December 2022 FINAL FANTASY XI Digest

[Stuzey]

yes the player base got excited and started to hope for something special for the 20th anniversary, but you can't blame them, they care, they want to see the game grow, but, it's not where the game is anymore.

You also feel the dev team want the best, they just don't get the support from SE, I don't know what the financial figures are, or how difficult it is to create new content in a 20 year old game, but they do the best they can

[Alhanelem]

FFXI does not exist as a title anymore from a financial standpoint, it only exists as part of FF14.

False. It doesn't exist as part of FF14, it exists as part of Creative Business Unit III. As does all of their other projects.

Xi exists as part of XIV.

Xi exists as part of Creative Business Unit III. It doesn't matter how many times you try to say this or how many times you blame FFXIV for FFXI's state, it's not an accurate representation of the situation, now or ever. You can keep repeating this as much as you want, I'll be there to remind people you're full of it and blinded by your hate of FFXIV.

yes the player base got excited and started to hope for something special for the 20th anniversary,

We did get something special. They created a website dedicated to the purpose which shared memories, interviews, offered a detailed history, art, and other stuff. SE never mentioned, promised, or alluded to any new game feature, mechanic, expansion, or anything else being added to the game in association with the anniversary. The playerbase let their imaginations run wild on that.

It would be different if they promised things of the sort and then didn't deliver them. But that's not what happened.

[Stuzey]

Why do you have to argue against everything? My point was that the playerbase care about the game and it was a missed opportunity, it doesn't matter if you feel SE didn't promise anything new, if the playerbase that came back for the 20th anniversary have not stuck around.

The more people who play the game, the better it is for the game

[Alhanelem]

XI was "declining" before XIV came out because they were spending all of XI profits to create XIV,

Nope, before that too. It was already happening before anyone even knew FFXIV was coming.

I'm just really tired of this false narrative that FFXIV killed FFXI, it simply isn't true and Producer/Director Yoshida, who is also head of Creative Business Unit III, made sure support would continue. if they really wanted to destroy FFXI they would not have done that.

That's aside from the fact that as you mentioned, the original release was a huge failiure. It was not going to be pulling many, if any, players from FFXI. whatever issues FFXI had to lose players, it had those before this.

[Immortal]

Where exactly are you getting that information from? What was "happening"? During that timeframe there were periods of huge delays between updates, thats causing a bleed. All because their resources were focused on XIV. XIV did directly impact XI negatively, if you can't see it you are blind. It wasnt some direct intention to hurt XI, it just happened naturally when they poured all their resources into advertising and support one game over the other.

[Pixela]

Check every financial report, XI is never listed in any way. There is no finance reports that ever mention XI since playonline accounts were merged with Senix accounts.

All the money XI makes goes to XIV operations, whatever budget we get is from that.

Dragon quest online is also part of BD3 and is always counted on financial reports, none of the people working on XIV work on it and you can't use crysta to pay for it.

I know you have this deadset idea you have to defend XIV and you think players knowing XI was merged into XIV operations hurts it, I think it's quite the opposite. Them being merged helps both games, I just want them to spend a little more on XI to be more profitable to.

[Alhanelem]

All the money XI makes goes to XIV operations, whatever budget we get is from that.

Stop. Saying. This. It's False at worst, disingenuous at best. Period.

None of the money XI makes -specifically- goes to FFXIV. None. All of the money goes to Creative Business Unit III (and/or profit for Square-Enix proper), who spends it how they see fit. Even by your own admission, the income from both games is identified as coming from Square-Enix Accounts, and you've never been able to determine the specific dollar sources, one way or the other.

You cannot say based on the financial reports or anything else that Dollar X was earned from FFXI and then later spent on XIV development. It cannot be shown because THAT'S NOT HOW BUDGETS WORK. There is ONE pot of cash for all projects- and again, those projects go beyond both FFXI and FFXIV. CBU3 is working on FF16. So some portion of the income from BOTH games is being spent on that- along with anything else the business unit has ever been involved in.

Dollars earned from any one of these projects can not be specifically identified as going to any other specific project. Not FFXIV, not FFXI, nor FFXVI. Those financial reports do not detail which dollar from which project was spent on what. It simply does not work that way- no matter how many times you repeat that nonsense.

And again, FFXI did not falter simply because SE decided to spend money on other projects (Whether FFXIV or not). FFXI was already in decline: Before FFXIV was announced. Before FFXIV 1.0 was released. After FFXIV 1.0 bombed. And so on. If FFXIV was largely or solely responsible for FFXI's decline, then why didn't it bounce back after XIV 1.0 had proven itself a failiure? By your logic, it should have stolen XI's palyerbase, but that didn't really happen. No, the playerbase was shrinking for other reasons. A lot of people cite Abyssea, though my personal opinion is it was post-abyssea (Abyssea was a power playground and honestly I thought it was really fun. But future content could not live up to what Abyssea offered, because Abyssea made us too strong for regular open world content to allow its mechanics).

I'm just really tired of you constantly repeating "oh, FFXI funded FFXIV, these financial reports (don't) prove it!" It's BS and i've explained at length multiple times (even in just this one post) why it's BS.

[Pixela]

Stop. Saying. This. It's False at worst, disingenuous at best. Period.

None of the money XI makes -specifically- goes to FFXIV. None. All of the money goes to Creative Business Unit III

No it goes to XIV operations, they are a combined service. All money paid into XI is paid into the XIV account system.

[Sp1cyryan]

No it goes to XIV operations, they are a combined service. All money paid into XI is paid into the XIV account system.

You don't know how SE handles things internally so just stop it already.

[Catmato]

You don't know how SE handles things internally so just stop it already.

Analhelm seems to know how everything is handled, despite never providing any kind of proof for it.