Final Fantasy XI Version 2.0?

Final Fantasy XI version 2.0 is kindda what Im getting from the producer posts. Aside from them not redoing graphics, giving us shiney new regional servers that is.

Is that basically it or am I reading to much into it?

You're reading too much into it.

Yeah, I think this is a bit off-base.

To me it sounded like the producer is a little overwhelmed. His post seemed to be to just confirm that stuff is in the works and a possible new direction for future content and reworking of old content, like with the mention of solo content, etc.

Also that a lot of the FFXI team has been shifted to work on the expansion.

Ok, I wasnt sure how exactly to read that. I know it wasnt going to be a complete redo like xiv but it sounded like he wanted to put the game through so many changes it was going to be close to a reboot.

Doesn't matter. This sounds like an amazing idea that I hope gets worked on after ffxiv v2. Updated graphics, major overhaul, but noooo nerfs.

There are going to be nerfs. There has to be nerfs. There are a select few jobs that are way to overpowered and a select few they could do away with completely with as worthless as they have become. So they need to tone down the overpowered and throw a bone to the underdogs

I get a vibe along the lines of "this is a lot of work my homies but we're doing all we can, hang in there" but yeah it seems they are committed for the long haul. Just not necessarily the way we want them to be.

I wish they would hurry up with 14, have it fall on it's face again or not, then we can all get back to what's important: Keeping the 200,000 FFXI subscribers for the long term. I don't fricking care what financial logic you try to shove down my throat, basic logic is basic logic.

Good game leads to sustained subscribers.

Sustained subscribers leads to profits.

Profits lead to 500 dollar lunches.


So from a financial stand point they'll be morons not to have a vested interest in prolonging FFXI's lifespan. I like to think giving someone the boot and bringing in new blood is them finally realizing this and are making an effort to continue having their 500 dollar lunches for years to come but I don't know. The Japanese have never held the same kind of business logic as everyone else. It's not a bad thing it just tends to make me really angry that a game that has been the best thing ever for them financially because it's practically free tens of millions of dollars every year developer salaries aside is treated as a cash cow rather than the flagship title of their company because it didn't garner 10 million subscribers.

But then I think about this other MMO and how it's developers treat it and then I stop being angry here because I realize that at least someone somewhere at SE HQ gives a shit about their product. I might not agree with their logic for FFXI but at least they don't shit on it to make a quick buck, and at the end of the day that makes me pretty happy and I forget about my little pet peeves.


Except the pet peeve about people(i.e. not SE employees but perhaps applies to someone somewhere there) who think it makes complete and logical sense to not ensure your game keeps on giving you free money every year and instead focus on an entirely new project that risks over a hundred million dollars in the hopes that it'll be the new WoW and you can finally upgrade your 500 dollar lunches to 5,000 dollar lunches because 500 dollar lunches are for the not so lucky poor folk. THEN, how it makes more sense to try to salvage that massive failure with a redo because it was too much money to just cut your losses and move on than it does to go back to FFXI, improve it 10 or 100 fold with the proper support it should have got in the first place, and continue to make a shitmillion dollars every year to fund whatever you want(See, people forget that Final Fantasy is not your average mainstream MMO, it holds actual long time loyal fans so the rules are different for FFXI. You can afford to update it because you KNOW the people will be there later. If you betray that loyalty you get to where FFXI is currently at)

Oh but no it's probably better to just forsake all that for a chance to make a shitbillion dollars. Hiring new blood and investing in another shop for their work is too much trouble and is illogical to spend that extra million or two dollars every year when it's better to just give a game a skeleton crew and move every one to the next big thing to lose a hundred million dollars. But you can't be bothered to f-ing spend a million bucks to make sure 35 million keeps coming in every year. I won't pretend to know how much they do spend but I imagine it's at least a couple million every year on FFXI. Obviously not enough.


.....


How much did this mistake cost them yearly? About 50 million dollars. We don't get to see the official numbers but anyone with a brain will come to the same conclusion. 500,000 subscribers down to 200,000. A loss of 300,000. Multiply that by 12 dollars per month and add in mule fees and it's in the neighborhood of 50 million lost per year because they wanted to do FFXIV. So not only did they lose their asses on 14 which may or may not redeem itself at the end of this year/start of next year, they also indirectly lost their asses on lost FFXI income that might not have occurred had they stayed focused on it rather than getting greedy and wanting more. It's no wonder Tanaka looked so bad there in his end days the dude cost his company more money than I could count to in my lifetime. But I digress, I have gotten over this and moved on for the most part. I just long for the coulda shoulda woulda while I'm forced to settle for last night's scraps.

But if I have to listen to one more person who doesn't have the slightest clue wtf they're talking about try to explain to me the complexities of monetary decisions and how SE made the right choice in regards to FFXI and FFXIV... I just don't even know. The ultimate warrior made more sense to me and he was damn near impossible to understand. I just wanted to get this in before the first person inevitably opens their mouth about the subject in this thread.

So in short I say to those individuals, yes you're right, but it doesn't excuse them for not using the common sense of hiring moar talent, another building to support them if need be, and ensuring that near 100 million annual revenue kept piling in for years to come. Now it's only like 35 million and it's THAT much harder to commit to doing what needs to be done but it's still well worth it to anyone with a brain. I would walk over babies for 35 million dollars a year I don't care how much overall I pulled in just ask George Lucas if he thinks 35 million is chump change the dude loves money like I love peanut butter reeses cups. And I'm sorry if you had nothing better to do than read this entire thing I just wrote. I know how you feel. I wrote it. or typed it. whatever

I can honestly only see this happening if ARR flops, and even then only after they fix the balance in the game first. But hey, a guy can dream right?

I think they eventually will do a 2.0 not anytime in the near future but if this game lasts for another 10 years there would be no reason not to at that point.

One of the main reasons the decided to do it for XIV is because they didnt want it to become a "lost" Final Fantasy and if they dont do something then it will happen to XI. The only other route i can see them taking is making an offline single player version of the game.

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Originally Posted by JouriStarz

The only other route i can see them taking is making an offline single player version of the game.

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http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__...ntasy_XII.jpeg



No really though, I would like them to find a way to basically turn the game single player when the servers eventually die. I like going back and playing my older Final Fantasy games, being back in that world again, with all the same familiar characters and reliving the story, it would be sad for me to see the one I have spent the most time on, be the only one which I could never go back and relive the experience of just because of the servers going down.

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Originally Posted by Elphy

Final Fantasy XI version 2.0 is kindda what Im getting from the producer posts. Aside from them not redoing graphics, giving us shiney new regional servers that is.

Is that basically it or am I reading to much into it?

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They don't need to redo graphics. They just need to update the directX wrapper the game runs under. Updating it to at least DX9 (Preferrably 10 or 11) would do wonders for compatibility with current graphics cards, and could add shiny water to the Windows / 360 version.

Yes. It's not as much the poly count and texture resolution that bothers me, but the complete lack of hardware antialiasing, glitchy graphics close to the "seams" where different objects meet (feathers, hair, etc.) and at times inconsistent texture filtering. I dunno about everyone else, but to me it seems like when looking at surfaces from a low angle, you go from good texture filtering closest to the camera, then no filtering at all (blocky textures), then texture filtering on the textures further away than that again.

Additionally, shadows seem to eat away a disproportionally huge amount of resources too. I'd love a game where you could run at 60 fps, 8x (or more) antialiasing, really nice texture filtering, better shadows, and shinier water, all without the game ever dropping below 60fps even in events where you have over 30 character models on screen.

Oh yeah, and maybe some updated sky textures here and there too. I know the devs know how to do it, because some of the WotG skies look absolutely fantastic, but at the same time, some other textures in other areas look very bad. An excellent example of this would be one of the nearly cloud-free during daytime in the past, and then look back at the clouds seen when it is thunderous in pashhow in the present, where you can clearly see color patterns in textures to make up for a too small color palette. Additionally, the resolution of the clouds in Riverne is also very low and looks very much out of place compared to other areas.

I also dunno if I'm the only one experiencing this, but I also saw a significant decrease in graphics performance when going from WinXP x64 to Win7 x64. I only managed to get it back to the performance I had on XP x64 when I upgraded my CPU to something about 30% better.

It would also be nice if they fixed the "glow" effects that we have on avatars, maws, and so on. This effect actually looks pretty neat at the resolution the game was originally made for (on PS2), but becomes increasingly blocky and ugly as the game's resolution is increased. At low resolution, the effect actually manages to emulate a HDR bloom-like effect pretty nicely (which is kind of impressive for a PS2 game). It is too bad that it doesn't look nearly as good for most players.

I would also like to see an official setting for greatly increasing draw distance. The game can look very pretty in some areas with the draw distance increased several times more than the game initially allows for. There is however one problem with increasing the draw distance more than the game is made for, and that is that environmental fog and weather effects that are meant to set the mood in an area are also affected by this, making these effects often become much weaker or farther away. Some areas really look a lot cooler when weather effects are allowed to do their thing. I bet it would look even better if we had both increased draw distance and the correct application of these effects.