Single Player Future

[Zarchery]

Sites have been saying FFXI should/will go F2P as sub numbers have dropped since F2P became a thing.
Personally, I hope it never turns into a cash shop, I'd rather pay a higher subscription rate then deal with that stuff, if it turns into farmville pay/play model, I'm gone. Hell with that crap.
Sure it brings in people, because anyone can play, but it brings in the worst people and it's the worst for the people (you'd pay far more then if SE upped the sub price to 16$ base with 1 character +2$ per mule), and I don't think it would do any favors for FFXI's community. Plus if you think the nerfs they do now are bad, wait until those people start up a ruckus....

Ugh. I know. I hate Freemium. I play Simpsons Tapped Out on my mobile and it was awful. I thought to myself "this is kind of a fun game, sort of Simpsons flavored Simcity. I would pay a decent price, say $30-$50, to have a version of this where I could build everything". But it's nearly impossible to do that with just the free version. You need to buy donuts to get a lot of things. I did eventually find a hacked copy that let me cook up about 80,000 donuts and millions of in game currency, so I enjoy it as is.

[evanwimbish]

But imagine.... Game of war and aFew other mobile apps have very loyal fan bases, ffxi will be ALL OVeR the media when it's released on mobile app, we will see so much Facebook spam when it's released which Is gonna be cool, but I'm kinda worried about what that will do to players which have already invested soooooo much time and money Into the game.

I would be satisfied when ffxi mobile reaches 1million new players this time around , all the old players that had to pay get 1 free relic or empy, because those zones will be outta control (which is why is no server merge and expect ability to change servers temporarily)

Literally now is the time to tell all your friends you played this game first! Because the new free ffxi pay for items will be like all the other FarmVille games , only this time you won't get banned for spending money.and we will have Tons more people to play with.

I honestly think this is a step in the right direction and will put brosale out of business! And we won't have to add more spam blocker tabs !

[Elemmire]

I dunno if it'd require a TON of work, it would require a fair deal, but it's ahrd to say without fully knowing the way the code works myself (I've never looked at it or tried to find anyone who has lol).

As for it being boring? Eh, not to me. I like the world, the characters, just derping around solo anyways. I play the game more solo than with people as is so it'd still be fun to me, but to each their own.

[machini]

There is another game, named Haven and Hearth, that I really love, except for the fact that it has PvP, and like EVE Online, you are hopelessly behind people who started before you (since gaining stats and abilities is partly time-spent based), and it involves permadeath. These problems are exacerbated the fact the client is opensource java, and people have fiddled with it to let them do a lot of things they couldn't normally, because the client is trusted with more information than it should be.

The creators of it are currently working on a "Haven and Hearth 2.0", which I think they are calling Hafen. It is basically a better version of their game, that seems to be fixing pretty much every problem that the first one had. Except it's still going to have PvP where some jerk who has been playing two months longer than you can murder you and no one cares you just lost 500 hours of work, 'cause lol that's part of the game.

I would seriously be willing to fork over money, when their new game comes out, for a version of the old game I could play with a couple of friends. I'd seriously be willing to pay 50 bucks a copy, and they've been told this by myself and others before. As far as I can tell they don't actually make any money off their game, as they have no advertising or anything anywhere. It's just something they do because they like it.

There are a lot of games out there that I would absolutely love if it weren't for the mandatory PvP and people whose entire goal in life is to ruin the fun of others.

This got a little off topic.

Point is, they'd make a lot of money off a little work.

[Alhanelem]

Point is, they'd make a lot of money off a little work.

It's a lot more work than you think it is; FFXI just doesn't have a big enough playerbase that would likely buy into this sort of thing for them to even consider it. I mean really guys, stop kidding yourselves, this will never happen.

As for the legal stuff- reverse engineering is specifically allowed for personal purposes or for interoperability, but you're still in violation of copyright law if you distribute or make money off it.

I really don't think you understand exactly how much it would be in SE's monetary interest to do that

It really wouldn't be in their monetary interest at all, it would be a considerable expense for them to rework the game to be offline (and disconnect pol from it) for a very small number of people that would be playing it.

Ugh. I know. I hate Freemium

That's not freemium. Freemium is like when an MMO goes free to play but keeps the subscription as an option with extra perks, while the free player has to either buy, or grind to earn, most of the content.

[bungiefanNA]

The thing with an offline version of the game is how much they would have to transfer into the client, and take so many things off the real-world clock. You have Conquest, Beseiged, Campaign, Colonization, weather, the calendar, and so much more tied to the server. All monsters are controlled by the server, eeven when not observed by the players, their spawn timers and movement are still managed by the server, across every zone. As it stands, taking control of a region or fighting off the beastmen army in any of those systems isn't balanced toward one player being able to do so, and they'd have to be recoded to work solo (and how would you manage all of the systems at once in single-player The AH would have to be redone, as well as the crafting system, because of how long it takes to build skill to make other items, and how many people with various skills you need to do things like Synergy The game was not designed for one person to be able to get by alone in the economy. It is a gigantic amount of work to do, for a risk of a small payout if they sold an offline version, not even factoring in how few of SE's staff can understand the whole batch of programming code that has been built up over the past 13 years. Releasing the server software is the most likely (though even the chances of that are really low) solution for SE if they decide to shut the game down while still making it playable in some form, the most likely thing being it just dying completely.

[Elemmire]

As someone already said (and you mentioned), they don't even have to do anything to the client too much really, but they could provide the server code and a means to run it on your computer and invite friends into your world or whatnot. Let it be tied to the system clock. If people want to cheat then, whatever, their world at that point. As I said, I'm really only hoping they'll consider/do this when they ultimately do take the servers down.

I think that's the best means as well. And if their programmers can't ultimately create a means for people to run their own servers and transfer their character data over to it, well, SE might want to find new programmers. It's work, no doubt, but it is their job.

[Tanitha]

I have played this game solo for 8 days and 9 hours (in my /playtime) on and off for years. It was not really that fun at all until trusts got introduced, just to damn hard. I mean I tried to get somewhere but realized at a point it was impossible, not worth the time.. fast forward to all the new things added in the last couple years; Now I have beat the Shadow Lord, about to take on Maat for my limit break,have checked out every expansion a little, got my relic armor.. I feel more accomplished then most games I play even though I am not *That* far. .... I love this game, music, story etc etc.. I have probably partied with random people for about 8 hours total of my play time and I sill love this game. I still love exploring, questing, auction housing etc... I guess I may be a mega dork but its still really fun single player.. I think the realize the demand for it as well when the introduced the trust system... Anyways, I like the idea of playing with people but not many are doing the stuff from 10 years ago like me haha.. Unless I x-fer my character to the Asura server and play on there... this game is better then MOST single player rpg's as it is..

[Bluestar2kx]

Since we already have a thread for it, i'l post here^^

(0:38:58～)
Q: Is there any possibility to release an offline version of the game?

A: We have talked about plans for an offline version several times; however, every time we start looking into the cost it is too high and we end up dropping the plan. We do want to make it available, but it is impossible to make the entire FFXI game something that is playable by one person, so we would have to take away specific parts. For these reasons we currently have no specific projects for this.

I can understand this to a degree.

But might I make a suggestion:

Take the server data, and create multiplayer internet/lan kit out of it, and sell it to us to cover creation costs. I don't know about anyone else, but if FFXI truly sunsets, I would definitely pay for that kind of access. And don't forget crowdfunding for titles and development can be huge, fans will pay to fund beloved titles, just look at what Star citizen has made from it's following, they've made 77 million dollars for that game.

Compile all the needed data into an easy to setup program the user can run at will, if possible allow game master settings like: player restrictions to stats, amount of players, level, drop %'s (such as a direct multiplier, say x2, x4, x10), items, or other things like atma's and such, set it up as a dedicated personal server like you would for any other game, and this way, you reduce the cost of making a true single player game, and let friends play together, because, isn't that why we all play FFXI?

In addition to that, see if it's possible to allow trust NPC's to form alliances with players.
Say one player in each alliance able to summon trust NPCs to fill it as needed (since your already trying to see if they can fill a whole party before development ends), each controlled as they are now, by the summoning player in that party.

It's set atm so only party leaders can, but each party has an independent leader in an alliance.
This would allow small groups of friends to do all of the game, even content requiring 18 members.
And if the game master could set say a level max, people could also get their current request for a lv 75 server, because you could artificially limit it. Sure, adoulin is set for lv 95+, but this would be by player choice, and easily adjusted at the reset of the server if they wanted to move up.

It creates a lot of possibilities, and it keeps FFXI alive for decades.
There's a lot of games players have kept alive for sooo long. This could be one.

If it becomes possible to rebuild the FFXI developer kit for PC and sell it, players could create an enormous amount of mods for FFXI while giving Square enix funds for further development, or to put into other titles (FFXI-2? ^.~), and modded games live for AGES, that kind of thing could be huge for Square enix and FFXI.

Just look at all the Elder scrolls and fallout games by Bethesda, Dragon Age by Bioware, look at more simpler games as old as total annihilation which still has a community patching the game themselves, and creating huge total conversion packs.

No Final Fantasy game has ever died.
I don't want FFXI to be the first for any reason, and I'll do what little I can to help, but i'm sure I'm not alone.

Square enix is working to help indie developers get off the ground. Why not let your fans help keep something alive even longer, or even breathe new life into it? Something that's been a centerpiece for tens of thousands of players (if not a lot more), and I'm sure, is at the heart of all the staff at Square enix who's worked on FFXI.

[Alhanelem]

No Final Fantasy game has ever died.
I don't want FFXI to be the first for any reason, and I'll do what little I can to help, but i'm sure I'm not alone.

It's not going to die, but it is going to reinvent itself. I'm still not clear what the deal is with the mobile version though. It sounds like its going to be the same game, but a seperate entity (not connected to the PC servers)?

So according to them, the primary reason for current events is a lack of functional development tools/kits (Because the game's codebase is on the PS2) and that they can't get new ones because the hardware is no longer supported by sony. That's understandable, but I think this goes to show why MMOs should not be based on fixed hardware systems. FFXIV has gotten around this problem by basing the game on PC and branching out to other platforms, which they can and are prepared to drop if they can no longer keep up with the game's requirements or if the development hardware no longer exists.

The reason this is going to be hard for many people to accept is simply because it's been around so long. I've had a subscription to this game for nearly half my life now. I now also play FFXIV and it has a lot going for it, but FFXI has a sort of old school charm that just can't be matched by anything else.