What would make you return to ffxi? (if you left and came back for the free access)

[Castanica]

Well.... You can't deny that it's at least a part of the issue.

It's none of the issue, if Square wanted they could get around that since they no longer support the ps2 anyway.

The point was, they didn't want to spend any money to get around it. Yet they still want to charge FULL PRICE while offering a vastly inferior service.

They even considered f2p but again, didn't want to spend the money to change the game.

[Alhanelem]

It's none of the issue, if Square wanted they could get around that since they no longer support the ps2 anyway.

The point was, they didn't want to spend any money to get around it. Yet they still want to charge FULL PRICE while offering a vastly inferior service.

They even considered f2p but again, didn't want to spend the money to change the game.

That's because it doesn't make them as much money as people seem to think it does. Yes, it's profitable. But it's not profitable enough any more for them to jump through the necessary hoops to keep things going when their dev kits fail.

[Castanica]

That's because it doesn't make them as much money as people seem to think it does. Yes, it's profitable. But it's not profitable enough any more for them to jump through the necessary hoops to keep things going when their dev kits fail.

That's because they don't know how to make it more profitable, there is nothing beside the company itself from stopping this game becoming very profitable.

With proper investment and not the horrible treatment the game has gotten over the last 5 years it would be very profitable.

Irregardless, trying to continue to charge a full sub when you have zero intention of developing the game is pure greed. This is still a bigger game than a lot of other titles that run right now.

[Castanica]

Oops... Perhaps I made a writing mistake. From the postings I've read here, all content, regardless of final platform, initially has to be written on the PS2 Development Tool. Once the new game data is written & bug tested, in Playstation2 form, it then has to be ported over to PC and XBOX360. Even if PS2 & XBOX support is dropped, SE still needs the PS2 Dev tool to write game code for PC. If I'm correctly understanding the postings placed here by the game devs, the only way to eliminate this would be replace the game's graphics engine. Replacing the game's GFX engine would require rewriting the client. IMHO, rewriting the game client would not be a good idea. You'd be making the game susceptible to all new bugs.

Point is, if they wanted to. They could redesign the dev system to work without the ps2 dev kits, the ps2 isn't supported anymore so they could make this work from pc development only. It's less of "we can't" and more of "we don't really care". I really wish there was a guy in charge of XI that cared about it and has passion for it.

It's not impossible, they just don't want to in the same way they were considering making XI f2p but didn't want to spend money changing the engine to incorporate the cash shop. If they can spend a VAST amount of money remaking FFXIV into a average success then they can spend some on XI to continue running it for the next 10 years too.

[Alhanelem]

Point is, if they wanted to. They could redesign the dev system to work without the ps2 dev kits, the ps2 isn't supported anymore so they could make this work from pc development only. It's less of "we can't" and more of "we don't really care". I really wish there was a guy in charge of XI that cared about it and has passion for it.

It's not impossible, they just don't want to in the same way they were considering making XI f2p but didn't want to spend money changing the engine to incorporate the cash shop. If they can spend a VAST amount of money remaking FFXIV into a average success then they can spend some on XI to continue running it for the next 10 years too.

They didn't design the ps2 dev tool, it would be an astronomical task for them to design their own. There's just no way.

[Obysuca]

I really wish there was a guy in charge of XI that cared about it and has passion for it.

Well, there used to be :/ But it seems now SE only cares about XIV and not really caring about XIV itself, seeing as how all content since 2.0, even to 3.0, has been the same, and more caring about $$$.
I miss when companies cared for their mmo like it was their child.