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

[Billnes]

I left (again) 2 months ago. I came back for the free access this time again but I can't see myself playing very much this time, because I have no intention of re-subbing considering what I'll be paying for (a game with a death sentence).

So my question is this, if you did come back what would make you want to stay? These free access fortnights are an obvious lure, but if the line isn't strong enough they won't be reeling in much money from them.

For me, I would want either continued full development (Yoshida even said that the key to longevity for an mmo is CONTINUED DEVELOPMENT), a very cheap sub or free access system with a cash shop selling cosmetics. I like my waifu, yes I would buy outfits to dress her up! the point is, either I'm paying for good updates on a game with a long-life or I'm paying for cosmetics. I ain't paying for nothing because you think we are suckers.

These very regular free access fortnights show that they still want XI players money, they just don't know how to make us stay and/or don't want to spend any money to that end.

Money to me is of little concern, I'm playing a f2p game right now. I spent well over £200 last month on it buying outfits for my characters, I still refuse to pay £12 sub for a game in the state XI is in. Mainly, it's the principle.

The idea of Rhapsodies was a spectacular flop imo, it did far more damage than good to this game. when you say you want to end the game with a spectacular ending, you still just said ending.

Make me want to stay Square, I still have the desire to play it but you need to offer a better deal than you are offering right now.

I know what the player numbers are like on this game now, so more agree with this mindset than you obviously assumed would. Do something about it before it's too late.

Dear Castanica,

To the best of my understanding, the development team, the executives at Square-Enix and some people here in the forum with the technical chops to do so, have written several posts on this subject: Writing new content for Final Fantasy XI requires Playstation 2 Development Hardware. As the years go by, there are fewer and fewer working development units that Square-Enix can acquire. To the best of my understanding: At one time, SONY placed a recall notice to developers. SONY wanted to destroy as many of these units as they could to prevent them from getting out to unauthorized parties. Again, to the best of my understanding: The SONY PS2 Development Kits, are very large, (40 Lbs.) feature extremely-highly customized circuit boards, (making them difficult, if not impossible to repair) boot very slowly, have limited RAM, use an old, obscure OS and are difficult to ship because of their weight and extreme fragility.

In my humble opinion, I believe that trying to emulate the functionality of the PS2 Development Kit, even using today's modern hardware would be extremely difficult or even impossible. The original SONY hardware appears to be too heavily customized. I also believe that not enough people outside of the Computer Science field understand that with emulation, you're asking software to do a job that was originally intended to be done by hardware. I simply don't think it's a viable option for Square-Enix to invest in attempting to rebuild hardware built by SONY.

Playstation 2 Development Kit motherboard


ASSEMblergames.com on YouTube purchased several dev units that were still working. According to the videos voice over, they were purchased at liquidation, when Midway went bankrupt. If you watch the video carefully, you can see that it works on Red Hat Linux 5.2 Apollo. The dev kit requires two monitors. The first one to enter Unix commands and write the actual code. The second monitor is an NTSC resolution monitor (low resolution) that's used to view how the finished game code is playing. Until a username & password is entered into the Unix side of the system, the NTSC monitor shows a splash screen. The video shows that the dev tool has a CD/DVD-ROM drive and can be put into "Retail Mode" via a code entered at the command line. I'm going on the presumption that just like the Debuggers Unit, this tool would not be able to play DVD movies, even if it was in "Retail Mode".

Watch the first video from Assembler Games here.

In another YT video, ASSEMblergames.com disassembled a dev kit to illustrate how heavily customized the dev kit motherboard is.

The next video can be seen here.

The unit itself:


Size comparison:


I hope this helps. I assure you that I made every effort to write this article as clearly and concisely as humanly possible.

Best Regards,
Uncle Billy
Long Island, New York

[Draylo-]

That doesn't matter Bill. They clearly have enough money to create boring flops, why can't they invest in an MMO that was their bread winner for years? It would bring back much larger returns than their 100th failure game or mobile game.

[Stompa]

I'm glad you're happy but you didn't read the topic title.

I did read it, and I tried to reply in the only way I could. I never quit the game, I was unable to play for a while during C&B era etc. and I came back as soon as I could and I was actually very happy that my money was being accepted in the SEAMS payment page.

Your post is basically talking about what would make a person stay in the game, if they came back, what would make them pay to play the game. I replied to that, as it applies to me, I am staying because I love playing FFXI, and I don't mind paying the subs, so the free trial doesn't matter to me. I'm sorry if I didn't make that clear in my last post.

I have said before, in one of these previous identical threads, I agree with a slight lowering of subs in 2016 and beyond, as there is no new content, it makes sense to lower the subs slightly, or at least restore the XI/14 bundle offer. Although that wouldn't affect me, as I don't play 14.

And also I'm able to afford normal monthly FFXI subs as they are not expensive, and for the monthly subs I get many, many hours of happy and thrilling gaming. So I don't see the "free play" as important to me personally, I think FFXI subs are good value, for such an awesome game.

[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.

[kylani]

After being frustrated at work during the day due to a post on these forums, I came home, logged in to play, and realized the fun has gone out of the game. Logged into my crafters to get mog pells and logged out. I play a game to have fun, not be frustrated by a game when everything else in my life is great.

I checked facebook, and a friend asked if I had played FFXI recently. What timing... We left FFXI for FFXIV v.1 with most of our LS ages ago. As full of bitterness as I was, I couldn't knock FFXI to him. I've played quite a few MMOs, most of them with this friend (Vanguard, lotro, wow, guild wars 2, etc), but FFXI is without doubt the best MMO I've ever played. If anything, there is so much content, FFXI is overwhelming and hard to explain to someone who is thinking about coming back after being away several years. I ended up telling him some of the many changes that have been added, and he's going to download and give it a try. He sounded excited, even as I just don't have the heart to play... I wanted to warn him, but I also wanted him to see how great FFXI has become and enjoy it.

I've played this game for 11 years. This last time, my sons and I all signed up again. Our favorite jobs are PUP, PUP, and BST (me). My oldest realized end game would be too frustrating for him since PUP would probably never be wanted in end game, so he quit. My youngest and I agreed to avoid end game this time and just play the jobs we love, doing what we can, and we've had a fabulous time up till now enjoying working thru missions, content, job points, reforged and augmented gear as we could get it. I also love crafting as always.

I thought if we could avoid being sucked into end game and leveling other jobs over our favorites, we'd avoid the frustration of end game. I didn't realize the mentality of today had changed from if you want to do end game, level a DD, WHM, BRD, GEO, to if SE adds new content that, perish the thought, a job that has never been wanted in end game happens to be good at for a change, folks would cry to nerf the job so that DD, WHM, BRD, GEO are the only jobs wanted again. I've never ever asked for another job to be nerfed, and most definitely never asked for a basic part of a job that has existed since day one of the job to be changed. That the devs would even change a core mechanic vs. adjust the content thoroughly disgusts me that I can't get past it. I know I should. BST has changed plenty over the years and I used to roll with it, but the venom of player base after literally YEARS of disparaging BST and all the times I did play other jobs to play with friends because BST was limited with their setup has hit me hard. I didn't cry to nerf blm, mnk, etc so I could play BST when a blm could do a tier 1 nuke in skirmish for tons more damage than my poor sad pet. I hoped someday SE would fix BST. Now I just don't like to log in to the game and see other players anymore. It was a relief and pleasure to log out.

I don't think FFXI can ever appeal to the masses who want everything handed to them. A big part of FFXI is the richness of jobs and pure fun of story. No one wants to deal with having to figure out different setups anymore. I did Cop with our static (whm, pld, thf, drg, me (brd, rdm, bst as needed) when people told us Cop couldn't be done with our jobs. We failed often enough, but we figured it out and managed to win, and those wins are still some of my fondest memories.

I still love FFXI and think the devs have done a wonderful job in recent years. I just don't think it's possible to overcome the player base that has gotten worse faster than the game has gotten better, and I think sadly, this player mentality is the norm for most MMOs now.

[Castanica]

The huge problem square has is they have big number mentality.

They don't seem to realize that the way almost every mmo is profitable these days is by feeding a niche, ffxi has an amazing niche but they are squandering it by tryting to copy the template that is failing to work on xiv.

As I said before if they just wake up and see how amazing this game is they could increase profits, sadly they will probably never do that.

They even have this idiotic mentality on FFXIV which is incredibly sad, both of these games could be much more profitable and they could take pride in them both. Instead they just see them both as embarassments due to lower player numbers than they would like and run them into the ground.

Please look at the mmo market square, you will never make another wow so stop trying to.

[kylani]

After venting my frustrations, I realized that maybe SE is doing the right thing trying to have the game translated to a mobile app. Focus on making the game solo/duo/trio able. Cut out large groups altogether so that folks won't be as inclined to fuss about not being wanted.

Trusts are wonderful and seem to be getting better and better. Improve those to the point where Trusts are enough support for you and a friend or two to do most content. The fights are still fun and will require strategy. Just not a full party of cookie cutter jobs and a canned strat. Much as I used to love grouping, I think smaller groups of friends with trust support may be more enjoyable long term, and increase willingness to try new strategies if you can round out a party with trust jobs you need. People pretty seem to shout for the jobs they want today. Eliminate the need to shout. Grab friends, and go.

[Krystal]

Frankly, I think they should make it so anyone with an active FF14 sub should be able to play FFXI free of charge. Lets face it, FFXI is awesome but its also seriously outdated and not nearly as popular as it once was. By giving this feature to active FF14 players, it allows players who love both MMOs but don't want to pay for both to be able to enjoy both.

Or at the very least give active ff14 subscribers a discounted rate. Whose gonna want to fork out 14 some odd bucks for an older MMO when they are already paying as much for the better looking one.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that FFXI isn't great but its still one thing no one can deny: OLD and not worth the 14 bucks a month anymore.