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...

[Kristal]

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.

Those numbers don't tell you the amount of fresh accounts that got banned. And most of those will be RMT. So there's only a small amount of real player accounts, 99.9% of whom got caught buying gil, using 3rd party tools or exploits. (The remainder is from players getting slapped by GMs not bothering to investigate player conflicts or GMs oblivous to the rules. Good luck trying to contact SE about that though... )

[Anethia]

Though I agree that Final Fail XIV needs to be scrapped, unfortunately I don't see that happening. The reality of the matter is that SE has spent too much revenue on the game at this point to allow it to fail. In way the problems that currently plague FFXIV are seen as short term encumbrances, while the higher ups see the game becoming a huge revenue source in the long term.

There are those of us that continue to play FFXI because it is a world we have come to know and love. All of the problems with FFXIV could have been avoided by simply overhauling FFXI to run on the new engine, and simply adding the planned content for FFXIV as an expansion. The player base gets new content, new players join, SE continues to make money, everybody wins.

Instead now you have a dwindling player base as long time fans become increasingly dissatisfied with lack luster content, reskinning old areas, and an overall lack of challenge. All because SE gutted the dev team and moved them to a game that should have been taken off life support almost a year ago.

And is it just me or does it seem as though over the last year of updates Treasures of Aht Urgahn has really gotten the short end of the stick? I mean old CoP and RoZ areas got exp boosts where easy prey yield 100+ exp but the Easy Prey in ToAU areas still only yield 50-75 exp a kill.

[Olor]

I think it is pretty bogus to ask XI players to pay so that XIV players can play for free

[Hashmalum]

When people complain that FFXIV has a huge development team and FFXI's is tiny, it's true, but they are leaving out another serious personnel related problem. You see, FFXIV still has all its original development staff (ok, except Tanaka) while FFXI does not; over the years, they were moved to other projects such as FFXIV, that new Dragon Quest MMO that hasn't come out yet, maybe even single-player games. Why does this matter? Because familiarity with the code base matters! It takes time to understand how code that was written by other people works, and that is time that could be used actually doing things elsewhere. That is why when we ask for something and are told that it "can't" be done, usually that's not true in any absolute sense, or even any reasonably technically feasible sense, but simply in the sense that the current skeleton dev team can't do it alongside their normal dev work in any reasonable time frame.

But wait, it's even worse than that, because FFXIV took all the best developers--we know this because the CEO himself promised that turning around FFXIV would be handled by SE's best talent! By elementary logic, therefore, everybody working on FFXI right now (along with all of their other projects) does not fall into the "best talent (as considered by the management)" category. Not an insult, simply a fact.

[Sesh]

When people complain that FFXIV has a huge development team and FFXI's is tiny, it's true, but they are leaving out another serious personnel related problem. You see, FFXIV still has all its original development staff (ok, except Tanaka) while FFXI does not; over the years, they were moved to other projects such as FFXIV, that new Dragon Quest MMO that hasn't come out yet, maybe even single-player games. Why does this matter? Because familiarity with the code base matters! It takes time to understand how code that was written by other people works, and that is time that could be used actually doing things elsewhere. That is why when we ask for something and are told that it "can't" be done, usually that's not true in any absolute sense, or even any reasonably technically feasible sense, but simply in the sense that the current skeleton dev team can't do it alongside their normal dev work in any reasonable time frame.

But wait, it's even worse than that, because FFXIV took all the best developers--we know this because the CEO himself promised that turning around FFXIV would be handled by SE's best talent! By elementary logic, therefore, everybody working on FFXI right now (along with all of their other projects) does not fall into the "best talent (as considered by the management)" category. Not an insult, simply a fact.

All of this should just simply upset us as a community even more so really, but they have us right where they want us atm. It's like they continue to keep punching us in the face and we keep going here's your 12.95 thank you here's your 12.95 thank you. Maybe at some point there will be 1000 page threads on this subject when people have had enough, and SE might understand that hey can only punch us for so much longer.

[xbobx]

Why the hell would we pay for more developers? That is just dumb, We pay the same amount now for a handful of devs that we paid 9 years ago for probably 10 times as many.

They make a lot of money off this game, if they are going to hack the development team and support they should be hacking the monthly price in relation. Pay for what you get.

[Airget]

It would be nice to get an idea of how exactly the dev team has changed since XIV was released. We already know that the main man Yoshida went from leading XI to XIV but other then that the best we can do is assume how things have changed. It would be interesting if we could get an idea of the exact number that was working on XI just before XIV was released and how many are working on it now.

Now while they did ask us about which platform we played on they still haven't really enlightened us on why they asked such an odd question out of the blue with no real clarification a month+ after it was asked. As mentioned XIV definitely does have the feel of looking more like XI but without the ps2 limiting it, now if the same were to happen with XI I wonder how SE would plan the expansions for it's future.

It's just sad that when you see something like Everquest still alive and running with a fanbase we as ac ommunity are pretty much taken for granted with no real hope of ever seeing a true expansion past WoTG. I would be amazed if perhaps they are hiding an expansion to release but with their focus on XIV it doesn't seem like that could be the case, we can hope perhaps they are hiding something they haven't told us yet but if XI just turns into challenge after challenge with better and better gear with no real sense of drama or story behind it the game will die. You can only do so many updates that add more recolored NMs with new gear before it just becomes a bore. I would say most who played XI did it for the story and when you take that away it starts to lose it's luster after a while. Hopefully after XIV is done having it's VU party along with a live letter from the producer and "celebrating" it's one year of being live we'll get some love from XI and maybe some light shined on it's future lol.

[Kaizersan]

Sadly I can see this thread getting locked for reasons we all know.

[Molech]

Meh, XIV is the future, I think its going to surpass XI when the revamping is done. Tomorrows XIV patch is going to bring people back, how long? thats to be determined. I think people are extremely naive to think SE is going to ever scrap XIV to revamp XI, expect the dev's to do the bare minimum with XI, maybe SE will put a bigger budget into XI once XIV is settled in and starts charging a subscription fee.

Yoshi-P is the best producer SE has had for their MMO's, the guy just gets it.

[Rambus]

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.

I love you! I met someone that is in the same exact position as me.

I would of scraped ffxiv in beta ifi had the power if i was overseeing the progress of it, fixing bugs and other things. Like runespider said they are soley running of the name now.

[Mirage]

And is it just me or does it seem as though over the last year of updates Treasures of Aht Urgahn has really gotten the short end of the stick? I mean old CoP and RoZ areas got exp boosts where easy prey yield 100+ exp but the Easy Prey in ToAU areas still only yield 50-75 exp a kill.

Huh what? ToAU received the same exp boost as the entire rest of the nonabyssian world. Maybe your server didn't have the astral candy at the time you checked, and you killed a mob that was just barely EP.

-edit-
That being said though, ToAU could use some touching up done to some of the content there. However, SE has already acknowledged this and are planning on doing that. They already did make besieged a bit cooler.

[Boofaceing]

Square Enix hasn't put out a game worth playing in over 10 years, including this one. Everything from buggy interfaces to buggy gameplay to annoying glitches, re-telling the same story they told the last fantasy, merging good companies into them and using none of their talent to put forward what might be considered an oddball game thats actually good compared to what their putting out, etc. Its been this way since 7. They hit Gold, put out VIII with some nice Cinematics that look better then 7, then they slopped on 9 and didn't even have anything engaging in it but some 'mystical' things that people who eat shrooms and listen to Tool all day might find interesting along with alot of people dieing (emotional fanbase moment). That sums up Square Enix since Final Fantasy VII. Oh yeah, and the 300 ripoffs and really badly made attempts at other game genres they keep throwing out and spinning off spinoffs of.

So just close the thread, because thats how it will stay, and you as well as I will continue buying until one day they make another game worthy of super praise that is mind blowing. VII wasn't either of those nowadays but at that time it was a game changer. I personally like Star Ocean games more then I ever liked Final Fantasy games because from Star Ocean to Star Ocean 4 they all share the same story if you pay attention. I wouldn't like if they released an online version because thats just not possible with how the game was designed, its really the same story here and you can't gripe about it.

Btw - First post and all and I know what your talking about but what does a 25 experience point difference have to do with anything at all relating to the game? If your going to Aht Urgan at that level anyways you better be questing because nap time burning is alot faster.

EDIT: New content = mute point. They already sold the game to millions, costing themselves another couple million to put in new content that will probably be buggy because the original team is gone isn't going to spike their money intake or do anything productive really except entertain more people for another 2-3 weeks before the secrets go up on Wiki.

Class Balancing however is another issue, as some classes are just useless while others prevail, and this point can be argued by many but lets be honest, there are some classes you wont play and its not because you dont like them.

[Anadosia]

One thing that really disappoints me is that they could have added some great story lines in Abyssea, but they didn't. They just threw the expansions in there.
I have to agree with the majority here about FFXIV and where our fees are going. What really irks me is that FFXIV players are playing for FREE and I strongly believe that, that game is solely floating on FFXI's revenue right now and that is truly a slap in the community's faces.
What has me currently curious right now is the survey they just did asking everyone which platform they play on. I'm hoping this may mean big graphic and some content changes in the game, but I'm not holding my breath. (still hoping though!)

[noodles355]

New content is a mute point.

[Kimble]

Any one that says "nothing has been good since VII" are usually just fan boys who think thinking will ever be as good as 7.

[Vold]

Meh, XIV is the future, I think its going to surpass XI when the revamping is done. Tomorrows XIV patch is going to bring people back, how long? thats to be determined. I think people are extremely naive to think SE is going to ever scrap XIV to revamp XI, expect the dev's to do the bare minimum with XI, maybe SE will put a bigger budget into XI once XIV is settled in and starts charging a subscription fee.

Yoshi-P is the best producer SE has had for their MMO's, the guy just gets it.It's Oct 5 2011. It's been over a year since 14's release. It's sitting at 30,000 or less players. Historically every game that has ever been determined to be fubar at launch has failed and never recovered. I'm not seeing the success in the future.

But fear not. FFXIV has seen success. It has turned out to be the most expensive FFXI advertisement ever. It's been really successful at bringing gamers over to 11. So it's not like things were a total loss.

[Zumi]

FFXI is over 10 years old now. A lot of games do not even get support this for this long. Sega pulled the plug on many of their phantasy star online games only a couple of years after they are out for example, The old Star Wars mmo is getting shut down in favor of the new one the old republic. SE could of done the same thing when they released 14 but they didn't.

A full expansion is just probably out of the question due to the number of people that play FFXI now. Yes it would be a hassle to even release it on PS2 because they don't even make PS2 games and that thing is out of hdd space. Seeing as so many people on fairly crowded servers it seems people are happy grinding all the jobs to 95 in abyssea now.

[Olor]

It's Oct 5 2011. It's been over a year since 14's release. It's sitting at 30,000 or less players. Historically every game that has ever been determined to be fubar at launch has failed and never recovered. I'm not seeing the success in the future.

But fear not. FFXIV has seen success. It has turned out to be the most expensive FFXI advertisement ever. It's been really successful at bringing gamers over to 11. So it's not like things were a total loss.

Yeah... XIV refugee here. I still have to use workarounds to download patches in less than 24 hours, and I tried the patch last night and I crashed less than an hour in and tried logging in for 20 mins after and couldn't get in. Fail.

[Atomic_Skull]

Though I agree that Final Fail XIV needs to be scrapped, unfortunately I don't see that happening. The reality of the matter is that SE has spent too much revenue on the game at this point to allow it to fail. In way the problems that currently plague FFXIV are seen as short term encumbrances, while the higher ups see the game becoming a huge revenue source in the long term.

Except that it won't. It failed it's launch, stick a fork in it it's done.

[Insaniac]

I believe they think having the game up to snuff for PS3 release has a chance of saving 14. Maybe in the JP market since they seem more accepting of console MMOs but imo their ship has sailed in the rest of the world. Admittedly though, I would leave 11 for 14 (if it wasn't terrible) at this point just to get away from Tanaka.

[noodles355]

Admittedly though, I would leave 11 for 14 (if it wasn't terrible) at this point just to get away from Tanaka.The same Tanaka who was on the dev team throughout all of abyssea, and that you have no proof concerning how much of abyssea, and post abyssea, he influenced? That Tanaka? Maybe you should leave for FF14, at least then we dont have to read your bullshit posts blaming everything you dont like in FFXI on one guy without any proof whatsoever.