What was the reason given for closing console versions of ffxi?

[Seillan]

They can tweak numbers, adjust data, and probably change or adjust game scripts (that is, things like what NPCs do when you talk to them etc, since that's probably done in a simple script language that isn't compiled like the game engine code is). But they can't do more major things like develop totally new battle contents or fix bugs that require altering the core code.

It's not really that hard to see.They worked around limitations by doing such things as adding seperate bags (vs making our existing bags bigger). By doing this you limit the amount of memory that needs to be used, since you can never have more than your inventory + 1 other bag open at the same time. Note that you can't move items between two different bags, it has to go through your inventory first. This is because it doesn't load in more item data than is necessary for what I described. If they made our bags 150+ slots, the PS2 wouldn't be able to handle it because that's too much memory being eaten up by the item data.

Also, ps2 and to a lesser extent xbox 360 have not been running without probelms the last few years. Seems every patch they implement new countermeasures against a screen blackout on the ps2 (which is a crash, and probably caused by memory being maxed out)

Well, I'm not here trying to say it was a great idea and will mean great things for FFXI after RoV or anything, just pointing out the reasoning SE gave. It just means that they can make further QoL adjustments, similar to the one where they expanded the number of simultaneous RoE objectives you can have active at once, and be able to take them further than if they had to hold back for the consoles. For example, we may see the addition of another quest to further expand inventory space again (or a baseline expansion of space that the currently existing methods of expanding inventory will add onto).

Those are good points. I wonder though if a compromise could have been made where instead of making it impossible for PS2/360 users to log on and play, they could have announced that any future QoL adjustments that exceeded the memory limitations would only be made made available to PC users? Obviously you'd be gimped while playing on the consoles, but at least people would still have the option. Granted, I don't really know anything about the technical specifics so I guess it might have been more trouble than it's worth; Just spitballing. I'd be lying if I said I'm not a little worried about the hit the population might take once support is ended. Something like that can't be good for the longevity of the game.

[Seillan]

I find it rather strange that they can't run their development programs in an emulated environment. Now that I think about it, I find it REALLY strange that they never bothered to port the development tools to ANY open platform after more than a decade. The way they have been treating this game almost since the beginning you'd think that there are two guys running things out of their garage just taking donations for maintenance. Pathetic.

I've had similar thoughts, my fellow doppelganger.

[bungiefanNA]

Most PS2 online games used a service called DNAS, Dynamic Network Authentication Service, as a wall to modded systems and cheat applications to keep them out of online games. Sony runs the DNAS servers. Final Fantasy XI is the last online PS2 game running on official servers that still requires DNAS to operate. Sony is shutting down the servers in March 2016. They have kept them up purely because of SquareEnix. This was stated in a Famitsu interview shortly after the press conference.

http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/125...a-diel-Project

The funny part of what you said is that players wanted them to stop support on PS2 so they could offer higher quality updates. Since we aren't getting any more updates this only hurts the game now.

To me it possibly points at a future plan that they don't want to talk about at this point.

American and European players wanted them to end console support. In Japan, console and arcade gaming is bigger than PC gaming, so the majority of JP FFXI players are on console, and thus they want console support to continue. Also, FFXI client assets are created on PS2 development kits, and then converted to the other platforms. Those dev kits are in short supply for the ones that still work, and SE has bought every working one they can find.

On top of that, the hard drives in PS2s are getting very old and many that aren't already could be on the brink of failiure.

In Japan, they produced PS2 HDD units from 2001 to 2010, 9 years versus our 9 months, and Europe's 0 months (excepting Linux Kits, which used the same hard drives, but different interface software bundled with them). There are lots more of them than got distributed for North America. Best of all, the hard drives are exactly the same in Japan and North America (no region lock on hardware besides the PS2 itself, just on software), so you could import one if yours died. PS2 HDDs are in much larger supply than dev kits.

I find it rather strange that they can't run their development programs in an emulated environment. Now that I think about it, I find it REALLY strange that they never bothered to port the development tools to ANY open platform after more than a decade. The way they have been treating this game almost since the beginning you'd think that there are two guys running things out of their garage just taking donations for maintenance. Pathetic.

It's not just porting the environment. It's that the staff has churned, to where the original developers aren't on the project anymore. You need to keep these people trained on writing for an obsolete environment (PS2 coding skills are different than for other platforms), or train them to rebuild the tools for a new environment. An emulation environment also needs to be accurate to what it is emulating or you add another layer to troubleshoot that can cause bugs and crashes. Emulation with 100% accuracy is really hard, and even Sony hasn't had it perfect on their platforms.

Probably the last time they could have ported the development environment was during Treasures of Aht Urhgan development, before staff started getting churned out to other projects. Back then, they were primarily concerned with porting to the 360, the PS2 was still alive, and they didn't anticipate the game lasting more than twice as long into the future as its current age (4 years at the time vs 13 years now). FFXI outlived the original expectation of its lifespan, like the Mars rover has, meaning they didn't plan to migrate the tools to keep it going, and their infrastructure to do so later no logner existed. Once the game was about 6 years old, it was too late to do it without massive investment of training of the new staff. The problem only got worse as time went on.

[Castanica]

Matsui: This May, Final Fantasy XI will celebrate its 14th year from the start of service, but the player population has also been gradually decreasing. To continue development, ultimately the only two ways are to either reduce spending or increase our revenues, but it's tough to just pull new customers as we have other MMORPGs ourselves (FFXIV, Dragon Quest X) and there are plenty of rival works from other companies. So, in order to capture some younger players over to FFXI in light of current trends, we would need to completely revamp. The cost to do that would be about the same as making a new MMORPG. We thought about all of our current players and how they would feel about changes, and ultimately we decided that rather than modifying the current FFXI, we should just work on new titles.

Around when did you make these decisions?
Matsui: When we launched the expansion Seekers of Adoulin in 2013, we decided that we would continue with the current Vana'diel and make things as convenient as we can for as long as possible rather than doing any large scale remodeling. However, the management aspects aren't the only problem, but we also have to support game consoles like PS2 and Xbox 360, which means we need to maintain the equipment and development environment for all of that, so finally we made the overall decision to end that support.
Saito: From the players' perspective, a lot of people seem to have thought we should cut PS2 support, but we're in a difficult position because the development for the different hardwares were all integrated. It's not like the Windows version is entirely independent.

What do you mean that it's all integrated?
Matsui: When we designed the development tools, we created an integrated environment so that we could control all of the resources on PS2 development equipment. All of the graphics resources and music were also made relative to the PS2, and those were then transplanted to the Windows version.
Saito: The PS2 environment is at the heart. So even if we remove that support, we're stuck with it. We once thought it would be good if we could specialize on the Windows version, but we weren't really able to pull it off. Since it was originally released as a PS2 title, the PS2 environment was the primary focus. The camera functionality and even event scenes were made on PS2 equipment. But as the equipment is aging, we're not left with much to develop on.

It baffles me that this guy seems to terrible in his decisions.

All they needed to do was look at other titles and how they remain profitable, I think the problem is that he only sees this as keeping the full team full time or not. There is no in-between.

A f2p system would of worked really well if done right but they didn't want to spend the money to make it happen, instead they blew the whole budget on the ending.

A system where you had 1 major update per year would of also worked really well, this is how almost every old mmo continues running. Everquest does it and they have far less players than XI.

The biggest problem with the guy in charge is that he does not seem to understand mmorpg gamers, even if you're killing support you should NEVER say you're killing updates. Nothing will kill your subscription numbers quicker than telling people all their effort is for nothing.

FFXI development seems to run the same way a JP ex party used to work on FFXI. Either we keep everyone on the dev team full time or nothing, they don't understand downsizing.

[bungiefanNA]

Remember, Matsui wasn't in charge until it was too late to switch to a Windows development environment. Tanaka was still in charge then. Treasures of Aht Urhgan wasn't even in the roiginal development plan, they only planned for the Zilart and Promathia expansions.

F2P games weren't super big in 2006 either. Now mobile platforms make them shine, but the model back then was subscriptions, and the whoile game would have to be overhauled for F2P mechanics, and we'd have to hope they weren't poorly done and abusive to players.

[Castanica]

Remember, Matsui wasn't in charge until it was too late to switch to a Windows development environment. Tanaka was still in charge then. Treasures of Aht Urhgan wasn't even in the roiginal development plan, they only planned for the Zilart and Promathia expansions.

F2P games weren't super big in 2006 either. Now mobile platforms make them shine, but the model back then was subscriptions, and the whoile game would have to be overhauled for F2P mechanics, and we'd have to hope they weren't poorly done and abusive to players.

FFXI could go free to play at the end of this year (not 2006), all they would need to do is add a cash shop that sells cosmetics or extra items. That would be easy since it will soon be a pure PC platform. The problem is they seem to of spent the whole budget on the ending while not realising that having an ending will kill subs more than anything else they could of done. I hope whatever other game they put Matsui on in the future is not a leading role, he really has very little idea of the mindset of an mmo player. If he really thinks putting the whole budget into an ending will do anything but kill the game really quick I'm amazed.

It's a nice idea to have an ending but to an mmo that's the kiss of death, the only thing worse they could of said was they are closing the whole thing.

I would expect that by early 2016 this game will have less than half the players it has now.

Really sad to see a game that still has amazing potential be killed off by incompetence, Square and NCsoft are the only companies that kill off games that are still loved and profitable if handled correctly. My fear is that what they are doing here will come to pass for XIV in 5-6 years too.

[bungiefanNA]

It could also be that his higher ups have tasked him with giving a kiss of death. SE has DQX doing well in Japan, and FFXIV doing well globally, and they have dodged the question of FFXI's active subscriber count in interviews for a while, while bragging about DQX and FFXIV subscriber numbers. They may be willing to let FFXI die now that they have replacements making them more money.

I'd be thankful. FFXI was my first, and will be my last MMO, because I don't have the free time I did, and I've tried the newer games and just can't keep up. It ending will get rid of the temptation to keep going back to it, and will give me a chance to go back to all the games that came out after it that I didn't get to play through. After the PS1, I haven't beaten very many games, because FFXI has been there.

Free to play would have to have them do something to allow in-application purchases, or tie more into SquareEnix Account Management, and they'd have to be able to make the cosmetic items, which they can't do once the PS2 dev kits are all dead.

For overhauling any of their tools to work on PC, they'd have to train any staff working on it to be more than competent with the PS2 coding procedures, so they can remake the tools in a more up-to-date environment. Training for PS2 coding at this stage is a big waste for one project. They said it would cost about as much as just making a new game. Doing that to be able to keep making future expansions is a big risk. If they could get any of their old staff back on the project, it has been so long that their skills and knowledge of how to do what they did is pretty rusty, especially if they've been working with different environments for development. How would your skills at using a computer be if you went back to using Windows 2000 or ME today? You'd be really lost if you had to do anything technical, and a lot of functions you take for granted now weren't present, or were very different.

[Castanica]

It could also be that his higher ups have tasked him with giving a kiss of death. SE has DQX doing well in Japan, and FFXIV doing well globally, and they have dodged the question of FFXI's active subscriber count in interviews for a while, while bragging about DQX and FFXIV subscriber numbers. They may be willing to let FFXI die now that they have replacements making them more money.

I'd be thankful. FFXI was my first, and will be my last MMO, because I don't have the free time I did, and I've tried the newer games and just can't keep up. It ending will get rid of the temptation to keep going back to it, and will give me a chance to go back to all the games that came out after it that I didn't get to play through. After the PS1, I haven't beaten very many games, because FFXI has been there.

Free to play would have to have them do something to allow in-application purchases, or tie more into SquareEnix Account Management, and they'd have to be able to make the cosmetic items, which they can't do once the PS2 dev kits are all dead.

For overhauling any of their tools to work on PC, they'd have to train any staff working on it to be more than competent with the PS2 coding procedures, so they can remake the tools in a more up-to-date environment. Training for PS2 coding at this stage is a big waste for one project. They said it would cost about as much as just making a new game. Doing that to be able to keep making future expansions is a big risk. If they could get any of their old staff back on the project, it has been so long that their skills and knowledge of how to do what they did is pretty rusty, especially if they've been working with different environments for development. How would your skills at using a computer be if you went back to using Windows 2000 or ME today? You'd be really lost if you had to do anything technical, and a lot of functions you take for granted now weren't present, or were very different.

I'm guessing you don't actually play ffxiv?

I do on and off and I can tell you 2 things, they almost never give subscriber numbers for that game either and when they have they have been exactly the same as ffxi at its peak. ffxiv has 500-600k subscribers worldwide, ffxiv is no bigger than ffxi was because the numbers are identical. Keep in mind that registered players are not subscribers.

So ffxiv numbers are almost identical to ffxi, except that it costs a lot more to run. So in real terms ffxi in its peak made more money than ffxiv does today.

Even if they went the ffxiv route of adding a cash shop to a p2p game and selling things that way it would make a huge diffrence, the lack of determination with matsui is saddening. For all the hate that Tanaka got nobody would deny he would of tried harder than this to keep the game running.

I actually find it rather disrespectful for Square to of made as much money of us as they have and not push it forward and spend money to make xi future proof. They did it for ffxiv, they wrote off the development budget completely just to make it profitable again, which was well over 60 million.

That's JP companies for you I gues though.

[Isal]

I'm not sure why you're baffled. They've outright stated that when they had to choose between "increase revenue from the game" or "reduce spending on the game", they concluded to go with the latter. Following that, Project Vana'diel makes sense towards that goal.

Final Fantasy XI was never a broken game, it was successful. That "kiss of death" is one perspective, but they're bringing the story to a close. You seem to be under the impression that they thought that closing the story would make the game more profitable in some way, despite their clear motives to simply reduce the cost of keeping the game alive.

Final Fantasy XIV, at its start in 2010, was a failed, broken game that represented SE's primary IP, so there was no way they were going to just let that go.

[Castanica]

I'm not sure why you're baffled. They've outright stated that when they had to choose between "increase revenue from the game" or "reduce spending on the game", they concluded to go with the latter. Following that, Project Vana'diel makes sense towards that goal.

Final Fantasy XI was never a broken game, it was successful. That "kiss of death" is one perspective, but they're bringing the story to a close. You seem to be under the impression that they thought that closing the story would make the game more profitable in some way, despite their clear motives to simply reduce the cost of keeping the game alive.

Final Fantasy XIV, at its start in 2010, was a failed, broken game that represented SE's primary IP, so there was no way they were going to just let that go.

The whole idea to cutting costs is to reduce waste and not cause damage to the product to the point it makes people quit.

If cost cutting leads to player losses then you're doing it wrong.