SE QA fail, update impressions

Two parts to this post... first about SE quality, then my impressions about the update content itself as well as the recent RMT activity.

QA - or lack thereof

One thing that really surprised me is the lack of testing... the big one is ranged attacks being ineffective. You have essentially one entire job (RNG) and two other jobs (COR & PUP) being disabled, which meant that they needed to have another emergency maintenance less than a day after their update...

Seems to me that they did not do any significant testing at all... more of a "it compiles, ship it" attitude. A few ways that this issue could have been caught:

- Automated regression testing: Have every job go out and do some basic moves. Ranger shoot arrow. Does arrow do expected damage? If not, raise a red flag. This can be easily done with basic software testing tools, many of which are cheap or even open source.

- Human testing: Have a human QA member login to every single job, test it out and do some basic activities... This should be a part of the basic release process. You can outsource the testing to India, China or Egypt for cheap

- Targeted testing: Your developers know what code they're mucking around with for the next update. Test those functions that you change before you ship. You've had months to do testing. >.>

So... I don't really think that SE has a real QA team behind FFXI. I don't think the developers play the game at all, and if they do, it's quite obvious which jobs that they do not play since this past update's bugs are easily caught with a few minutes of playing.

And there's really no excuse for this lack of QA. Assuming FFXI only has 500,000 players, each only having one character at $13/month, this means that they are bringing in at least $6.5m/month, or $78M/year. Let's take 5% of that and put it into QA and customer service. $3.9M/year can pay easily for a team of 20 highly qualified software developers, or a team of 50+ off-shored developers to do basic QA. You'd really only need 5-10 smart people with the appropriate tools to do basic automated regression testing.

Update/Changes impressions

Besides the failure of QA (and update speeds... geez... someone teach SE about buying burst bandwidth or peer-to-peer networking), here are some impressions on the update:

- Job changes:

Pretty good changes to WHM & RDM now. I'm especially happy about the WHM changes as it significantly boosts the job, making it the #1 healer to have, and even tempting me to go level it now even though I already have 3 healing jobs.

Composure is definitely a boost to RDMs. Knowing what a pain it is to keep a Refresh/Haste Cycle going, plus the general inefficiency of casting Refresh on yourself, this job ability significantly enhances the job.

- Campaign changes:

General failure... Reducing exp from attacking fortifications is a horrible idea. The exp from that isn't even that good compared to fighting real mobs, and if people try to afk, they'll normally end up dead once the first wave of campaign mobs comes by.

Not allowing people to skill up at all on fortifications seems unnecessary... with level sync already gimping people's skills, this just makes it that much harder to level a job up, especially for those people who have jobs that do not easily get parties. I'm just glad that I don't have anything to really skill up. I guess my Scholar staff skill will remain low

Personally, I stopped doing campaign months ago... this definitely isn't encouraging me to start again, and if I do, I'll be avoiding offensive campaigns. In the past, I preferred defensive campaigns since offensive campaigns often had long waits between waves of mobs. Now, with less exp for beating up fortifications, there's even less reason to go on the offensive.

- MMM changes:

Somewhat of a failure. They secretly nerfed the amount of marble reward you get for completing mazes. This means that it takes twice as long to farm marbles to set up your mazes. In return, I *suppose* you can share already created mazes with other people. I expect that this will likely make MMM even less attractive as you have to grind twice as long to get a chance at an item.

Supposedly there is an adjustment that the longer you go without doing a maze, you'll have a higher chance of a better reward. This means that if you don't do MMM on your maze for 4 days, you'll have the highest chance for a reward. We'll have to see if this "higher chance" is worth it or not. Drop rates are already horrible for this lackluster event

However, I *do* like having more music to choose from though :D

- Gobbiebag

I have mixed feelings about this... in general, the gobbiebag upgrades have become more and more expensive with every next upgrade, so it isn't too surprising that these final two upgrades are very expensive. However, the fact that the materials also compete with Salvage crafting materials and hecatomb materials seems to unfairly penalize players who are trying for those pieces of gear.

Personally, I'm holding off on this upgrade until after the initial inflation & rush... I'm sure people will end up farming these items and the market will take care of itself in a couple of months. Meanwhile, we can just use our Mog Satchels, which are...

- Mog Satchel/Security Token/RMT activity

Mixed feelings about this too... for two reasons.

1. The security token itself is a good idea. It will cut down customer service expenses to SE (and probably end with laying off of many GMs and phone customer service reps) as it will cut down on the number of accounts being compromised. One-time pads are the most secure mechanism there is, though having a physical device is a pain. I'm fairly certain that they're not making money on the manufacture and distribution of these tokens either. I'm hoping that they go the Blizzard way and release an iPhone app for it sometime too so I don't have to carry around a device I'm sure I'll eventually lose.

2. On the other hand, tying it to the Mog Satchel is a cheap trick. Everyone wants more inventory, and hence will buy the token just to get the Satchel. This really stinks of RMT. Everyone will be buying the token not thinking "oh, this will protect my account", but rather "I need to get this in order to get my extra inventory slots". It sets a bad precedent.

- Crystalline Prophecy/More SE RMT

If the security token set a bad precedent for RMT, then this questline is even worse. This "mini-expansion" hasn't even been out for 24-hours and people have already finished it. I pre-ordered it after last month's billing period was over and I've gotten the first cutscene. I'm holding off actually doing it until the initial rush is over, and to figure out when I can do it with some friends. The cutscenes look really good, on the standards of WotG, and it looks like it will be a nice trip down memory lane for the original Zilart story-line. However, for the rest of the expansion... well, as far as I can tell, the whole content consists of:

- Farming for multiple Rare/Ex drops

- Farming for "Key item" drops

- 3 popped NMs

- 1 level capped run around a zone

- 2 BCNMs

And... you get your choice of one of 3 pieces of... well, decently nice armor at the end. Overall, it seems like it would be a long quest-line, but not worth spending $10 for. I mean, there are tons of other long quest-lines in the game that have armor rewards at the end (Opo-opo Crown for example), but they do not require you to pay for it. Where is SE going with this? Would they have released 5 mini-expansions in the past for each of the Serpent General quest-lines, each for $4.99? Where will it stop? I know Oblivion had their $2.50 horse armor... is SE going the same way with micro-payments? How much would you pay for a Ridill? $50? $200? How much for 10 merits? Can I order a fully merited level 75 RDM for $500? Wait... isn't this just RMT? Should I report SE to the STF?

- Equipment Augmentation

Haven't tried this myself... from what I've read, it's another waste of time due to the randomness and possible negative stats that can be added to the equipment you try to improve. Plus it makes the equipment Rare/Ex, so you might end up turning that very expensive Peacock Charm into a useless paperweight

From looking around, it seems that there are many mixed feelings about this update and the mini-expansion... here are some other links for other opinions.

- Talint's view on the update and the lack of understanding the dev team has on their customers. I love this quote from him: “they introduce ridiculous content with the intention of making it easier down the line”

- Erica's view on the "Crystalline Failure"