Swan Song of Vana'diel; ~Why I Won't Play the Mobile Native App~

[Aquilah]

I look at it this way: We'd all love for this version of the game to last forever and get expansions and a new UI and stuff. But it's not going to happen. I'd rather it live on, active, in another form, than die and be inaccessible.
With what Square Enix has been doing in the mobile market lately, I have faith that they don't intend to half-ass any of this. Even their announcement makes it pretty clear they want to preserve the game as much as they can, while upgrading the experience.

We'll see.

As for graphics...eh. FFXI isn't exactly cutting edge graphics. I won't mourn too much if some corners are cut. But like, there are mobile games out there that look really good.

I mean, look at this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBXH9ecBsYU

That's a game that generally has more going on at any given time than FFXI does, too.

I can't exactly make you be optimistic about this, but as someone who currently prefers this to FFXIV and missed the boat on playing during its more active years...I'd really like this mobile version to work out.

[Draylo-]

That game doesn't look bad, but is it online? I would imagine they have to dumb the graphics down for online mode so its accessible to everyone with a phone. Also the problem still remains that we would have to play on a phone... I can't imagine getting serious about any kind of phone game. I really enjoy FF record keepers, but I'm not super serious about it its more casual. This just screams to me, we don't care about FFXI anymore so we are throwing it off onto a third party where they will make it a pay to win game that people play 10 minutes out of the day. This game deserves better than that imo, they could have invested in a PC revamp and made it unique compared to WoW-esque MMOs like FFXIV.

[Aquilah]

It is. Kritika is an online game.

http://www.siliconera.com/2015/03/19...ourtesy-nexon/

This seems to have the most information of all the news I've read and it all points to them at least trying to keep the core of the game intact. The screens, tiny as they are, at least seem to resemble FFXI.
But that's all we have. So who knows? I guess we'll have to wait for them to show off some actual gameplay to see what's happening.

I don't consider it a 'we don't care about FFXI' anymore move, though. To me, if they didn't care, they'd just quietly kill it and not devote all this development they're currently devoting to it. It costs a lot of money to remake a 13+ year old game, you know :P.

[Draylo-]

I guess, lets just hope its decent.

[Aquilah]

That much we agree on.

[Zeargi]

I just don't see this working well here in the states.

[bungiefanNA]

It's not as if the USA is the primary target for this. Japanese company, Japanese targets.

[Zeargi]

It's not as if the USA is the primary target for this. Japanese company, Japanese targets.

Correct, which is why it's on a mobile platform. They are are showing a complete bias on the demographic that they want. Big shock, because it's not the first time that this has happened. I don't live in Japan, and have like 2 friends that I talk to regularly that are from there, so I've no clue how their mobile/cellular data and Hot spotting works as a country. The reason I say that I don't see this working in the states is because of the huge cap on cellular data plans, and the lack of overall Wi-Fi Hot Spots that can be trusted.

[bungiefanNA]

Japan is the testing ground of new cell phone models. They've had more features than us for longer than us for a long time in that market. We get maybe 10% of the phone models that are released there. It's easy to cover Japan in cell signal, with how compact the country is.

[Arciel]

Before I begin let me just apologize in advance for what is going to be a long post.
After SE announced the Vanadiel Project, I wasn’t sure what to think of it and it really took me a long while to understand where they were coming from.. and over the past few months I think I finally get it.

Perhaps the most confusing part of the Vana Project was the decision to announce everything together, because it seemed like none of the 3 separate announcements were actually linked.

XI ending regular updates was a signal of the end, and Rhapsodies was essentially the apology. I believe this was always an inevitability, but the reliance on PS2 hardware meant that this came sooner than later. Essentially, FFXI’s dev team had painted the game into a corner and there was nothing else they could do. Service would slowly wind down, and the very least they could do left was keep the servers online for PC gamers, for now.

The deal with FF Grandmasters? I honestly think this one was in no way influenced by FFXI winding down, and was just another side project, but related to FFXI. This is just another way for SE to cash in on the expansive mobile gaming market, alongside FF WWW, Pictlogica and Record Keeper. Having seen videos of the beta in action, I’d go as far as to say its basically another generic mobile+gacha kind of game, except that it’s FFXI flavored and conveniently uses its lore, monsters and equipment to furnish the game, just like how FFRK draws from all the other numbered FFs.

It was really the third announcement that struck me as odd - and I think the first thing that came to my mind was.. Why would we want to play FFXI on mobile after a decade on console/PC? And then I realized, the FFXI native app isn’t actually meant for us. I believe it’s really meant to introduce XI to a brand new audience of gamers, who would hopefully be drawn into the game.

Why are they doing this? Why are they telling us this? Perhaps SE knew that XI in its current form would die. This was its only saving grace - a MMMRPG.. multiplayer mobile RPG. I’ve never actually come across this term before, so perhaps they feel like they’re carving out a niche in the market for the game? I also believe they decided against going for a full remake of the game because it was a waste of resources and like some have mentioned would compete for the same pie as XIV, which doesn’t make business sense.. so a new XI would have to cater to a different market.

So what exactly is this native app? I wish I knew, and I wish they told us more. With no news in the last 4 months I’m left wondering if they even decided to proceed with it. If they did then I believe this is the future for FFXI. This is to be FFXI: A Mobile Reborn. (lol)

If I may be cautiously (or unrealistically) hopeful about it, I think this might be a chance for SE and Nexon to remake FFXI and get things right, from the very beginning. The main question of concern left for us would then be.. are we willing to do it all over again? My answer would be yes.

(Side note: I’ve been playing FFXIV: Heavensward for the better part of the last month, and I only have praise for the game for leaving me thoroughly impressed by the vast improvements made since ARR. I am also wont to comparing it with XI and thinking of how XI could have turned out if it was more well planned out.. and as a newer game on better technology. This also made me miss XI a whole lot)

How exactly does one recreate an MMO with over 10 years of content? The most logical step from both a business and development standpoint would be to start from the beginning and work progressively. When this app game releases, I expect it to be the vanilla FFXI. No expansions. Level 50 cap. After all, if everyone is starting from scratch, there’d be no one to do endgame immediately. And they could roll out the updates at a steady pace to keep gamers entertained. They’d not have to worry about designing new content because it’s all already been done before.

The game changer, and major difference really, is they’d be able to implement all the QoL additions they made to the current game into the app. I’m talking about Home Point warps, Survival Guides (hopefully integrated more efficiently), Fields of Valor and Treasure Caskets, Warp Rings, cheap Reraise scrolls, wide scan, no EXP loss till 30, Level Sync, Synthesis and of course Trusts. RoE could probably be implemented in a way that it would run automatically, like a true Achievements system or XIVs Challenge log.

For all the times I’ve said to myself.. ”if only these changes were around when i started the game”, this could be that chance. Of course, they’d need to figure out a UI intuitive enough to support all these features.. and I think that’s really the biggest challenge the native app faces.

But there are also the possibilities of them undoing past mistakes or limitations for the remake. For eg, implementing a unified teleporting system early in the game would save them the need to add so many overlapping systems in the future. Or to be able to tweak older gameplay systems to not be as totally redundant as they are now (Expedition Force lol, or a better Evolith system from the very beginning). Battlefields could be truly instanced. Quest fights could be instanced from a small section of an open area zone. Jobs would actually be fairly balanced from the beginning and not totally suck.

The possibilities are truly endless - but this is of course, mere speculation. My point really is that the sky's the limit with the native app. And if this is what they’re planning for it, then I want to see it succeed. It’d breathe new (rehashed ) life into FFXI.. at least until it runs out of content to implement - which won’t be anytime soon. By that time, if FFXI is doing well enough, we may see that version being ported for other platforms, or brand new content for FFXI.. maybe a new expansion.

But one thing seems very clear, it won’t happen to THIS FFXI, only the mobile one. OR, i could be totally wrong. I wish there was more info.