Feedback on Matsui-san's letter: "The development team is currently considering what

[Fatty]

Hello,

From Matsui-san's letter:

As such, many of our players have always valued in-game interactions quite highly, and we know how difficult it is when one of our treasured friends takes a break from the game. The development team is currently considering what we can do to alleviate this issue, and may ask you for your ideas, input, and assistance in the future.

I'd like to provide my input on how you can improve and alleviate this issue. Also because, unfortunately, I can't even get my friends to try FFXI.

1. Please provide an easy way to download the game. People that use different browsers are having trouble downloading the .DAT.001 etc. files, and can be too confused to run the installer when there are multiple files lying around, sometimes with wrong extension (due to the browser), wrong locations, and/or corrupt downloads. This is not straightforward, and it demands more attention than just clicking and downloading like how people install other games. This is discouraging especially for new players. One solution could be to create a downloader that downloads these files and runs the installer automatically.

2. Please provide an up-to-date client that doesn't require many hours of patching upon installing the game. This is quite important, many people are very disappointed they cannot play the game after installing. Some patching is to be expected, but the current installer available on PlayOnline is many years old! It needs to be updated. For people with slower internet access this is even more troublesome: the hours of patching comes in addition to the initial downloading of the game. This means you have to be extremely determined to play FFXI because the first 2 days are going to be just downloading and patching.

3. Please provide a clear and brief guide on how to set up game accounts (for new players). For example: to create a POL ID (and what is a "POL ID"?), its relation to SE accounts, what are Content IDs, what is a Member Password, etc. This would need to be very concise and clear. All of this can be very confusing to people who don't know any of these concepts, and when other games don't even have these concepts. It only gets worse when they have to read lengthy pages of documentation, google everything, or even have to watch a YouTube video that is 23 minutes long just to set things up.

4. Trials are very short and scarce. I believe that in this age, there aren't many good reasons for this. We all want more people to try FFXI after all. Trials are only 14 days long, and when people spend 2 days just to install, or even worse, they get stuck for days - and then find out that their trial period is already almost over, they simply quit. One of the solutions could be to include a very limited but permanent free login for people to check out the game at their own leisure. Of course, this would require development effort, but arguably that could also have been done many years ago when the development resources were not as scarce as it is today.

I also see Final Fantasy XIV is making similar mistakes as FFXI: Free login campaigns get activated the minute you login in the launcher (and not the game), and then you have to patch the game. People on slower net connections spend a day or two to download and update the game. For only "up to 96 hours" of free login, people can simply give up when they have to spend half of it just to patch the game. This is not a good customer experience.

5. Please make the default control scheme more sane and familiar by default. I'm not talking about implementing a new control scheme. But the default config options in the game could be adjusted to be more intuitive: people know how to move with WASD in almost all games, but when installing FFXI for the first time, anything people try to type opens the chat window. That is extremely bizarre for most new players (and probably even for returners that's been absent for many years). They don't know or remember how to change it, or if it can be changed at all. For example, please make the "compact" keyboard option default, for starters. Buff timers and AoE range indicators should always be on by default in my opinion. And please make these "first steps in Vana'diel" a part of the "installation guide" (as referred to above), or even better, make a new in-game Primer that opens up automatically (which also includes steps to navigate the primer itself).

6. Please make the default graphics options more sane and familiar by default. Because nobody expects a game to crash when they alt-tab. This is extremely bad, especially for new players. Please at least make "borderless window" the default setting in FFXI Config. Please make all other graphical options more sane and familiar as well, by default. So the game actually looks good and behaves good on first launch.


Final Fantasy XI is a special game, but it has always been extremely difficult to set up and install and to try for the majority of people out there. Despite that difficulty, even after 16 years, there are still 16 servers online, which is a huge accomplishment - and kudos to the development team for keeping things up and giving us new content to enjoy over the years.

But that also speaks volumes: If FFXI was easier to set up and install (and hence more accessible), imagine how much more it could have thrived. People would come back much more often, new players would be a lot more common. New players are the life force of the game, and they should never be neglected.

There are games out there that became extremely successful because of how accessible they are (RuneScape comes to mind). "Final Fantasy" is a very strong brand, however it could reach many more people if it was more accessible, and not by just relying on the brand itself.

As of late (last ~2 years), development responses in English forums have been extremely scarce. I don't know if my message will be seen or acknowledged, but I hope it will (since Matsui-san himself asked for feedback!). We're just trying to help FFXI to become more successful because we all love the game. And I want my friends to play with me.

[Nyarlko]

Awesome post. Agree with all of it. Only thing that I'd like to add is that the current naming scheme for the purchasable downloads needs can be confusing. I've met many players who accidentally bought just the Seekers of Adoulin expansion before finding out they need the Ultimate Seekers edition. IMO, there's no need for the partial package anymore and there should only be the full game (preferably a package that's been updated to current content) available for purchase, and named so that it very clearly is the full package.

[Dzspdref]

(/clap) (/clap) (/clap). .. to both of you. I cannot find fault in any of this, nor think of any detail to improve upon for helping people start up.

[Zehira]

Would it possible for SE to bring back vanilla FFXI servers like WoW did? I mean why not? It would kill all the private servers. One can only hope.

[Alhanelem]

The worst part is, it really shouldn't take hours to download the updates:

1) The process is slowed because of Playonline calculating file differences and then downloading tens of thousands of files one at a time, which is vastly slower than simply downloading an archive containing all the files and then extracting it
2) If that isn't enough, POL won't use more than a certain amount of bandwidth for downloading the files- Even after getting vastly faster internet speeds, a full update from a fresh install of Seekers Edition doesn't go any faster.

If SE packaged every patch into an archive it would significantly speed up the process with only a few hundred files at most (every update ever released, though many of these should already be in the client installer).
FFXIV does this- it just downloads and installs the patches in sequence in an archive, none of this downloading 130,000 files nonsense.

[Alhanelem]

Would it possible for SE to bring back vanilla FFXI servers like WoW did? I mean why not? It would kill all the private servers. One can only hope.

To me this would be pointless. Nostalgia is a pair of rose tinted glasses, and to be honest I think the community is what really made the game fun. Going back to an older verison of the game isn't going to conjure up all the players who were playing the game at that time. I do not miss the days of getting 100 xp a kill at all, especially when I don't have all my friends around to make that whiling away of the time as fun as they made it.

(And, if I did want to do a time warp, I would only want a content time warp, not a feature timewarp.... I've spent enough hours walking around all the zones in this game and even if I was on a vanilla server, I'd want my home point teleports and such)

The only way to make this truly fun would be to have an actual time machine and be able to wipe our memories in the process, so that we could go through things as if they were new to us again.

[Nyarlko]

Would it possible for SE to bring back vanilla FFXI servers like WoW did? I mean why not? It would kill all the private servers. One can only hope.

No. :x I think that the devs are even on record recently that this is not an option on the table. There isn't nearly as much justification as with WoW, since that game has had literal landscape changes, ability removals, and massive combat mechanic changes. Major NPCs have aged and died. lol It also would not do much to reduce the number of private servers since those would be still be free. If you really, REALLY want to play old content, then just wait for FFXI Mobile, since it's supposed to only go up thru CoP.

[Justuas]

Would it possible for SE to bring back vanilla FFXI servers like WoW did? I mean why not? It would kill all the private servers. One can only hope.

WoW is much more popular than FFXI so it makes sense they're bringing back vanilla servers.

[Zehira]

No. :x I think that the devs are even on record recently that this is not an option on the table. There isn't nearly as much justification as with WoW, since that game has had literal landscape changes, ability removals, and massive combat mechanic changes. Major NPCs have aged and died. lol It also would not do much to reduce the number of private servers since those would be still be free. If you really, REALLY want to play old content, then just wait for FFXI Mobile, since it's supposed to only go up thru CoP.

Why would I enjoy FFXI mobile probably filled with micro transactions? lol I can try it but I doubt I would enjoy it as much as I do now. Only if the devs are bored and have nothing better to do since they stopped making anymore content. I know the reason people like to play this game. "The community." It was wonderful when most of us didn't have Facebook.

WoW is much more popular than FFXI so it makes sense they're bringing back vanilla servers.

You don't need a million of players to be successful. One or two servers should be enough.

What Alhanelem said is good. Vanilla FFXI with the QoL enhancement as long as just bring us the real strategies back (and maybe slow down exp and remember the community is important) so more new players can try it out. Last year, many new players I have met stopped playing this shortly after they started since we are focused on the endgame only. Of course, it is because they couldn't find any fun to do, rather than soloing most of time. Believe it or not, this game is the best only for who have played it before.

[Nyarlko]

You don't need a million of players to be successful. One or two servers should be enough.

What Alhanelem said is good. Vanilla FFXI with the QoL enhancement as long as just bring us the real strategies back (and maybe slow down exp and remember the community is important) so more new players can try it out. Last year, many new players I have met stopped playing this shortly after they started since we are focused on the endgame only. Of course, it is because they couldn't find any fun to do, rather than soloing most of time. Believe it or not, this game is the best only for who have played it before.

One or two servers is not enough to pay for development costs, and no corporation is going to invest into building a break-even project.

That issue is a problem with the mindset of the current playerbase. I run a linkshell named FaceDesk. We are officially a "social ls that does things together" and our focus is helping newer players. I saw what the merc mentality was doing to others, and started active recruitment a couple months ago after I got triggered seeing someone trying to sell Escha-Zi'tah T1 drops. -_-* I started w/ only a small core of experienced and friendly people. Now, we've got everyone from players who've been active since launch, players who've returned after years long breaks, and players who had never touched the game until the last few months. [i]The linkshell is actually FULL now, and I've started getting tells from members who can't get in because we're full, so we can't accept too many more new faces unfortunately. T_T SE really needs to raise the "online linkshell member" cap.[i]

It wasn't that much work on my part to help my members with missions, or smash up T1s for clears'n'gears, or answer questions, or just talk with them. You'd be amazed how much more fun this game is when you don't feel lonely in a silent ls, or w/o one at all. Now I've got people who have been doing Omen card farms who can't use the gobbiebox yet. XD