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.

I remember gathering used the Gold Saucer minigame method and it was horrible.

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Originally Posted by Wildheaven182

The biggest issue is corporate's decision to make their own game engine.

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No, the game did not fail because they made a game engine for it. Making a game engine can be a good decision if you have some special needs for a game. At that time, there were no good game engines for MMORPGs with good graphics. Many MMORPGs at that time used the HeroEngine at this engine was really bad because it was very slow. With other engines, you could have good graphics and good performance but not in an open world environment etc.

And 1.0 was bad because the content was really bad. They copy&paste'ed content literary everywhere, the game was buggy, there was a hard limit how many EXP you could to a day etc.



Cheers

It's still sad how a lot of clueless XIV fans and people who parrot 'nightmare' without really knowing what they're talking about continue to crap on Hiromichi Tanaka to this day as if XIV undoes the decades he poured into a lot of Squaresoft's best projects dating as far back as the first Final Fantasy on the famicom.

And as if Yoichi "My fortune teller said we have to move our headquarters to a different building in a completely different address" Wada wasn't the real problem, considering it was under his leadership as CEO that they were having development problems across so many projects at Square Enix like the Fabula Nova Cristalis project, Final Fantasy XV, XIV, KH3, Crystal Bearers, etc...

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Originally Posted by Powercow

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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This ^. Thank you for clarifying. Its been ages since 1.x and I could only distinctly recall running out of charges and waiting AGES for resets. Getting around without them was no easy feat.

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Originally Posted by Larirawiel

No, the game did not fail because they made a game engine for it. Making a game engine can be a good decision if you have some special needs for a game. At that time, there were no good game engines for MMORPGs with good graphics. Many MMORPGs at that time used the HeroEngine at this engine was really bad because it was very slow. With other engines, you could have good graphics and good performance but not in an open world environment etc.

And 1.0 was bad because the content was really bad. They copy&paste'ed content literary everywhere, the game was buggy, there was a hard limit how many EXP you could to a day etc.



Cheers

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No, I think the game engine is pretty clearly a root of many problems. It's clear how difficult it was to work with crystal tools and they didnt replace Crystal Tools with Luminous engine for ARR because Crystal Tools was good.

I shouldnt be surprised every breath you take on the internet you have to explain the concept of nuance. No Im not saying the engine was the source of all problems, it wasnt. And I agree, bad design decisions were the root of the creative and gameplay problems.
The engine and their backend programming was based heavily on scripts, for everything. From what Im told scripts are useful for automating small repetitive tasks but far from ideal for any longer processes, causing heavy cpu load or something. Bad performance.

I didnt see mentioned yet, the fatigue system capped how much exp you can earn, literally incentivizing people to not play. 1.0 white knights defended it all though.
Never underestimate the blind loyalty of fanboys and their capacity to ruin their own favorite games.

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Originally Posted by Wildheaven182

I didnt see mentioned yet, the fatigue system capped how much exp you can earn, literally incentivizing people to not play. 1.0 white knights defended it all though.
Never underestimate the blind loyalty of fanboys and their capacity to ruin their own favorite games.

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I've never seen anyone defend the Surplus system, especially not during the 1.0 era. Many of us tried to explain or understand the reasoning, which was almost certainly to encourage people to play a wide variety of classes in order to gain various abilities, spells, and passives to make your own class from it all.

It was just really, really badly implemented. It was confusing (like why call it Surplus if there's no intent to do anything with it? Why have Surplus levels?), it was overly punishing if you wanted to play only one or two classes (you could hit Surplus' first tier in only a few minutes and it took a week to reset), and so many weaponskills and spells functioned more or less the same (especially early on) that any incentive to gather more options felt pointless (Feint being the only really notable exception weaponskill-wise, which just forced most everyone to level Lancer thus defeating the "make your own class" aspect).

I feel like the main idea of the Fatigue system was fine, and honestly better than Bonus EXP. The tuning was just off.

Ideally, the fatigue system would work kind of like a seasonal (but granular) pace-ceiling that would increase the game's density of players; rather than some getting straight to max level, extra play-time was forced towards breadth of leveling.

Note here though that back then Character Level was separate from Class Rank. Character Level determined the level of gear you could equip and, iirc, how many off-class skill slots you had access to. Class Rank, on the other hand, built bonus stat when using its weapon type and unlocked the weapon's skills.

Whereas Bonus EXP must be spent on your max level job for best effect (especially given the Armory Bonus you'd then extend to all beneath the lead's ceiling), Fatigue did the opposite: "Okay, now try any of the many other Hand, Land, War, or Magic Disciplines".

Smart system, just with too much advantage to early comers and consistent but mild play, and tapering off so sharply as to feel like a hard cap -- something an actual realm-wide fatigue or soft-ceiling system (instead of solely player-by-player), a just slightly more lenient EXP floor, and greater EXP rates in general (as to feel like "Bonus EXP" for each and every job separately) would have remedied.

I think the fatigue system just rubbed some people the wrong way, because there wasn't an endgame at launch so people saw it as an artificial slowdown to stretch out the leveling.

I was a closed alpha tester and still to this day I had more fun in 1.0 than I do now. I do not care when all the none players always say "Nightmare" as I was there and I remember it clearly as if it was last year.

I began in Limsa I think I began as a Elezen because omg there where no cat girls :O they came later. I then began on a Lala then Hyur and I think and I bounced of each and every wall I fried a new power supply lol

I stuck with all the tests they did I died a good death with a Lalafell outside of Limsa and also a battle regiment routine with a lovely random conjurer and then we would get reset for the testing. When we where giving feedback it was not listened to as we now know and they where told about the issues from testers. I stayed with each update and then the game released it was like oh where is the content haha. But I had made a few friends here and there and the world was vast I do laugh at all the copy paste comments when we have the world now with great big dot barriers it is poor and empty lifeless to what it was.

I loved that you could ride on the ferry and go and sit inside. I made a lot of friends crossing over to Limsa on them. The characters had depth they changed character voices which I think is part of the reason I miss my old cat girl so much :( The world was vast with life and dangerous and no mounts no jumping it was great :D

The game gets so much shit from people who either logged in and hated it then left or by people who just jump on the bandwagon. The game was bad in part the UI the lag omg but the heart was there it was an a amazing experience. They where adding with each patch and it was great can you imagine players in the world in party? fighting big NM's like in FFXI. The battles where fun they where improving with time. I think what 16 years of updates would have been like if they had stayed the course.

On that note when we where asked to provide feedback on the game either let if die or let it carry on then I obviously said with others keep the game. I find it sad that so many call 1.0 without even experiencing it. I know my opinion could be opposite to another alpha tester one who was there and I respect that but for those who did not even play just remember that if we had not asked for the game to stay then maybe none of us would be here at all and FFXIV would have been another failed game.

I am old now though lmao >.< well feel it

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Originally Posted by Luluna

The game gets so much shit from people who either logged in and hated it then left or by people who just jump on the bandwagon. The game was bad in part the UI the lag omg but the heart was there it was an a amazing experience. They where adding with each patch and it was great can you imagine players in the world in party? fighting big NM's like in FFXI. The battles where fun they where improving with time. I think what 16 years of updates would have been like if they had stayed the course.

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Yeah I had a similar experience as you, a lot of bandwagoners and a lot of people commenting on it that clearly didn’t even play it. I actually like what 1.0 was trying to do, and am a little disappointed in how the game is now. It’s not an MMO now, it’s an online RPG. There is no exploration and there is no challenge to the world.

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Originally Posted by Wildheaven182

No, I think the game engine is pretty clearly a root of many problems. It's clear how difficult it was to work with crystal tools and they didnt replace Crystal Tools with Luminous engine for ARR because Crystal Tools was good.

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You have to look at in a historical context. They started to make the game ~2005. Which engine, you could licence at that time would be way better than Crystal Tools for a MMORPG? Propably there was not a single one. So they decided to make an own engine. Other studios like Bioware or Zenimax Online used the HeroEngine. But they had to modify it heavily to make it work. And their MMORPGs still had really huge performance problems.

And the Luminous engine was not available in 2005.

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Originally Posted by Wildheaven182

I shouldnt be surprised every breath you take on the internet you have to explain the concept of nuance. No Im not saying the engine was the source of all problems, it wasnt. And I agree, bad design decisions were the root of the creative and gameplay problems.
The engine and their backend programming was based heavily on scripts, for everything. From what Im told scripts are useful for automating small repetitive tasks but far from ideal for any longer processes, causing heavy cpu load or something. Bad performance.

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FF14 1.0 would propably still fail with a very good engine.


Cheers

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Originally Posted by Larirawiel

You have to look at in a historical context. They started to make the game ~2005. Which engine, you could licence at that time would be way better than Crystal Tools for a MMORPG? Propably there was not a single one. So they decided to make an own engine. Other studios like Bioware or Zenimax Online used the HeroEngine. But they had to modify it heavily to make it work. And their MMORPGs still had really huge performance problems.

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Lineage II (released 2003) was using Unreal Engine 2, and it worked quite well, even with the large open world and 100+ player sieges. The engine's successor, Unreal Engine 3, was also available in March 2004.

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Originally Posted by LeCorbeaux

Lineage II (released 2003) was using Unreal Engine 2, and it worked quite well, even with the large open world and 100+ player sieges. The engine's successor, Unreal Engine 3, was also available in March 2004.

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Yes, but if you look at the Lineage 2 screenshots from that time, it looks more like Final Fantasy 11 Online. Perhaps the engine was not good enough for a high graphical fidelity and open world with a high number of players.

Edit: i asked Grok, which japanese studio has licenced the Unreal Engine in 2005. And the answer is: Namco. This was the only studio at that time. So maybe, there were some other, non-technical obstacles, which prevented the licencing of the Unreal Engine.


Cheers

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Originally Posted by Larirawiel

Yes, but if you look at the Lineage 2 screenshots from that time, it looks more like Final Fantasy 11 Online. Perhaps the engine was not good enough for a high graphical fidelity and open world with a high number of players.

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Because FFXI (May 2002) and L2 (October 2003) were the same generation of MMORPGs. FFXIV would have UE3 available, a significant graphical upgrade.

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Originally Posted by Larirawiel

You have to look at in a historical context. They started to make the game ~2005. Which engine, you could licence at that time would be way better than Crystal Tools for a MMORPG? Propably there was not a single one. So they decided to make an own engine. Other studios like Bioware or Zenimax Online used the HeroEngine. But they had to modify it heavily to make it work. And their MMORPGs still had really huge performance problems.

And the Luminous engine was not available in 2005.



FF14 1.0 would propably still fail with a very good engine.


Cheers

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It would have been better for them to at least commission the development of a game engine by people who actually make game engines, or recruit for it. Theyd just have to contract for full ownership which would have been more expensive and harder to negotiate. It's 1000% different from game programming. And all squex did at the time was pull their top programmers from other projects, hurting other games at the time, according to the interviews.

Btw the lead guy on 1.0 was moved down to the level design team.

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Originally Posted by Aphex

It’s not an MMO now, it’s an online RPG.

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I'd call it an online multiplayer game with some RPG elements.
The RPG elements were minimal to begin with and have only been reduced over the years.

Do level and gear progression make it an RPG? Then extraction shooters and first-person action games like Darktide would be RPGs.
Almost every game genre nowadays has some RPG elements, doesn't make them RPGs.

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Originally Posted by Luluna

I was a closed alpha tester and still to this day I had more fun in 1.0 than I do now. I do not care when all the none players always say "Nightmare" as I was there and I remember it clearly as if it was last year.

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I saw the intros the other day and I was blown away by the presentation. Not defending gameplay or story long term, but the game certainly had a charm and a vision that makes even the XIV we have today feel so restrained in comparison. 1.0 looked and sounded truly cinematic, whereas everything in XIV is wooden and sounds quite soft/forgettable even down to the mixing. Dialogue after cinematics was a little more concise and natural. The moogles playing off key absolutely took me out. XIV definitely lost something when 1.0 died.

I also did not play anywhere near 1.0 and my opinion is based on the objectively superior animations, camerawork, and uncompressed audio/voices/effects. XIV now can barely handle scenes like that anymore. Its just a shaky cam effect as people or objects zoom off the screen unnaturally and everything we hear is compressed to hell.

I think we call that nostalgia.

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Originally Posted by Luluna

I loved that you could ride on the ferry and go and sit inside. I made a lot of friends crossing over to Limsa on them. The characters had depth they changed character voices which I think is part of the reason I miss my old cat girl so much The world was vast with life and dangerous and no mounts no jumping it was great

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GOD, I wish FF14 still had travel like this. I would seriously just ride boats and airships repeatedly just to chill and talk to randos.