Would a FFXI kickstarter be considered by the developers?

[Zeldar]

And have we forgotten what this thread was originally about? A kickstarter program, where the COMMUNITY would fund the overhaul. We aren't asking "would you consider spending a ton of YOUR money to remake it?" We are asking "would you spend a ton of OUR money to remake it?"

[Seiowan]

It's great that there's so much love for the game, but I just don't see them doing it. What people need to realise is that this is a long running game with 14 or so years of content! There isn't some quick-fix that will make it new and shiny. They would have to look at redoing all of the characters, the armor, the locations and the items. It's essentially asking them to make a brand new game!

People vastly underestimate how much time that will take to finish, and how much money it would take to make. Firstly, the original game without the expansions cost them around $25 million to make (2-3bn Yen) so just imagine how much more would need to be done to accommodate the expansions as well. You probably wouldn't even see the remade game for another 3-5 years due to the mammoth amount of work that needs to be done. To respond to that quip about just hiring new staff -- the bigger the team, the higher the management costs since all that work needs to be well coordinated. It brings a whole new set of issues into play as well.

I know some of us have deep pockets, but unless you have a few million to spare, I don't think Kickstarter is going to cut it.

[Dazusu]

It has nothing to do with how many people are playing, it's to do with the fact the engine is written for the PS2 and the update suite they use to make content is using the ps2 dev kits. That was the point of the thread, that was why they originally made ffxiv since they thought XI had a shelf life.
They just didn't understand that mmo players stay loyal to their games, the exact same mistake waas made with lineage 1 and 2.

Except in this case, FFXIV:ARR is doing a lot better than FFXI. In almost every respect.

The number of people currently subscribed to Final Fantasy XI is a direct gauge for the amount of interest in Final Fantasy XI (at least for SE). The point of my previous post in reply to Diavolo was that the same gauge cannot be used for FFVII and its remake.

XI has a shelf life as determined by SE, not by us.

[Castanica]

Except in this case, FFXIV:ARR is doing a lot better than FFXI. In almost every respect.

The number of people currently subscribed to Final Fantasy XI is a direct gauge for the amount of interest in Final Fantasy XI (at least for SE). The point of my previous post in reply to Diavolo was that the same gauge cannot be used for FFVII and its remake.

XI has a shelf life as determined by SE, not by us.

Nobody knows how many people are subscribed to either, they refuse to tell anyone. Does it have more subs now? sure, it has comparable subs to what XI had when it was it's age (although much lower from what I've been reading from lodestone scanning when you take away china and korea). This is mainly because it's new and pretty (90% of whta XIV players care about is pretty dresses / cat butts and breath effects).

Again, I'll tell you that (since you are a new returnee and probably haven't taken notice of what they have said) the reason is because the game requires a huge re-write in order to be able to make large scale content. The reason they probably won't make more expansions, the reason they have cut back (but not stopped) updates is because of the PS2 dev kit situation and not because of lack of players. The game has comparable player numbers as when the last expansion came out.

I'm not sure why you're arguing about this, it's not a player number issue it's an engine issue. The game still has more than enough players paying money for them to make expansions and big updates, they just cannot because of the ps2 dev kit situation. If a million players came back to XI tomorow they would still not be able to do it because the ps2 dev kit situation would still be there.

[Dazusu]

Again, I'll tell you that (since you are a new returnee and probably haven't taken notice of what they have said) the reason is because the game requires a huge re-write in order to be able to make large scale content. The reason they probably won't make more expansions, the reason they have cut back (but not stopped) updates is because of the PS2 dev kit situation and not because of lack of players. The game has comparable player numbers as when the last expansion came out.

I may not have played for a few years; but that doesn't mean I haven't followed the game and announcements from the development team. Of course, we don't have solid numbers or facts because they don't release that kind of information - but it doesn't take a genius to make an educated guess by logging in at any time of the day or night and finding <1K on most servers, and 300~600 on the majority.

I'm pretty sure that is a lot less than at the time of Adoulin's release. At least that's a fact for Leviathan.

There was an announcement that stated they had to decrease the size of the development team to reduce costs to enable the game to keep running. How does that not directly correlate with the size/scale/quality of updates they are able to produce with now more limited resources? This isn't just about PS2 dev kits (though I don't disagree that might be a substantial factor in it). Can you really argue that this isn't about the money, and by extension the player base size? If the game was large enough (ie, a million plus subs as you suggested), had the income - they might fund an engine rewrite. As it stands - it's not worth it.

'Course, I'm open to the fact I could be entirely wrong. We'll never know unless they tell us though :-)

[Castanica]

I may not have played for a few years; but that doesn't mean I haven't followed the game and announcements from the development team. Of course, we don't have solid numbers or facts because they don't release that kind of information - but it doesn't take a genius to make an educated guess by logging in at any time of the day or night and finding <1K on most servers, and 300~600 on the majority.

I'm pretty sure that is a lot less than at the time of Adoulin's release. At least that's a fact for Leviathan.

There was an announcement that stated they had to decrease the size of the development team to reduce costs to enable the game to keep running. How does that not directly correlate with the size/scale/quality of updates they are able to produce with now more limited resources? This isn't just about PS2 dev kits (though I don't disagree that might be a substantial factor in it). Can you really argue that this isn't about the money, and by extension the player base size? If the game was large enough (ie, a million plus subs as you suggested), had the income - they might fund an engine rewrite. As it stands - it's not worth it.

'Course, I'm open to the fact I could be entirely wrong. We'll never know unless they tell us though :-)

Again, it has less to do with player numbers (because it has enough to sustain a development team) and more to do with the base engine being ps2 restricted and them only having a few of the dev units left (go watch the recent interview and they say all this). There is a decent sized dev team to put out monthly updates, they are just limited with what they can make. That's the main reason many were moved off XI, because it was pointless them working on it due to not having enough dev units to make content on.

The thread was about a kickstarter to help fix that issue, you're posts have little to do with the topic.

However to respond to your points, I will say that XIV isn't doing all that well either in terms of player numbers. They went form monthly updates to having an update every 3, it's known they have reduced the staff working on the game. They also heavily subsidise it will the cash shop, implying the dropping subscriptions aren't enough for an expensive to run and update game. XI is a far cheaper game to update.

However as I've said player numbers wasn't the point of the thread, it has enough to sustain a dev team which is all that matters. If you want to discuss player numbers make a thread about that.

[Diavolo]

The dwindling population size is a result of a great many factors, but the development team's inability to provide more changes/updates sooner in the game's market life due to the limitations of the engine has played a significant role, and it continues to hurt the game going forward. Saying the membership size today is too small to convince SE a new engine is worth the investment is a catch 22. How do you increase the player base/interest when you're struggling to provide the bare basics in terms of updates? A kickstarter's an interesting way of approaching it as it could attract former fans that might be tempted to return with the promise of bigger/better things in the game's future, but you'd have to know they were open to the idea first.

That makes you an optimist, not a realist. I admire the persistence of your argument, though (and I too hope the revival of the game could happen... but the realist in me knows it won't)

Fighting for what you want isn't what I'd call optimism, it's about as practical as it gets. We're all aware of the situation, some more than others, but it won't change unless we push for it and telling people it'll never happen isn't going to do much to encourage people to fight for that change. "Vote Dazusu for president... even though it'll never happen!"