Category Archives: Dear SE

Dear SE, 3102 error is horrible

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Sending this to in-game support:

 

Dear SE,

Can you please do something about error 3102?

Getting disconnected from the server is already upsetting enough, either it is caused by my own internet hiccupping or by server’s congestion. Being unable to log back in immediately makes it even more unbearable. Why is my “ghost” staying on the server for so long after I am kicked by the server? Sometimes the error 3102 can spam continuously for over 10 minutes. And on a unique instance, I’ve encountered an incident where my 3102 fest continued itself for 30 minutes, which doesn’t make sense.

More recently, though, I once got kicked from the server during a boss fight in Neverreap. Of course, by the time I managed to get through the log in screen, badly bruised by endless assaults from the 3102 devil, the whole party, including me, had already fallen to our foe. Although we won in the next attempt, it left my heart extremely heavy due to the fact that I was made the burden of the party only because my ghost refused to leave and let me return.

Today, again, I was onto a Heavensward unspoiled mining spot, but as soon as I landed on my feet and executed Stealth to stay safe from the cruel beaks of the overgrown cockatrices in Hinterlands, the server kicked me out. I was rejected countless times by the server because 3102 devil hates me. Maybe I’ve cussed at it for too many times it had built up a stunning amount of grudge, who knows. By the time I got back into the game, the unspoiled node disappeared right before my eyes.

This is truly aggravating and I could not hold my rage in and had to resort to filing a complaint against this offender.

Please punish the 3102 error for interfering with my gameplay. And although players are not allowed to dictate how the GM carry out a punishment, I would like to suggest you permanently ban 3102, for the sake of all the players, as I heard that this is a repeating crime against so many victims.

Thank you dearly,
An angry loyal player.

 

A Fisher’s Woe

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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.

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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 improve shop interface for GC and Ixali.

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Dear SE,

Please add the amount selector to Ixal Oaknots shop and GC shop.

When we buy materials from GC Quartermaster, or from Ixali Oaknots shop, sometimes we have to buy in bulk. Yet, the shop interface only allows single piece of item at a time. Please consider adding the arrow buttons and amount number input like normal NPC vendors. It is terrible when we have to click and confirm purchase 99 times for 99 items of the same type.

Sincerely,
Crafter in distress.

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

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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.

 

 

Dear SE, about RMT friend request spams

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Sent a suggestion through in-game Help Desk today:

Nowadays RMT friend request spams are getting extremely aggressive. I’ve just gotten 3 requests in 5 minutes or so. Right now how the Friend Request notification react to our click makes it cumbersome to decline friend request.

Please change the interface to make “no” mean NO. For example, change the options from “Yes” and “No” to “Accept” “Decide Later” “Decline.”

Right now, when we click on the notification of friend requests, it automatically assume that we want to accept friend request and only ask “Accept friend request from XXXXXXXX?” and only let us answer “Yes” to accept, or “No” to temporarily dismiss the window.

Please change this menu to reflect Teleport offer menu, where we can immediately decline it and get rid of the notification. Or, as I’ve already stated in my other suggestion long ago, please make it so new characters cannot send Friend Request unless a tutorial quest has been completed first, and please limit the number of friend requests that a character can send out per minute or per 10 minutes, so that people or bots cannot spam friend requests to a thousand of receivers at a time.

– End of suggestion letter –

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FFXIV Gardening needs an improvement

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27 APR 2015. I am writing this to SE. Hope they listen and consider it. XD

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Dear FFXIV development team,

I’d like to propose an idea about gardening system for housing in FFXIV. Please hear me out. Since my suggestion is very long, I’ll provide a list of paragraph’s content for it, so you can navigate more easily.

(1) The current gardening function
(2) An idea of how gardening can improve
(3) Rough ideas of how we can earn the ability or function
(4) User interface example

(1) The current gardening function

Right now we need to target and “talk” to each of the plant in order to fertilize or to tend. The menu will disappear and force us to target the next plant to execute next action. This is redundant, especially when I have 24 plants in my garden. Having to target a single plant 24 times in a row to apply the fertilizer about 10 times a day sure gets old and exhausting. We only have 1 kind of fertilizer, why do we need to select the fertilizer manually every time we’re applying a bag of fertilizer to the plant? Tending the plant is less troublesome, yet is still unnecessarily redundant, although I don’t mind it as much because we only need to water each plant about once or twice a day (depending on how often we fertilize it).

(2) An idea of how gardening can improve

Many of the games that have gardening in them have the “upgraded” ability or tools for gardening. Harvest Moon titles and Animal Crossing titles, for example. They allow the player to either unlock new ability or forge new tools to make gardening easier and more time-effective. In Harvest Moon games, we could hold the button longer to charge the upgraded (or tinkered) watering can, then release the button to water 9 beds of plants in one swing. In Animal Crossing games, we could equip a different watering can to make the watering action cover larger area of the land.

If FFXIV gardening would have a function to execute the same action to all 8 beds in a single gardening patch at once, life will be much easier for us adventurers. Likewise, if we get the ability to apply fertilizers to multiple beds (by selection, probably a check list, or continual sequence of menu windows) without having to do all the extra clicks, it will make gardening much more time-effective.

(3) Rough ideas of how we can earn the ability or function

The improved gardening ability doesn’t have to exist for everyone. You can make us go through a hard or long quest to unlock it. Make us earn it, through sheer dedication and effort. Make it so it is difficult to unlock, I don’t mind, it will worth every ounce of my effort.

You may want to make it so the house needs to install a specific piece of outdoor furnishing, or make it so we need to craft a whole new kind of garden patch, in order to make “mass action” possible.

This furnishing/upgraded garden patch should be hard to craft, make it 4 star recipe if you must. Make it so we need to visit every crafting guild to gather information or the blue print for the new, improved garden patch. You can even involve the engineers like Cid or Biggs & Wedge. Make them give us a quest to earn a design from them, then, only after obtaining this design blueprint, we can start crafting.

You can make it so there is a once a week repeatable quest to obtain an important material (or the key part) to use in the synthesis. And/or you can make it involve the Ehcatl Nine, so that the person needs to have max reputation with the tribe in order to do the quest to obtain this key part. The finished product can be like the current Deluxe Gardening Patch, but make the thing in the middle clickable, and that will be where we execute the “mass action” to all 8 beds in the specific patch.

As for an individual adventurer’s ability to use this “tool” or this new garden patch, you may want us to start the quest at, for example, the Botanist guild. Then the NPC can tell us to complete a series of goals in order to unlock it and earn the ability to interact with this gardening tool. Those who haven’t done the quest will have to do gardening the old way and tend/fertilize plants one at a time. Make us earn the function, don’t grant it for free. This will make it more challenging and more fun.

 

(4) User interface example

As for the menu window, you may want to explore many possibilities. What I have in mind is that the “tool” for mass gardening in the specific patch, when clicked, will show a window with a chart of its own 8 beds, no need to tell us what plants are in which beds, and let us click (check the check box, or highlight the bed’s number) before confirming to execute the wanted action (fertilize or tend) to all selected beds.

Or you can make it so that clicking on the “tool” of the specific patch will give us a series or menu prompt, probably asking us whether we want to tend or to fertilize. After selecting the action, it will ask a series of question, we can hit the button yes or no to specify if we want to take action on 1st bed, then 2nd bed, then 3rd bed, and through the 8th bed. This will make it that we don’t have to be kicked out of the interaction menu after every single action on single plant.
Please consider the possibilities and make the life of us gardening adventurers better. Thank you. :)

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End of my suggestion letter.

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4 MAY 2015.

Dear FFXIV development team,

On 27th of April 2015, I wrote and sent a suggestion regarding an idea of letting us gardeners execute an action on multiple beds of plants in the same Gardening Patch at once. I’d like to add something else to it.

This mass action function can probably help consolidate the items listed in FC Activity history. For example, instead of listing “Player tended a plant in the xx Bed, xxx patch.” for 8 times, it can list “Player tended to all plants in xxx patch.” or “Player used the Sprinkle on the xxx patch.” This will greatly reduce the flooding of activity log.

Watering (tending) the plant can be an action on all beds in the patch by default, and there is no need of check boxes for individual beds, while applying fertilizers to multiple beds should be based on manual selection.

Planting and harvesting, however, should remain individual.

Please consider mass-action function and this improvement of FC Activity log for gardening. Thank you.

 

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