Is there secrecy over the 20th anniversary?

[Lortheron]

So, about the 20th Anniversary.

Is that the big announcement, the Producer's recap of everything we already know that has been discussed in previous statements?

Basically just that.

[Delmania]

Where there is a will, there is a way.

PS: maybe SE is waiting for FFXI players should come up with a crowd funding champaign for a XI remake, lol.

The difference is that XIV ui isn’t tied to the ps3 like XI’a is tied to the ps2. They’d have to remake the entire game.

[Lortheron]

The difference is that XIV ui isn’t tied to the ps3 like XI’a is tied to the ps2. They’d have to remake the entire game.

Do they expect us to crowdfund it?

[Zenion]

Do they expect us to crowdfund it?

Knowing Square-Enix, if the fans and players tried to crowdfund a Final Fantasy XI remaster, it'd be hit with a cease and desist three hours before the fundraiser closed.

[Lortheron]

Knowing Square-Enix, if the fans and players tried to crowdfund a Final Fantasy XI remaster, it'd be hit with a cease and desist three hours before the fundraiser closed.

Hell at this point they could launch a pre order program for an "expansion pack" to be released 1~2 years from now containing just some basic improvements(*) and not much more that I belive most players would gladly pay 50~60 dollars upfront each to have said updates made to the game.

*: basic UI, mouse controls, a PlayOnline free game launcher (altough you can put PlayOnline music tunes somewhere else in the game and make them available in Spotfy, etc.), and some minor graphics updates (mostly things already available via mods: such as higher resolution support, higher reolution textures, unlocked/60 FPS support, and the insane crazy hiper innovative ability to alt tab) would you do it?


PS: all above changes would surely bring many players back and new players alike. Many people that want to try out the game don't start for lack of above listed (basic) "features".

[BST]

I feel, this game would be dead in the water without the 3rdparty tools that make this game playable.

I don't use them but have seen the difference they make. Which is why I haven't been subscribed for months, this game runs like a crack-whore with special needs.

I can't survive more than half an hour with 21 to 29FPS on my RTX 2060, I am obviously used to 144pfs in FF14, which is over ten years old now and getting a complete Overhaul including Higher resolution textures, better animations, better lighting (lets hope DLSS with Ray-Tracing probably never, but damn the new lighting so far is Insanely good) not to mention Character textures and possibly polygon upgrade.

I have been around since 2002 with the JP PS2, played on it until they pulled the plug in 2016, never cared about PC and pretty-but god damn, it wont even run as good as it did on PS2, on a modern PC.

I would re-sub if only SE would add an option for 60fps, I mean, adds 4k background resolution, 29fps, start a battle and it becomes a slide-show, even in town it jitters, 21 to 29fps.

They can do this, its been around for years, and from what I have seen you can also max the draw-distance, two things they could address surely.

But they never will.

[Lortheron]

I feel, this game would be dead in the water without the 3rdparty tools that make this game playable.

I don't use them but have seen the difference they make. Which is why I haven't been subscribed for months, this game runs like a crack-whore with special needs.

I can't survive more than half an hour with 21 to 29FPS on my RTX 2060, I am obviously used to 144pfs in FF14, which is over ten years old now and getting a complete Overhaul including Higher resolution textures, better animations, better lighting (lets hope DLSS with Ray-Tracing probably never, but damn the new lighting so far is Insanely good) not to mention Character textures and possibly polygon upgrade.

I have been around since 2002 with the JP PS2, played on it until they pulled the plug in 2016, never cared about PC and pretty-but god damn, it wont even run as good as it did on PS2, on a modern PC.

I would re-sub if only SE would add an option for 60fps, I mean, adds 4k background resolution, 29fps, start a battle and it becomes a slide-show, even in town it jitters, 21 to 29fps.

They can do this, its been around for years, and from what I have seen you can also max the draw-distance, two things they could address surely.

But they never will.

Yeah, it's sad. Again, they always come up with the same old excuses not to do anything for the game. Things that should have been addressed back when they had ~500k paying accounts, XI more than generated enough money to justify and pay for anything needed for such changes to happen, but SE never cared, they preffered to take all the money remake XIV from scratch. XI is always getting the (much) shorter end of the stick since forever.

[Lortheron]

What a complete letdown this anniversary segment was. I am so upset and SE should be ashamed of themselves for treating this amazing game in the way they have these years. You have so many loyal fans and people rooting for this game and you give it less than the bare minimum while increasing pricing. I am just so disgusted I don't even know what else to say.

I wonder how japanese audience reacted to the 20th anniversary announcements.

[Lortheron]

I agree I was very disappointed. FFXI is an amazing game and I've been playing it for three years, I was hoping for a remake, Updated UI, POL remove, texture update, party finder like FFXIV to make it easier for people to group up and do content with. Anything and nothing, they hyped up the 20th anniversary and got nothing.

like FFXIV is getting a graphical update and FFXI isn't? FFXI doesn't deserve love? I'm super like disappointed I let my hopes get the best of me

Even a Fantasia to change race or the ability to change hairstyle would have been more exciting

Exactly this. No love for XI, really, that's a problem which goes way back even when the game was one of the top popular MMO. Great people working on it, sure, but zero to no real investment from SE as a company back into the game after the initial expansions. Meanwhile XIV gets compleatly remade with XI revenue money and now is getting a full in depth graphical update...

[Alhanelem]

Again, if you were expecting some massive announcement, I could have told you years ago when this was all set in motion that you were going to be disappointed. And surprise surprise, nothing terribly dramatic happened and everyone's disappointed, even though they should have set their expectations low in the first place. Silly as it may be, I'm happy that empy will finally return to relevance again in a new battle content. The new high tier weapon line might excite some of the bigger masochists among us.

The biggest thing that gets in the way is even though it's gone, this game was developed both for and largely on the PS2 as the primary platform. Even though it's gone, there are few people left that would have the expertise to fully move it away from that. FFXIV was developed entirely on the PC and for PC as the primary platform. While it is on console, it was never limited by it in any way, as if the console no longer becomes capable of running the game properly, they can end support for that console no problem and make it available on the next gen one relatively easily since the consoles we have today are much more similar to PCs than the earlier generations. For FFXI, they could certainly redevelop the game entirely, but odds are it would have to just be FFXI-2, with everyone starting fresh as maintaining compatibility with our existing data would likely be a hellish nightmare. And I'm not sure how much of our playerbase is that willing to give up everything to get that modernized version of the game, or how many new people will play it. Because if you promote it as an updated FFXI and not as a brand new game, it's going to be hard to bring in players.

I would re-sub if only SE would add an option for 60fps, I mean, adds 4k background resolution, 29fps, start a battle and it becomes a slide-show, even in town it jitters, 21 to 29fps.

You can do all this yourself if you know where to look, just don't tell anybody you're doing it.

The engine itself is already fully capable of 60fps and the animations were designed at 60fps, the game actually deliberately divides the frame rate by a factor to bring it down to 30, and what happens is this actually magnifies any slowdown i.e. a couple frames lost at 60fps+ becomes many frames lost when scaled down to 30 (which is why it dips so low in some circumstances). This was originally done for a few reasons, first was fairness with ps2, but it was also because of the upper limit of 60fps the way the game was designed- if it went higher it would cause the animations to speed up. This is actually something they could basically change with the flick of a switch (technically) but because there are possible issues it would take some work to verify it doesn't break anything.


very late edit:

The Voracious Resurgence marches ever forward to its conclusion, and as of the May version update we're at just about the story's halfway point.

This surprised me, i thought, given how long ago it started, that it was going to end on or around the 20th anniversary, but apparently we're only "halfway through" after the 2 years-ish since they first discussed the 20th anniversary and TVR. So it sounds like this is going to advance for a while longer yet.