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

[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.

[Alleo]

So true Voltyblast. I would love to have a nice mix of a good storyline and good gameplay and I really hope that SB can do that. But not only will the story be split between two big conflicts (and after the Uldah and WoD situations I am quite skeptic about it), we also dont really know about any new long lasting content. (Maybe Eureka but we also dont know much about it) At least right now it looks like either its less than HW, or a lot like the older content. Yoshida himself also stated that we wont get more difficult dungeons and that there wont be a true overhaul with skills (yet they still love to call it that..stop using words that are not describing the change..you will only give a false sense of hope and will receive lots of backlash if its not that way)

In the end I wish that they would work more with the community (and the whole community too not just mostly their Japanese player base). They could introduce ingame polls about wishes and improvements of the game. With a little bit of an reward people would take part of it. With that you will get the opinion of more than the people that are posting on the forums.

At the same time if you have a certain concept for new content in the game, post some ideas of it in the forum and see how we react to it. I am quite sure if they asked us if we want the LoV system that we have now or maybe something more simpler like a pokemon version that we would have probably chosen the second option and maybe LoV wouldnt have been such a failure..

And maybe have beta testers for your stuff that are at the same time players from your game. Because I am not sure if content like Diadem would have been approved if more people had tested it.

The least you could do is have a survey some time after the release of a new patch that will question us about the content. Maybe asking what we liked about a certain content or what we would improve. This will certainly costs SE money but IMO this might also be the best way to get to know how we like the content and maybe even give them better ideas for future stuff.

[Yeol]

I sure know that making a game is a lot of work, but I don't understand why Stormblood seems not good as ARR or the hype of the Heavensward launch.

Usually, people will be very hyped for an MMO before it's release.
They hype tends to slow down after each expansion because there are some players that MMO jump. Meaning they get so excited at first, then they say bad things about it like "It's just another MMO" then move on to the next new thing.

For me, I'm very hyped about Stormblood. Many of my friends returned back to play after they saw the full trailer and fan fest live. So I don't think hype have died from people who are faithful to this game.

[Ririta]

Usually, people will be very hyped for an MMO before it's release.
They hype tends to slow down after each expansion because there are some players that MMO jump. Meaning they get so excited at first, then they say bad things about it like "It's just another MMO" then move on to the next new thing.

For me, I'm very hyped about Stormblood. Many of my friends returned back to play after they saw the full trailer and fan fest live. So I don't think hype have died from people who are faithful to this game.

The problem is that SE is too tight lipped about information until the last possible moment, and the info that we get points to the expansion being the same as we already play.

For example, had they announced that the Omega raid would be a 16-person hardcore raid and showed some of its gameplay, people would be discussing that to heck and back.

But we know that it'll be just like Gordias, so there's not much to discuss (or get hyped about).

This is why WoW, very early, was talking about Mythic+ dungeons, Artifacts and open world legendaries. People want to be surprised, without surprise its hard to get people hyped.

I don't think it's because of MMO hoppers, but rather because we veterans already know what to expect.

[Lambdafish]

The problem is that SE is too tight lipped about information until the last possible moment, and the info that we get points to the expansion being the same as we already play.

For example, had they announced that the Omega raid would be a 16-person hardcore raid and showed some of its gameplay, people would be discussing that to heck and back.

I'm going to reserve my judgement on this until next week. I'm giving SE this upcoming live letter to give us a tonne of surprises. At fan fest they only have a limited amount of time, and they covered a very basic overview - the announcement, the lore, the locations, the jobs, and very light information about gameplay and features. This upcoming live letter will be their first opportunity (other than interviews) to really delve into the gameplay meat.