[Stormblood Budget] Where all the money's gone ?

[Alleo]

ear me out, not saying it's useless but come one, we don't really need longer voiced cutescenes ! Once you've done them they become useless, we need things to actually do to not get bored :/

I agree with you. This is simply no single player game that you might enjoy for the story, this is a MMO. They can go and focus on the story more than other MMOs but they should not forget that the most important part of a MMO is the gameplay and the rest of the content. Unlike single player games where you sell complete games, here you need people that pay for it each month to create more. And people will only stay if they have something interesting to do. And like you said, the story is something you only do once. (And some are not even watching it once) I mean each new patch you can go through the story in like 2 hours depending if you have a dungeon/trial in it or not and be done with it for the next three/four months. I really do like a good story (even though some story decision in HW really took me away from it in this game..) but I also know that I would not play and pay for this game at all if the rest was not there.

I really hope that with SB we will have more content that you can put your time in without it being too frustrating. For example in other games fishing is a mini game itself. You need to press certain combinations of letters to succeed and I kinda liked that. At the same time you could also just simply do nothing with the consequence of having a lower chance or worse fish. In FF14 you sit there, have enough equipment, the right bait with you, are there at the right time with the right weather...and yet getting the fish is still so much RNG..that it really does not feel much fun. And having fun is really important.

[Voltyblast]

This is simply no single player game that you might enjoy for the story, this is a MMO.

I also agree and I think the game should just be more about gameplay WITH story elements together: Afterall we have SWTOR to make a good comparison when it comes to storytelling, with their well-done dialogues and ALL voiced cutscenes, even for basic quests. Sure some lines are recycled but they get the job done. But here? For one thing, I haven't seen an MMO with such a lack of voice acting and when there is one, it's usually f2p made by small companies where they rather spend money on other things than voice acting. But this is supposed to be an AAA game...yet there's as much dialogue as a ps1 game? And even then, I'm all for voiceless games - heck I loved Legend of Dragoon and similar back in the day - but at this point, I'd say the dialogue could be just more fluid and better paced: I can't stand a para and half worth of text when it can summed it up in 10 words.

Still, this is also why I usually don't even bother discussing anymore and it caused me so much issues with the game's community in the past (especially in my server, wherein fear of harassment I just name changed for a good year) that I kept most of my opinions of myself, where instead of actually acknowledging the faults of having a "story focused mmo" they simply say "you're wrong you're just mental/hater/etc.

At this point I just "live and let live": if people want more FF story then I guess more power to them, since the stories in the latest games don't make a lot of sense anymore and since 12 (and partially 10) I just dropped them and moved on other franchises. Their plots are somewhat understandable at least.

But to sum up my thoughts, I want a deal between gameplay and story, but if the story is the one getting the most - and people are fine with it (because it's final fantasy, it has to have a story) then I suppose nothing will change and we'll get less and less content, but more and more story...which is good until it's over in those 2 to 5 hours of gameplay for what, 6 months of waiting?

Oh well, at least 1.0 had a great story and even if its gameplay sucked and it lived long enough thanks to it.

PS: yes that was sarcastic.

[Talraen]

Oh well, at least 1.0 had a great story and even if its gameplay sucked and it lived long enough thanks to it.

PS: yes that was sarcastic.

Not for nothing, but 1.0 at launch had very little story (there were like half a dozen story quests for the entire game, plus three per class), and that was one of the many early complaints. Leves were intended to replace typical MMO sidequests, and people hated that, and demanded quests. Indeed, quests were one of the first things added when they started revising the game. The good parts of 1.0's story were also all added well after the game had already failed. So, sarcasm or no, 1.0 did not fail in spite of a good story at all. It failed in pretty much every respect at launch. (Except crafting... I miss the overly complicated, insanely detailed original crafting. /sigh)

[odintius]

Not for nothing, but 1.0 at launch had very little story (there were like half a dozen story quests for the entire game, plus three per class), and that was one of the many early complaints. Leves were intended to replace typical MMO sidequests, and people hated that, and demanded quests. Indeed, quests were one of the first things added when they started revising the game. The good parts of 1.0's story were also all added well after the game had already failed. So, sarcasm or no, 1.0 did not fail in spite of a good story at all. It failed in pretty much every respect at launch. (Except crafting... I miss the overly complicated, insanely detailed original crafting. /sigh)

I miss the gear and materia it had back then about it /sigh

[Shougun]

(Except crafting... I miss the overly complicated, insanely detailed original crafting. /sigh)

I really liked that too, when I made my first chain mail I felt like "I JUST MADE MY FIRST CHAIN MAIL!!!" lol. Now, meh, next item. I would like some of the exp growth to change if they kept that system but I did really enjoy the complexity of making said items. Although I'd probably also be begging much harder for the ability to craft from retainer's inventory then or some sort of GW2 material system lol.. so many items :P.

Still, agreed the recipes were pretty cool.

I miss the gear and materia it had back then about it /sigh

The materia that shattered your gear if it failed? Or something else about the system?

[Talraen]

I really liked that too, when I made my first chain mail I felt like "I JUST MADE MY FIRST CHAIN MAIL!!!" lol. Now, meh, next item. I would like some of the exp growth to change if they kept that system but I did really enjoy the complexity of making said items. Although I'd probably also be begging much harder for the ability to craft from retainer's inventory then or some sort of GW2 material system lol.. so many items :P.

lol yeah I had a very similar experience. Some random guy was like "can you make me a hempen cowl?" and after crunching numbers and drawing flow charts for 10 minutes, I determined that... no. I mean I had a ton of hempen cloth (since it was like 2 moko grass for 12 yarn and 2 yarn for three bolts of cloth or something), but some of the pieces were like, taupe, and others were slate gray, and you could only find the appropriate bugs in two different continents. So I went on a world-wide quest for dye bugs, leveled up my alchemist to make them into dyes, and eventually completed my epic level 5 body piece. It's still my favorite memory of 1.0.

Also, no lie, my bewilderment at needing wood chips to make leather caused me to research how leather is actually made. It was educational and fun! Well, educational at least.

[odintius]

The materia that shattered your gear if it failed? Or something else about the system?

No the stat it gave were better and varied like magic attack pontency + 9 the system back then to create them can go away. What we currently have is a joke the gear increase that they newly introduce in stats should be were you sprit bond it once 100% you can chose to allot stat points into repeat it until it max given a reason for it to sprit bond in the first place and the materia I mention as a bonus option but meh it is what it is..

[Voltyblast]

Snip

That's my point: even with a huge name behind it, 1.0 failed because of what you said: the game sucked for various reasons, and the story also sucked: basically everything sucked. No offense of course.
Why do you think 2.0 became famous? Well, not for the story but because it was playable after a long time: it was the GAMEPLAY that made the game successful, not the story or the franchise itself because if it did, then 1.0 wouldn't be shut down. And I even recall wanting to give that game a shot and suffice to say, I was glad to have listened to my guts.
A big brand helps but even that couldn't help that misstep of a game and I'm fairly sure 1.0 learned that lesson the hard way.

And this is why I'm concerned: they're slowly making the same mistake they did with 1.0, focusing more on "fanservice" (in this case the franchise itself) instead of what actually made it good (the gameplay). Say what you will, but if this game suddenly begins to "fail" in the gameplay department, it will eventually do the same end of 1.0. I mean think about it: we're basically 2 expansions in and nothing really changed so far nor they mentioned any drastic changes: we might get some improvements over combat but for all we know it might be so little, it might as well be a patch. In most other games when an expansion hits we see drastic changes in gameplay but also content: new modes are introduced, new battle mechanics or even new and different methods for gaming itself (I remember WotLK and the introduction of the phasing, which was a pretty big deal).

What do we have with HW, beside the same exact stuff from ARR, that is actually new? ? Diadem? POTD? Aquapolis? Everything else is basically the same under a new coat of paint.

And I'm saying this because I liked 2.0: it was my first final fantasy after a long pause that made me dislike the entire franchise and pretty much any of their games: they just lacked quality and weren't fun anymore. I remember seeing 2.0 and thinking "Wow they're finally listening to their fans, I'm surprised...maybe they're not that bad".
But now it's a repeating of the same thing and, once again, I'm moving away from them: the reason why I'm here ranting about this aspect it's because I truly hoped for the best and finally started to care about their products.
But at this point, I will just call it a day and move on better games.

Thank God I skipped their latest games at least...a shame considering people say Nier Automata is good, but I'm just too scared to try it.

[Talraen]

That's my point: even with a huge name behind it, 1.0 failed because of what you said: the game sucked for various reasons, and the story also sucked: basically everything sucked. No offense of course.
Why do you think 2.0 became famous? Well, not for the story but because it was playable after a long time: it was the GAMEPLAY that made the game successful, not the story or the franchise itself because if it did, then 1.0 wouldn't be shut down. And I even recall wanting to give that game a shot and suffice to say, I was glad to have listened to my guts.
A big brand helps but even that couldn't help that misstep of a game and I'm fairly sure 1.0 learned that lesson the hard way.

And this is why I'm concerned: they're slowly making the same mistake they did with 1.0, focusing more on "fanservice" (in this case the franchise itself) instead of what actually made it good (the gameplay). Say what you will, but if this game suddenly begins to "fail" in the gameplay department, it will eventually do the same end of 1.0. I mean think about it: we're basically 2 expansions in and nothing really changed so far nor they mentioned any drastic changes: we might get some improvements over combat but for all we know it might be so little, it might as well be a patch. In most other games when an expansion hits we see drastic changes in gameplay but also content: new modes are introduced, new battle mechanics or even new and different methods for gaming itself (I remember WotLK and the introduction of the phasing, which was a pretty big deal).

What do we have with HW, beside the same exact stuff from ARR, that is actually new? ? Diadem? POTD? Aquapolis? Everything else is basically the same under a new coat of paint.

You're kind of all over the place here. While I actually agree that gameplay is what made 2.0 succeed, you're just asserting that without really backing it up. Would 1.0 have succeeded if the gameplay had been good (and the story still nonexistant)? Maybe? I have no idea. To have good gameplay, 1.0 would have been so fundamentally different that I can't even speculate.

But "fanservice" was distinctly not 1.0's problem. If anything it was the exact opposite. 1.0 used no FF classes, took basically nothing from FFXI, and was in every way trying to be a totally new thing. I mean, look at what was added by 1.23: quests, traditional jobs, primal battles, meteor, Bahamut. All of the fanservice was added in preparation for 2.0. I don't think it's why 2.0 succeeded, but the more fanservice-y version of the game is also by far the more successful one.

I don't know that we need any drastic changes. I quite like the game the way it is, and everything I hated about Heavensward (i.e., the changes to crafting and gathering) were drastic changes. I don't mind the continuation of the tomestone model, the hard vs. extreme primals, or any of that. My favorite change in Heavensward was adding an easy version of the raid, which was pretty drastic but is not the sort of thing people seem to be clamoring for. I never played WoW, so I can't comment on how they do things, but people on these forums are always pining for FFXI, and the expansions to that game never changed anything drastically except perhaps at the very top levels (which I didn't do). It was new zones, new jobs, new quests, and people seemed fine with it. I'm easy to please, though. Stormblood could literally just add Samurai and nothing else and I'd be excited for it, lol.

And I'm saying this because I liked 2.0: it was my first final fantasy after a long pause that made me dislike the entire franchise and pretty much any of their games: they just lacked quality and weren't fun anymore. I remember seeing 2.0 and thinking "Wow they're finally listening to their fans, I'm surprised...maybe they're not that bad".
But now it's a repeating of the same thing and, once again, I'm moving away from them: the reason why I'm here ranting about this aspect it's because I truly hoped for the best and finally started to care about their products.
But at this point, I will just call it a day and move on better games.

Thank God I skipped their latest games at least...a shame considering people say Nier Automata is good, but I'm just too scared to try it.

A lot of people hate on the latter Final Fantasy games, but they still all sold well, and I happen to love them. 12 might be my favorite, 15 was the most emotionally satisfying, and I love 13 and think the main criticism ("it's so linear") is ridiculous because it applies just as much to 10, which everyone seems to like. (Honestly I suspect the reason so many people didn't like 13 was because it wasn't fanservice-y enough.) 13-2 in particular seemed inspired to me, though Lightning Returns turned me off early enough that I never got very far. Tastes vary, but Final Fantasy is still popular. It's not at its PS1-era peak, but it's hardly dying.

And it's not all gameplay or story in these games, either. 12 and 15 both have kind of terrible gameplay mechanics, but the story and storytelling are top-notch in both. 13's mechanics are super fun and unlike anything else in the series, but the story turns super dumb in the latter half. 13-2 took 13, made it less linear, and added an interesting story that goes to places I didn't expect it to.

Plus, a lot of people who claim to hate the story in 14 also admit they skip the cutscenes, and a lot of people who hate recent FF games admit they didn't play them. So...

[Voltyblast]

Snip

Yes, 1.0 would've been better if it had better gameplay: not only it was bad from a fun perspective (slow combat, clunky menus, etc), but it was also bad from a technical and design standpoint (graphic were so high yet unstable nearly no pc could play it, and areas were copy&paste mess with basically no thought process). 2.0 was a success not only because it was a more recognizable game (it's basically your usual Wow-clone with tab targeting: everyone knows that) but also because it WORKED, it actually worked for most computers and believe it or not, there are people who have low-end pcs because of budget problems. I'm one for example!

So while I have no basis to confirm my point, this is called "an educated guess": if 1.0 played similarly to 2.0 it would've at least succeeded to stay afloat.
If anything, if my guess is wrong and 1.0 would always be bad regardless, then there was something else that was fundamentally broken to begin with, beyond graphics and technical issues.

On top of that, 1.0 was somewhat fan-servicy...why? Well it tried to recapitulate the shadow of its previous game, ffxi. Again this is all "educated guesses" but think about it: the gameplay was slow, clunky, very menu based, the travelling was mostly on foot despite the anima thing and the world was more seamless...while I haven't played it at all from those videos I saw, the game really looked like FFXI-2 rather than a new installment. The problem was it didn't cater enough for those old school fans either and only the true hardcore fans remained to the end...I mean, I saw people defending that game for how "truly final fantasy-ish" it was. What does that even mean, besides trying to be similar to their old flame FFXI? And look no further than these forums: how many people CONSTANTLY bring up ideas that are taken from FFXI?

Once again this all an educated guess, but FFXIV in both the old and recent incarnation, were always somewhat fan-servicy to some degree. It just failed on a very fundamental level (both gameplay and technical) to actually be any good on its own.

However, when I meant fan-service in my post, I meant in FFXIV 2.0: lots of stuff in here are obviously made to attract old-school FF fans...I mean we got that ff6 boss fight, we got odin, somes bosses that come from older ff games (I didn't know calcabrina was from one!) we got jobs that while some are completely off (MCH, AST) we have MANY that are from the FF world (ninja, warrior/berserker, Red mage, Samurai, etc). Not only that but we got "other" kind of fanservice: we got cat girls, cute lizard girls that shouldn't exist and most of the races are quite literally rip offs from ffxi. In addition, we got many references from previous games: those galrean dudes are obviously the judges from ff12, the bipedal mount (i forgot its name) it's from ff6, a lot of costume rewards are from older FF games (Cloud, cecil, tidus, yuna, etc) and the list goes on.

And before you say anything, I'm totally fine with fan service: I honestly don't care about any FF related stuff but I know people like it - I liked persona 4 dancing all night for crying out loud. But, if the fanservice gets priority over gameplay, then problems will start to arise because only those few will really truly enjoy it, but being niche doesn't bring money anymore. Look at Wildstar to see what I mean.

So to answer also at Berethos about drastic changes, what I mean is to take what made ARR good and improve on it: things like tome grinding should be tweaked in order to improve itself but instead it's a carbon-copy of ARR without any changes. Dungeon works the same way but how about additional objectives like timed runs, an achievement for specific actions and additional reward for that? Dungeons don't have to be hard to be fun: they just need a reason to be re-run. Need a proof? Just look at EX primals: they have mounts that promote re-runs constantly. You think they would be alive to this day if they hadn't? I just want the same kind of treatment for the rest of the game, that's all I meant!

PS: while the taste is subjective, just because final fantasy is popular it doesn't necessarily mean it's good. CoD is popular and it's pretty much filth. However, I have played games that deliver better in both storytelling and gameplay that, Final fantasy now seems mediocre to my eyes: I loved the Shin Megami Tensei since Digital Devil Saga (not just persona), but also other games like the Atelier series (they looked like fables, which is nice) and the Ar Tonelico trilogy (very interesting lore and characters), as well as older gems like Suikoden and Shadow Hearts (No koudelka unfortunately, but SH2 is my favorite of all time).

What I'm trying to say is, FF and SE in general don't really inspire me to buy their games anymore (FFXIV is pretty much my first and last game from them ever and I don't even think I might try the expansion either) because of their quality drop: I rather spend 90 euros in CE for a series I know that is good because of their previous titles like Atlus (not just persona, but Etrian Odyssey is amazing and Shin Megami Tensei games are top notch games despite their difficulty) or even Gust (Atelier games are often hit and miss but Ar Tonelico is one of my favorite trilogy around but I can't wait for Blue Reflection and Nights of Azure 2) than any latest SE games, considering what they've done (not just 1.0, but also many bad spin-offs like Theatrhymn, Dissidia, World of Final Fantasy and final fantasy explorers).

Call me narrowminded or stubborn or whatever, but I have only so much money that I can spend and I don't want to make a crapshoot anymore: I'll just stick with what I know.