New expansion?!?

[PlumbGame]

Survived is a very loose term... Sorry if basing things off popular MMO that have 2-3x the active player base is frowned upon, but thats what they did with ff14 and it has worked okay so far.

Like i said its my oppinion vs your oppinion, but in the end its both oppinions.

Abyssea killed ffxi
No it didnt
Adoulin killed ffxi
No it didnt
etc etc

FFXI has been slowly decreasing for years, and no one things put a nail in its coffin, but the fact that the devs are coppying from other more successful mmo should indicate that they have an idea of what needs to be done.

Not really "slowly". There has been certain points in FFXIs history that has had significant drops. There was several people who dropped in adoulin because of some of the new gear that came out and RMEs they made that weren't 119 yet. Some came back, but a lot just stayed away.

It's also hard to put a nail in the coffin when a game can still be successful without millions of players. IDK SEs costs since they obviously wouldn't share that stuff with us, but even 100 players could still be a financial gain.

[Bluestar2kx]

FFXI has been SE's most profitable final fantasy title ever. And while we don't have any numbers, from bits and pieces it doesn't sound like this game takes much to keep running, so I would definitely agree that even with a smaller population then we have now, FFXI could still turn a profit.

But given it's history as a money maker, and it's devoted fanbase, I don't think they're going to cut the cord anytime soon.
Though we all know, there's a fair bit they could do to improve FFXI's population, but that of course, takes a lot of money.

I think an engine/graphical overhaul/update would do wonders, but that's essentially re-writing the entire game, and we know that comes with a steep cost.

[Elemmire]

Thats your personal oppinion, and like mine, neither is right nor wrong.

I just find it annoying that i have to go do 12 year old artifcat quest, or expansion story lines to get relevant end game items for today. To me, its obnoxious to have to get mission rank 6, then finish cop, just to upgrade AF gear from 12 years ago into something for today. Thats a lot of back tracking for new people and makes it way less approachable.

You could play those other MMOs though if you like that system more. Or embrace the new gear they add. I could agree that they should try and get new gear to be comparable to old gear that's upgraded, but a lot of new gear is pretty good still.

[Stompa]

On the whole "FFXI is dead / Aby killed it / Adoulin killed it" etc. stuff which is always good for a laugh, I would relate some quotes;

Qufim Island 2005; Party member; "This game is dead. It was fun a year ago, but it sucks now. This game won't be around in a year, you mark my words."

Grauberg(S) 2009; Another party member ; "This game is dead. It used to be fun but it sucks now. Everyone knows this game will be shut down soon."

I laughed when she said that, because it was almost the exact same words another person said four years earlier.

What I remembered on both occasions was that I was having fun playing the game, I was having as much fun in Vanadiel in 2004 as I was in 2009. And today I am still having as much fun in Vanadiel as I had eleven years ago.

I don't think Aby or SoA killed the game, I don't think the game is dead. I think it is an old game, and old games lose the mainstream playerbase who traditionally will go for the newest eyecandy titles. Old games retain their devoted fanbase, like a cult. The same is true of some diehard fans playing 1980s games in 2015 lol.

I actually liked Aby a lot, the battlefields were fun and I liked proccing mobs to build popsets etc. The Empy weaps and armors are cool, NMs in Aby were cool. I just wish they had put a lvl75 lock on the Aby doors to stop everyone zombie leech bimbo airhead mode from 30 to 99.

SoA is okay too, I do love the city of Adoulin and I really enjoyed the SoA mission storyline. I like some of the new monster types they created in SoA too, especially the big floppy white gorilla mob lol.

I'm just reading the version update notes and the Vanadiel Digest stuff, and really you can see the enthusiasm being put into these announcements, they are really trying to give people fun stuff on a regular basis, and they are really putting effort into the game. My only actual problem with FFXI was paying for it lol, but now they have fixed the payment options, I totally don't see any problems. FFXI is a fun game, if you know how to enjoy yourself and don't expect miracles. And it isn't dead either.

[Elemmire]

Survived in this case is a very direct term, not a loose one.
As I said, FFXI has done it with a sub model the entire life of it, which little likelihood of that changing.

The only other old school MMO to make out better then FFXI on a sub model is WoW.
Everyone else either died, or went F2P to break even or make a profit (Hell even Elder scrolls online is going that route now). So while the population has declined over the years, it's still one of the few that can actually be called successful, I'd sooner borrow ideas from FFXI, then almost every other game, even if they have more people now then the borrowing game does. (they only have those subs because it's f2p, we both know that.)

So borrowing from other MMO's in the way you suggested, is not the way FFXI should be, if dev's felt differently, it wouldn't be here. To add to that, while ideas are fine and dandy, I wouldn't say taking ideas from games that had to go F2P just to stay online makes them a great target for borrowing from, even if their population is higher, it's done using a flawed and quite honestly, a model that milks the consumer. That's why they're still dying.

What makes FFXI unique, is part of it's model, and that's why it's still going. Take that away, and you get what we saw: people will leave.
So while "opinions are opinions, and neither right or wrong inherently", there's plenty of basis in fact to say which applies to FFXI.

But I will give you credit, FFXIV is quite popular, and maybe one of the only games I'd trust "ideas" coming from to XI, as long as it doesn't get as stupidly easy and boring as it.
We just have to see if it can keep the strength in the way so many others couldn't.

Personally, I agree. What I loved about FFXI was how that team play mattered most to maximize your efficiency/success rate than individual performance. Maximizing damage didn't come from maximizing gear alone, it came from working in line with others to skillchain and magic burst. That was a REAL MMO experience, having to work together to get somewhere. Hell, even leveling was like that. But I am happy I can actually just go out and do stuff in the world on my own too so I don't sit around the cities bored. Though, that's why I'm happy to have left an MMO and come back years later. Old content for solo'ing fun, new content for group fun.

FFXI has been SE's most profitable final fantasy title ever. And while we don't have any numbers, from bits and pieces it doesn't sound like this game takes much to keep running, so I would definitely agree that even with a smaller population then we have now, FFXI could still turn a profit.

But given it's history as a money maker, and it's devoted fanbase, I don't think they're going to cut the cord anytime soon.
Though we all know, there's a fair bit they could do to improve FFXI's population, but that of course, takes a lot of money.

I think an engine/graphical overhaul/update would do wonders, but that's essentially re-writing the entire game, and we know that comes with a steep cost.

I don't mind the graphics, even this old they are still nice. Some animations could be improved maybe, but ya. Part of me really wants a UI/interface/controls overhaul for PC, but also worried it might not feel like FFXI if they did that too.

Other than that, I dunno what I'd want changed for FFXI if anything other than maybe some minor class changes (RDM needs love and BLU should get to use all its magic by default, just equip magic to set up how you want your traits/passives/whatnot to be, etc).

I would hope that if FFXI were to ever go offline, they'd give everyone who still plays the ability to download a patch to play offline in their own world and rework content towards being able to solo or use trusts everywhere. But, that might be asking too much. *shrugs* would be nice.

The other thing would be a nice FF sigle player game in vana'diel. I'd love everyone to see how awesome the world is. I really do love the general layout and the stories and the characters and whatnot. They did a fantastic job with that (better than FFXIV, imo, FFXIV was pretty dull to me)

[Alhanelem]

It seems your opinion isn't shared by everyone.

Nor is yours. Different people have different perspectives. I'm just telling it how I see it. Some people are happier than others.

From my perspective, the year prior to audolin was the game's lowest point. Although subbed much of it, I played the game very little during that time; I play it much more now. There just wasnt much interesting in the new content during that time, largely because abyssea set the bar too high in power levels which compromised the potential enjoyment of the content that came after. Audolin solved that problem and did so in a reasonably good way.

Is the game perfect or close to it? Hell no. But I'm enjoying it a lot more than I have in a long time, and I know other people who are too. So please, don't poop on people's opinions because of your judgement of the number of people who share them (which isn't really even accurate). Some people like it, some people don't, I get that. But I can say with relative confidence that more people are happy now than were prior to audolin's release.

There was several people who dropped in adoulin because of some of the new gear that came out and RMEs they made that weren't 119 yet.

The % of people with R/M/E (prior to audolin) is pretty low and I extremely doubt that anyone quit the game permanently because they didn't immediately offer upgrades to them. I don't know how anyone could have believed that they were never going to do that (therefore throwing their hardest-to-earn-items-in-the-game down the drain), especially considering that relic and artifact armor upgrades were made available. If a person was invested in the game enough to make these, and DID take a break from the game, odds are they'd have been following the news and came back when they found out their work wasn't in vain.

[Allestra]

I hope they do have another expansion.

ffxi will never totally die but it is close to it atm. The fanbase (as small as it is) will always be there to support the game imo.

I prefer the game more now then at the beginning of my 10 yr journey. The QoL changes to me personally have really helped me enjoy things but sadly they come at minimum, 5 yrs too late.
Too many have left already and even myself, its been so long for these changes to come, I have already found other games that have taken ffxis' place as a main mmo

although ffxi will never be my main mmo again, (the ancient graphics alone are hard to stomach)....it holds a special place to at least jump in on occasion and do a few things.

[Tidis]

I'd love at least one more expansion that covers the whole of Vana'diel, as of right now we've dealt with missions that encompass a specific region, perhaps when FFXI looks like it's declining to the point they only have 1 more expansion in them, they can do this final expansion which will cover all areas, 4 nations, zilart, CoP, AU, Adoulin, maybe even WotG plus any other areas that might have been introduced, include all the established hero's and heroines, alongside new ones in defending Vana'diel.

Despite expansions in the past dealing with the end of the world, it was very much focussed on one region, obviously that helped players experience the areas introduced in each expansion but it doesn't feel like a world crisis if only one particular area is getting all the action.

[evanwimbish]

Id like to see ffxi-2 eventually come out where you can revisit all the old areas and more, along with tetra master being re-released along with mobile app support!

[bungiefanNA]

I'd love at least one more expansion that covers the whole of Vana'diel, as of right now we've dealt with missions that encompass a specific region, perhaps when FFXI looks like it's declining to the point they only have 1 more expansion in them, they can do this final expansion which will cover all areas, 4 nations, zilart, CoP, AU, Adoulin, maybe even WotG plus any other areas that might have been introduced, include all the established hero's and heroines, alongside new ones in defending Vana'diel.

Despite expansions in the past dealing with the end of the world, it was very much focussed on one region, obviously that helped players experience the areas introduced in each expansion but it doesn't feel like a world crisis if only one particular area is getting all the action.

The reason they do expansions by region is because they have players that don't buy some expansions, so they can't make an expansion require a previous expansion. They broke that rule with add-ons, but never with another expansion. That seems to be one of the rules they hold themselves to, making expansions only require the base game, no matter what other expansions are available. They would have to really break that rule to have an expansion take place inside of all the other expansion areas.

There's also the matter of just how much manipulation of data they would have to do. Each expansion mainly has its content in its own ROM folder. Adoulin is ROM9 for example. Except for a handful of scenes in Jeuno, all the data they modify to make Adoulin work is in that one folder. Abyssea and previous expansions work that way too. That would be a humongous patch to do if they messed with that many files.