Final Fantasy XIV Expansion Pack

I think they should delay the upcoming patches past 1.20, and wait for a long dev cycle for 2.0/ And ps3 release. Add a subtitle, give PC users 1-2 extra free months with the new content, while also giving the same to the PS3 users.

I know slow steady patches are what we are going to get, and that is what the people want, but I think if they do stuff behind the scenes and really ramp up what Yoshi has in mind for the game in 1 lump sum it will bring tons of people back, and to the game for the first time.

thoughts/

I against everything involved with the word 'slow'

there will never be expansion packs due to the game never making money

How could a game with barely any content and horribly mangled fundamental gameplay aspects even warrant an expansion pack?

First, I want to say I see what you are thinking, and I understand why.

Imo I think the game should be heavily worked on until the ps3 release. If we can show people how much it has changed before then, and can promise continued change after ps3, I think that will be the best course of action. Also Like when RoZ (first XI expansion pack) MUCH content came with it, and I think if SE continues to give us regular content but is also working on a full fledged expansion pack, that will be the best course of action.

RoZ offered:
"Fixed" SMN (no more just eles)
new regions
new end game area
new jobs
new content/battles
new mission line
continued nation missions
level cap raise? (i think this may have been prior to RoZ, or done in steps, I dont remember fully)

Anyhow if we can have basic additions done up until ps3, and then have a real expansion, I think that would be best.

to change everything involved and make it an actual fun game to play. the 'expansion' is just content they are going to add over time, but if they were not forced to make promises then break them to the public they could release all this content at once and you come back to a fundamentally different game and you decide to pay $15 a month...

not to mention. SE charge us for every expansion.

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Originally Posted by Volsung

First, I want to say I see what you are thinking, and I understand why.

Imo I think the game should be heavily worked on until the ps3 release. If we can show people how much it has changed before then, and can promise continued change after ps3, I think that will be the best course of action. Also Like when RoZ (first XI expansion pack) MUCH content came with it, and I think if SE continues to give us regular content but is also working on a full fledged expansion pack, that will be the best course of action.

RoZ offered:
"Fixed" SMN (no more just eles)
new regions
new end game area
new jobs
new content/battles
new mission line
continued nation missions
level cap raise? (i think this may have been prior to RoZ, or done in steps, I dont remember fully)

Anyhow if we can have basic additions done up until ps3, and then have a real expansion, I think that would be best.

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I think this is more what I had in mind. You are right they probably are working on an expansion. Yoshi said somewhere(paraphrasing) its hard because he came on to basically what he called a broken blank slate and has to add everything like end game content, mid game and fix everything all while the customer whines. I feel for the guy, I think he can make this game great with his team.

Here is a problem: What about beta testing? Not taking in enough beta testing feedback was a lot of what got them in to this situation in the first place.

By allowing us to keep playing the patches, we can help ensure the game stays balanced and bugs/problems are picked up in greater detail before the PS3 version is launched.

Thus, I am against not continuing patches. This is a part of beta development.

And I consider this game as if it were in a beta phase.

too soon our current story line isn't even fully fleshed out. SE completes a story line before doing an expack is a new main story added to the game.

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Originally Posted by Kilta_Firelotus

too soon our current story line isn't even fully fleshed out. SE completes a story line before doing an expack is a new main story added to the game.

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Final fantasy XI had no storyline "not very much main plot"o.o ROTZ bring this story line right now the the few storyline there is in the game are not even 100% the main plot. So please maybe play too level 46 to see all the storyline before saying something like this. "And i don't mean look them up in youtube so then you say ya i know all about the storyline"

maybe the dalay for all the stuff are due to a expasion pack i'm sorry if ps3 is not release with one then ffxiv have no hope. What they going to sell ffxiv to ps3 users how it should have been for the PC release? ya that s*** wont cut it for many people now at days.

Yoshida:
"Yeah remember all that content we promised you to re-breath life into the game and turn it into a great experience?

Weeeellll... It's all gonna be in an expansion pack now! And you're gonna pay for it. And it's gonna delay everything else we've been working on"

Yeah I can see that going swell.

and expansion O.o how about a game thats not a giant turd first. We wont see an expansion for 2 years+ easy, if they happen at all. They can barely keep regular patches and fixes up at a decent pace, and the fact that the game may barely make money would mean they might not happen in general.

umm ya...
you must not be paying attention much.

let me see

gridania your discoving stuff about the elementals, greenwrath, moogles, and a ritual that is said to help cleanse you of the greenwrath. And hints of a shadow attacking patrols. You learn about wildlings who are lost souls taken by the greenwrath. And learn a child wants to prove elementals are not real, and how he feels findind his paremts may not be wildlings.

that is just an example. but as I said this story isn;t fleshed out it is only the beginning. in ffxi we had the first 5 ranks and the defeat of the shadowlord. That is where rise of zilart starts. When you go to norg after killing the shadowlord you geta cs.

starts are slow at the start to intro duce you to the characters. then it rises to the peek where most of the action is and then falls to a climax.

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Originally Posted by Kilta_Firelotus

umm ya...
you must not be paying attention much.

let me see

gridania your discoving stuff about the elementals, greenwrath, moogles, and a ritual that is said to help cleanse you of the greenwrath. And hints of a shadow attacking patrols. You learn about wildlings who are lost souls taken by the greenwrath. And learn a child wants to prove elementals are not real, and how he feels findind his paremts may not be wildlings.

that is just an example. but as I said this story isn;t fleshed out it is only the beginning. in ffxi we had the first 5 ranks and the defeat of the shadowlord. That is where rise of zilart starts. When you go to norg after killing the shadowlord you geta cs.

starts are slow at the start to intro duce you to the characters. then it rises to the peek where most of the action is and then falls to a climax.

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Even the shadowlord battle's cutscenes dipicted an unfinished story, with flashes of the scene afrterwards showing what was coming up in rise of zilart.

^ story is the least of this games problems when it comes to getting an expansion....ever.

SE please upload some game into my game before you even think of charging me for it.

The ps3 release is the restart of FFXIV. The one shot we have to see if this game will live to fight another day.

As it stands now, the game is insanely under-developed despite the potential of it being the best of all time. It really needs another solid year in development before and can compete with even the crappiest top tier MMOs currently online. (horse is dead... i know)

If i were king?

1. I would triple the development/qa/writing team. Either they don't know how to build a proper MMO for 2011 or they have some serious resource constraints. I will assume it is the latter.
2. Split the team into two camps. UI and Content
   1. UI:
      1. For the love of god, create a proper UI that is in the very least not the worst among the top-tier MMOs. The lag, lack of intuitiveness and polish just show how far removed the whole effort has been. The UI comes off as if they never played another MMO or simply lack drive to be the best (something startup MMOs have plenty of). It just feels HEAVY and SLOW.
   2. Content:
      1. Provide small revisions like dungeons to keep us poor saps interested.
      2. Add additonail non-zoo-like-creatures to the game. We need to start walking into towns of peaceful gobs and pissed off humes.
      3. FOCUS on ENDING the main story line with a bad ass reward for completion.
      4. FOCUS on making the various Guilds more than a afterthought with their 3 useless quests.
      5. ABOVE ALL... expand the game. They have to. The level of content in the game is so far behind even the worst top-tier MMOs going.

My 2 cents but... while this game is a great foundation... it is about to be destroyed by a few very promising MMOs coming out in 2011.

Truth be told.. i fired up the Rift trial... one crappy MMO, but I'll be damned it put FFXIV to shame with its professional polish, instant UI responsiveness and overall sense of completion. I mean dude... the class trees are INSANE.

squeenix.. i heart u... but it's reality check time.

YES... expand the team and the game.

Their team seems so damn tiny, especially for what it is ( a #d FF MMO) i just dont see why they have the people to build a whole new MMO (whatever it will be) but cant get some more people for this team, who clearly seems to need it.

Why do we need an expansion when we still have 4(?) unused regions and Ishgard in the data?

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Originally Posted by Wolfie

How could a game with barely any content and horribly mangled fundamental gameplay aspects even warrant an expansion pack?

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Zilart was the "fixer" to FFXI after initial foundation tweaks, most of what everyone know of XI's early years that weren't importers or Japanese native is the world post Zilart.

So it's not that unheard of.

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Originally Posted by Corrderio

Why do we need an expansion when we still have 4(?) unused regions and Ishgard in the data?

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It's actually not in the data anymore, only some textures and a few (3) Guildleves exist. Unless you mean they're still needing to be added and unlocked based on what the map says yes.

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Originally Posted by Zanfire

Their team seems so damn tiny, especially for what it is ( a #d FF MMO) i just dont see why they have the people to build a whole new MMO (whatever it will be) but cant get some more people for this team, who clearly seems to need it.

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I hear this big time... I don't get it at all.

Being a dev myself... whenever I walk into a clients site and they ask me... 'why are we not killing it???'. 99.9% of the time most of the following is true...

1. Team is not skilled.
2. Leadership lacks that 'killer instinct'.
3. Foundation/Architecture is rubbish so changing on the existing platform slows to a snails pace.
4. Company is too large, slow and bureaucratic resulting in poor disconnected sobs in cubes who don't give a shit even though in their hearts... they love what they do.

Bottom line... It just seems to me that if the crystal tools worth paying dividends.... they should be able to start cranking out content left and right like no tomorrow.

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Originally Posted by Corrderio

Why do we need an expansion when we still have 4(?) unused regions and Ishgard in the data?

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expansion = open up these areas

not so much a physical area expansion.

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Originally Posted by Zanfire

Their team seems so damn tiny, especially for what it is ( a #d FF MMO) i just dont see why they have the people to build a whole new MMO (whatever it will be) but cant get some more people for this team, who clearly seems to need it.

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100+ isn't exactly "tiny", given there's people who can make entire games solo (Touhou). They also mentioned that while they intermingle (XI/XIV dev team for example) the rest are on their own divisions because despite popular belief, Square Enix isn't an MMORPG company that can dedicate everyone on the payroll to one project.

XI's dev team is tiny, as they pulled people from it for XIV's initial development and the dry spell of content from 2007 - 2009 kind of shows that.

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Originally Posted by Jennestia

Zilart was the "fixer" to FFXI after initial foundation tweaks, most of what everyone know of XI's early years that weren't importers or Japanese native is the world post Zilart.

So it's not that unheard of.

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Perhaps the c-level peeps at squeenix feel that they way ffxi survived still applies to today. start slow and fix. this would explain a great deal...

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Originally Posted by Jennestia

Zilart was the "fixer" to FFXI after initial foundation tweaks, most of what everyone know of XI's early years that weren't importers or Japanese native is the world post Zilart.

So it's not that unheard of.

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Doesn't mean anything. Do you think that if FFXI was released today in its initial state (albeit with a graphics improvement) that it would fare just as well as it did back then? It would crash and burn just like FFXIV. There's some things to be learned from older MMOs; justifying a crappy release or justifying an expansion immediately after a crappy release when the vanilla game is still in disarray is not one of them.

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Originally Posted by Jennestia

100+ isn't exactly "tiny", given there's people who can make entire games solo (Touhou). They also mentioned that while they intermingle (XI/XIV dev team for example) the rest are on their own divisions because despite popular belief, Square Enix isn't an MMORPG company that can dedicate everyone on the payroll to one project.

XI's dev team is tiny, as they pulled people from it for XIV's initial development and the dry spell of content from 2007 - 2009 kind of shows that.

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I keep hearing its like 50 people tops. And they clearly are big enough to be both kinds (MMO and non-MMO) they already have 1 thats been going for a long time, have this pile they are working on AND another in the works...hell most MMO companys cant do that many at once. Tbh i think they took people away from 14 because of how bad it was and from FFXI (its old and wont be around forever) and put them on this new game, which they really must be puttin all their hope into.

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Originally Posted by Zanfire

I keep hearing its like 50 people tops. And they clearly are big enough to be both kinds (MMO and non-MMO) they already have 1 thats been going for a long time, have this pile they are working on AND another in the works...hell most MMO companys cant do that many at once. Tbh i think they took people away from 14 because of how bad it was and from FFXI (its old and wont be around forever) and put them on this new game, which they really must be puttin all their hope into.

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Ok let me get you straight, SE think that they have a product that has been in development for 5 years, the launch didnt go well, but everyone says it has potential, so they will pull people out of it to other projects which will make them loose money faster because the content takes longer to make and they are still employing the same people, rather than the 2 logical choices which are lay people off to save money, which makes them loose less, or get more people from other projects to attempt to salvage ffxiv faster and start to get back what they have already lost.

Also where did you hear the 50 people from, im sure yoshi-p said that it was over 100 people on the dev team.

The reason development is going slowly is because crystal tools was designed for ps3, and the opengl api, so they need to optimise it for PC and directX, admittedly this should have been done pre-release but we are stuck now.

Also for anyone talking about the lack of recent patches, what would you prefer buggy, incomplete, rushed content and emulate the release with every patch or would you prefer smooth complete content that they have taken time over that you can just enjoy straight away? lets not forget why the game is like this now, because it was rushed for release.

When I was playing alpha I said to friends that it wouldnt be released on time because of the state of the game, I was wrong but in a way right because the release should have been delayed.

tl;dr: No company would pull people out of a dev team for other projects if a game has potential and is loosing money.

SE has never said (as far as I can remember) there are 50 people on the dev team.

Crystal tools is slowing development down because it was designed for PS3.

Most people would prefer content that is complete rather than rushed because everyone rages when its delayed, lets not forget why the game is in this state right now, a rushed release.

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Originally Posted by Jennestia

It's actually not in the data anymore, only some textures and a few (3) Guildleves exist. Unless you mean they're still needing to be added and unlocked based on what the map says yes.

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Well that sucks

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Originally Posted by Catapult

Here is a problem: What about beta testing? Not taking in enough beta testing feedback was a lot of what got them in to this situation in the first place.

By allowing us to keep playing the patches, we can help ensure the game stays balanced and bugs/problems are picked up in greater detail before the PS3 version is launched.

Thus, I am against not continuing patches. This is a part of beta development.

And I consider this game as if it were in a ALPHA phase.

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I fixed it for you.

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Originally Posted by Gath

I fixed it for you.

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I wouldnt call it alpha, when in alpha if you ran past the group of people crowding outside LL (LL was the only city useable then) you would not beable to see any mobs or aethers, oh and you were lucky to get on in the test window because the servers hadnt been balanced so you had to wait in a queue to get on, you DC you needed to wait again

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Originally Posted by Delsus

I wouldnt call it alpha, when in alpha if you ran past the group of people crowding outside LL (LL was the only city useable then) you would not beable to see any mobs or aethers, oh and you were lucky to get on in the test window because the servers hadnt been balanced so you had to wait in a queue to get on, you DC you needed to wait again

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Alpha stage in a game is where they get feedback from both devs and players to change the game in a whole, to see what they don't like and change it. There are still plenty of bugs in this game, which is another thing alpha test does a lot of, is the major bugs. The game may play like it's in beta phase, but it's being treated like it's still in alpha.

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Originally Posted by Gath

Alpha stage in a game is where they get feedback from both devs and players to change the game in a whole, to see what they don't like and change it. There are still plenty of bugs in this game, which is another thing alpha test does a lot of, is the major bugs. The game may play like it's in beta phase, but it's being treated like it's still in alpha.

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mmos are in constant development, alot of the time getting constant feedback from the players and devs look at the ffxi forums, would you say that is in alpha, i mean by your rules it must be because it is still getting feedback from the players and devs and choosing what to change based on it.

An expansion pack would basically be a big middle finger and a slap in the face to me. Never will I buy an expansion pack for this game that brings content that should have been there day one.

I agree with others saying that this game does not have enough content to even be looking at an expansion pack yet. They need to add a lot more stuff to it to even consider it as a stand alone product. Once that standard has been achieved then they can start looking at an expansion pack.

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Originally Posted by AlexiaKidd

I agree with others saying that this game does not have enough content to even be looking at an expansion pack yet. They need to add a lot more stuff to it to even consider it as a stand alone product. Once that standard has been achieved then they can start looking at an expansion pack.

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I agree with this, which is why I will expect one to be released around ps3 release, which will be when the game is up to standard, and I expect the ps3 release to come with this expansion to help bring in sales

Regardless of whether you think this game is practically speaking in alpha or beta the fact is, in either case, it's not a retail ready product.

Even mentioning an expansion pack at this point puts the cart so far ahead of the horse he can't even see it anymore.

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Originally Posted by Kilta_Firelotus

umm ya...
you must not be paying attention much.

let me see

gridania your discoving stuff about the elementals, greenwrath, moogles, and a ritual that is said to help cleanse you of the greenwrath. And hints of a shadow attacking patrols. You learn about wildlings who are lost souls taken by the greenwrath. And learn a child wants to prove elementals are not real, and how he feels findind his paremts may not be wildlings.

that is just an example. but as I said this story isn;t fleshed out it is only the beginning. in ffxi we had the first 5 ranks and the defeat of the shadowlord. That is where rise of zilart starts. When you go to norg after killing the shadowlord you geta cs.

starts are slow at the start to intro duce you to the characters. then it rises to the peek where most of the action is and then falls to a climax.

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That not even the plot of the game the few time they talk about the empire they make them sound like there here in eorzea. telling you most give up the avatars and stuff. Still that not even the main plot that just mission i don't call anything the main plot without the Expansion that when the main storyline really starting. Right now is like final fantasy xi before ROTZ it tell you a few things but its not really the main plot.