New advertising campaign, annual fee discount, win!

[Stompa]

As for leaving us behind doing this, it's really their only choice. Jumping into a "new" game and finding players with characters they've had for 13 years and having the resources that come along with that would break the economy right away, so they can't transfer anything meaningful. One appeal of starting when a game releases is that everyone is at the start of the curve, so you have a chance to get to the top of it. If there are already people way ahead of you on day one, you aren't going to be interested in climbing the curve to try to catch up, especially if they are that far ahead. You tend to just give up in Mario Kart if you get completely lapped by the person in first, there's no hope of catching them, and it's the same mentality here.

I totally agreed with your post, and I really enjoyed your fascinating analysis of the technical aspects, which you know way more about than I do.

I snipped the above piece, because I don't really agree with this. I might be misunderstanding it, or taking it in the wrong context, but FFXI is a teamwork / helping-others game. Mario Cart, FPS, racing games etc. are all competition gaming, you want first place and you hope that everyone else enjoys the taste of dust because that's all they're gonna be eating today etc.

I have done LB3 hundreds of times, for the endless waves of new players that swept through our LS in the last eleven years. I have helped people build finished Empys, while my own Empys are all in various stages of unfinishedness. I would think nothing about spending my whole evening just helping a new player with mundane stuff, or stay up half the night farming a hard drop for someone. And I'm not special or unique at all, a huge number of FFXI players are famous for being helpful and welcoming to new adventurers.

So I'm not saying you are wrong, only that there is a difference between games like FFXI and pure competition games, racing games or whatever. I just look at the scenery as we farmed another Glavoid for somebody lol. I don't mind, because I'm happy just being in Vanadiel, even if I'm not in First Place and making progress.

But you are right about the hardware problems, which you described far better than I could. And we all know its over. SE have completed the repairs to their spaceship, which crashed on our barbarian world in the late 1980s. They realised it would take about 30 years to fix their ship, and so they used our primitive Earth tech to make awesome games, in the hopes we might learn something before they left us. Soon they will blast off into space and return to planet Square and leave us with this new loltablet game and this confused look on our faces lol.

[Jile]

So no, they can't keep developing on PS2 development kits even if they wanted, since they aren't made anymore, there's no option to repair them as there are no spare parts stockpiled by Sony, and the last few dozen working ones in the world (not held by private citizens that won't sell them) are in SE's hands.

SE could always do what I did, take 20 seconds, go to ebay and search PS2 development and I found one for sale for $1000. I think they can find them, they're just not looking. http://www.ebay.com/itm/Playstation-...8AAOSw~gRV410u

[bungiefanNA]

SE could always do what I did, take 20 seconds, go to ebay and search PS2 development and I found one for sale for $1000. I think they can find them, they're just not looking. http://www.ebay.com/itm/Playstation-...8AAOSw~gRV410u

Even systems like that, there aren't too many remaining, and keeping them in working order at the age they are is a sisyphean task. Eventually the equipment is going to wear out, and leave them with no development environment. The call for Rhapsodies was done because they don't expect remaining systems to last long enough to do a full expansion rollout over 1.5+ years, and they don't want their equipment to completely fail in the middle of an expansion. Congratulations, you found ONE system, and on an auction site, from a questionable source who may not have everything needed for it in an environment like SE needs.

Stompa, watch Extra Credits. Even in a game with cooperation elements, you still have the progress curve to consider, which puts people into competition, and not being able to climb that curve if you start too late is a disincentive to remain playing. I've tried endgame shells and been unable to remain in them because I couldn't get the help needed to catch up, they'd rather kick me than help me come back from a time of being unable to play. As you approach the end of the curve, it becomes competitive, and you can't make the last of it in many conditions if you are too late to the game.

[Alhanelem]

SE could always do what I did, take 20 seconds, go to ebay and search PS2 development and I found one for sale for $1000. I think they can find them, they're just not looking. http://www.ebay.com/itm/Playstation-...8AAOSw~gRV410u

Not all the ones you find on ebay are going to be functional; also unless they've been sitting in a closet gathering dust the whole time, they're probably just as on their way out as SE's kits are.

[bungiefanNA]

The curve wasn't for current FFXI, it was for FFXI mobile. The curve is why they couldn't transfer our current characters' progress to FFXI mobile. If people were brand new to a game on day 1, and seeing maxed out characters in the first hour, they'd not want to continue on. FFXI mobile MUST be a seperate environment for the curve to be appealing. You can't start with people already at the finish line.

[Alhanelem]

OK fair enough. I was talking about FFXI only, as it is my favourite computergame. Also because I only play PC games, and my mobile is a Nokia from 1997, lol.

But I do wish SE the best of luck with their mobile game, which I will not be playing, with or without curves!

All this talk about curves is really messing with my mind.

I would consider playing it if they supported lolwindows mobile. I plan to get one (I simply like the design of vanilla WM10 over android and iOS... it would be perfect to me if the app support was better!) and I doubt either that or grandmasters will ever support it (Although supposedly some android apps can be made to work on windows 10 mobile)