FFXIV is not a failure, never was.

[Eekiki]

Your signature image offends me, Minun. That girl is clearly nude from the waist down, and because you cropped it I can't see the good parts. HOW DARE YOU.

[Rhianu]

The game is not a failure, it is incomplete... it's basically a beta or even alpha at this point but we need to know where it is going before we can say if its a failure or not...

Uh... games that launch in an incomplete state are failures.

[Onidemon]

Uh... games that launch in an incomplete state are failures.

Nah... game developers that launch games in an incomplete state are failures. I'll never say it enough but TESTING is THE most IMPORTANT part of a product and 80% of companies these days forget that.

Ragnarok online was in Beta forever and when it came out it was great for that reason.

[Holy_Dragoon]

You could argue that many games are launched incomplete, as most have horrible bugs that are not caught in QA process. There's so much to test anymore because there is so much to them from a technical standpoint. FF XIV is not the first game I've played in an "unplayable" state.

[Akumu]

You could argue that many games are launched incomplete, as most have horrible bugs that are not caught in QA process. There's so much to test anymore because there is so much to them from a technical standpoint. FF XIV is not the first game I've played in an "unplayable" state.

Yea most games on release day are in their worst state with patches needed. So many bugs and other technical difficulties.

[Holy_Dragoon]

Unfortunately, FFXIV was released as an amusement park without many rides. And the park itself wasn't quite ready, so the rides couldn't be added as soon as we hoped.

[Kilta_Firelotus]

no ffxiv had rides, just not the ones ppl liked. Big difference.
There is content, just nothing ppl like atm. Ppl expected 8 years of content. Ppl all over over speculated instead of doing wait and see. Ppl chose to ignore the heafty server stability issues which did cause a good portion of what they wanted to release put on hold. Alot of ppl gave this game a 7/10 sorry but imo thats not fail. That is a work in progress. And unlike single player games. MMO are always a work in progress. Just ffxiv is a bit slower for reasons. If this game was as bad as ppl say, then no one woulda bought it after beta. You all had a mnth or so playing with the current battle system. And SE even said why the beta issues couldn't get fixed or changes ppl asked for.

MMo are never finished products we all always get patechs and major updates, bugs will happen and get fixed. Stuff will always get tweeked.

And before you said they had 8 years of ffxi, they started making ffxiv after the 3rd year of ffxi.

[Rhianu]

Ppl expected 8 years of content.

No, people just expected a decent amount of content. I mean, look at Rift, an MMO which is even younger than FFXIV, and already has more content today than this game is likely to have within the next year.

Also, I have to say that the argument that MMOs are never truly "finished" is a bad way to look at things. Yes, MMOs continually get more and more content added on top of the core game, but at the same time there is a point at which the core game can be called a completed product, and the game should not be released before that point.

[Malakhim]

My issue with Final Fantasy XIV(and possibly extends to FFXIII as well), is that it seems to grab my attention mostly by luck that I happen to like several things that they're doing rather than a direct attempt at grabbing me. Basically what I'm getting at is that I feel that the game was designed in a vacuum; improving on things like presentation and a few other key things, without really looking at how gaming and gamers by extension have evolved since FFXI's release back in 2002(JP).

Examples, why is the game still relying on lifeless text for its tutorials instead of doing what many other games have been doing for the past few years, which is creating dynamic tutorials that not only keeps the player's interest, but ensures that they learn exactly what they need to succeed? Why was a hardware mouse implemented so damned late in the beta(pretty much at retail launch)?

I can't help but think that FFXIV's(and FFXIII's by extension) failures were the result of failed communication within and without of the dev team. Things just feel too disjointed. Yoshi and the reshuffled dev team have acknowledged as much, and are working to correct it, so I have some faith that there's a transformation in project management going on in SE that will help things out for the better.

People have mentioned that it's been six months and we haven't seen anything entirely groundbreaking happening. I actually agree that 6 months is an awful long time for the type of stuff that we've seen(which really hasn't been much more than UI improvements and the base for a sidequest system). This however could be due to a multitude of reasons, and not necessarily due to a failure to act, such as logistics, bureaucracy, prioritizing issues, etc. I have no idea. It's quite possible that after this period of "sluggish" action, we might see a much, much larger rate of changes/improvements, etc.

Personally, I always thought that had the game had another year, it'd be in much better shape, so I'm going to be holding out until September 2011 to make any serious judgment.

[Rhianu]

Personally, I always thought that had the game had another year, it'd be in much better shape, so I'm going to be holding out until September 2011 to make any serious judgment.

Eh... if it was a year under Tanaka, I don't know if there would have been much improvement. Tanaka really doesn't seem to know how to give players what they want.

Heck, even in FFXI, there's stuff players have been begging for for years that they didn't start getting until just recently due to Tanaka leaving FFXI to work on FFXIV full time.

Thankfully though, Tanaka is no longer in charge of FFXIV, either.