FFXI REMASTERED! Do eeeet!

[Alhanelem]

As much as I hate to agree with Analhelm, he's right about this one. The way you phrased it implies XIV has fewer Steam players than XI does.

This is why I always tell people precision in wording is important. Yes, some people may see it the way the person speaking intended, but poor / ambiguous phrasing can send a different message than was intended. We can't read each other's minds.

I guess he was trying to say that FFXI has more *total* active users than FFXIV has players on Steam by itself. While probably true (even though I think FFXIAH's method of calculation disporportionately represents bots, as bots use the AH all the time and some players may go long periods of time without using the AH and not appear in this chart), I think it's a largely meaningless observation. FFXIV was not released on steam until later, and is still on a console (well, two sort of) platform, so Steam represents a relatively low percentage of FFXIV players- In no small part because new players are often advised to buy the game standalone from SE rather than from steam.

[Pixela]

The point I was making is that FFXI player accounts make up a significant addition to FFXIV's overall player numbers and profits for PR and financial presentations, there is no argument here. This is a fact, this would be like Blizzard buying Eve Online and secretly adding their players numbers and profits to wow and saying it wouldn't matter. Of course it would, there will always be a benefit in this kind of tactic.

I made the comparison to Steam and indeed PS4 because I knew they were comparable and I knew your pride would force you to say one doesn't actually matter to "XIV" as an entity and not say the same about the other two (aka if XI doesn't matter to the total then neither does steam).

It also helped XIV claim the PR award of being "the most profitable FF title" much sooner because they stopped counting XI profits when ARR launched and they forced us all to be merged with XIV account systems (if you check the places that calculate these things, you will see they magically stopped counting XI revenue when they stopped appearing on financial reports after ARR...cause they merged XI profits into XIV). This is like going into a race and taking the leader, and forcing him to move behind the runner up and push him so he can win and then shouting how amazing it is the runner up won gold.

Again I'm not saying XIV does not have more players than XI, I'm not saying XIV isn't successful and I'm also fully aware that being useful to XIV is a benefit to us. What I'm saying is XIV wants and needs XI players numbers to add to its own for PR and financial report reasons and they would not want to lose all steam players or all XI players equally.

If you can't accept XIV operations value XI for numerous financial and pr reasons, you're purely arguing form a position of fanboy pride.

Since you play both and are fully aware XI and XIV have been merged I'm not sure why you're even arguing at all.

[Alhanelem]

The point I was making is that FFXI player accounts make up a significant addition to FFXIV's

I know this, and I still fundamentally disagree. You're comparing the entire game to one segment of the other game's population.

FFXIV doesn't "need" its numbers padded by any other game, be it FFXI or anything else. Finanical reports not seperating this information has no meaning whatsoever. (You still haven't linked these financial reports). You are implying a relationship and meaning that quite frankly I don't agree exists.

[Zero-Hour]

It ends just fine many times.

Possibly, not seen one yet though.

The problem is you can never please everyone, there's always an "old salty" who thinks all change is bad and nothing can be legitimately improved. While FFXI is classic, the idea that it can't be improved is nonsense.

Yes, indeed FFXI could be improved, but the history of re-mastered and tinkered with says otherwise.

The problem would probably manifest itself in the guise of some higher-up business-type in SE who think they know what the target audience want and go all out pushing that agenda, all the time while having no actual clue what the players really want. For instance, totally changing the battle system for "something more up to date". Doing so would completely change the game.

The best re-masters are those where they take the original game as-is and just 1080p the graphics, while leaving the story, game play, battle system exactly as it was.

Lets face it, they are not going to be selling a remastered FFXI to anyone other than the original player base, a modern audience would quit if they were not in endgame within a week of starting.

[Pixela]

.,.,.,.,.,.,.

[Sp1cyryan]

So about the topic at hand...

[Dihlyte]

I would love if FFXI was remastered (not remade) with the exact same mechanics and similar minimalist UI.

The only things I would like to see changed for FFXI is the camera, hotbars (or lack-thereof) and graphics. Keep everything else exactly the same. I mean there is a reason we play FFXI instead of FFXIV, and its not because we're poor, or have outdated PC's, its because we enjoy the immersive, expansive, and extremely deep gameplay! At least that is why I play XI now.

If FFXI looked and played like say FFXIV 1.23b in terms of the graphics/hotbars but with the FFXIV 2.0-6.0 Camera control system (not the angles, just how fluid it moves) and everything else like FFXI now, I personally feel it would make so much more money!

I think it might even go toe to toe with FFXIV. There is a large playerbase out there who love traditional true RPG gameplay, that are floating from MMO to MMO, not quite satisfied, and I think if XI got a graphics and controls update, it would do amazing to capture that audience!

[Dragoy]

The camera is actually one of the things I'd /not/ change too much. It has a kind of a weight to it that I like, and even though I often find myself kind of fighting against it, I still prefer how it works most of the time when compared to modern game engines.

Similarly the characters seem to have more weight to them than those in X¦V for example, which is a bit funny.

I played with the completely new GUI they were working on for a bit on the test server, and I'd really like to see that being worked on once more again even though I don't personally really mind the GUI being what it is. It would be great to have it as an alternative though.

I'm not sure how I would feel about higher resolution and more detailed textures even. Maybe I could live with those.

I think one of the things on top of my list graphics-wise would be the draw distance, which makes things look pretty broken at times.

In general I don't think I'm in favour of a "remaster" for the reasons that others have already mentioned as well: they're often making things worse, wasting everyone's time and money, but it would still be interesting to see what they would do with the GUI if they had the funding to work on it again (I think Matsui mentioned he'd like to overhaul it too).

Aside from all that, I'd like the general performance of the client to be improved, since it's pretty dated in all kinds of aspects, being tied to old technology and all that.

[Alhanelem]

I would love if FFXI was remastered (not remade) with the exact same mechanics and similar minimalist UI.

The only things I would like to see changed for FFXI is the camera, hotbars (or lack-thereof) and graphics. Keep everything else exactly the same. I mean there is a reason we play FFXI instead of FFXIV, and its not because we're poor, or have outdated PC's, its because we enjoy the immersive, expansive, and extremely deep gameplay! At least that is why I play XI now.

If FFXI looked and played like say FFXIV 1.23b in terms of the graphics/hotbars but with the FFXIV 2.0-6.0 Camera control system (not the angles, just how fluid it moves) and everything else like FFXI now, I personally feel it would make so much more money!

I think it might even go toe to toe with FFXIV. There is a large playerbase out there who love traditional true RPG gameplay, that are floating from MMO to MMO, not quite satisfied, and I think if XI got a graphics and controls update, it would do amazing to capture that audience!

FFXI's interface isn't minimalist, it was just designed for a much lower resolution than most of us are playing at today.

However, I agree about the mouse control. FFXI's mouse controls are just utter garbage, the mouse is essentially useless in this game even though it supports it. The camera control is indirect- it's really just pressing the IJKL keys depending on how you move the mouse.

The other big thing I think needs to be iimproved for the game to resonate with people today is for the game to be more responsive. Get rid of or reduce animation locks throughout the game. Yes, it would affect gameplay, but I think anybody would be hard pressed to come up with an argument as to why animation lock shouldn't be revisited. I the game's behavior in this area is inconsistent at best, where some things will happen regardless of animation, some things will interrupt some animations, and other things have to wait for any and all animations to play before they can happen. Most egregious is simply engaging/disengaging. I can press attack on a target, and simultaneously get cured by an ally. This forces me to wait. Then a monster casts a spell, forcing me to wait longer. Then someone else casts another spell.... the way the game can chain animation locks is just silly. This has been probably my biggest gripe with the game since forever.

The only valid argument against this I can see is "we've played with it this way for decades." While a valid argument, just because we've played with the game this way doesn't mean it was a good design. It adds an artificial element of challenge- i.e. not the good kind. Making the game more responsive to input (i.e. always doing something when you press the button) will make it a lot more fun just by itself.

[Pixela]

Some things to keep in mind if they did this.

They would have to change the dat file system to add proper mipmap support (this is a system that adds smaller versions of every image to stop shimmering as you move closer / further away from things), every single file would need to be updated and mipmaps added if they added larger textures. This is something near every game has, and something they could not add to XI because PS2 hard drive space was so limited.

The PS2 and more accurately the hard drive limitations off the ps2 crippled this game.

I don't even know if the devkit has the functionality to add mipmaps, if it does it would still require every file to be manually updated. That's a lot of work.

The install size of the game would more than double.

This is purely if they did a simple remaster and added the original textures or scaled them up.

It needs to be kept in mind that modders do things in ways that would never be allowed be a proper game developer, so just cause modders can do something it doesn't follow a developer can do it the same way.