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A lot of readers asked me why I made this Mechanics FAQ while I despise FF12's
sleep-inducing story, tune-lacking music, tedious gameplay, etc. Now, I would
like to share my story with you -- the story about this FAQ.
It all started in the North America release evening, October 31, 2006. Within
a few minutes of game clock (if I could see it), I realized that I couldn't
call up the menu with Triangle, view the minimap with Select, etc. I tried
both of my official PS2 controllers, purchased at different locations at
different times, with no luck.
I knew where I should go -- I came to the GameFAQ / GameSpot forum and looked
for help, only to find out that a dozen of people were also crying the exact
same problem. We couldn't play our game!
Just for the record: the board was such a crowded place that night.
A topic would be pushed to page 6 within a minute.
We, the players who had this problem, made a joint effort of identifying the
source. We started writing to Square-Enix, trying another PS2 or controller,
reporting our model numbers and places of purchase, etc. In a few days, we came
into consensus that it was probably a controller issue, as the problem could
be readily solved by using another controller. My case was a rarity that both
of my controllers were "broken" although they work perfectly in all other
games I played.
I also checked out some Asian forums, and it seemed that the problem only
exists in the NA version.
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I contacted S-E in two ways. On the 2nd evening, November 1st, 2006, from a
S-E online support staff, I learned that S-E was already aware of the problem,
and they were assessing "whether to announce it" -- that certain official Sony
Duel-Shock 2 controllers may be incompatible with the game.
Later, my email was also replied. It was a very poorly-informed response. You
can see the exact content from Appendix A above.
Knowing that the company has probably decided to down-play this serious, but
not very wide-spreading problem, I went to Wikipedia FF12 entry, and added a
little section of "Controller Issue". I reported this problem as accurately
as I could.
Within a few hours, my information was formatted and proofread by other fellow
Wiki users. It was also edited to become a "bug" in its section title.
However, suddenly, the entire section was "deleted" by a fellow user of
Wikipedia. I was shocked, and I put the section back in thinking maybe this
was an editing accident. It was promptly removed again by the same user.
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This user's reason to remove my words was that this is an "Original Research".
An Original Research here means that I was the first person to reveal this
controller issue, so I had no reference. Wikipedia does not accept information
with no trust-worthy references, just in case people would flood the online
encyclopedia with unsupported, bogus claims. This is understandable and I
respect this policy.
Realizing I need references, I gave this Wikipedia fellow user various links
of the threads on the GameFAQ / GameSpot forum, where about a dozen of users
(numbers constantly climbing) were still posting about this problem within the
last 48 hours.
This user denied my reference, because "I was the creator of this thread".
Actually, I happen to be the creator of the "Summary of Controller Issue"
thread. Obviously, one cannot reference himself in this situation, despite that
many users replied in the same thread that they have the same problem.
Oh well.
Just for the record, when I was editing Wiki, I took a look at some
change logs. In the past 24 hours, the FF12 Wiki page received about 100
editions of how well the game was received.
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Knowing that I was up against some serious FF12-Wiki babysitter, and I did not
have all day to continue this police-and-thief(that's me!) game, I thought I
need to work on some... serious reference.
Within a few days, I submitted a controller issue FAQ to GameFAQs. It was
promptly rejected because of "Lack_of_Content" (exact quote), despite that a
couple of other FAQs at that time had smaller file size.
Knowing that I need some serious content, I looked at the list of FAQs then,
and decided to borrow useful information I read from the internet, translate
them into English, to become a "Game Mechanism FAQ". A lot of posts at that
time were about weapon comparison, stats of characters, weapon damage etc, so
I thought game mechanism should be a good starting point. I happen to like
math, so I was quite happy compiling the information as well.
The first submission of the mechanism FAQ was denied due to "incompleteness".
I then spent some more time to make it look more "complete" -- adding some
more paragraphs, and deleting some "coming soon" place holders in the Table of
Content. It was accepted eventually, and renamed "Game Mechanics FAQ". It was
only about 1/5 of the size of what you see today.
And, at the end of the Mechanics FAQ came the Appendix of Controller Issue.
I did not include it before acceptance, fearing a similar fate it suffered
earlier.
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In the meantime, we still hear about 1 to 2 new cases of the identical
controller problem every day.
When troubled users (including myself) came to the forum, they were usually
met with hostility. This hostility largely troubled me at that time, as we,
the victims, were not only ignored by a irresponsible game company, but also
insulted by ignorant fellow players who lacks the ability to imagine someone
else's situation. This frustration soon became another reason why I would like
to struggle for a formal, credible, published source of controller issue, so
we can permanently silence the uninformed & ill-mannered.
As more and more people are reporting the same problem to the forum, I am
happy that they can all be referred to this guide to know they are not alone.
A breakthrough of information came in just before New Year, and I was very
excited about it. (See Appendix A)
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In the meantime, another user gave me a source of the actual Battle Ultimania
guide (which is specialized in the game mechanics), so I no longer had to
collect may-be-imaginary information from the web.
This Battle Ultimania guide has a truck load of information, and is truly
helpful especially for such a detail-oriented, but tells-you-nothing-about-it
game. If you can read Japanese or Chinese, and you would like to learn more,
write me an email.
With the Ultimania guide I updated a lot of sections in the FAQ. However,
thanks to various readers' feedbacks, this FAQ also have a lot of information
that Ultimania does not have.
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One day, in another FF forum, I read that somebody briefly quoted a FF12
developer interview. I learned that the developers made all of these torturing
rare monster spawns, drops, and chests so people will be puzzled after a few
hours of failure, and come out to ask for help and exchange information --
thus they talk about this game more.
They call this "encouraging players' interaction".
In my view, though, it has no good meaning at all. This is nothing but a
technique to boost the game's popularity, by flushing players time down the
drain! From another interview translation, a developer revealed that they made
us miss the zodiac spear so easily, so we would have the motivation to play
the game again.
I was deeply annoyed by their technique. This is not what a company should
treat their customers. The customers have a right to rebel. I choose to take
a small step further.
In this 300Kb of text, I have revealed everything there is to waste your
time in this extremely torturing and mind-numbing game, so you do not have to
come out and "exchange information", wondering in eternity with no clear
answer. My information comes from their official guide, so it is 100% accurate
unless I make a mistake in translation.
No matter you like FF12 or not, I would be glad that this FAQ helped you save
time. And please help other puzzled users by referring them to this guide,
if what they seek can be found inside.
I have received a lot of heart-warming emails, and I thank you sincerely for
them.
Thank you all.
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