Foundational improvements to XI

[radar]

FFXI is a classic game as a service that is loved by its community and there really is nothing else like it on the market, and even when the game hits its 30 year anniversary lots of people are still going to want to continue to play it and Square enix needs to be aware of that and plan for it now.

Not only should fundamental improvements be done to the game, knowing it's going to continue to run for a very long time to come, but continue to be profitable and valued to the company too and treated as such.

FFXI will still have a lot of players on the 30th Anniversary, and will outlive modern big budget attempts at online games made today using Unreal Engine 5 (Babylons fall, Marvel Avengers, Final Fantasy First Soldier etc) . Given money spent on these projects ended up being a waste and they could not find an audience, more money should be spent on XI as a proven success story to make sure it can last as long as possible and not fail due to any kind of basic operational reason.

Making online games like this is incredibly difficult (as proven by past record of trying to do so and not succeeding), and so a proven and long term success with a built in and very loyal fanbase should be valued and future proofed as much as possible with greater investment on a foundational level. Every effort should be made to make sure you can keep it running as long as possible.

Some more staff should be taken on for XI, so more work can be done for the game and to future proof it and make sure it can keep running long-term for 10-20+ years and more.

FFXI still has a data cap of 56k, this really should be improved because it severely limits the kind of content that can be made, causes lag in large party situations and limits the game. This would be a major improvement in going forward in a very long running game that has many many more years in it.

Support for Windows 11-12, possibly including support for 4 gigabytes of ram and Direct X improvements.

Improvements to the development tools.

FFXI will still be running and have a lot of paying customers 10 years from now and I have no doubt on that, this game is a long term money maker and should be supported with that in mind.

It should be treated as the success it is, and invested in for the future.

[Alhanelem]

FFXI is a classic game as a service that is loved by its community and there really is nothing else like it on the market, and even when the game hits its 30 year anniversary lots of people are still going to want to continue to play it and Square enix needs to be aware of that and plan for it now.

Not only should fundamental improvements be done to the game, knowing it's going to continue to run for a very long time to come, but continue to be profitable and valued to the company too and treated as such.

FFXI will still have a lot of players on the 30th Anniversary, and will outlive modern big budget attempts at online games made today using Unreal Engine 5 (Babylons fall, Marvel Avengers, Final Fantasy First Soldier etc) . Given money spent on these projects ended up being a waste and they could not find an audience, more money should be spent on XI as a proven success story to make sure it can last as long as possible and not fail due to any kind of basic operational reason.

Making online games like this is incredibly difficult (as proven by past record of trying to do so and not succeeding), and so a proven and long term success with a built in and very loyal fanbase should be valued and future proofed as much as possible with greater investment on a foundational level. Every effort should be made to make sure you can keep it running as long as possible.

Some more staff should be taken on for XI, so more work can be done for the game and to future proof it and make sure it can keep running long-term for 10-20+ years and more.

FFXI still has a data cap of 56k, this really should be improved because it severely limits the kind of content that can be made, causes lag in large party situations and limits the game. This would be a major improvement in going forward in a very long running game that has many many more years in it.

Support for Windows 11-12, possibly including support for 4 gigabytes of ram and Direct X improvements.

Improvements to the development tools.

FFXI will still be running and have a lot of paying customers 10 years from now and I have no doubt on that, this game is a long term money maker and should be supported with that in mind.

It should be treated as the success it is, and invested in for the future.

I share your feelings abotu the game, but, in the grand scheme of things, it wasn't that big of a success. Now, I don't mean to suggest it was a failiure by any stretch, but it performed about average among other MMOs at the time. Then WoW came along and took the world by storm.

There just isn't a big desire to invest tons of money into a 20-25 year old product within SE, particularly when they aren't in the best financial situation. As you've no doubt read, our love was returned with "ok, we're not going to wind down operations like we thought we were going to."

And that aside, they actually DID invest in new server hardware just recently. So it's not like they're doing nothing.

[radar]

I'm not saying to throw tens of millions of dollars a year into the game, this is saying to hire an engineer / coder to work on the game to do the things I stated specifically. Working on the engine, to actually push the game forward and remove the 56k cap. One dedicated coder can do a lot to improve XI, because it's an old game and not overly complex. So one person can do a lot.

Right now everyone working on XI is making content, and working at max capacity. There needs to be someone assigned to work on low level things to future proof the game and ensure it keeps running past new versions of windows etc.

Every bastketball player doesn't need to be michael jordon to be worth investing in. Invest in success, because not only are XI players loyal and give a lot of money to the company (and most will still be here 7 years from now) but they also buy their other games. If alienated, they will be less likely to do that.

Square have had a long list of failures, they need to fortify and build up proven success stories with loyal communities and that are going to last a long time to come.

XI needs a dedicated coder assigned to it, the position it's been in for many years is very precarious because they only hire the bare minimum people to keep it printing money and they need to go more than that, to ensure it's stable for the future.

Dragonquest 10 gets more support than XI does and it's far smaller, that's wrong.

[Alhanelem]

Dragonquest 10 gets more support than XI does and it's far smaller, that's wrong.

I'm not so sure about this. I haven't even heard about dragon quest 10 in years.

[Waffle-King]

I'm not so sure about this. I haven't even heard about dragon quest 10 in years.

The latest expansion to DQX "Version 7" was released a year ago. The last major patch 7.3 was released at the end of January. 7.4 has been announced and has a trailer. Dragon Quest day is about to start, so they'll probably announce the release date for it.