Development Team Downsizing and Justification Makes no Sense

[Pixela]

We know who they were, didn't change what they did and how it riled people up for years.

You're pretty high and mighty lately, you were no different than the rest of us and don't pretend otherwise. You talked crap on 14, private servers and all the other stuff.

[Immortal]

He is going thru his doomer phase and tries to pretend he has some moral high ground now. Even though only a few short months ago he made a thread about people botting in 2023. Oh but its everyone else that needs to let things go lol

[Sp1cyryan]

He is going thru his doomer phase and tries to pretend he has some moral high ground now. Even though only a few short months ago he made a thread about people botting in 2023. Oh but its everyone else that needs to let things go lol

I don't need to pretend anything. Especially when there is no high ground to compete for.

Are all of your posts just some canned contrarianism lately? Then again, it's not like you can be debated with so this is one of the better outcomes from you wiggling those fingers around.

[BobbinT]

also to add note as one being part of legacy player here:

It's true that 1.0 was "lacking", but I still believe way back then, if given more time to polish, today might have a different path on how original version goes. Gotta admit, despite all those failures, 1.0 actually had a deep lore, something I found similar to other FF series. For example, as me starting on Gridania, it touches it's own dilemma regarding elemental sickness & how all need to bring things into balance, sadly these were being dumbed down on 2.0 as mere affliction. Or that shady antagonist elezen figure on Limsa part of story, which ends up as being mere mention & slideshow as part on 3.x Alexander alliance raid series.


When 2.0 arrives, while some who never experience 1.0 found it much more fun playability-wise, some of legacies found that some things had to be cut down in order to met the original promise for PS3 port limitations: reduced graphic qualities (aka no "bumps") or how when we zoomed in our gears which shows how detailed the stitching on our garments which became very ugly mess on 2.0 onward, areas that were originally seamless near non-loading into smaller separated zones, contents being cut down without a mention like Hamlet (there's archived 1.0 lodestone news that actually lists achievement lists not carried over to 2.0, with Hamlet not being mentioned there). Even 2.0 itself back then felt too boring with way too much filler unnecessary mini stories, something that majority complained & SE finally caved, thus trimmed alot of those on much later date. Admittedly, the feels when I started playing 1.0 were way more magical than how 2.0 was delivered 1st time, granted that by the time I started 1.0, some of those old obnoxious features like that fatigue system already gone & makes the game much more enjoyable.



In the end, from eye-to-eye comparison, 2.0 just plain boring & didn't have that depth of lore feels found on 1.0 or other FF titles. Heck, majority of 2.0 content contains copy-pasted features found mostly from FF11 libraries with FF13 stuff thrown as part of end-game raid content back then. It was starts to get more interesting post 2.0 stories, leading to its 1st expansion & continues to improve much more leading to what we currently have, & did manage to make the title became award-winning. which should have been for part of mainline FF, despite they still carries borrowed content from other FF series.


Still... it never stops me thinking... what would the story evolves if there was never a Dalamud moon falling, what if 1.0 didn't fail. Every time I brought this topic, some did wonder as well.


When 1.0 did close down for good & waiting for 2.0, finally gave the chance to try FF11, which I should've done decade earlier, but being barred with expensive dial-up net costs compared to decade later when net became much faster with cheaper cost. Sure, by that time, graphic & content-wise felt much inferior, but somehow it does have that unique charms that every mainline FF series does, which is main reason why I also love this, even more than their offline series counterparts. And it's still fun to play all the way currently, hence every time on return home campaign always taking semi-hiatus on FF14 to focus on FF11, only briefly touch FF14 to cap weekly stuff real quick (thanks to hunt tours which easily cap my weekly tomes in under an hour). Personally wish could invest more on FF11, & would if SE would even consider making effort on their payment options like FF14 does, like discounts when subbing per 3 months or half yearly plans or that crysta gametime cards, one which still begs me to wonder as to why SE still kept sticking on just a single monthly plan which is more expensive. There's always tons of stuff to do every time coming back to FF11, just hoping that this game still lives on despite the structural changes.

[Alhanelem]

It's true that 1.0 was "lacking", but I still believe way back then, if given more time to polish, today might have a different path on how original version goes.

A large part of the problem was the world was made unnecessairly massive by pure copy and paste, and for how huge the areas were, there was basically nothing in them. The game launched with almost no content whatsoever. And the combat system changed wholesale like 3 times from first alpha (I was among the very first few to enter the world in the first alpha test)to the initial launch. If the game had been given like another year (at least) it probably could have turned out better.

They also teased us a lot by populating huge swaths of the map with enemies dozens of levels above the level cap, and to earn the achievements for revealing the map you actually had to visit teleport locations surrounded by level 90+ mobs at level 50.

[Pixela]

He is going thru his doomer phase and tries to pretend he has some moral high ground now.

pathetic

[Alhanelem]

I maintain a sub to both games, even though i'm not always active in one or the other, I like to be able to come back to it whenever I feel like and not wait for campaigns. They both have things that make them special and fun and they both hold special places in my heart.

[Pixela]

So for people who don't know, YoshiP leads an entire division that was made to update and create MMORPG titles. XIV, XI and Dragonquest 10 online, among a few others. However he argued that he should be allowed to make ff16 and they allowed him (which they should of never done imo), and gave him a lot of money to do so. Now it's looking as if ff16 isn't going to do so well and pre-order sales are awful (especially in Japan) and so obviously this is a big deal for his entire division now.

Which is why he will be cutting budgets on anything he can cut budgets (YoshiP is directly in charge of budget allocation for 11) on and putting all efforts into ff16 for "18 months after sales" to try make it profitable in the long term, becasue it's surely won't be in the short term.

It also points out one of the biggest lies in gaming the "shipped" meme, where the company "ships" millions of copies of a game to outlets and then the outlets quietly return almost all of them months later when they don't sell, cause shipped doesn't mean sales.

Telling interview if you cba to read it all, the very last line most of all.

Ochiai: This might be a weird question to ask but since you have put so much passion and effort into creating this game, when it comes to management, how do you approach on the sales aspect here (read: translate it into profits and sales)? In terms of timing and your target audience and so on.
YoshiP: So when it comes to product, when I first submit my proposal, it's a given that I would attached together with the budget documentation, like this will be the platform where the game will be released, development wise it'll take a grand total of this amount, when the game will be released, the cost for marketing and PR will take this much, and the projected profit will be around this much...these will of course be included into the documentation...but I can tell you that I wouldn't want to look at the first week sales for FFXVI (laughs).

Ochiai: (laughs) But still, I take that the board of directors came together and approved the budget you're issuing during the meeting I assume

YoshiP: Yes that was indeed the case, but when it comes to FF, there are places where you can't turn back once you get into it. but I'm being quite drastic here, and precisely because I'm a creator here, I have to be particular about the business aspect, and if I'm just creating this game out of self-satisfaction, it will definitely not connect to the next. So even though if I get told that it was a fun game, but if this doesn't translate to sales then we won't be able to create the next game. So our policy at Creative Business Unit 3 here is that at the very least, create a game where you yourself think it's interesting, and make the game earn in black numbers (※A Japanese word meaning "profit", loss of profit is "red numbers"), even if it's just a little. By doing so, we will still get money and we'll be able to work on the games we like or things that we think are interesting so I think this time.......well......well if I think this wouldn't work out, I'd actually go destroy those projects myself, like, "I'm sorry this is impossible" and then work on other projects to supplement it, and yeah I would tell them to cancel this project. I mean, I've already done this numerous times throughout my career but still, yeah since I can't turn back this time when it comes to creating this game and I told them that we'll try to sell it all out so allow me to put this amount of budget I need for this game. The answer I got from them was "Yeah, do your best"...so...yeah. But then I've been generating profits from FFXIV anyway, and manage to contribute a lot to the company and it was thanks to the Warriors of Light that made it happen, so it was hard for the company to say "no" to what I've proposed I assume (laughs).

Ochiai: Since I do not have any experience in game sales here, but you previously mentioned that if you go with the selling out pattern, then you can somewhat see the how the next implementation will be, and sometimes there are cases where this isn't what's the approach taken when it comes to sales pattern so my question is how, or at which timing would you be able to grasp on how the sales of the game will end up when it comes to today's context?
YoshiP: By the way, the system of lump-sum payment is applicable only in Japan※1 but when it comes to overseas, basically if you can just "break in" if you want to. This can be weird, but they basically just go "just purchase a shelf". What this means is that, let's take a street-level store for example: when release date approaches there will be other games released along with your game, yes? You can brush all of them aside and say you want to place one huge portion of the segment to sell, say, FF16, then you can ask them how much do you need to pay them to do so, and they'll do so. They would also tell you that you can ship them as many copies as you want to and they'll return the extra copies that they couldn't sell. Therefore to see how sales would fare will be starting from...the amount of pre-orders...but when it comes to pre-orders, anyone can pre-order whenever they want to these days and not many would do so....so sales wise we'll look at the first week, to see how many have purchased the game digitally as well as from wholesale dealers, so the sell out starts there, and the rest will be predictions: How much the game has reached the hands of gamers, so predictions will be made. So we'll use those detailed data in advance and create a simulation. The reason is because we'll have proof at hand on how much the copies have reached the players. For example, for FFVII Remake, we calculate based on what we can see how many user base do we have and calculate from there, so judging from the content we have this time, we can estimate that there are certain generation base that hasn't played a single Final Fantasy game purchased this game but since we are making it a full real time action, we can calculate once on how much it has dropped in percentage for certain player base who would prefer turn based Final Fantasy games and create a simulation based on that, but ultimately the results cannot be certain until we open the lid (read: release the game) so it can be hard to tell.

※1 - YoshiP's original Japanese sentence was "ちなみに買取なのは日本だけなので”. 買取 in Japanese can be different depending on the subject discussion on hand, and the standard meaning for this word is buyback, as in trading in used goods to get back some amount of money. But considering that's definitely NOT what it means... See here for more info

Ochiai: Like for example when it comes to movies, as movies run a duration of usually 2 hours when it comes to content, so in a way we can easily see how it performs, but when it comes to games, it takes time to complete them from start to finish so it's tougher to grasp how the behavior would change. So this is my personal thoughts on the matter but how do you approach the post-release sales period like for example, to see if there's a change in certain behavior, or see if your game makes it to the ranking, and by looking at these, what kind of marketing strategy would you take after the game is released?
YoshiP: When it comes to sales extension, well, this can slightly different from country to country, but when it comes to Japan, I can bring up one good example which is Slam Dunk (which is recently aired in theaters).

For the generations who are fans of the show, they would be extremely interested about it, but there was a commotion when it comes to the promotion prior to its release and this caused everyone to have doubts. But once the fans watched the movie, they'd go "You better watch this movie!", or they'd go recommend those who haven't watch the movie but expressed interest in it and nothing beats that kind of attraction when it comes to what PR can do even today. Though as for me, I'd go back to my roots, and convey properly on how the game has been made and released properly, and if people find the game interesting, streamers from all around the world who will be streaming this game will convey their comments and the louder those voices are, then it might encourage others who hasn't buy the game yet to give it a try, purchase a PS5 along. Another thing I've realized that younger generations don't tend to be particular about the release date, and tend to based their purchase on what's popular within their community circles, and what everyone is playing. In fact this is what happened when it comes to Apex, Fortnite, and this is definitely what the trend is heading towards today, so what I did is to make estimations on budget, lay out the plan saying "FFXVI is coming out", and made simple approach to try getting the shop to convince gamers to get FFXVI together with their PS5 purchase. Therefore this time, I've laid out a plan on sales that would last about 18 months.※2 Even when looking at the ownership ratio for PS5, there's no mistake that there will a drop in absolute ratio rather than looking at the games that are released for both PS4 and PS5.

Ochiai: Yeah, that's right.

YoshiP: I mean, yeah, it would be idiotic for anyone to not make these calculations beforehand, which is why it's important to consider the sales in a long term and extend them for as long as it can be, and then from the sales that have accumulated through these long months, we can see up to which extend people have played the game, and since we can see data in the achievements people obtain in game, we can tell how much people are stuck at certain aspects, and so on. From there we may make adjustments so that it'll be easier for people to obtain them, and we wouldn't need it to be an online game to do so. Therefore, I'm not looking at the short term sales at all.

※2 - In Japan, this method is called じわ売れ (Jiwa Ure), an internet lingo literally translates to "Gradual Selling".

[Alhanelem]

So for people who don't know, YoshiP leads an entire division that was made to update and create MMORPG titles.

FFXVI is not an MMORPG. Their first project was FFXIV, and they have custody of the FFXI project now. (but didn't develop it, obviously) Saying they were created to make MMORPGs is disingenuous at best when they've made one MMORPG and are making one not-MMPORPG. That isn't a pattern.

and I hate maintenance costs on everything,

Not sure what you're talking about here. Repairing gear? It's a trivial cost. Teleporting? Trivial. Gil isn't even that important in FFXIV unless you're trying to world first the next raid or you're passionate about glamour or estate decoration.

Every MMO has money sinks to limit economy bloat. FFXI is no different.

[ManaKing]

PS5 exclusive is all that is wrong with XVI. It would have sold fine already if it was on steam