Does SE know how to make good, fun games anymore?

[Cairdeas]

Then how to you explain AC? He kept mourning over Aeris death throughout the entire movie.

Melancholy is not Emo. Emo is a fake emotional state brought on to be used as an attention grabber. Mourning the death of a loved one is NOT emo. Especially if you were almost the one that killed them and watched as someone else did without being able to protect them.

[Chromeo_El_Lobo]

I enjoyed FFXIII.

I also enjoy FFXIV.

So I guess my answer would be, FFXIV.

[Corrderio]

Melancholy is not Emo. Emo is a fake emotional state brought on to be used as an attention grabber. Mourning the death of a loved one is NOT emo. Especially if you were almost the one that killed them and watched as someone else did without being able to protect them.

Fair enough, however it still doesn't change the fact he was a bland character.

[Cairdeas]

He might be to the casual observer but any character that can inspire someone to write up entire psychological evaluations of the individual character as a thesis for psychology can't be that bland. :P

[Winterclaw]

Wasn't WoW pretty good when it came out? Also, there's a different between a decent release and a beta quality release.


Speaking of WoW, there's something that they are doing right and the Polls SE has been conducting clue me in on what they haven't been doing well. WoW is the king of the hill and is growing in subscriptions for one good reason: they have an idea of what their fans want and try to give it to them. SE? I don't know any more. I think the new guy might have some idea what's wrong with this game in general but needs to poll the fans to make sure. Polling is an art form so I'm not exactly sure I'd trust it.

The inherent problem of a final fantasy MMO is it needs to be a FF game and it needs to be a good MMO. Also MMO fans have their own wants and needs that console fans don't. It's a different culture. Part of the problem, in my estimation, is that SE as a company thinks that console JRPGs and MMOs are all the same thing, which is an error. The other problem I'm not sure they know what FF fans want, what MMO players want, and as a company, what they really want in a game. So in the case of FF14, the guy who made it made a collection of MMO components without really knowing what an MMO should be or what makes them fun.

Whatever happened to iterative design processes or hallway usability testing? Was there not one QA guy who stood up and said, "we're running off of a cliff here"? Somehow I doubt that unless the QA in japan is different than the QA I've been involved with. That's why I tend to think the problems we are facing now are because of a top-down directive. You have an idea, you test it. If the average QA guy or employee thinks there's problems with it, then chances are your average fan will as well. So you go back to square one and rethink your ideas. I mean the lack of an AH alone is a clue that no one really tested the game for fun or usability (ie they had to improve the wards after release) or that SE knew what an MMO player wants.

So tying things back into WoW, they are the king of the hill. 11+ million subs don't lie. Plus everyone's friends are over there. So if your game isn't good enough for people to stay, ie you don't know what your core players want or at least what their real needs are, they aren't going to like your game or stay. So to make people stay, you've got to know what you like and you've got to know what they like. However when it becomes a too much of a business, you can lose touch of that unless you make a concerted effort to stay on top of things.

[Cross]

I must say, I didn't like XII at all.
XIII had a great story, but the gameplay was just meh and I was very dissappointed about the "secrets"...cause...there weren't very much.

I loved I to VII , X and XI. Also Dissidia was epic.

I would love to see the old school FF RPG: worldmaps, secrets, old-fashioned battlesystem.

[Galamantyl]

You'll understand one day when you grow up into a big company with billions of dollars from other people's pockets on the line.

[Swev]

I rather see a new Chrono Trigger / Cross game come out. I love that game.

[wind]

Yet aside from those as a possibility, I'm not sure I can say anything that square enix has released more recently have been that good compared to what they were able to produce in the past (FF6,7,10, most of the DQ games, etc).

@OP this title is a lil misleading simply because SE has only made games XI(merged during XI being released, so Squaresoft made the beginning of XI) and higher. 6, 7, 10 all were made by squaresoft not square enix.

[Moth]

Really... how is this thread helpful AT ALL in the sharing of ideas to help FFXIV grow and change in a positive way?.... which is pretty much the entire point of the official message boards right now as SE stated.
It amazes me that these threads continue to pop up on here.