What is RDM all about?

[Crimson_Slasher]

Or maybe they just overestimated their playerbase when making the game.

The reason they changed names for XIV in the first place was likely because of all the crap they had to put up with in XI, since players seemed functionally incapable of telling the difference between offline and online games and completely independent titles in the same "series".

This is also fairly well represented by the absolutely massive player misunderstanding of the Job system. The Devs never wanted people to pick "Main" jobs. It's fairly obvious, when looking at game content and the Dev's actions over the past 8 years, that they didn't want people to try and push their "Favorite" job into a situation where it's useless or wasteful. When a situation calls for NIN NIN BLM, they expect players to go to their Mog House and change to NIN NIN BLM.

People who understand that this is "An MMORPG that uses the name Final Fantasy and happens to share somewhat familiar class names" and not "The eleventh Final Fantasy game which derives its elements from the previous ten" are at a significant advantage over their peers.

That last statement was just plain ignorant. It very much is the eleventh final fantasy which derives its elements from the others. A white mage is a healer, it wasnt morphed into some abomination. Black mages didnt become melees, monks arent slinging magic, summoners dont enfeeble the monsters only. This game was strongly molded on concepts of old, from airships and chocobos and ferrys used to travel, down to the monsters we love to hate. If the game shared very little with other games, id support that statement, but the game was an experiment at taking the games of old and evolving them into something for online mmo fame. There are far more things this game has in common with older final fantasy games than with just about any other mmo. Most statements you make actually have some merit, and make sense, even if i dissagree, but its not "somewhat familiar class names" its identical class names, and the classes look and behave majorly like they did ancestorally. And hell even if rdm wasnt good at X in old games, or if it indeed was, that doesnt stop players from wanting things to be improved in the current game.

And thats what this forum is for, to let our thoughts be shared and heard. If they dont want to hear them, they wont, but im going to be frank here. We have seen if they like an idea, they will just do it even if most people want it or not. We as players should remind them of the game's roots, and should point out glaring flaws. That said, i am sorry to have attacked you for this, because nothing comes of that, but i just couldnt help but show where i felt you were ignoring too much of the final fantasy fandom that many of us enjoy, we play ffxi to enjoy the game and feel that nostalgia. /end-rant

[Seriha]

If the evolution of remade games and RDM is any indication, it seems SE certainly has a history of dropping the ball with first iterations. Either way, forsaking the franchise roots would basically turn the game into a random generic fantasy MMO instead of an FF title. At which point, it's a matter of thematic evolution and some being okay with discarding and recreating concepts. The latter is a dangerous philosophy to adopt.

[Greatguardian]

I'm not sure you understand how limiting it is to be tied down to previous iterations of games in the creative process. FFXI, just like FFXIV succeeding it, tried very hard to "Be its own game". It is not just "The Eleventh Final Fantasy", it is "Final Fantasy XI, the MMO".

Do you have any idea how demoralizing it is to go into a project with a grand vision, only to have that vision scorned because it was different from some other guy's vision 10 years ago? The Final Fantasy series has never been a cohesive, sequential unit. Final Fantasy XI shared its title with its predecessors, nothing more. In-game terminology was designed in such a way that it would be familiar to fans of the series, but that did not mean that the game was designed to be similar to previous iterations of the franchise.

What Red Mage or Warrior or Time mage was able to do in FFMCLVIII doesn't mean jack shit in the context of FFXI. Each game is its own entity. If you want a CloneMO, go use RPGmaker or something and build your own.

[Seriha]

I'm sure the guys who played baseball back in the day would be appalled by its evolution.

Unfortunately, you're okay with not wanting to play baseball as long as there's a game and feel compelled to shove that point down the throats of others. Your "limitations" while honoring those roots are only as small as your imagination. Fortunately, video games aren't so grounded in rules like reality.

Or maybe I should be calling this Spunkwustler? Then again, I need to remember I'm talking to the guy who'd be okay with Monks being married to ranged weapons if it somehow meant they did more damage than with their fists.

[saevel]

That last statement was just plain ignorant. It very much is the eleventh final fantasy which derives its elements from the others. A white mage is a healer, it wasnt morphed into some abomination. Black mages didnt become melees, monks arent slinging magic, summoners dont enfeeble the monsters only. This game was strongly molded on concepts of old, from airships and chocobos and ferrys used to travel, down to the monsters we love to hate. If the game shared very little with other games, id support that statement, but the game was an experiment at taking the games of old and evolving them into something for online mmo fame. There are far more things this game has in common with older final fantasy games than with just about any other mmo. Most statements you make actually have some merit, and make sense, even if i dissagree, but its not "somewhat familiar class names" its identical class names, and the classes look and behave majorly like they did ancestorally. And hell even if rdm wasnt good at X in old games, or if it indeed was, that doesnt stop players from wanting things to be improved in the current game.

And thats what this forum is for, to let our thoughts be shared and heard. If they dont want to hear them, they wont, but im going to be frank here. We have seen if they like an idea, they will just do it even if most people want it or not. We as players should remind them of the game's roots, and should point out glaring flaws. That said, i am sorry to have attacked you for this, because nothing comes of that, but i just couldnt help but show where i felt you were ignoring too much of the final fantasy fandom that many of us enjoy, we play ffxi to enjoy the game and feel that nostalgia. /end-rant

+1,

This pretty much. FFXI wouldn't be called "Final Fantasy" without the job system from FFI / III / V / Tactics and sorta-kinda X-2. The job system is what defined game mechanics of Final Fantasy, its the whole reason FFI was able to save SquareSoft and prevent them from going into bankruptcy. People like GG and co don't even know why it was called "Final Fantasy". At the time Square had released several failed games for the Japanese Famicon and was pretty much out of money. As a last ditch effort they decided to make a Role Playing Game, something they were originally hesitant about due to Enix's crushing market share / popularity with Dragon Quest. So in the end they said "screw it" and decided that instead of a pre-made generic fantasy RPG they would instead put ~YOU~ the player as the main character and have you decide the main characters of the story and their unique jobs. They created six different class's yet only four party slots, thus guaranteeing that you'd want to reply it again with a different setup for a different experience. It was named Final Fantasy because it would be their final game and would be a fantasy RPG. It was a smash success and saved the company from default, its sequels are some of the highest selling fantasy RPG's every made. They were so successful that they eventually bought out their main competitor, Enix, and became Square Enix. The six original jobs were Fighter (Warrior), Monk, Thief, Red Mage, White Mage, Black Mage.

To try to ignore those past success's would be ignorant at best, down right dishonest at worst. Just because you have players only playing one member of a group does not invalidate the job system nor the concepts of those jobs. If your thinking this then go back to playing WoW, DAOC, or one of the many MANY fantasy MMO's in the marketplace.

Seriha's right, we don't have Black Mages wielding great axe's and wearing heavy armor. We don't have White Mages wielding swords nor spamming Flare / elemental nukes. We don't have thief's calling pets. Each job has both a theme and a concept, most of them work pretty well, some of them SE messed up during the execution phase (Summoner big time).

[cidbahamut]

They were so successful that they eventually bought out their main competitor, Enix, and became Square Enix.

Wrong. Squaresoft was financially in hole after blowing all their money on Spirits Within and the merge with Enix saved them. Square most definitely did not buy Enix out.

[Crimson_Slasher]

Wikipedia:

The company has made two forays into the film industry. The first, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001), was produced by Square subsidiary Square Pictures prior to the merger (Square Pictures is now a consolidated subsidiary of Square Enix).[46] Its box-office failure caused Enix to delay the merger, which was already considered before the creation of the film, for fear of associating itself with a company that loses money.[47] In 2005, Square Enix released Final Fantasy VII Advent Children, a CGI-animation movie based on the PlayStation game Final Fantasy VII, set two years after the events of the game.

Take from that what you will.

[saevel]

Wrong. Squaresoft was financially in hole after blowing all their money on Spirits Within and the merge with Enix saved them. Square most definitely did not buy Enix out.

Umm ... WTF over?

You realize that Squaresoft was worth many times more then Enix right? And that Enix had been barely floating for years prior to the merger.

And WTH is this crap about "losing all their money...", SWI was SE testing / showcasing new CGI technology. They didn't actually intend to make much money on that movie. FFVII AC on the other hand was intended to make money, and it did. Squaresoft has been swimming in cash for years now, they've several extremely successful IP's with the biggest being the Final Fantasy series. They also have Seiken Densetsu (Secret of Mana) and the Crono series along with various other minor productions. These guys rarely lose money with a RPG, which is why FFXIV was such a shocker to their management.

It's just mind boggling that people thought of Enix as the bigger of the two. Their Dragon Quest series was in decline and the only big seller was the monster raising spin off they did, it cached in on the whole pokemon craze. Enix's biggest issue was that it was mostly a Japanese only company, very few of it's titles were released overseas and usually not for a year+ and often to luke warm reception. Merging with Squaresoft allowed them to rebrand their IP's and successfully market them to international audiences. Dragon Quest IX is a perfect example of this, it's Enix's old DQ line but anyone playing it can easily spot the Squaresoft influence. In the end Squaresoft bought out Enix and merged with them rather then make them a subsidiary.

[cidbahamut]

Umm ... WTF over?

You realize that Squaresoft was worth many times more then Enix right? And that Enix had been barely floating for years prior to the merger.

And WTH is this crap about "losing all their money...", SWI was SE testing / showcasing new CGI technology. They didn't actually intend to make much money on that movie.

The way I've always heard it was that the engine for Spirits Within cost them a fortune and when the movie tanked they came dangerously close to bankruptcy. If you've got some reading material to the contrary I'd be glad to take a look.

[saevel]

You do realize that Enix was on the verge of going bankrupt in 2001 right?

Merger with Square

In June 2001, Enix expressed interest in partnering with both Square and Namco in online ventures to deal with mounting development costs.[11] That same month, Enix invested in the company Game Arts, acquiring ¥99.2 million worth of stock shares in order to publish the latter's Grandia series.[12] Despite Enix's marketing of Dragon Quest VII in 1999, the game was delayed numerous times and not released until 2000. As a result the game didn't (as had been expected) contribute to the fiscal year 1999, cutting the company's previous profit-to-sales ratio in half and causing its stock value to drop by 40% in early 2000.[5][13] Enix was further hurt by a delay of Dragon Quest Monsters 2 in Japan in 2001, dropping its first-half 2001 fiscal year profit by 89.71%.[14]

Enix's competitor Square also suffered financially in 2001, mainly from the box office failure of its feature film Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. This made Enix hesitant to join with the company.[15] However, it was announced on November 26, 2002 that the two companies would merge the following year in order to mutually decrease development costs and to compete with foreign developers.[16] The merge was delayed until April 1 2003, when the new merged entity Square Enix came into being.[1] The merger between Enix and Square had apparently been considered since at least 2000.[15]

They screwed up DQ VII and Monsters II and had little cash on hand and interest was puttering out on it's products. Enix also doesn't have an internal development study, they hold IP only and instead hire out to outside development studios to make their products. DQ was actually made by Chunsoft.

Squaresoft has it's own development studio's and prefers to keep everything in-house. So even though SWI was a commercial failure (technical success though) it didn't put a ding into their cash reserves nor did it effect the market value of their various products. Squaresoft could of walked away from Enix and still kept on producing Final Fantasys, Mana's and just about anything else they wanted. Enix on the other hand was looking to insolvency if they couldn't produce a successful product soon. Without the merger Enix would of either went under, or split its video game division off (it's Manga division makes a decent profit).

About SWI

Square Pictures rendered the film using some of the most advanced processing capabilities available for film animating at the time. A render farm consisting of 960 workstations was tasked with rendering each of the film's 141,964 frames. It took a staff of 200 and some four years to complete the film. Square intended to make the character of Aki Ross into the world's first photorealistic computer-animated actress, with plans for appearances in multiple films in different roles.

The Spirits Within debuted to mixed critical reception, but was widely praised for the realism of the computer-animated characters. Due to rising costs, the film greatly exceeded its original budget towards the end of production, reaching a final cost of US$137 million, of which it made back only $85 million at the box office. The film is blamed for the demise of Square Pictures,[2] and has been called a box office bomb.[3]

Horrible idea for a video game company to make a movie on it's own, technology wise they had it down pact, but story and script was pretty bad. It was a techno demo that never should of made it to a movie.