The new Nomura?

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Originally Posted by Amnmaat

FFXVI being the latest victim of his game design philosophy. We gave him a chance to finally make a good mainline FF game where he didn't "Reborn" someone else's game and he blew it.

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Unless I have heard incorrectly, Yoshi-P was the producer for FF16; he was not the game's director. A producer's job is about scheduling and keeping production efficient and timely. If you didn't like the game and it wasn't because there were rampant production difficulties, it makes no sense to lay the responsibility for that at the feet of a producer.

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Originally Posted by Amnmaat

Let's keep it down to earth, let's talk that real ish; YoshiP hasn't done anything great since heavensward (maybe stormblood).

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Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but Shadowbringers is overwhelmingly beloved. And Yoshi-P was the director for of that expansion.

The premise of trying to use metacritic to assess MMO expansions is fundamentally flawed, no matter which side of the fence you're on. MMO's are by nature a live-service style game, and expansions have a 2+ year content lifecycle that make it incredibly difficult to really rate them until they've run their course.

Expansions in 14 are particularly difficult to assess rapidly because SE basically never rolls out the new endgame systems/features of the expansion until LONG after the launch. Reviewers never even have a chance to interact with the failed systems, cut content and general patch content issues that end up being at the core of many peoples criticisms about certain expansions.

Where Stormblood was an expansion redeemed by its patches, Endwalker was an expansion undermined by them.

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Originally Posted by LittleImp

The premise of trying to use metacritic to assess MMO expansions is fundamentally flawed, no matter which side of the fence you're on. MMO's are by nature a live-service style game, and expansions have a 2+ year content lifecycle that make it incredibly difficult to really rate them until they've run their course.

Expansions in 14 are particularly difficult to assess rapidly because SE basically never rolls out the new endgame systems/features of the expansion until LONG after the launch. Reviewers never even have a chance to interact with the failed systems, cut content and general patch content issues that end up being at the core of many peoples criticisms about certain expansions.

Where Stormblood was an expansion redeemed by its patches, Endwalker was an expansion undermined by them.

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I agree you can't really use metacritic scores as way to say an expansion is successful when its only scoring the initial release and none of the post expansion content that comes in an expansions patches. Metacritic scores don't determine if a expansion is successful or not but its ability to maintain player interest throughout the expansion during the post expansion cycle.

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Originally Posted by LittleImp

The premise of trying to use metacritic to assess MMO expansions is fundamentally flawed, no matter which side of the fence you're on. MMO's are by nature a live-service style game, and expansions have a 2+ year content lifecycle that make it incredibly difficult to really rate them until they've run their course.

Expansions in 14 are particularly difficult to assess rapidly because SE basically never rolls out the new endgame systems/features of the expansion until LONG after the launch. Reviewers never even have a chance to interact with the failed systems, cut content and general patch content issues that end up being at the core of many peoples criticisms about certain expansions.

Where Stormblood was an expansion redeemed by its patches, Endwalker was an expansion undermined by them.

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You're partly correct, but not fully.

"A game producer is responsible for managing all aspects of a game's design, development, and release.1 Their responsibilities include working with creative and quality assurance teams, designing the story arc, public relations, meeting with financiers to get the project funded, working with marketers to advertise the video game, and working with a legal team to get the game licensed" source: https://www.ziprecruiter.com/career/Video-Game-Producer/What-Is-How-to-Become

Producers have as much, if not, more say than the director. When the director is creating a bad story, plots, and bad game design overall the producer can ovewrite him and present him with a better or completely different direction for the game narrative, story, and game design. FFXVI IS yoship's game. As ziprecruiter states, the game's story arc is his design.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

As an aside, MMO's are a very different beast to single player games when it comes to reviews. Even if someone likes the base expansion, the subsequent patches could very well leave much to be desired. I've also noticed that there's usually a flood of 'best expansion ever' reviews right at launch and then very little after that period. That goes for both positive and negative reviews.

The other elephant in the room is that Square Enix actively bribe certain content creators (by their own admission) with free merchandise and invites to exclusive events which is rather blatantly a mutually beneficial arrangement between both parties to allow for financial gain. In other industries, such shady arrangements would be seen as inauthentic and very dubious.

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This is true, every expansion release has been "the best expansion ever" sans endwalker. I still remember the incredible praise stormblood got, called better than heavensward, etc. Moreover, as you stated a lot of these game sites are mostly required to give high score to the bigger game makers now; unless the game is a buggy mess that can't be justified like cyberpunk's initial release. Same goes for these "influencers."

shadowbringer's initial release might've been great, but outside of 6.3 and bozja we got less dungeons, less hairstyles (chronically less, a trend that continues in endwalker), and the complete gutting of job classes and their mechanics. So yeah, as much as we want to kiss the toes of shadowbringers, it was average at best, when we go down the list past the msq and past asmongold's drooling/wow's refugee crisis.

Give me a weekend and a fridge full of malt liquor and I guarantee I can write a better, more coherent story than at least half the storytelling in this game.

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Originally Posted by ReynTime

Excuses. PS5 obviously doesn't have PS4 or combined PS4-PC-Xbox numbers, but neither did PS1, 2 or 3 when their first final fantasy games came out and still sold as well or better than the company expected.

Final Fantasy VII, VIII, X, XII and even the oh-so-hated XIII sold systems. Final Fantasy XVI failing to do that is still attesting to how the brand fell from grace.

And before you go "but muh economy crisis/muh lower buying power", even PS5's current price in the current economy doesn't hold a candle to how overpriced PS3 was.

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No doubt those were system sellers, although XIII benefitted from releasing after the significantly more affordable slim PS3. Could only imagine how differently things would have gone if XIII released in that bizarre 2006-2008 period.

One thing that might be worth mentioning that has been going on with Japanese Devs in recent years is the debate over the term JRPG. Some like the term because they feel it acknowledges the differences in RPG presentation that resulted from Japanese culture, while others dislike it due to viewing it as offensive and racist. Trying to find it atm but I'm pretty sure there was an interview where Yoshi-P identified himself as the latter and gave indication that one of his goals was to avoid the term.

Idk YoshiP release games with no retouch à la nomura style.Look at FF15 and KH series. But def he's quite safety first guy when he makes games. I do love is perfectionist side of how making games, even tho his game turn out to be too much accessible freak in "gameplay". But none the less, he's a better AAA dev than other AAA devs. Like or not he's good but he's flawess human like everyone else.

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

Huh, my understanding was by all accounts FFXVI was being considered an overwhellming success, and that any concerns about sales targets was simply because of PS5 availability issues still lingering and nothing to do with the quality of the game itself.

Also, Yoshi is not the new Nomura, he scrapped belts. ;)

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SE has actually made a statement based on the fact they are very happy with the sales of XVI as a result of all the negative garbage spread to try to prove the opposite. That is all you will find on these forums. They are not here to provide constructive criticism. They are here to complain incessantly about nothing. I am glad they gave them a place to shout into the void. Keep all of them here in one place. Easy to avoid when I feel like it or come troll/bash if I want as well.

The thing is, 16 is literally a carbon copy of 14's RR story just told in a different way.

Rather than Ultima absorbing all the eikons, we do.

Ultima then somehow uses all the eikons at the end of the fight because reasons.

Power of friendship overcomes the big bad whom only moments before literally one shots Ifrit, Bahamut and Phoenix combined.

Ultima is killed by a sword blasting a hole through his chest (Emet Selch death)

Add in all the mind-numbing side-quests other than the last five.

And the hand-holding with the rings (lel). Also the "hardest" difficulty is a cakewalk. Copying from the MSQ instanced trials now being baby mode.

There's entire plot points that are just left to the player's interpretation.

There's a reason why the sales are so low.