Why Cant Final fantasy 11 get the same treatment?

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Originally Posted by Olor

Yeah... I guess that is why WoW never gets any new subs

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• WoW is easy to jump in and walks you through the first few levels, actually up until around 20 or so it holds your hand. Even then quests/missions never really stop holding your hand they just tone it down.
• WoW is also free to play now for the lower levels.
• WoW gives new and old players incentive to play new characters (Hi, rested EXP being character specific and not account specific).
• WoW allows the option of a new player being "power leveled", through content. FFXI does this now to a degree but its much weaker. Not saying this is a good thing just that it is a factor for new players or a friend of a friend joining the game.
• WoW isn't crippled by locking the game's potential by a console.

I could keep going on about how many things WoW did right to gain the subscription base it has and to continue gaining new subscribers but that doesn't help FFXI because these are things the devs could see on their own and "steal" for FFXI or FFXIV but they've chosen not to in a lot of cases.

Honestly there are a lot of reasons people could give why building on XI has a lower potential ROI than rebuilding XIV, but "too much content to catch up with" shouldn't be one of them

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Originally Posted by Olor

Honestly there are a lot of reasons people could give why building on XI has a lower potential ROI than rebuilding XIV, but "too much content to catch up with" shouldn't be one of them

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I never said that in and of itself it was. It is a factor tied in to what is putting off new players, not the content itself or really the amount of time it might take but the fact that there is so much content no one is doing anymore.

The last time I reactivated my WoW account (Wrath of the Lich King had just come out if I remember right) I created 3 new characters 1 to play with a few friends in a static, 2 others to fill the time while they were doing endgame on their mains. While leveling all 3 characters I was almost always around lower level characters doing the same quests/missions as me.

Outside of taking my mule through Gusgen Mines 19-30 I was solo the whole time, even with my flag up.

WoW is obviously doing a lot of things right when it comes to the outdated content, some of which I mentioned to many other likely factors involved that FFXI doesn't have going for it, but it doesn't really matter that WoW has them. FFXI doesn't meaning a lower appeal to new players, meaning another notch against being a good ROI candidate.

But who is to say that a XI revamp wouldn't be able to include systems to make the game more appealing to new players? Nevermind that doing a revamp itself (and advertising it) would bring in new players, which is half the problem at the moment - still - it isn't difficult at all to get "caught up" on anything essential in XI right now.

I don't think players are put off by content - by horrific time sinks? Sure - but not by content.

Also as someone who is quite familiar with XIV - I would say the situation for a new player in that game is MUCH MUCH WORSE. Pretty much everyone is capped on multiple crafts (which they probably used bots to level cause it is excruciating) and you NEED multiple jobs leveled to high levels even do 1 job well (gladiator is a perfect example) and the grind is sort of soul destroying... sure there is hardly any content to "catch up" on, but I don't think the game being almost barren of content should be considered a selling point.

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Originally Posted by Olor

But who is to say that a XI revamp wouldn't be able to include systems to make the game more appealing to new players? Nevermind that doing a revamp itself (and advertising it) would bring in new players, which is half the problem at the moment - still - it isn't difficult at all to get "caught up" on anything essential in XI right now.

I don't think players are put off by content - by horrific time sinks? Sure - but not by content.

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No one can say for sure, all they can do is look at current information available. XI is running on a 10 year old core engine, supporting a deprecated console, functioning on PC through a wrapper meaning expansion is severely limited, 360 is likely running trough the same direct x wrapper as the PC.

PS2 limitations. Take away the PS2 and those become limitations of an engine designed to function on a PS2.

All content is a Time Sink >.> And again it isn't the content itself its the fact that there is so much content no one is doing anymore and some of that content is still important to the current content.

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Originally Posted by Olor

Also as someone who is quite familiar with XIV - I would say the situation for a new player in that game is MUCH MUCH WORSE. Pretty much everyone is capped on multiple crafts (which they probably used bots to level cause it is excruciating) and you NEED multiple jobs leveled to high levels even do 1 job well (gladiator is a perfect example) and the grind is sort of soul destroying... sure there is hardly any content to "catch up" on, but I don't think the game being almost barren of content should be considered a selling point.

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Oddly enough it is because it can be spun as room for growth, more so room for growth that welcomes a new player base because there is more content for them to do with old players because the old players couldn't have done it yet. I'm not saying this is a great argument just one that I've seen spun successfully in the game industry several times before.

Spin might get people in the door for a first try... but given how badly they burned everyone who originally bought the game, they will need a heck of a lot more than spin to make XIV pay for itself, let alone make money.


Much easier to spin a relaunch of a game which didn't go down in flames, imo - there are probably a crap ton of players who dropped the game over the years who have some fond memories who would probably come back if they saw a good advertising campaign that specifically addressed some of the big reasons ppl quit (high time investment - low reward was probably the biggest one)

Imagine a welcome to Vanadiel campaign that included a new expansion, with a focused pitch about how much easier it is to get into the game now (complete with a smattering of revamped lower level content/quests - especially ones that LEAD new players to maze of shakrami and gusgen etc at appropriate levels so they can easily get in on the GoV action) - doesn't even need to be a lot of new lower leveled content - just enough to ease new players into the revamped leveling system

If they added a whole new nation on a different continent - made speedy travel more accessible at a lower level (maws etc - and more teleport npcs!) - and allowed new players to roll as a member of that nation it would be even better, but really, just adding a real expansion (with some solo-low-man content for all levels - but heavy on 6 man (max) endgame) would do wonders for the game if they actually advertised it a bit.

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Originally Posted by Olor

Spin might get people in the door for a first try... but given how badly they burned everyone who originally bought the game, they will need a heck of a lot more than spin to make XIV pay for itself, let alone make money.


Much easier to spin a relaunch of a game which didn't go down in flames, imo - there are probably a crap ton of players who dropped the game over the years who have some fond memories who would probably come back if they saw a good advertising campaign that specifically addressed some of the big reasons ppl quit (high time investment - low reward was probably the biggest one)

Imagine a welcome to Vanadiel campaign that included a new expansion, with a focused pitch about how much easier it is to get into the game now (complete with a smattering of revamped lower level content/quests - especially ones that LEAD new players to maze of shakrami and gusgen etc at appropriate levels so they can easily get in on the GoV action) - doesn't even need to be a lot of new lower leveled content - just enough to ease new players into the revamped leveling system

If they added a whole new nation on a different continent - made speedy travel more accessible at a lower level (maws etc - and more teleport npcs!) - and allowed new players to roll as a member of that nation it would be even better, but really, just adding a real expansion (with some solo-low-man content for all levels - but heavy on 6 man (max) endgame) would do wonders for the game if they actually advertised it a bit.

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Your ideas cost much much more money than SE's ideas for FFXIV. Why you might be asking? When looking at both game's life span, to make FFXI survive 2 things have to happen PS2 must be dropped or no longer updated, and the core engine must be rebuilt for PC, 360, and PS3 respectively. Either individually or PC downgrades for 360 and PS3. All of this equals more money and/or time invested. More money invested means less potential ROI in the same time frame or a slower potential ROI, neither of these are things investors want to hear.

That right there makes FFXI a bad investment not to mention the other factors (outdated content current players don't do, large top heavy player base, etc.) when comparing it to XIV.

I don't think the core engine has to be remade entirely; maybe for more things such as the inclusion of flying mounts, jumping, etc, but I think most people prefer adjustments or additions that could be made if the limiting factors weren't a) the amount of RAM the PS2 has and b) the amount of hard drive space the PS2 has left. The 360 isn't and shouldn't be included in this, because it has access to 512 MB of RAM minus the amount of RAM needed to operate a background OS (which would be quite minimal) and the option to increase hard drive space (plus, if you even plan to play XI on the 360, all game boxes have a notice on the back and in the manual stating you need at least a 20 GB hard disk to play and that you should keep a reserve amount for future updates). It isn't bound by a strict 40 GB hard disk with an apparent 10 GB or so partition-size for FFXI. Correct me if I'm wrong about the latter, anyone.

I would prefer higher res. textures, really, as oppsoed to a whole graphical remake. The geometry is fine, still; for a PS2 game, XI's use of polygons is still good to me. However, with textures, I believe that dev's start out with higher resolution textures and then downscale them as needed in order to fit the specs of platforms accessing the game. I'm sure that for the PC and possibly 360 clients, this could be a possible update without really changing anything engine-related other than requiring more VRAM and possibly more CPU power given the way the game generates its imagery. Still might be a thing to look at.

That, or just update the DirectX version used with the game to a much higher version; if that was all we could get in terms of graphics, I'd be more for it since a lot of the issues I have with XI are technical-based and not graphics-based (FPS, collisions of objects, etc).

Several things that could be fixed include item space, new areas and not just re-skinned versions, higher resolutions which mean that things the dev's wanted to include but couldn't now can (mini-map as an example), possibly more enemies and/or NPCs on-screen due to increase of VRAM available in events such as Besieged, Campaign, etc. I for one would love this, but hopefully SE tells us what the survey they requested we take was about.

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Originally Posted by Zagen

360 is likely running trough the same direct x wrapper as the PC

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Xbox 360 only has DirectX 9, it does not have the DLLs for previous versions of DirectX. Microsoft saw no need to create 360 versions of those because nobody would ever need them.

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Originally Posted by Zagen

Your ideas cost much much more money than SE's ideas for FFXIV. Why you might be asking? When looking at both game's life span, to make FFXI survive 2 things have to happen PS2 must be dropped or no longer updated, and the core engine must be rebuilt for PC, 360, and PS3 respectively. Either individually or PC downgrades for 360 and PS3. All of this equals more money and/or time invested. More money invested means less potential ROI in the same time frame or a slower potential ROI, neither of these are things investors want to hear.

That right there makes FFXI a bad investment not to mention the other factors (outdated content current players don't do, large top heavy player base, etc.) when comparing it to XIV.

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Your just making things up. First off, you have no Idea what that costs to do. Second, ROI - I'm not sure that means what you think it does. We're talking about completely overhauling 2 games. Before the over haul, game 1 has 10 times the subscriber base of game 2. After the overhaul, we have 2 newly rebuilt games, game 2 has made 1/10 the profit of game 1 during the lengthy overhaul (if that), and now needs to increase sales ten fold to even come close to game 1. In order for game 2 to surpass the profits of game one and thus become the better return on investment, 2 things need to happen. Game 2 needs to A) maintain its new 300k player base for at least 2 years, and B) game 1 needs to fail entirely in those 2 years. Game 2 then needs to survive longer than game 1 would have given the same opportunity. Just looking at that you see that game 2 possesses limited potential for ROI.

All of that is completely ignoring the money that has already been thrown out the window on FFXIV. The chances of even breaking even on investments won't be realized for years to come, if ever.

Rebuilding FFXI might bring in some new players, it might not. Adding new content will likely keep the player base at about the levels that they are now. Given the fact that most people did not quit FFXI to go play FFXIV, it is likely that the 2 games could co-exist.

With the number of players that FFXI has, it wouldn't take long to recoup the costs of a rebuild, and considering that the other option is to do nothing and lose all the players, it really isn't even a risk. It's either A) slowly stop making money because the game withers and dies, or B) invest money in it and keep it making money. The only question really is: How much of an overhaul to do, in order to maximize profits.