FFXI: what about an offline version?

[Zarchery]

take a look at my post again. i already "bought the DVD player". choose your words with a bit more wisdom next time. and as for that assumption, as soon as that announcement hit the public, numbers started dropping significantly from the playerbase. server populations back that up. hopefully the numbers will pick back up with the new content, once the kneejerk reaction is passed. im not blaming SE, although undoubtedly there are ppl doing just that. i think its sad. even you, captain assumption, would agree that consoles do represent a significant portion of the playerbase. i dont think that console users would be out of line to suggest offline play. while it is true that PCs are the solution to continued online play, not everybody wants to get a pc just for that purpose. im so used to my xbox that when i play on pc i have to remember what key does what. that is simply the way things are with a lot of ppl.

1) I do frequent searches. Population on Carbuncle is about the same as it was a month ago. I assume your statement numbers started dropping significantly from the playerbase. server populations back that up. was just something you made up, or picked up from someone else, and expected I'd accept uncritically.
2) I made no assumption about your ownership. The second sentence was a reference to the collective "you" of Xbox players who won't get a computer or have one and refuse to use it.
3) Console users are very much out of line to suggest offline play. They are asking Square Enix to essentially design an entirely new game just because they don't feel like migrating to PC. I never asked Nintendo to create a Game Cube version of Mario Party 8 or 9. I got a Wii. Of course my other option was to stop buying Mario Party games, though I did not elect that.

So I guess here are the options for Xbox 360 players:

1) Ask that Square Enix spend a huge amount of time and manpower to design a brand new game for them.
2) Spend like $229 a year from now for a brand new PC.
3) Use their existing PC to play this.
4) Quit playing Final Fantasy 11.

[steellords]

what is it about PC gamers that like to hate on consoles? i play XI on both xbox and pc, but i prefer xbox. somebody in this thread said all you need is enuff cpu and memory. well, xbox has that. plus there is xbox live, where i can talk to my friends on xbox, and i can look stuff up on pc at the same time or watch a movie, ect. a lot of people out there pay their monthly dues so they can play on xbox. not sure about ps2, never played it on a PS. i love my xbox, and i sincerely hope that SE reconsiders dropping xbox. another thing, if im taking a vacation and i know that i will have internet access, i can always take my xbox with me and play there. hard to do that with a pc unless u have a laptop. my xbox can prolly do almost anything a laptop can do for sure. so what is with the "haha you cant play on xbox anymore" attitude that i have seen from so many ppl? you like your PC. fair enuff. to each their own, but dont belittle players who choose to remail loyal to their console instead of taking the path of the pc. consoles are made for the sole purpose of gaming, with a few extras thrown in. not so for pc, unless you happen to be one of those "wealthy" ppl that can afford to make their own setup.

No one has to "hate on consoles" to point out that the experience of playing on PC can be pretty damn similar. You can use a controller, AVI port to your tv screen, voila!

I mean i started way back on ps2 and i found the transition seamless. Yeah i get it, extra expense, but the consoles frankly have held this game back for years. Just be grateful it lasted this long

[Roja323]

No one has to "hate on consoles" to point out that the experience of playing on PC can be pretty damn similar. You can use a controller, AVI port to your tv screen, voila!

I mean i started way back on ps2 and i found the transition seamless. Yeah i get it, extra expense, but the consoles frankly have held this game back for years. Just be grateful it lasted this long

I have consoles and a desktop, and a laptop. I have to say my favorite is my laptop. I love my ps4, but having to be in 1 room next to a tv can cause issues, and prevents the wife from being in the room with me if she cant have the tv on. Desktops are pretty much the same, only instead of just a tv, you need a desk, chair, and speakers to go with it.

I know ill never have the best graphics on the games i play, but i can play them in any room of my house. And for FFXI, my desktop and laptop have the same graphics, the desktop is about 2-3x as powerful, but the game is so old eventually you will plateau where no matter how much new hardware you throw at it, it will never look better/load faster/lag less.

I genuinely feel however, that tieing an mmo to a console AND a pc hurts more than it helps. I will bet in the end, PS3 for FF14 will hurt and turn into the 'ps2 limitations' meme it is now. Even one day the ps4 will limit ff14, maybe 2-3 expansions down the road. Having to maintain support for 10+ year old technology, and expecting modern graphics/lots of updates is just unrealistic.

[Bluestar2kx]

I'm skeptical about the statement "any old laptop can run this game". I bought a used laptop at a pawn shop in 2012. I ran the benchmark on it a few months ago and it ran pretty poorly.

You must have been to a pretty shoddy pawn shop.
I went there looking for laptops a few years ago, most of them we're built in the last 4 years (at the time) and costed several hundred.
I went to amazon and bought a used HP Nc6230 for just over 100$, ran FFXI fine (not awesome like modern PC's but playable), and it only has a 64mb radeon x300 with a 1.8ghz Pentium M. If it can run FFXI, anything you find at a pawn shop should be able to unless they just buy broken garbage. Most modern laptops run at least 2ghz dual core, and usually an intel GMA card, which is more powerful (though lacking some hardware features, not many of which FFXI uses though) then the radeon x300 and often runs up to 1.5-2gb of vram, not that FFXI needs that much heh.

what is it about PC gamers that like to hate on consoles?

i love my xbox, and i sincerely hope that SE reconsiders dropping xbox.

Likely the same thing about console gamers acting like using the PC is a sin and full of a******** and can't do what their console does.
I don't know where it started. I use both (tho not for FFXI, but i have) and am happy with the blend, so I don't get the hate bashing that goes back and forth, but it's definitely a 2 way street.

I love my 360 too, but I don't think this decision is up to SE. Or it would happen a lot sooner usually and not a year from now. I think this is a microsoft decision, likely something with XBL service on the 360 switching to bare minimum function only at that point. Microsoft isn't known for leaving support going for any longer then they have too, so by then it will be like, 3 years right, Since XB1 launched? That's about microsofts story. So I think next march the 360 will not be able to use XBL anymore except for being able to download old purchases and buy already available content, all other services will be ended.

So this decision is likely waaay out of SE's hands.
Can't say for the PS2, maybe the same way, plus how hard it is to work with the PS2 now. They have to do quite a bit to keep FFXI going on it, esp with all the graphics reductions it now uses, that can consume a fair bit of money, same with the 360 support, so this actually saves them a fair sum. We have yet to see if this will affect FFXI further.