Do you want to play Final Fantasy XIV?

[Sephr]

And yet, here you are, much to the dismay of many.

Not even going to have a crack at the ridiculous Tanaka-worship going on here, but he had a shot and he totally, absolutely and unquestionably ruined it. The game he turfed out was a steaming pile, and he was completely out of touch with what the MMO community wanted (His ideas for the market ward system looked like a damn train wreck from day 1, he expected the community to go there, barter and act as if it was the real world? Sorry but that's not how games work.)

Yoshida seems like he's pretty much the last hope for this game to be pulled out of the gutter and into something remotely playable, but sure, you play the battered housewife, because at the end of the day it won't change anything.

Tanaka managed to launch possibly the biggest failure in Square-enix's history (yes, there was probably pressure from above, but he certainly seemed to continue his stupid archaic distant attitude all the way through development and 'beta'). He sucked, and sadly they put him back on FFXI rather than ditch him.

If you want FFXI-2 or WoW, then obviously FFXIV won't appeal to you, but that doesn't mean the foundational concept is wrong and needs discarding. It just means you should go play WoW or FFXI or any other Everquest-clone.

It didn't appeal to ANYONE except the hardcore few, do you not see that? Do you really think telling people to go play something else is going to make this a successful game?

The crafting system is also a parallel to the Vanguard system, so it is clear that FFXIV was not developed in a vacuum, but developed under the influence of the MMO industry. Anyone who says FFXIV lacked direction and meaningful development obviously aren't looking hard enough.

Hilarious. You shouldn't have to 'look hard' to find the direction, that's the freaking point. You should be sent in a direction by the game and it should be somewhat obvious what your general goals are, in FFXIV there were none.

If you look at the basis of FFXIV, you see a player-driven economy (crafted gear being the best in game), community-based gameplay (linkshells and the would-be-released player-run companies), and an active combat system. These are all responses to problems in other MMOs.

If it ain't broken, don't fix it. Innovate for sure, but don't just blindly try and tackle what you foresee as a problem for the sake of it. Their 'fix' was total crap.

There were some things that went wrong with FFXIV, but it seemed like those errors were due to a lack of time and feedback implementation rather than a stubborn unwillingness to better the game.

Whilst I agree time could've made the game better, I don't think it could ever have reached it's full potential under Tanaka.