Camate, please relay this message to SE

[Sesh]

Final Fantasy XI needs a Bigger Dev Team! This game deserves a bigger dev team, the player base, your loyal fans DESERVE a bigger dev team.

Almost every issue that crops up on these forums on a daily basis (talking about the intelligent, practical, well thought out ideas, suggestions or bug fixes) ends up being, ignored or told that because the dev team is too small there is nothing that can be done.

I understand SE is running a business, they're main goal is to make a profit, and they hope to milk us for as long as we continue giving them money, but it's just plain ridiculous at this point.

From Forbes.com

"Square Enix was ranked No. 9 on Game Developer magazine's 2009 list of top 10 game publishers, just under Sony ( SNE - news - people ) and ahead of Microsoft ( MSFT - news - people ). The ranking includes revenues, reviews of game titles and a survey of industry professionals. DFC Intelligence, an industry research firm, ranks Square Enix sixteenth worldwide in home entertainment software revenue (which excludes revenue from hardware or arcade games). DFC's ranking is based on public filings from the past two years.

With net sales of $1.5 billion for the nine months ended Dec. 31, 2009."

I hear a fair amount of people defending SE for the lackluster product they continue to peddle to us. Saying "FFXI is their only source of solid revenue blah blah blah" it simply just isn't true. As customers we really should be a bit more angry about the lack of funds and resources being given to FFXI. We should not be seeing quotes like this and be ok with it.

Compared to FFXIV, FFXI is currently being developed by an extremely small amount of people and because of this each team member’s work load is extremely high. Due to this, in order to prevent imbalances in responses on the forum due to individual developer answers, the community team looks over every thread and picks up on the high priority topics to report to the development team.

If we need to pay 1 dollar extra a month for 5 extra dev team members.. fine. If we need to pay 2 extra dollars a month for 10 extra members GOOD. I would like to think that the majority of the player base would part way with 2 dollars more a month for, steady quick updates, bug fixes, implementations of smart suggestions from the community, and general fixing up the game.

As of right now it's sad that the people who play this game, and collectively put millions of dollars/pounds/yen into SEs pocket, get ignored and abandoned to die. Camate(or WHOEVER) do your best to please let SE know that we think that this game deserves far more than what its getting. It may be only a game, but its a game we've played and enjoyed for many years, tell them to throw us a friggen' bone!

[Runespider]

As a FFXI subscriber the vast amount of your sub fee goes to pay for FFXIV development, nothing is going to change on that till they can start charging a fee for it. In the mean time FFXI is taking the financial hit for it.

It's wrong and pretty rude of them to do it the way they are but they are going to do it anyway, it's the only way they can keep FFXIV running free and put a lot of resources into it. It's pretty disgusting really, FFXI is still a fairly successfull MMO with still has one of the largest monthly subscriptions userbases and we get treated with content that MMOs with vastly fewer players get.

That's Square all over though.

[Huevriel]

Do you think it's possible to apply as a Dev over at the El Segundo building? Hell, even VOLUNTEER!? I'm sure you can whip up some of the local knowledgeable player base within the immediate vicinity (I'm sure it's few who have the abilities) that can head over and help out. Parking's not bad and it's by a metro station.

[Sesh]

As a FFXI subscriber the vast amount of your sub fee goes to pay for FFXIV development, nothing is going to change on that till they can start charging a fee for it. In the mean time FFXI is taking the financial hit for it.

It's wrong and pretty rude of them to do it the way they are but they are going to do it anyway, it's the only way they can keep FFXIV running free and put a lot of resources into it. It's pretty disgusting really, FFXI is still a fairly successfull MMO with still has one of the largest monthly subscriptions userbases and we get treated with content that MMOs with vastly fewer players get.

That's Square all over though.

It really is just rude and frankly dumb to alienate your fans of 8+ years, because you screwed up on another game. FFXI is a great game it really is, but it could be so much more than it is right now if given the proper direction.

[Buffy]

Lol you guys are funny. Get in the real world. Another game before ffxi paid for the dev of ffxi. Yah, our dollars might be going to pay for ffxiv right now, but that's how businesses work. Current profits pay for future projects. They hope ffxiv can be a revenue producer for them for a decade. They have to try. However, the previous update was poor. I wouldn't mind paying 10$ every 3-6 months for abyssea level content that is new. That might be financially viable. We will never know really.

[noodles355]

Another game before ffxi paid for the dev of ffxi.

That other game was fully developed and completed by the point it's profits were used to develop FFXI. The same can definitely not be said here.

[Runespider]

Lol you guys are funny. Get in the real world. Another game before ffxi paid for the dev of ffxi. Yah, our dollars might be going to pay for ffxiv right now, but that's how businesses work.

There is a difference between using profits to pay for another game to be developed and starving the successfull title to pay for the other one to continually be freeplay.

It would be like paying your loyal workforce half wages and taking away benefits to take on more staff that don't really do any work around the place anyway.

[Crocker]

Since 1 of 3 of my accounts were wrongfully banned I have always said I love the game but hate the idiots running it.

What company in their right mind would ever tell paying customers that something they are paying so much a month for is being run by a "extremely small amount of people" now compared to the fail FFXIV. I'm wondering how many is extremely small? I'm thinking 6-8. If that's the case maybe they should lower the monthly fees! Sure we all know making a MMO takes alot of time and money but we shouldn't suffer because you need more devs on the other project.

Ill never get FFXIV just for the fact I was wrongfully banned in FFXI and can do nothing about it. So why bother risking real money in new stuff from them just to be banned again for nothing!
http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/rule/specialtask.html Take a look at those banned numbers, for every 10,000 that's $1,300,000+ lost per year. But there's more that's alot of people that wont be buying FFXIV, or in my case no game by Square Enix ever again.

I personally think they should just scrap 14 and rebuild 11 on the new engine sure it would take at least 2 years but would make so many happy and would bring in even more new players to where I don't see 14 ever making it.

Renaming the races and forcing the use of 2 names, simple stuff like that is dumb and making the broken battle system closer to 11 wont help a thing the game is straight up horrible.

[Runespider]

I personally think they should just scrap 14 and rebuild 11 on the new engine sure it would take at least 2 years but would make so many happy and would bring in even more new players to where I don't see 14 ever making it.

Any normal company would, Square is a Japanese company and this is one of their big brand name titles. It's all about saving face, not what is the best business decision.

[Kristal]

I personally think they should just scrap 14 and rebuild 11 on the new engine sure it would take at least 2 years but would make so many happy and would bring in even more new players to where I don't see 14 ever making it.

Judging from the overhauling being done on FFXIV, isn't that what they are doing? Every update it starts to look more and more like FFXI, but without that pesky PS2 holding it back. If they had started doing that from the get-go, FFXI would still be a lvl 75 game catering to a slowly dwindling but persistent crowd...