Sooo SE actually wants to know the numbers of PS2 users eh?

[FrankReynolds]

Too bad 99.9% of PC players RELY on windower & bots to play cause apparently vanilla ffxi is too hard QQ

Edit: And god forbid they can't play on a TEST server without it e_e

your signature below
// *******************************************************************************
One of the proud 1% of PC players that dose not rely on Windower or bots to play the game, TAS is only for Kaizo Mario or other challenging rom hacks not FFXI! The only way I enhance gameplay is .dat mods.
// ***********************************************************************

.... why does your signature say that you do .DAT mods? Mighty foolish for a guy who is bad mouthing PC players for no apparent reason on an official forum don't ya think? or were you just trolling the PC players in hopes of saving your PS2?

[Leonlionheart]

Step 1. Make everyone take Innocent looking poll

Step 2. Don't even look at the data

Step 3. Announce that according to the poll, nobody plays on PS2 anymore

Step 4. Discontinue support for PS2 and offer free download of PC media to anyone who has purchased a copy of the PS2 version.

Step 5. Carefully police your community site and remove all angry posts by the few angry PS2 players that actually post

Step 6. Get a tattoo of the PS2 controllers on your wrists to remind you of the chains you broke free from.

This. Is. Brilliance.

Hope they do that, whether you wrote it with sarcasm and discontent or not!

[Limecat]

If this does lead to the end of the PS2 client, SE should make a new firework and send a stack of it to everyone who answered PS2 on the poll. When used it places a little PS2 on the ground in the game that suddenly bursts into flames and disappears.

[Shiyo]

If this does lead to the end of the PS2 client, SE should make a new firework and send a stack of it to everyone who answered PS2 on the poll. When used it places a little PS2 on the ground in the game that suddenly bursts into flames and disappears.

LOL that made me laugh irl, nice.

[Frost]

I don't get it, it's been nearly seven years since a PS2 was in production that you could even install FFXI on...

And while they're afraid of losing customers that currently exist, they're scaring away customers that could exist.

And I'd bet that the greater majority of "PS2 Users" already play on another client.

[Kari]

I'm no programmer, but to me it seems very unlikely that the server wouldn't check which version of the client a specific user logs in with each time this happens. It might not log this data automatically all the time, but I would "guess" that it wouldn't be a large ordeal to make the servers log which clients are used for which accounts for a limited period of time. The data collected from this would easily show how many subscribers logged on with only PC clients, only PS2 clients, both (and the distribution between the two), or any other possible combination.

The only thing you'd really need a poll for is to find out how many people would be all right with changing their platform, and what would be necessary to do for them to do so (like a free game download, for example).

It's overall better to make a real survey, no matter how much data they could have, or already have, collected automatically.

Allows the players to know they decided to take the survey and let them feel involved.
Allows players to let SE know, "Hey, I may not have logged in on my <system> in 4 months, but I'll likely be using it in the near future along with my <current system>!"
Allows players to let SE know that we may have played on PS2 2 years ago, but we stopped.

Too bad 99.9% of PC players RELY on windower & bots to play cause apparently vanilla ffxi is too hard QQ

Edit: And god forbid they can't play on a TEST server without it e_e

Nobody cares.
And using Windower/TPPs to reduce annoyance doesn't mean the game is "hard" without it.
In fact, if PS2 is dropped, I could easily see most of the cosmetic benefits we use Windower for being implemented into the game itself. [Ability to see party/alliance TP, alliance MP, mob HP, distance from target, recast timers on screen, maybe even "macro sets" with auto-swaps.]

I hope for good results of this survey, regardless.

[Dragoy]

Yeah except I'm going to lie on all of my accounts and pick PS2 just in case they're checking to see if they should ban me.

The fact you made this post already leaves you open to be banned since you are suggesting that you play XI on the same computer.

You know you can basically have more than one windoze running on one computer, and thus, you could run more than one FFXI on the same computer, without manipulating the client at all and essentially it would be just like having two or more computers or consoles running the game.

It is unfortunately true though that most who do that are indeed using those 'other ways' but... I'm just saying that it does not necessarily mean that. ^^;


Anyways, in my opinion, the survey does not likely mean anything to us players, and even less likely will they be announcing the results to us. Not impossible though, but that's just my guess.

I do hope they are basically asking the players which they would rather use, and that it would actually mean something for the future... Not like they couldn't get the info themselves, and even less likely they would trust a survey like this to be too accurate for much.

[FrankReynolds]

This. Is. Brilliance.

Hope they do that, whether you wrote it with sarcasm and discontent or not!

Not really sarcasm. I really hope they do that. They seem to be moving towards a streamlined FFXI staff. Outsourcing billing, Moving testing Duties to the player base.... Cutting PS2 support / programming / costs... all good ways to keep the game profitable.

[Runespider]

Not really sarcasm. I really hope they do that. They seem to be moving towards a streamlined FFXI staff. Outsourcing billing, Moving testing Duties to the player base.... Cutting PS2 support / programming / costs... all good ways to keep the game profitable.

Sadly if anything does come of this, I think this will turn out to be the real reason lol Cutting programming costs, I doubt they will build FFXI up beyond the weakest link after dropping it. We have a bare bones dev team as it is.

If done right dropping ps2 support could really boost FFXI, Square don't have much history of doing things right though.

[Jile]

Out of curiosity..... While most posts I've seen on the English forums are pro-phaseout, how are the Japanese forum's overall opinion of this poll and the potential ps2 phaseout?