Is 1.18 the final straw?

[Mack]

Square Enix announced revised earnings expectations today. The company says that it will incur a net loss of 12,000 million yen for the previous fiscal year. Its previous forecast from February 3 listed a modest net profit of 1,000 million yen.
The revision is due to extraordinary losses, in part from a "tightened selection standard" for games. This will result in 4.5 billion yen in losses related to development cancellations. A press release announcing the revision did not share specifics beyond this.

I'm pretty sure though that this was due to extraordinary losses and has nothing to do with a video game.

[Mireille]

We will add content, just give us time' phase, and I think most of the players are at that point. It's now or never!

Agreed that people are at that point. I'm just not sure its a realistic expectation. Introducing content that gets invalidated by game mechanics changes, or becomes too weak when the jobs system is implemented, won't win them any points with the players who enjoy that content.

End this crap and give the xi team the funds and support to create a master piece in the vision of xi and I bet they would turn out a game far more successful then this, even in the begining with their exp i bet it would be solid, the fundamentals would be there at least and xiv didnt even get that right.

There is nothing left to do in XI. What can be accomplished has been, ergo the level cap increase to 99 in order to set a new bar of accomplishments. And in so doing they invalidated a lot of other content like Beseiged, Campaign, Sky, and Limbus. They are also out running out of room on the PS2 hard drive hence the content updates that reuse old zones. Two server merges in the last year show that the XI player base is leaving. Not because XI isn't great, but because they have essentially beaten the game to a point that it holds no more interest to them. Now an XI-2 set 300 years in the future where you start over from scratch might be interesting, but I don't think that's what people mean when they say they want XI-2.

I won't lie though. The tenth letter from the producer pretty much set my timetable in stone. If the game isn't up to speed by the end of summer, then I'll probably stop following it.

I've seen a few people post that letter X outlines stuff they are putting out this summer. Letter X outlines a lot of things that they are working on 'up to this summer,' but a great many of those things were planning with implementation at a later phase. I took the letter to mean that a lot that of that stuff, like the mount system being planned, won't be out until after the summer is over. Potentially long after the summer is over depending on the work involved. Don't be surprised if some of it it is story driven as well, meaning content updates taking place prior to the introduction of those updates. For example consider the possibility of a mount system something like what the summons were in FF XIII. If they did something like that you would need content, like the primal battles, leading up to it. If it doesn't say implementation in phase 1 then don't set yourself up with an expectation you will have it by the end of August.

In comparison to XI in a way we are playing a game whose boundaries are the equivalent of having all the outdoor zones directly between the three cities up to but not including Jueno. We haven't begun to scratch the surface of what this game may encompass. I also get the impression those three cities are the boonies, and not the major metropolis of this game. When we get to see the empire the technology level of this game may change drastically. I think SE stated that this game was going to have a much higher level of technology than XI, but I have yet to see any player usable item that didn't in concept exist in XI. No weapons more modern than a muzzleloader for example. The Empire has high tech to be sure though. The storyline at this point seems more about creating a connection between the player and the region encompassing the three nations. The stars of the story have yet to appear on stage. Look at the world map, and you only seen one continent, oh but up in the corner is another landmass enshrouded by clouds. Notice that some of the ocean names are cut off by the edges of the maps too. Where is the polar ice or the tropical regions? We're living in a tiny corner of the world, and we don't even have full access to that corner yet, but we want to judge things as if that corner is all that will ever be.

I'm not trying to argue that we shouldn't expect then to make good on the promise of this game, but its going to require more patience imo. If you want date X to be the end all be all moment that your dreams get realized don't be surprised of those dreams get shattered by the code monkeys. Again we are playing a free game, so you can take a long break and come back when they say it is ready. Better to do that than burn out and never return in my honest opinion.

[Kiara]

Look at the world map, and you only seen one continent, oh but up in the corner is another landmass enshrouded by clouds. Notice that some of the ocean names are cut off by the edges of the maps too. Where is the polar ice or the tropical regions? We're living in a tiny corner of the world, and we don't even have full access to that corner yet, but we want to judge things as if that corner is all that will ever be.

Hi Mireille,

Good points. I would say one thing that *is* a big mistake, if what you're saying comes true (that the current continent we're on is just the starter areas, so to speak), is that there's already too much *wasted space* currently.

If we're the equivalent of Windy, Sandy and Bastok right now, they really screwed up. How many people go and SP at:

* Lynxpatch Pelt
* Larkscall
* Snakemolt
* Lichenweed
* Woad Whisper Canyon
* Oakwood
* Zanr'ak
* The Red Labyrinth
* Twin Pools
etc., etc.

The list goes on and on regarding how many UNUSED areas there are in this game right now. So if they open up a "Jeuno," it'll be pretty sad to see all these major chunks of our current landmass go unused.

The sad part is, let's say they "balance" the above areas and finally use them for Leves or it's actually usable for SP Parties... it'd still be a disappointment for some because those areas are all really the same Copy & Pasted Textures and Geometry as the current more traveled camps nearby.

Don't get me wrong, I want the visual, exciting distinct change of environments like when we went from our starting Cities to Jeuno, Yuhtunga Jungle, to Boyahda Tree and Castle Oztroja and Sky and Sea, etc., but I wonder what they'll do with SO MANY unused areas right now (that are mostly copy & pasted textures)? It'll be interesting.

[Mack]

Yea its horrible how many unused sections of map there is and no matter what they use them for it will never feel like you're actually going to new area since everything looks the same.

[Mireille]

Hi Mireille,

Good points. I would say one thing that *is* a big mistake, if what you're saying comes true (that the current continent we're on is just the starter areas, so to speak), is that there's already too much *wasted space* currently.

If we're the equivalent of Windy, Sandy and Bastok right now, they really screwed up. How many people go and SP at:

* Lynxpatch Pelt
* Larkscall
* Snakemolt
* Lichenweed
* Woad Whisper Canyon
* Oakwood
* Zanr'ak
* The Red Labyrinth
* Twin Pools
etc., etc.

I would guess the goal was to prevent one camp from being over camped like Kazham, or Gob Hill was in XI, but at the same time we do have exactly that problem at Nanawa Mines and Camp Horizon because people hate to travel to Gridania. What I don't know, because I can't do a '/sea all,' is how many people are really logged in at any given time, so maybe if the active player base goes up people will exp in those locations, or move back to their starter city in self defense.

At launch a lot of camps that are empty now were packed then. Players would use Tranquil or Nine Ives now if they didn't congregate in Ul'dah and have to run across 5 zones to get there. That's a soluble problem though, and the eventual addition of a mount system may open up some camps that no one uses now. Some camps are just absurdly hard to get too like the flux near camp tranquil being guarded by rank 80 dragons. If for example we get airships, or flying mounts of some sort, a large world becomes a lot smaller in terms of travel, and agro won't block us from even acquiring a flux. We also haven't begun to see real content updates so who is to say all that wasted space will be wasted in a year.

The flux system in place is similar to what they do in abyssea except Anima takes a dumb amount of time to regen considering its the only fast travel available. There is no eqivalent of the teleport crags, that you could tele-taxi to for 1k, at the middle point to Jeuno/Sandy/Valk and made getting to a pt much easier. We burn all our anima as it regens and run everywhere. It might make more sense to have anima work more like cruor where you earn it through a variety of mechanisms instead of over time, but at the same time I think its not intended to be the only system that gets you to a location quickly. It was just supposed to be a beginning, but then the other methods ended up in terminal delay mode.

Bottom line a lot of stuff that could have made those camps functional, and for that matter Gridania and LL as home bases functional, is now on hold, so people hang out in Ul'dah and overcamp the stuff nearby.

[Warlyx]

adding ,invis and sneak will help too getting to some "camps" ....not that u need it atm , because u can always avoid any agro .....but are fun tools to have :P

[Rowyne]

I think for some, the amount of pent-up frustration at what happened with the launch of this game until now is so great that if Patch 1.18 is nothing short of the second coming of Chrono Trigger (or Final Fantasy IV or VI), it will be a "failure."

I don't blame people who have that much frustration, I sometimes wonder how I've stuck it out until now.

True. And I'm afraid of the exploding balls of meteor sized flame that will happen on these forums on patch day. It's inevitable, no matter how good it is. And you know someone's gonna /ragequit.

If we see 1.18 = ... "Altered the Targetmode Method Z so that now you can target Gathering Points using Up or Down" :P well... we have a problem. (^_~)

I LOL'ed IRL

[Malakhim]

Well I think that in order to avoid oblivion, people need to keep in mind that patch 1.18 is just the first step. It isn't going to be a giant miracle patch. Yoshi has been very specific about everything happening up until the end of the summer. If anyone rage quits when 1.18 hits in a few weeks, they can only blame themselves for setting themselves up for disappointment.

[Poipori]

I will restate what I posted in another thread couple weeks ago, 1.18 will not be a game changer, that's for sure.

Because according to the producer's letter and battle blueprint, we'll only be getting ONE rank 50 dungeon and ONE rank 30 dungeon, plus core auto attack, with some other minor changes.

To those that hoped for the new job system, well let's just say you won't be seeing that anytime soon, definitely not in summer, because according to the producer's letter, "Cost assessment for job system implementation" is in FUTURE task, "implementation of job system" is no where to be found, so I think the earliest you'll see white/black mage in game is end of the year.

So, be prepared to WAIT, WAIT and WAIT.

[Malakhim]

I will restate what I posted in another thread couple weeks ago, 1.18 will not be a game changer, that's for sure.

Because according to the producer's letter and battle blueprint, we'll only be getting ONE rank 50 dungeon and ONE rank 30 dungeon, plus core auto attack, with some other minor changes.

To those that hoped for the new job system, well let's just say you won't be seeing that anytime soon, definitely not in summer, because according to the producer's letter, "Cost assessment for job system implementation" is in FUTURE task, "implementation of job system" is no where to be found, so I think the earliest you'll see white/black mage in game is end of the year.

So, be prepared to WAIT, WAIT and WAIT.

Actually, everything that Yoshi wrote in his letter will be here by summer's end(which could be august or september, I have no idea), and that includes the job system.