper us and make fishing easier, but at least for user interface – the Fish Guide – please improve it regarding the Folklore information. Add a separated Folklore page, or make it possible to check, in a glance, which folklore we’ve already acquired and how many fish are in those pages (it can be blacked out like normal uncaught fish, that is fine), and, like BTN and MIN folklore item information in the Gathering Log, tell which map that fish is in.

Or, if that is unmanageable, please at least make us (everyone) able to trade Rowena’s Token (Blue scrips only, for both the gatherer and the crafter, if you’d please) back to Blue Scrips.

A Fisher’s Woe

By | |
Leave a comment

Dear SE,

I strongly feel that fishers are being bullied badly by your current RNG system.

First off, I must let you know that fishing in FFXIV has always been my pleasure and I found it relaxing, that is until RNG seems to be remarkably working against fisher more than any other DoL classes. I’ve been stuck on Lucis quest for over 6 months because the spawn window for the token (Gigant Clam) is only 3 hours long, and they tend to escape A LOT. When I say A LOT, I mean on some nights I could hook 5 Clams and ALL of them would escape. That is 5 times in a row, at the rate of 100%. And even if I was lucky enough to reel it in, there is no guarantee that it would be the HQ clam.

Recently, I have upgraded my gear and I am now at 500 gathering, with food. So I went back to reattempt my Lucis quest again. The minimum gathering needed for this clam is 375. And guess what, I hooked 3 clams and lost all due to RNG deciding that my 500 gathering is not good enough to get any of the 3 clams. I would understand that the fish can randomly escape when gathering rating is around the minimum requirement. I would understand if I were at 425 gathering, 50 above minimum, and lost the clam 2 out of 3 times. I DO NOT understand, and nor am I happy, to see that I am sitting at 500 gathering, 125 points over minimum requirement, and yet still lost 3 out of 3 clams.

For other DoL, not only that they can manually select the slot to limit their target item for gathering, they also have consistency effect of Gathering rating towards the success rate. If I am a miner or a botanist, and I am 125 gathering above requirement, I’m likely having 100% success rate. Damn, at 645 gathering, which is only 45 points above requirement for Legendary Node (folklore gathering) , my miner is already getting 80% success rate on the item. I then can use skills to boost success rate by 5%, 10%, or 25%.

What does fisher get for success rate? A completely wild random RNG, and no success rate skill.

Please make success rate for fisher more reliable and more rational. It is beyond comprehension when we keep losing a fish when we put so much effore in gearing up to increase stats. If fisher’s gathering rating is going to be so ineffective in dictating our success in hooking a fish, we’re far inferior than other DoL. Not to mention that we don’t even have the Offhand tool to boost stats anymore…. This is so sad.

With love,
A frustrated fisher.

Blacklist system should have an additional function.

By | | ,
Leave a comment

Dear SE,

I’d like to suggest that the blacklist system should have an additional function.

Or maybe just add a separated function, that allows YOU to prevent a specific player’s character from appearing on your screen. 

There are times when I want this really nice screenshot of the sunset, but a person is standing there, AFK or not, blocking the view. There are times when I want to take a pic at a specific spot (like in front of an event’s decoration), but this person is AFK there all day long (this happened during this year’s Little Lady’s Day) so no matter how many times I came back to check the availability, I still couldn’t use the thing for my screenshots.

Sometimes people are nice and when I asked politely, they gladly moved out of the way. But that’s not always the result. Sometimes they didn’t see my request, sometimes they might just not care, and sometimes they purposely tried to be mean. Also, since the time in the game changes quickly, sometimes I totally miss the screenshot opportunity because asking and waiting for response took too long. (For example, the moon already moved and changed angle.)

If I could remove the appearance of a PC from my own screen, this won’t be a problem anymore. And I won’t even need to intrude and make my selfish request to them when and where I want to take a screenshot.

Additionally, there was one exclusive incident when I made a comment in /say about persons who spammed the chatlog with emotes, and they weren’t nice enough to uncheck the “Display log message” in emote menu like I suggested, but instead continued even more notoriously. I moved away so I was outside of the range for the emote to appear, they followed and spammed more. So I moved again and blacklisted and continued crafting. One of the persons in that spam fest went out of their way to follow me and had their character stand so close to my face with their crotch towards me. Which was beyond rude and was also disgusting.

If I could have an option to “unsee” specific characters in the game, this kind of harassment wouldn’t bother me anymore.

On a remotely related subject, it would also be nice to have an option to prevent my blacklisted persons from seeing my character. It is creepy as hell to have a person on my blacklist follow me around doing emotes at me.

There was one incident, back in 1.0, when a TERRIBLE (terrible is an understatement) person – whom I and my friends bumped into during a Behest, had argued with, and blacklisted him – kept following us around doing emotes at us and laughed repeatedly when we were killed in a levequest.

An option to hide myself from being seen by this kind of person would be much appreciated. So that we can take an additional measure against the people whom we decide to blacklist, to prevent them from stalking us.

Also, although it was just me being paranoid about the crotch person mentioned a few paragraphs above, what if they were taking screenshots of the moment? Now they will have pics of doing nasty things to my character. They may upload them and laugh with their friends about me and how they got back at me in those pics . That’s gross as hell. If I have an option to also hide myself from my blacklisted persons, I could feel less vulnerable.

If you would consider adding such function or anything similar, I would be forever grateful.

Sincerely,
Aleczan Knighthill.

Dear SE, please add “Pause Queue” function to Duty Finder

By | |
Leave a comment

Going to send this letter of suggestion to SE through in-game support desk.

 

Dear SE,

I’d like to propose an installation of a new function which could be very useful for FFXIV Duty Finder.

Please also add a “Pause Queue” function to the Duty Finder. My idea is that this button will temporarily put the DF on hold for the player. When paused, the player would temporarily step out of the Duty Finder line, while staying at the same spot in the queue, not moving closer, and not getting kicked out of the waiting line. When the player comes back and “Resume” queuing, the player will get back into the waiting line where he or she first stepped out, as the spot had been reserved for the original owner.

However, if the player executes this function after there was a prompt to commence Duty, the player will resume queuing in the next after next spot. In the event that some other players in front of the pausing person got into their Duty, freeing up the spots at the front of the line, the players behind the pausing person will pass them and go on ahead, as if the pausing person is frozen in the line until he or she comes back and hit “Resume” button.
This ability to “Pause” will be extremely useful for various kinds of situations.

 

Example 1:
A poor Dragoon who finds it tough to get a Duty Finder in Syrcus Tower to pop for over an hour decides that he should also spend his waiting time doing something productive. He changes to a low level job and went to grind EXP in FATEs. In the middle of a fight, while he is tanking a FATE boss, the Duty Finder goes off and presents a Commence prompt.

He cannot change back to his registered job because he is in the middle of a fight.

If he runs away from the FATE to try to lose enmity, there is a chance that the boss monster will reset to full HP if it follows him out too far from the spawn spot. Other players in the FATE will be very upset and will call him out on it. Resetting a FATE boss is also rude and is a waste of everyone else’s time and effort.

If there is “Pause Queue” function, he could use it and stepped temporarily out of the queue, letting the next person in line go in instead. Meanwhile, he won’t waste all the long minutes he had spent waiting for this Duty. He also wouldn’t need to start queuing from the end of the line again, which could be another hour or even longer. He could finish the FATE, change job to DRG, and resume queue and will probably have to wait for 5 or 10 minutes for next chance.

 

Example 2:
A healer has been waiting for a Labyrinth of the Ancients duty for well over 90 minutes. The Alliance is slowly filling up, missing only 2 tanks, 1 Healer and 1 DPS at the moment. She’s been sitting here for so long, fearing that leaving the desk will make her miss the opportunity to get into the Duty, and that she would need to start queuing again which could result in another waste of 90 minutes.

She’s starving. She needs food. She also needs a bathroom visit.

The current DF system means that she has only 3 options, withdraw now and go get her needs fulfilled, run for it hoping to be lucky enough to make it back in time before she’s kicked out from not hitting the “Commence” button, or hold out and make gaming a higher priority in life than nature’s calls.

If there is a “Pause Queue” function, she will easily decide to pause it and run for the bathroom and get food from the kitchen, resting assured that when she returns, she won’t have to spend yet another agonizing 90 minutes to get into a Duty. If she’s lucky enough, she might even get into the same Alliance that she got a spot in earlier.

 

Example 3:
A tank is having a bad luck day. He’s been sitting in the queue for 20 minutes for Expert Roulette. It seems all the healers are asleep or away from home right now, as there is no sign on the healer despite the party’s being ¾ for so damn long.

He went to Gold Saucer to kill time while waiting for the Duty Finder. As if the Twelves were pulling a prank on him, the Duty Finder prompt to commence pops up while he’s in the middle of a Triple Triad duel with an NPC. He threw his cards onto the board quickly without thinking, in order to rush the match to end so he could enter Duty. However, there is a Sudden Death rule, and he happened to score a draw against the NPC, so the NPC wouldn’t let him go and the next match forcefully and automatically starts.

In current system, this tank would totally miss the commence countdown and be kicked out from the queue. He would have to start queuing from start again, which could be extremely irritating. He’s been waiting for this party for over 20 minutes, yet he is forced to forfeit his spot just because he is 1 minute late to click the commence button?

If there is a “Pause Queue” function, once he found out that the NPC isn’t letting him go anywhere, he could have pause it for a while and rush back to resume queuing. Or, if he is smart and plans ahead, he could pause his queue before starting the Triple Triad match with this NPC, and then resume it after the match ends properly.

 

In my opinion, current system is a little harsh and unfair for those who’ve been sitting in front of their screens for over an hour, sometimes close to two hours, waiting for the party/alliance to slowly assemble, only to then get kicked completely out of the line just because they have some kind of emergency in real life and need to leave their chair for just a minute or two – when the Duty Finder decides to be mean and go CHING when they’re AFK. Of course, it wouldn’t go off for the whole 2 hours while they were sitting tight and staring, but would, unfortunately, pop once the person has left to do some business.

With a Pause Queue system, the player could relax a little bit more and pause then resume their queue without much disturbance to other people who happen to be in the same Duty party.

If you fear that people would abuse or exploit the function, you can limit the pause usage to, perhaps, 3 times per real life day for each player.

As for people queuing on DF as a party, make it so the whole party will have to vote whether to activate the Pause or not. It should show the name of the person who initiates the Pause proposal, to prevent griever from abusing it to the party. Once a Pause is activated, any of the party member can vote resume. Again, the person will have their name shown to every member.

Please consider the possibilities of this function.

Thank you,
Aleczan Knighthill.