Is there secrecy over the 20th anniversary?

[Alhanelem]

Post from Wikipedia.



Yoshi is in charge of all MMORPGS, everything from funding to buissness strategy. If he said XI was going to get an expansion, it would get one. They are not allowed to make any on his say, even if players would pay for them.

He is actually also on the board of directors.

https://www.jp.square-enix.com/company/en/officer/

The reason I say he won't do this, is because graphics are a major concern for XIV players and that would push it into competition with that game.

It really wouldn't, but believe what you will. If he really had it out for XI, it would already have stopped existing. Your own quotation also says that business unit has shifted to a single player game. But I'll give you the board of directors, I was unaware.

You know, three different versions of Runescape all exist at the same time. the original, "Old School (which is ironically newer) and a newer one than that. The franchise has more players than it would likely have if they decided to terminate one of those projects, and they could easily make more money with a new one. This environment is not as black and white as you make it out to be. While FFXIV has some players (such as myself) who played XI, they are entirely different kinds of games and a remaster of FFXI is not going to take business away from FFXIV. Even if it were to, that's just moving a customer from one service to another, that isn't lost money. So I don't see Yoshida as having any reason (relating to 14 at the very least) to block a remaster of XI were one to be proposed. Improving FFXI's graphics wouldn't in any way increase competition between the two games, which have pretty different clienteles (which isn't to say there isn't any overlap, but again, players moving between different projects in the same company is not a loss)

[Pixela]

I have a friend that plays XIV, and she is always going on about wanting a hd graphics upgrade on that too.

Ain't gonna happen there either.

[Alhanelem]

I have a friend that plays XIV, and she is always going on about wanting a hd graphics upgrade on that too.

Ain't gonna happen there either.

It isn't going to happen there because the disk space required would be insane. FFXI"s graphics are considerably lower fidelity and could be improved to FFXIV's level without being a massive download that would take ages over PlayOnline's antiquated network system.

Of course, that would be one of the primary benefits of any sort of remaster- the opportunity to ditch playonline entirely.

[Immortal]

Graphics overhaul would help this game so much, people are so vain in this age. Just look at 14 and how much time and money people spend on glamour. The sad part is that XI already has beautiful graphics that have aged well, but its not enough for most gamers these days that spend thousands on PC and TV upgrades.

[Epiihyran]

I think if they're not going to improve the graphics, they could at least provide some new clothing regularly. Along with this be more compelling for players as well if there were more sweet little opportunities for social things in the game. If you're not going to provide much content, at least have something the fans can make fun for themselves. Theres thriving bars, clubs, coffee houses, etc. in FFXIV for example.

[Alhanelem]

I think if they're not going to improve the graphics, they could at least provide some new clothing regularly. Along with this be more compelling for players as well if there were more sweet little opportunities for social things in the game. If you're not going to provide much content, at least have something the fans can make fun for themselves. Theres thriving bars, clubs, coffee houses, etc. in FFXIV for example.

I mean, it isn't likely in any way but we can both dream, and let it be known we want things like that.

[Pixela]

If they were going to attempt to upgrade the graphics they would have to do a lot of work, they would have to update the entire file system for a start and then update every dat file with images in it. XI broke industry standards due to PS2 hard drive size limitations.

They would have to increase install size by 40-50%+

They would increase load times of zones by about 50-100%

This isn't even counting the graphics artists that would have to make these improved graphics assets.

It's such a huge deal, that honestly not as many people care about as you think.

[Alhanelem]

If they were going to attempt to upgrade the graphics they would have to do a lot of work,

If they wanted to do the bare minimum, they could give us better textures at little to no work. Heck, the community has already done that. Art is generally created at the highest quality technology allows and is then downscaled for the target platform. That means, theoretically, they should have higher quality art assets that could be used for a remaster.

This isn't even counting the graphics artists that would have to make these improved graphics assets.

As I just explained, that isn't necessairly the case.

But having said all that, a remaster or some similar project would mean a new budget and a new budget means they can create new things.

They would increase load times of zones by about 50-100%

The load time of zones has virtually nothing to do with the graphics and everything to do with the online data transfer. Need proof? Just sit at the game's title screen. It periodically cycles through different zones. Since you're not actually connecting to a server, none of that data transfer is taking place. The actual loading of each zone takes maybe 1 second. And when you consider games today can load ten times more data in the same amount of time, they can clearly upgrade the assets a lot without affecting loading performance. The game was designed and built on the PS2. Almost everyone playing the game today has a far better PC than what the PS2 was capable of at the game's launch. And many games today dynamically load the textures in at a low quality and bump them up as the loading process continues, so you get in quickly and it might look ugly for a second or so but you don't have to wait as long.

Man I've been accused a lot of being a debbie downer on these forums just shooting down stuff for the sake of it (which isn't really true from my point of view....). What do you think you're doing here?

[Pixela]

I think people have a wild idea what a remaster is, did you play the dark souls remaster?

[Alhanelem]

I think people have a wild idea what a remaster is, did you play the dark souls remaster?

Yes. The exact idea of what this means though, varies greatly from studio to studio as much as it does from person to person. The one thing typically agreed upon is that in general, it means making various improvements or revisions to an original project without changing it wholesale.

Also for the record, FFXIV's live letter today announced that the next expansion will introduce a graphical update to the whole game. i.e. higher res textures, etc. Nobody seems to be panicking about the possibility of load times increasing.

Bizzarely, they even mentioned FFXI, calling it "solo friendly" in a discussion about trying to improve the solo experience in FFXI.