With all of the limitations holding FFXIV back, why not make a new FF MMORPG?

[Tint]

"The thinnest expansion"

It's not even out and we'll have 2 years of patches we don't know anything about.

lol

It's 3 eight man raids (normal and savage), 2 ultimate raids, 3 twentyfour man raids, 7 dungeons, 5 trials (normal and extreme), 1 deep dungeon and 4 new "Eureka styled" maps.

And of course the Expansion itself has 8 Dungeons and 3 Trials (2 Extreme).

Sure there might be some stuff we know nothing about yet. But we already know like 90% of it.

[Aylis]

If that happens, it's time for a new Final Fantasy MMORPG.

A question I've often asked myself over the coarse of my time in FFXIV is after everything will they even ever think about attempting another FF MMO. I honestly believe no, no they won't.

Suffice to say FFXIV had a rocky start. I was around for the start of 1.0 and was around till it collapsed. Already the company invested a lot of money to make 1.0 happen. When it was deemed a failure they lost a lot of money and a lot of fan backlash during this time. Subsequently costing them even more money to rebuild what they could from 1.0 and regain consumer trust. During the shut down would probably have been the best time to rebuild totally from scratch and maybe FFXIV could have been a lot more then what it is now. Except shareholders and all and SE not wanting a stain on the FF name with a failure in the franchise. they did what they had to do, a good bad decision basically given all the limitations and something I've wondered if they wanna take that risk again.

I'm not taking anything away from Yoshida in that light, he did do good in pushing what he can to the limit and with a small dev team on top of it. It just raises the question if he did really save FFXIV or if he just gave it a few more years without being on life support. Despite FFXIV's new found success between the relaunch to now. The dev team has still remained small. If they did do another FF MMO would they go into it with a similar small dev team and the new MMO would gradually fall into the same path FFXIV is now. Even with all the money its making is another question I've wondered.

Finally why I don't believe they will make another MMO is well, fan backlash. From what I seen over the years is no matter what the devs do, none of it will be right in the eyes of the fans. My friend even told me of a quote Yoshida said, I think it was at one of the last fanfests where he said something along the lines of they keep new content ideas strictly as optional content due to backlash. Granted yes my personal feelings somethings could have been implemented differently (BLU having the job being able to level to 70 and have its full kit for example) and a lot could be solved by playtesting and beta'ing new content and a closed method of providing feedback over a place where things de-evolve into a screaming match, insulting and attacking the devs, which is what we have now. The arguments about BLU being a limited job, gunbreaker being a tank, dancer being a dps. Veira and Hothgar. I'd be totally surprised at this point if the devs put in anymore new races or new jobs in the game due to this all wearing down on them. There's only so much a person can take in knowing no matter what they do, it's going to be hated.

Looking at this through a dev and company perspective, given all they went/are going through. In regards to a new MMO if they do indeed sit and ask themselves "Is this worth doing again?"

[UserHere]

And of course the Expansion itself has 8 Dungeons and 3 Trials (2 Extreme).

Slow down Nostradamus, this expansion actually has 9 dungeons at launch .

[Dualgunner]

It'd be neat to see what Yoshi's team could accomplish without the fetters of 1.0. If that meant FFXVI being another mmo, or even FFXIV-2, I'd be interested to see what happens. That said, they would be kind of crazy to try and run four mmos simultaneously.

[Daralii]

It'd be neat to see what Yoshi's team could accomplish without the fetters of 1.0. If that meant FFXVI being another mmo, or even FFXIV-2, I'd be interested to see what happens. That said, they would be kind of crazy to try and run four mmos simultaneously.

5, since I think XI Mobile is far enough along that it was playable at PAX.

[Dualgunner]

5, since I think XI Mobile is far enough along that it was playable at PAX.

Yeeeeaaaaaa they should probably look to not making another mmo at this point.

[Genz]

Because despite the limitations, FFXIV is being considered a success, so on one hand there is no need to make a new MMO, and on the other hand, if they did make a new MMO, it would just be a FFXIV-2 on a lot of things (no customisation, trash quests in a useless open world, linear instanced donjons, fan-service, overdrawn story with botched cut-scenes, etc.)

Another thing is FFXIV is kind of a thorn in SE foot. They certainly don't want to make a MMO now, and they probably didn't want to make one around 2012 if they didn't have FFXIV to rebuild.

[silentwindfr]

I agree, although possibly not for the reasons you've listed. Really, this applies to Final Fantasy as a whole, I feel that unfortunately FFXIV is keeping the series afloat all on its own for quite some years now, and that's frankly pretty unfair. I think this contributes to some of the loftier expectations for the game. I'm guilty of it, I admit. I feel it is what's representing Final Fantasy as a whole right now, especially considering FFXV....wasn't it. Even if you're a fan of the game, it was quite the departure.

I don't necessarily disagree with what you've mentioned are possible limitations, but I also feel a more pressing reason for a new Final Fantasy (MMO or not) is the series needs to move past it and XV and get a fresh face. I feel this will also free up FFXIV to go at its own pace and have more freedom to accomplish its own goals, instead of being forced into THE Final Fantasy for a while now.

the trouble with FF did begin when they had this silly idea of fabula nova crystallis... this whole arc is a mess.... 13 was from bad to meh and 15 was.... lacking in some aspect while being an interesting game i feel they have loose the touch with the game.

i don't think they need a new ff mmo, they need to stop to take soo much of the benefit of the game from it for other stuff and invest a bit into it.... yoshida was forced to create the shop for be sure to get enough money for develop more stuff.... it's insane to think that the company is not giving them more support.

Because despite the limitations, FFXIV is being considered a success, so on one hand there is no need to make a new MMO, and on the other hand, if they did make a new MMO, it would just be a FFXIV-2 on a lot of things (no customisation, trash quests in a useless open world, linear instanced donjons, fan-service, overdrawn story with botched cut-scenes, etc.)

Another thing is FFXIV is kind of a thorn in SE foot. They certainly don't want to make a MMO now, and they probably didn't want to make one around 2012 if they didn't have FFXIV to rebuild.

no it's more FF14 did save them, when ARR did come out... honestly without FF14 they will have never finish KH 3 and FF15....

[Daralii]

the trouble with FF did begin when they had this silly idea of fabula nova crystallis... this whole arc is a mess.... 13 was from bad to meh and 15 was.... lacking in some aspect while being an interesting game i feel they have loose the touch with the game.

i don't think they need a new ff mmo, they need to stop to take soo much of the benefit of the game from it for other stuff and invest a bit into it.... yoshida was forced to create the shop for be sure to get enough money for develop more stuff.... it's insane to think that the company is not giving them more support.



no it's more FF14 did save them, when ARR did come out... honestly without FF14 they will have never finish KH 3 and FF15....

They never did finish XV. Episodes Lunafreya, Aranea, and Noctis were all cancelled mid-development.

I largely liked the XIII trilogy, so my opinion might not be sane, but the biggest problem with XV was that they tried to go way too big and it ended up drawn out for way too long, which isn't exactly surprising considering how much time Nomura spent at the helm. XVI would probably be fine if it was just a return to basics after how radically they tried to change how the games were structured after... IX, I guess.

[Kirsten_Rev]

Suffice it to say, Yoshi P and his developers did a heroic thing in saving Final Fantasy XIV. They deserve to move on to new and better projects. We deserve to play new and better games. If Final Fantasy XIV starts to lower the bar, it's time to make the choice that's better for all of us--gamers and developers--and start fresh.

You're making two assumptions here that I think are quite flawed.

(1) You're assuming that it's XIV's underlying architecture holding it back, rather than the development team's choices. I think it's a mix of both, with the team choices being the primary - rather than the secondary - culprit. The relentlessly vertical itemization scheme, in particular, results in a lot of wasted effort.

It's quite stunning to realize, for instance, that the development team put in the effort to make, for Stormblood alone, a total of 15 dungeons, three Raid tiers (really 12 Primal fights), two EX fights, three Alliance Raids, and 9 Primals. That is a massive amount of content, but we never get to 'feel' like there's content on this scale, because of how quickly and lazily content is tossed onto the garbage heap of the Roulette.

It's a huge waste of resources. They need to figure out how to recycle content more effectively, make it relevant for longer - while not feeling completely stale. They don't need to go full XI with the itemization, but it'd be great if they slowed things down. That would afford them the resources they need to make all these QoL improvements, including female Hrothgar and male Viera, while also giving us more of a feeling that there are a variety of things to do.

Again, this is a burden imposed by the dev team's own leadership and design decisions - not platform limitations.

(2) You're assuming that SE is capable of designing a more robust and flexible system than what XIV is working with right now. I think that's a massive amount of faith to place in a company that has yet to demonstrate such a capability.

If I knew for a certainty that SE could design a truly expansive, flexible platform for an MMO - something on par with an Unreal or Unity engine - I'd say go for it. If nothing else, such a game would last for longer than XIV does, because it wouldn't need such a large development team to churn out content.

But I seriously, seriously doubt they could pull this off. They simply don't have the expertise with graphics engines that long-time PC companies like id Software / Epic Games / Ubisoft / etc. do. In all likelihood, we'd get another engine that supports beautiful artwork and overly relies on particle effects, with fair to poor technical capabilities in all other respects.