What is RDM all about?

[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.

[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]

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.

Tanked? SE has tons of cash on hand. Square Pictures made the movie, SP was a wholly earned subsidiary of Squaresoft, basically a company specifically made to produce this movie. When the movie lost money (137 mil cost, 85 mil return on investment) Square-soft decided that going into movies on their own was a bad idea and canned the subsidiary company. Square themselves were no where near financial trouble, they could of just made another CT or Xenogears and made money. The cost overruns were due to rendering technology at that time not being advanced enough to actually make this movie. Square had been used to making short FMV's for games and underestimated the amount of CPU work required to render a full production movie. They had all of zero experience doing actual movies and made mistakes. Modern render farms are powerful enough to produce full length movies using Squaresoft's photo-realistic technology, hence FFVII AC took less time then SWI.