Thinking about 1.0

So im doin the reflection quest line that you get in house fortemps right? And as someone who joined during EW i obviously wasn\\'t there for 1.0. Iv seen images and such but never played it, as one could guess. But then while thinking the idea hit me like a rock.

Whatever became of 1.0\\'s lead? Like, are they ok? How do they feel bout where X|V is now? Did the internet troll them into the ground? Did they keep working at squenix?

Whats the community consensus of them?

The director of 1.0 was Nobuaki Komoto who directed a few expansions of XI. The producer of 1.0 was Hiromichi Tanaka who was the producer of XI. Obviously Yoshida is the current director and producer of FFXIV. I believe both Komoto and Tanaka are equally blamed for 1.0, but I imagine actual 1.0 players will know more than me. There are many videos explaining the whole situation like here is one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWIrju3F6nU. There are more serious videos if you try searching for them.

I believe Nobuaki Komoto continued to work on XIV since he's credited as either the Lead Game Designer or Game Design Supervisor from 2.0-5.0 before receiving a special thanks in 5.1-6.0 It's quite possible that he is now retired since he is over 50 years of age and had spent two decades with a high position at SQEX. https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Nobuaki_Komoto

It seems like Hiromichi Tanaka departed SQEX shortly after the failure of 1.0 citing unknown physical or mental health problems. He's ten years older than Komoto and was producer of XI's entire lifespan, so seems like a reasonable decision after the 1.0 disaster. Because he was the producer and subsequently departed while Komoto stayed that is likely why he gets more public blame, but I've noticed that actual 1.0 players tend to blame Komoto more since he was the actual director. https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Hiromichi_Tanaka

I don't think many remembers them that fondly since 1.0 was such a forgettable mess and neither communicated like Yoshida does. It's not like a Jeff Kaplan Blizzard situation basically. It's similar to the Hajime Tabata FFXV situation, but probably worse since Tabata was arguably screwed over and did try to communicate like Yoshida.

1.23b (the final patch before 2.0) was perhaps the best version of Final Fantasy XIV outside of that 4.5-6.0 era. Evercold will be a return to form though.

Nobody really talked or thought about them. All the talk has been about the savior, Yoshi-P. Only people that seemed to blame them was Square Enix.

They were developing an FFXI version 2. That's what 1.0 essentially was. Except it was supposed to be modern and the engine and behind the scenes was supposed to be better, not constrained by console. The exponential growth of tech between 2000 and 2010 was huge compared to how it's now sort of hit diminishing returns, so there was no way FFXI could predict how tech would have evolved 10 years later.

The problem is, they didn't consider other MMORPGs when defining what modern is, and each part of the team worked on different things but when it got glued together it didn't make sense. The reason there isn't a lot of blame, I think, is because being an MMORPG director is hard. By this I mean, of all the people that have done it, they usually don't do it perfectly and there are usually things people think it could be done significantly better and that their perspective of things is misguided. They just happened to get some very crucial parts wrong that almost killed the game on arrival. This is obvious to anyone that's played multiple MMORPGs so seeing one director make big mistakes is like a "welcome to the club" thing.

I don't remember anybody being overly mean about it. Tanaka worked on the first couple Final Fantasy games, I think he's generally well respected by fans of the series. Tanaka wasn't as front-facing as Yoshi-P, so I don't remember seeing memes about it. The only people who knew who was in charge were the people playing FFXI or 1.0, the game wasn't widely talked about like it is today and you didn't have streamers larping as fans trying to rile people up with engagement bait.


Around FFXI's 20th anniversary Square Enix launched their "We Are Vana'diel" website with interviews of people who worked on the game over the years. If you'd like you can read the interview with Hiromichi Tanaka from 2021.

There's a fascinating documentary on youtube about 1.0's fall.

The biggest issue is corporate's decision to make their own game engine. It's akin to a band crafting all their own instruments themselves.
They write their own music and perform it but they dont know anything about how to craft the wood for a guitar and put it together.

Not to say there weren't also shortcomings with the director and management. But id say watch the documentary for all the info if youre interested. Here you'll get fanboy glazers still defending it somehow. It did have its share of white knights funny enough.

I thought the previous director went on to make his own project, but I can’t remember specifically what. I don’t remember the community having any ill will towards anyone. Things were less vitriolic online back then, than they are now.

Truthfully, there are quite a few of us who have played 1.0 that could see what they were trying to achieve. I really loved what 1.0 was trying to do. If you are able to see the intention of some of the design, it had the potential to be the best MMO ever made. They just dropped the ball pretty hard. The art direction was better too, like the garlean empire being steampunk, not sci-fi like it is now. And all the weapons and armor felt grounded. Ooo and the movement physics for characters was awesome. Oh well….

I cant speak for the aftermath of 1.0 and its producer/dierctor, but I can speak about what led to the disaster that was 1.0.
I was chosen early on as an alpha tester, and from the get-go we could see the scale of the problems. For lack of a better explanation, the game was a beautiful skeleton. There were bones, but literally no meat (ie. content).
Being my first time alpha testing though I suspected this was normal and gave my feedback on the tester forums.
It wasnt until the Beta tests that it started to become apparent that the team wasn't listening to our pleas to not release the game yet. The game, while in a playable state, had nothing going for it - no major content beyond leves/fates and a few trials, a plethora of bugs and there were countless seriously weird design choices a handful of notable ones include:

--only 8 teleportation charges per day and they were on a rigid several hour timer for reset for each one. If I recall it was an 8hour reset? Though it could have been 24.... I cant remember. But if you used a charge, you had to wait a very long time for it to reset.
--Crafting was a nightmare! You had to craft each material (yarn, ingot, etc), then each individual piece (sleeve, torso, leg, etc) and then finally stitch all the pieces together at the end.
--There was level 50 monsters right outside town that could kill you instantly if you didn't know to avoid them - I distinctly recall dying to a high level lizard right outside Ul'dah.
--The polygon count on certain objects would absolutely wreck the fps of even the most high end machines - SO LAGGY! (There was a famous flower pot with an absurd amount of polygons!)
--The Black Shroud was a literal maze!
--You had to stand still to attack anything. If you moved, it would cancel your attacks, and if I recall there wasnt even auto attacks? I could be wrong on that one as its been ages, but Im pretty sure there wasnt.
--The menu system was gods awful, and Im so happy they got rid of the annoyingly loud selection noise that played whenever you selected something in a menu or advanced the dialogue. (Try hearing that for hours/days/weeks on end)


Anyways, 1.0 was not ready for release and despite our earnest pleas begging them not to release it yet, they did. So to say the criticisms were justified and earned upon launch would be the unvarnished truth. It was really unfortunate because I love what the team did with FFXI and I truly thought they could make it shine, but to bring out a new MMO in the current modern day, they needed to do a lot more than what they had done with FFXI, and not just graphically. Even so, the bit of story/lore that was present was enough to sow the seeds for Yoshi-P and the teams remake and I was super shocked when 2.0 released. It was AMAZING! Granted today, ARR might feel a bit dated and oddly paced, but given what they accomplished in less than 2 years I'd say it was a solid remake! And I havent left yet so they must be doing something right (though Dawntrail's first half did test me...).

I was an alpha tester and was incredibly excited for FFXIV. The little I played felt unplayable to me. I literally got lost in Limsa Lominsa and couldn't get out because the controls felt so backwards to me. There wasn't anything to actually do in the game at that point. The graphics on the boat scene that you started with were amazing though!

I kind of wish I had stuck with it and actually went on to play 1.0 but at the time it just seemed awful.

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Originally Posted by Vespar

--The menu system was gods awful, and Im so happy they got rid of the annoyingly loud selection noise that played whenever you selected something in a menu or advanced the dialogue. (Try hearing that for hours/days/weeks on end)

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Oh god 1.0 had that? I played Mabinogi for a time and remember how fuck awful grating that sort of thing was to endure.

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Originally Posted by Vespar

--only 8 teleportation charges per day and they were on a rigid several hour timer for reset for each one. If I recall it was an 8hour reset? Though it could have been 24.... I cant remember. But if you used a charge, you had to wait a very long time for it to reset.

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Anima was originally: you start at 100, but recharge limited to 4 per day, and it could cost either 6 or 8 to teleport to another city (though it would teleport your whole party.) It was pretty quickly changed to be less-terrible (costs were halved and I think you got anima more frequently) but it wouldn't be until Yoshida's team took over that it was made actually tolerable. People made alts *just* to teleport people.
Edit - Actually it might have been 3 anima recharging per day at launch, once every 8 hours? It's been so long but I do remember it being ungodly slow.

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--Crafting was a nightmare! You had to craft each material (yarn, ingot, etc), then each individual piece (sleeve, torso, leg, etc) and then finally stitch all the pieces together at the end.

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I used to joke that crafting a tunic IRL with materials found in nearby hills would be easier and less effort than crafting a tunic in 1.0. Honestly only half a joke.

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--There was level 50 monsters right outside town that could kill you instantly if you didn't know to avoid them - I distinctly recall dying to a high level lizard right outside Ul'dah.

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There was a rocky crag with some super high level demons about 200 feet away from an Ul'dah exit, but the most notorious has to be that one level 23-ish ant that loved to camp the walkway to the western parts of Thanalan. The strat was usually "wait until someone else agro'd it and then run like hell."

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--The Black Shroud was a literal maze!

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Oh it's not as bad as Yuhtunga or Yhoator. Still kinda terrible though.

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--You had to stand still to attack anything. If you moved, it would cancel your attacks, and if I recall there wasnt even auto attacks? I could be wrong on that one as its been ages, but Im pretty sure there wasnt.

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Correct, no auto attacks, everything was through the Stamina system (and TP for special attacks. Remember the Feint meta? Cost very little stam and only 250 tp, plus couldn't miss, which was a godsend because player accuracy was TERRIBLE). Moving didn't necessarily cancel the attack, it's just you couldn't move while executing them. Also you moved super slow with your weapon drawn (unless you spent points to unlock the Lancer trait which mitigated most of that), and pulling out or sheathing your weapon was very slow (and also rooted you in place.)

Oh, and on crafting, some items needed were insane. Black Boar Leather for some low level items, but the lowest level Black Boars are 40+.

God what a mess 1.0 was. I miss it.