I'll support Hiromichi Tanaka regardless, How about You?

[Rutelor]

Very clearly he was referring to people, forums and site writers not conversant in Japanese that made free-form versions of fact they had only half-perceived, since they had been originally stated in that language. Do American companies that expect their products to be consumed globally render everything into Japanese, Spanish, German, Chinese or French before the product is even launched?. I remember all the hyperbole about fatigue. When I got the game and started playing, I laughed; and when I first turned rank 30 after almost a week of being fatigued, I laughed even harder at all the misapprehensions I had heard and read. As it turned out, fatigue was the least of the game's problems.

As far as his infamous "insult" to the community is concerned, what seems to have happened is that many of my fellow Americans think the word foreign is a dirty word. To those people, who misuse it to vent their prejudices, it means a dirty thing: The wrongheadedly dirty thing they think when they apply it to someone from... let's just say elsewhere. And it stung them, when they found themselves to be the subject of what to them was a disparagement. But yes, we are all foreigners to the Japanese, or to the Mexican, or the Mongolian, and it doesn't have to mean a dirty thing.

But that will be the extent of my Tanaka apology. I think he had a long and expensive run at the helm of the game, and he was way short of steering it into safe port. People speak of "his vision" as though that alone is all being a producer takes. Or as though his company had been remiss in allocating enough time or resources for him to carry it out.

The FFXIV game system does not work, it never did and it wasn't going to: With the generously allocated, and extravagantly misspent resources he had available, Tanaka produced a barren, unbalanced, undercooked mess; it had more loose ends and anachronistic throw-backs than anything in the game industry I had ever experienced before; and the player base, almost unanimously denounced it as a failure. Either the vision didn't prove itself feasible, or the man with the vision couldn't make it happen. Whichever it is, Tanaka had to go. Five years and all those millions are quantitative enormities that leave him without possible excuse. After all, he is the man that conjured up this virtual world with only repetitive, unimaginative, unchallenging guildleves as a feasible way to advance nowhere. That and its one event: the half-cooked Behest. Even a literal, sketchy copy of the successful Campaign, from FFXI, or the innovative public quests from Warhammer Online, would've been more entertaining.

We know nothing of what occurred past the closed doors of SE's meeting rooms. Assuming (and it's far from certain) that there was pressure put on him from above, to publish quickly, before the game launched... What difference does that make? Every single game producer will have pressure from above to minimize expenses and publish quickly. Period. Tanaka is far from an oppressed victim within the hierarchical structure of the company he helped build and helps lead.

Also, he is far from the first old-time, big-name game designer to have failed egregiously in transferring his arresting vision, so palpable at the dawn of the MMO industry, into the so-called next-gen technological realm. The names McQuaid and Garriott preceded his fall with great bombast.

[Nayt]

Tanaka oughta retire. He's past his expiration date and it's time to bring in some fresh air

[Ogun_Riastradh]

Why do you have such a huge obsession with Tanaka? Tanaka may have some good work in the past, but he completely derailed the series and the company with this. He failed to listen or react to any feedback and made very few if any changes from alpha and beta. Even if he was getting pressure to release the game, as a producer its his job to stand up and say its not ready. He failed on so many levels, and you are proving your ignorance by continuing this argument. If it wasn't for Yoshi-P coming in, many more players, including myself would have left. You are hating on Yoshi so hard, yet he has made progress with the mess he was given, and he is literally rebuilding the whole game, including targetting, battle mechanics, job system, attribute stats, and I've heard that he's working on fixing this copy/paste BS in Grid.
I'll play a good game even if Tanaka is on board, and I won't play a bad game even if Yoshi is involved. This blind loyalty and entire thread are foolish and we should be concentrating on ways to make the game better. Bottom line....STFU.

[Blair]

Wow, there is surely a lot of Tanaka-hater. Well, I'm going to say what I see.

I joined FFXIV dec 2010. I didn't know how crazy it was alpha/beta, althought not as appealing as ffxi, it was fine with me with nov update, followed by Dec update.

I had a good 2 months. Made some friends, kill few NMs, tried all kind of leves.

But ever since Yoshi letters.. lots of people start to disappear, US, German, French, even JP players...

I haven't log on more than 2 months already. I understand Yoshi is doing "Preparation" and "Basic", but that is just not enough.

Why? I just don't see Yoshi being capable of providing a Remarkable Game to us.

Becuz You can see a lot of a person when he is doing his ground work.

A quick metaphor to explain my idea: there are many musician practice piano so hard everyday, but it doesn't make he Mozart.


I think Yoshi is good at twisting/promoting FFXIV, maybe FFXIV will be a blast when launch in China, PS3.. so on. But for how long??

Yoshi is unable to make FFXIV remarkable. FFXI is remarkable, FFXIV is not, not by Yoshi.

Again, I don't hate Yoshi, I'm not a blind follower of Tanaka, afterall, who are they to me?

You can judge things your way. I'm just saying what I see.

[Zenaku]

Wow, there is surely a lot of Tanaka-hater. Well, I'm going to say what I see.

I joined FFXIV dec 2010. I didn't know how crazy it was alpha/beta, althought not as appealing as ffxi, it was fine with me with nov update, followed by Dec update.

I had a good 2 months. Made some friends, kill few NMs, tried all kind of leves.

But ever since Yoshi letters.. lots of people start to disappear, US, German, French, even JP players...

I haven't log on more than 2 months already. I understand Yoshi is doing "Preparation" and "Basic", but that is just not enough.

Why? I just don't see Yoshi being capable of providing a Remarkable Game to us.

Becuz You can see a lot of a person when he is doing his ground work.

A quick metaphor to explain my idea: there are many musician practice piano so hard everyday, but it doesn't make he Mozart.


I think Yoshi is good at twisting/promoting FFXIV, maybe FFXIV will be a blast when launch in China, PS3.. so on. But for how long??

Yoshi is unable to make FFXIV remarkable. FFXI is remarkable, FFXIV is not, not by Yoshi.

Again, I don't hate Yoshi, I'm not a blind follower of Tanaka, afterall, who are they to me?

You can judge things your way. I'm just saying what I see.

ya i agree i just love how he got the job just because he play a lot of mmo i don't see how that titles a person to lead a MMO. All he doing is fixing up the game i bet once it fix and thing die down Tanaka would take lead or even take leader of the new mmo and it be 10x better then ffxiv or maybe not let's see and find out i still don't think yoshi is good enough to make this game better.

[Dargoth_Draconia]

I would back him further but I am a tad skeptical right now, I honestly think he shouldn't be a Director of another MMO and should stick to ideas and single player RPGs. He had a pretty decent vision of FFXIV but fail short on a couple of his ideas and his team was pretty crappy. Sure the game was rushed but at the pace he was working on it if the game came out today it would probably still be only as good as it is currently.

In reply to recent posts, FFXIV is pretty remarkable but it just lacks content for the time being, only reason FFXI is remarkable is because it has like 8 or 9 years on this game and at the beginning it was literally in the same state as this game. The Japanese release of FFXI was pretty buggy and crappy and lacked content from what I can tell for a good 6 months to a year until RotZ came out.

[Shizuo]

From his track record it is hard for me to believe that the poor game design and premature release was his doing. I have strong suspicions that some senior management at the company saw low earnings and wanted to rush the release of FFXIV in order to boost company earnings before the calculation of their annual performance-linked bonuses.

[Nuru]

ya i agree i just love how he got the job just because he play a lot of mmo i don't see how that titles a person to lead a MMO. All he doing is fixing up the game i bet once it fix and thing die down Tanaka would take lead or even take leader of the new mmo and it be 10x better then ffxiv or maybe not let's see and find out i still don't think yoshi is good enough to make this game better.

I don't even think they are going to use anyone from any of the FFXI and FFXIV team to work on the new MMORPG.

First, that would be one ridiculous move. SE, for the most part, should not recycle dev team members from games they have developed that don't have a very wide playerbase. The dev team will most likely be people that have worked with partnering companies that have Produced Games that SE has Published.

Second, they are going to "revitalize" FFXI and FFXIV, whether or not these MMORPGs are losing or gaining playerbase. They are focusing more on the monthly subscriptions as a source of income, as mentioned in the financial reports.

Third, Tanaka is still working behind the scenes. Think of Yoshi_P as just the designer for the game mechanics, while Tanaka is the planner for the main Content, which includes "Storyline, Missions, Expansions, etc." If it really were just up to Yoshi, I couldn't even begin to imagine how F'ked up the storyline would end up. (Not saying Yoshi would be a bad storyteller, but it probably wouldn't fit in with the rest of the game's story.)

There is no denying it, its inevitable that Tanaka is still directing certain points of FFXIV while focusing more on the main direction FFXI is heading.

[Rutelor]

I have strong suspicions that some senior management at the company saw low earnings and wanted to rush the release of FFXIV in order to boost company earnings before the calculation of their annual performance-linked bonuses.

Tanaka IS senior management!

[Rutelor]

... i just love how he got the job just because he play a lot of mmo ...

Really? And from which record did you find out the reasons why, and how he got the job?