Development Team Downsizing and Justification Makes no Sense

[Alhanelem]

It's called cutting your losses, when a big project fails they have to save money from any source they can. Which is what happened most recently I'm pretty sure.

Where is your evidence, sources.

I already cited my own google search (whose 1st search result was the playonline website), the other source is this forum.

This has nothing to do with cutting your losses. As I said, FFXI was already declining before FFXIV. The death of FFXIV 1.0 did not boost FFXI at all and it really should have. Now that last bit IS partly opinion, but it makes no logical sense that a bunch of FF fans (whom *allegedly* came from FFXI in large part) with no game to play would not come back to FFXI, even temporarily.

Yoshida could have pulled the plug on FFXI. SE's main offices put forth the idea of winding down the game. He actually wanted to save it, and he did. Source: the WE ARE VANADIEL website. Read over the interview with Naoki Yoshida.

[Catmato]

There's no way FFXIV caused that. FFXI was already going through rough times. 2011 was when Dynamis was changed and when Voidwatch came out, on the heels of abyssea, which is widely blamed by players for the game's decline.

Pixela's link to the We Are Vanadiel interview clearly says that they decided not to use budget and manpower for improving FFXI, but for a new game (FFXIV) instead. 2011, the year of the server merges, was also years after FFXIV started development and 6 months after FFXIV released and bombed. I think your timeline of events needs some review.

[Alhanelem]

Pixela's link to the We Are Vanadiel interview clearly says that they decided not to use budget and manpower for improving FFXI, but for a new game (FFXIV) instead. 2011, the year of the server merges, was also years after FFXIV started development and 6 months after FFXIV released and bombed. I think your timeline of events needs some review.

Abyssea and voidwatch were before that, and this was when a lot of people started quitting the game. No one knew when FFXIV was coming out at the time. Yes, development was in progress but I find it a stretch that anyone would think "oh, SE is making a new MMO, better quit FFXI now." Especially without really knowing what it is or what it would be like. And, as I said before, the cancellation of FFXIV had little impact on FFXI, which indicates that there wasn't some huge mass of players that quit XI for FFXIV because a lot of those players would likely have switched back after discovering how crap it was.

That last bit is certainly just a hypothesis, however it's logical and supported by the pattern of events at the time.


As far as the WE ARE VANADIEL site, I'm not referring to the same thing Pixela was.

[Sirmarki]

Pixela's link to the We Are Vanadiel interview clearly says that they decided not to use budget and manpower for improving FFXI, but for a new game (FFXIV) instead. 2011,

True - but then we saw RoV and TVR and you can tell a lot of work went in to those.

[Catmato]

Abyssea and voidwatch were before that, and this was when a lot of people started quitting the game. No one knew when FFXIV was coming out at the time. Yes, development was in progress but I find it a stretch that anyone would think "oh, SE is making a new MMO, better quit FFXI now." Especially without really knowing what it is or what it would be like. And, as I said before, the cancellation of FFXIV had little impact on FFXI, which indicates that there wasn't some huge mass of players that quit XI for FFXIV because a lot of those players would likely have switched back after discovering how crap it was.

That last bit is certainly just a hypothesis, however it's logical and supported by the pattern of events at the time.


As far as the WE ARE VANADIEL site, I'm not referring to the same thing Pixela was.

Right but your statement:

it's absolutely ridiculous to imply that FFXI had to suffer for FFXIV to succeed.

Is absolutely not true if you take this into account :

Rather than pouring manpower and budget into reconstructing a world that players had already thoroughly experienced, we felt that those resources would be better spent creating a new game with its own world and adventures. (source)

Resources that COULD have gone into FFXI instead went into FFXIV. Yes, population was declining before FFXIV released, but the resources were certainly allocated years prior to that.

[Alhanelem]

Resources that COULD have gone into FFXI instead went into FFXIV. Yes, population was declining before FFXIV released, but the resources were certainly allocated years prior to that.

I'm not disputing the fact that they focused their efforts on making their new game. That's nothing out of the ordinary. But this was all behind the scenes and could not have influenced player counts, as we were still getting regular new content at this point.


And it is absolutely true that FFXI did not have to suffer for FFXIV to succeed. that's just not the decision that Tanaka made. SE is and was a massive publicly traded company and they didn't HAVE to divert resources or even use the same team in any way to build a new game.

My argument was and is that FFXIV is a symptom, not the cause, of FFXI's decline. FFXIV did not make FFXI go into decline. FFXI was already declining when they decided to take the step of focusing their efforts on a new game. And until that game was announced and revealed to the public, the players had no way of knowing that development focus had shifted to a new project and therefore couldn't just up and decide to start quitting in droves with the expectation a new MMO was on the way. FFXIV began because they had felt (at the time) like they had gotten all the mileage they could out of FFXI.

[Catmato]

I'm not disputing the fact that they focused their efforts on making their new game. That's nothing out of the ordinary. But this was all behind the scenes and could not have influenced player counts, as we were still getting regular new content at this point.

I strongly disagree. Players don't have to know exactly what's going on behind the scenes to feel the impact of resource reallocations. I also strongly disagree with getting "regular" updates. Throughout much of the development of FFXIV, updates were anything but regular.

And it is absolutely true that FFXI did not have to suffer for FFXIV to succeed. that's just not the decision that Tanaka made. SE is and was a massive publicly traded company and they didn't HAVE to divert resources or even use the same team in any way to build a new game.

Sorry, I must have misunderstood what you meant. I thought you were musing about what actually happened instead of some theoretical situation where SE had good management and infinite money.

Edit: forgot a word

[BobbinT]

It was declining, as a direct result of all resources being pulled so they could work on XIV. XI went literally 8 months+ without an update during WOTG, that whole time period was a huge crawl in terms of content/updates due to XIV. As a direct result (they also stopped advertising during this crunch to get XIV out) the game suffered, can see that easily before 1.0 came out. This caused a decline, which did turn around once Abyssea came out. This is because 1.0 flopped.




This saw an increase in XIs population and the devs decided to focus on the game as a result of the horrible 1.0 release/reception to tide them over until realm reborn.

Proud to say that I am one of those ppl. Though despite 1.0 failure, I did enjoy my time there, all the way to Dalamud descend, till server closes for good. Have a blast in Vana'diel completing every story chapters they had, till ARR came out which was around early Adoulin releases. Even during my time in 1.0, LS mates kept talking about how wonderful FF11 are, which did really drag me down to it.



Can't believe any1 would say FFXI was declining at that point, coz I still clearly remembers how terribly congested WKR is & even with all that, still took several days just to beat one, with me ends up camping on corner due to sleep & next thing floor-faced when woke & proceed to ask nearby to rez & continue participating. Even normal reives takes hours just to bring it down with fps really dips so low having so many participant, & saw how my BST, which I proudly grinded & helped finished story content prior to Adoulin, gets absolutely butchered & thus abandoned the job since.


Even Abyssea days gets really crowded, with ppl taking turns on worm parties, or normal xp camps like gusgen mines, crawler's nest, & bosta having very crowded as well. And this is happening on my server Bahamut, can't rly imagine how things goes over more populated servers like Asura back then.

[Immortal]

I'm not disputing the fact that they focused their efforts on making their new game. That's nothing out of the ordinary. But this was all behind the scenes and could not have influenced player counts, as we were still getting regular new content at this point.


And it is absolutely true that FFXI did not have to suffer for FFXIV to succeed. that's just not the decision that Tanaka made. SE is and was a massive publicly traded company and they didn't HAVE to divert resources or even use the same team in any way to build a new game.

My argument was and is that FFXIV is a symptom, not the cause, of FFXI's decline. FFXIV did not make FFXI go into decline. FFXI was already declining when they decided to take the step of focusing their efforts on a new game. And until that game was announced and revealed to the public, the players had no way of knowing that development focus had shifted to a new project and therefore couldn't just up and decide to start quitting in droves with the expectation a new MMO was on the way. FFXIV began because they had felt (at the time) like they had gotten all the mileage they could out of FFXI.

My god you literally cannot admit you are wrong in any form. You were just called out as being WRONG, so take the damn L and move on. FFXI did suffer as a result of XIV, its been explained to you multiple times with evidence from the damn devs and producers themselves. If that isn't enough, nothing will be because anyone could easily see that just based on the fact they chose to advertise XIV over XI a million times over. XIV was the direct cause to XIs decline due to the severely limited budget and of course the resources being pulled meant less quality in all areas including advertisement and updates. The players knew this back then, when we went literally 8+ months without an update and rumors were already spreading about "Rapture"

[Alhanelem]

I strongly disagree. Players don't have to know exactly what's going on behind the scenes to feel the impact of resource reallocations.

So what exactly was going on at this time that would give you insight into the impact of resource reallocations? We were still getting large scale new contents at the time. I disagree with your notion that there was anything at all to give any indication to players (before the reveal of the new game) that focus was being shifted to a new project.

so take the damn L and move on.

This isn't a contest, there is no L to take. Opinions can't be wrong. "I"m not disputing..." the purported fact being presented doesn't affect my opinion. Still doesn't. Opinion. OPINION. o-p-n-i-o-n.

Sorry, I must have misunderstood what you meant. I thought you were musing about what actually happened instead of some theoretical situation where SE had good management and infinite money.

I never said SE had infintie money lol. Just that they have the resources to work on more than one project at a time without compromising either one. SE has multiple development studios and divisions. I think the only reason this decision was made was because they put the guy in charge of FFXI in charge of the new project. Why, I don't know, I can only suppose that it's because he had experience directing an MMO. In hindsight, that really didn't do them much good did it- since they basically ended up firing the team behind XIV 1.0 and forming a new one.

Anyway, my point remains the same: Everyone here is blaming FFXIV for everything that happened/is happening to FFXI, but the reality is FFXIV was a product of the state of FFXI- If FFXI had become the same big mega-hit as WoW did, I doubt they would have been considering a new project when they did. Opinion, of course, but you don't cast aside something that is doing well (unless you have no business sense...)

I can understand why people think and feel that way, considering the facts presented. But I maintain that FFXIV was a product of FFXI's declining popularity, rather than the cause of it.