Development Team Downsizing and Justification Makes no Sense

[Amnesty]

[IMG] https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=...07.-2207520000. [/IMG]

[Zehira]

I'm not sure that you understand what I am saying.

I think he meant the game already got mixed up thanks to the cap 99. They don't play as intended anymore. Just cheating and botting. That truth without proper reasoning.

[Immortal]

Lets use South Park as an analogy to make a point

They created the show in 1997 and it's still putting out shows today and still making good money, they updated the creation tools but it still looks the same and is pretty much the same thing but new stories. If the animators working on it are bored or want to go make the terminator, they replace them with new staff that do want to work on it.

If South Park was owned by Square Enix, they would of canceled it and replaced with with a hyper realstic CGI series cause the "animators" (in reality it's managerial) were bored of the old style and are excited about CGI. It would cost 30 million dollars an episode, take 6 months per episode, everyone would hate it, each flower pot in the background would have 100 billion polygons, they would cancel it in a year after burning 120 million dollars while 10 people watched and then make a new CGI series that cost 40 million an episode and that would fail again.

This is how Square Enix operate, they are so fixated with novelty, new tech and new audiences that they don't understand you should always nurture success and audiences you already have.

FFXI is 20 years old ps2 game, guess what? The players aren't going anywhere anytime soon, new players are still joining (who like grind / long term / old school - hi2u runescape / aesthetic) and it has plenty of profit growth potential with expansions and merch. A lot of people would come back for 5-6 months for an expansion too, so it's not even just the expansion box price that would make money but the sub price from booster player numbers after too.

With investment FFXI could carry on another 20-30 years easily and be updated all that time, and make good money doing it.

All they need to do is invest money into dev tools so people can keep making content etc, it's not even comparatively expensive to do compared to everything else they throw money at. As long as they just try to re-create what they NEED.

It does not matter if it's 20 year old tech if people like it and will pay to play it, also the devs want to keep working on it because they are XI fans and have stated they only got into game dev becasue they loved XI and wanted to work on it.

The entire problem is management.

They have burned money on countless games over the past few years that quickly died, and damaged their brand in the process as completely chaotic company. If they spent a fraction of that on XI dev tools it would of been guaranteed profits for the next 20+ years and it would be amazing PR to rebuild faith and love in the company.

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Again the same thing is going to (and actually already is) happening with XIV where they are getting itchy feet and want to work on the newest AAA single player devil may cry clone.

The only reason they are still in business at all is because they have a loyal fanbase that keep bailing them out of every hole they jump into, but that are slowly getting sick and tired of their antics.

Everyone I know that used to be a Square Enix fan is now a fan of a specific thing they run, and hate the company. That is not good.

Most companies understand the value of a loyal fanbase and niche products, Square Enix understand nothing but chasing pretty butterflies.

They are running XI into the ground.
They are doing the same thing with XIV.
They ruined FF7 R in so many ways.
FF16 looks like a complete mess of mashed together ideas that will end up appealing to barely anyone.

I mean really.

TLDR: If people still like Chess, make more Chess boards and don't try make super intergalatic blackhole 4d chOss'.

This is so true, this company is just terrible. They used to ban like crazy back then I remember, so many people got smacked for the dumbest things. I always am shocked that Anelheim is still here for that reason.

[Pixela]

Because he's an informer / reporter and other people are not, so if you're in a place where one person reporting everyone and nobody is as low down and dirty to do the same, they win. FFXIAH is the same becasue very much like here the moderator/s don't read anything naturally and only come here when they get reports.

He got nuked fast from the XIV forums becasue there were people like him there.

[Alhanelem]

Because he's an informer / reporter and other people are not, so if you're in a place where one person reporting everyone and nobody is as low down and dirty to do the same, they win. FFXIAH is the same becasue very much like here the moderator/s don't read anything naturally and only come here when they get reports.

He got nuked fast from the XIV forums becasue there were people like him there.

Almost everybody gets nuked fast from the FFXIV forums, because people are honest and don't sugar coat their opinions more often than not. But even that is becoming less true these days as there are fewer official posts. I got banned from the XIV forums for using a certain strongly inappropriate word to describe what I thought of a certain bad idea (Bizzarely in spite of this they never moderated the actual post... ?????). Since I have restrained the potty mouth around here, I thus haven't gotten in trouble since.

I already addressed the rest of the silliness in that quoted comment (for lack of an appropriate word), so I'm not going to do so again. There is one spot we agree and that's SE being a terrible company (with a lot of great talent working for them). I just disagree with all the "boost FFXIV ruin FFXIV" stuff. Because everything is simply running its course with SE being a business and businesses doing business things. FFXIV is reaching the latter part of its lifespan and its support will gradually decrease, probably starting with the next expansion. PAX East had FFXIV badge lanyards the last 5 times or so, this year it was FFXVI lanyards. Eventually just like FFXI, FFXIV will be a thing that simply exists and generates free money while SE moves on to its Next Big Thing.

[Immortal]

Its just not fair at all, I hate the whole situation. If I had the knowledge and worked in the field, i would work on the game for free. I had not felt this sad about the games future since the announcements of end of major content with ROV ending. Can only hope something changes along the line because thats what happened last time. Only this time there are other factors hurting the game and its bottom line like private servers and a jaded community. This game has so many potential new stories and fun times to be had and so many people want it to succeed but are sad to see it neglected. 16 looks like a completely different game, not even Final Fantasy... This was always the one game I could always come back to and feel at home and enjoy myself and they even trying to slowly take that away. I guess we will all just reach a point as we get older and pushed out in favor of the new kids. Why is it so terrible to support loyal fans and continue working on a legacy title that they benefited from so much?

[Alhanelem]

i would work on the game for free.

It's pretty easy to say this when you're not already doing it. given what we do know about how the game was built, it might just be one of the worst software development projects you could work on. And evidently, there were some people on FFXI that didn't want to be working on it full time (i.e. the reason the producer said that they are holding people's careers back)

You know, life just isn't fair sometimes. Nothing lasts forever.

Did you know that in Japan a funeral was held (by the company that ran it) for the last remaining pager service in operation in Japan? At the time they still had somewhere around a few thousand people still using it (i.e. doctors), but no matter how much something might be loved by the people still using it, there comes a time when we simply have to get with the times.

[Rinuko]

Given the absolute nonsense that has been posted on these forums over the last week, I think SE should just close these forums down.

I'm surprised they haven't years ago.

https://github.com/ps2dev/ps2dev

This is funny, you think a company would use something like this? I'm sure Sony would approve it.

[Pixela]

Square spent way more on Marvel Avengers and it was free to play and nobody wanted to play it, they had to close it in a few years. Next gen engine and all.

FFXI is a 20 year old ps2 game and we are all throwing money at them to play it, yet they refuse to invest more into it beyond the bare min.

It's not rocket science, but apparently it is to them.

They should know better because almost everything they make recently is garbage and they can't afford to act like this.

[Rinuko]

I have never worked on PS2 software or hardware but I would imagine it's more complicated than just port their engine to something new.
Problem is likely between "Does SE want to have 2 modern MMORPG in the FF IP" and money+resources required for such a task.

I think this ship has sailed like a decade ago but I kinda like the game as it is, but then I grew up with the game so I'm having both a bias and rose-tinted glasses.