What happened to the 8 years of data and market analysis?

[Fieros]

there are many definitions of "casuals gamer", and in japan a casual gamer is not necessarily someone that wants an easy game, but simply someone that doesn't have much time to play.
In Japan the monster hunter series (for instance) is considered a casual-friendly series.

That said, one of the biggest problems with FFXIV is that the target userbase wasn't identified clearly enough. There's something for casuals, something that appeals hardcore, something that appeals sandbox lovers... the problem is that all those "somethings" by themselves aren't enough to satisfy fully any of those audiences.
As I stated, trying to make everyone happy will end in big problems basically in every market. It's one of the most widespread and problematic marketing fallacies there are.

SE should have focused on pleasing a more limited customerbase, but pleasing them fully. After that, you can work on spreading your target further by building on the solid base you already have.

Agreed.

PS: Its nice to read something from you written from a more neutral perspective.

[Winterclaw]

That said, one of the biggest problems with FFXIV is that the target userbase wasn't identified clearly enough. There's something for casuals, something that appeals hardcore, something that appeals sandbox lovers... the problem is that all those "somethings" by themselves aren't enough to satisfy fully any of those audiences.

Which begs the question: who is the userbase now? The one the devs would presumably be tailoring the changes and fixes to the game to?

[Arek_Fairbairn]

The answer of all financial problems of SE (if they have any :P): FF7 HD remake

(Finally somewhere I can post this theory without being random ^^.)

Think about this, Final Fantasy's 1-4 have been remade around their 20th anniversaries. Logic would dictate the others will follow.

Which begs the question: who is the userbase now? The one the devs would presumably be tailoring the changes and fixes to the game to?

The mutts who like a mixture of all three, like me ^^;

[Galamantyl]

Plus that still doesn't answer how you could end up with a worse product than FF11. The interface sucked. Combat is tedious. Crafting is epic frustration. Content was missing with little storyline within a city-state and dailies making up most of what you could do. Leveling is too slow overall (I'm anti-levels but still, what the game calls progress is bad).

WOAH! I must have accidentally skipped over that. You're comparing a newer generation game to an older generation game? Yah, for a second there, I thought you were thinking when you posted that, but I was wrong.

First off, FFXIV was released in 2001. Back in those days, mmorpgs were a lot more hardcore. Think of the hundreds of thousands of people who quit FFXI shortly after it came out (most of which were fans of modern Final Fantasy titles that required hardly any skill or grinding to play at all). A large portion of this crowd flocked to WoW as well, which introduced a much more noob-friendly environment. You're saying FFXI is meant for casual gamers? That's bs. No other mmorpg today requires 4 straight uninterrupted hours to complete a single mission.

Get your facts straight before you apply this excuse to why FFXIV turned out as it did.

[Shelia]

lol

OP pretty much said everything I've been saying all along...

FFXIV doesn't have to be a clone of FFXI. I just wish SE would use their past experience to shape an enjoyable game rather than poop a completely new and unfinished one out and slap the FF title on it.

If the game wasn't meant to be FF, I wish they would've just kept developing it in that direction. I feel bad that SE sometimes doesn't get to do what they want due to the masses. Take FF12 for example. The story was really supposed to revolve around Basch, and be a little more somber than other FFs. The marketing team freaked out because OMG WHO WOULD WANT TO PLAY A CHARACTER OLDER THAN 20 YEARS OLD?! and created Vaan and Penelo. Pretty much the entire story arc changed. While Basch still plays a significant role, he is not the main character and the game isn't as serious or dark as it would have been, given SE had the choice.

[kukurumei]

I love how nobody is allowed to a valid opinion except for the armchair expert of all things.

The thread is basically asking what happened. And you have to arm chair unless you hire a private detective, in japan.

You will never be able to drag the real story out, everything is sanitized by PR when it reaches the public. Reading between the lines is the best anyone can do.

What we have are:

-Interview post disaster: (PR admitting that they indeed was trying to make a game "not FF11") So we know developers were intentionally shunning their fans(FF11 player base) and tied a certain amount of hands

-Release post disasters: "Horsebird" fiasco. The thousands of grammatically and and nonsensical words and terms. It lead to conspiracy theorist like outsource to china, and porting to china for easy money, etc. (Also where china is responsible for surplus came from). In any event, when a release state game is fill with grammatical errors that were deemed impossible for even a native speaking child. There is a a definite smell of lack of QC and outsourcing. The people in the team were definitely "Not good" to let these kind of things happen.

- Beta test records : The lack of any official response for the 8 months of this period, shows that there was pre-meditated plans to make the game we see today, priority was on " casual solo" aspects. Things that were tweaked were things like attack speeds, targeting, levequest(repeatedly), xp, etc. Things that were ignored for 8 months were party aspects, the dreaded "No sp for parties more then 3" comes to mind.

-Pre release interviews aka Tanaka, the face of FF14: Tanaka was a vocal one, preferring to have his say in all the FF14's good and bads, instead of relying on PR people. This lead many people(and should be since he's the producer) that Tanaka was the man at the helm.

-Executive meetings an financial meetings: We know now for sure and from before, FF14 was projected to be a major major revenue stream. Both stock holders and the higher ups were all giving the image that even with all of SE's problem (it stocks was half of the decade before) and their repeated problems, FF13 and FF14 were major revenue drivers. They were not "meant to fail". We know for a fact after the disaster, SE cut their projected revenue by 90% for fiscal year, due to FF14.

There was no hint that higher ups made "FF14 pushed out to die". Considering for 8+ months we the small beta-testing public already knew it was doomed, the higher ups would have smelled it even sooner. They would have cut all PR, slowly made plans to minimize their stake in it, and smudged the financials.

- This is probably the strongest argument against the "release too soon theory". Basically every higher up and every major stock holder would have been slowly pulling out before FF14 hit, not before.

So where does that lead.. There were definite signs that FF14 was on a collision course with death, but it's pretty odd that SE financial didn't hint at it. So if you start blaming CEOs and CFOs or even boards...that's kind hard to prove. They would have made their moves long before it was too late to cushion the damage. That leads the producer and the director.

It was pretty obvious why the producer got rubbed out in this case. How deep it goes down the latter or up the ladder we'll never know. But he is the go-to guy. Producers should be having daily if not weekly or at least monthly status report updates, by at least the director, more likely every department head. He would have have managed the financial and scheduling. He would have also known about the Press and the fan community input.

It's hard not to paint an arrow on the "all roads leads to" position. It does sucks when you're that person, but it was a 4+yr project. You don't get off lightly for things like that.

[Evovenom]

Originally Posted by pielun
Dear Mr Rofl.
Your mutiple posting is filling not only the English forrums but the Japanese forrums`NEW POSTS as well.
Mr Yosihida already said that he will only announce what he can promise to deliver on date.
Thank you for your cooperation. From Japan.


lmao wow Belgian you're even trolling the jp forums. Once you get your feast from jp I guess your off to the next 2?

Lol, that's what is seems like.

[Evovenom]

WOAH! I must have accidentally skipped over that. You're comparing a newer generation game to an older generation game? Yah, for a second there, I thought you were thinking when you posted that, but I was wrong.

First off, FFXIV was released in 2001. Back in those days, mmorpgs were a lot more hardcore. Think of the hundreds of thousands of people who quit FFXI shortly after it came out (most of which were fans of modern Final Fantasy titles that required hardly any skill or grinding to play at all). A large portion of this crowd flocked to WoW as well, which introduced a much more noob-friendly environment. You're saying FFXI is meant for casual gamers? That's bs. No other mmorpg today requires 4 straight uninterrupted hours to complete a single mission.

Get your facts straight before you apply this excuse to why FFXIV turned out as it did.

Discussion is over, look he lost. He's fact said FFXIV came out in 2001. W00t!!!!!

[Fieros]

The thread is basically asking what happened. And you have to arm chair unless you hire a private detective, in japan.

You will never be able to drag the real story out, everything is sanitized by PR when it reaches the public. Reading between the lines is the best anyone can do.

What we have are:

-Interview post disaster: (PR admitting that they indeed was trying to make a game "not FF11") So we know developers were intentionally shunning their fans(FF11 player base) and tied a certain amount of hands

-Release post disasters: "Horsebird" fiasco. The thousands of grammatically and and nonsensical words and terms. It lead to conspiracy theorist like outsource to china, and porting to china for easy money, etc. (Also where china is responsible for surplus came from). In any event, when a release state game is fill with grammatical errors that were deemed impossible for even a native speaking child. There is a a definite smell of lack of QC and outsourcing. The people in the team were definitely "Not good" to let these kind of things happen.

- Beta test records : The lack of any official response for the 8 months of this period, shows that there was pre-meditated plans to make the game we see today, priority was on " casual solo" aspects. Things that were tweaked were things like attack speeds, targeting, levequest(repeatedly), xp, etc. Things that were ignored for 8 months were party aspects, the dreaded "No sp for parties more then 3" comes to mind.

-Pre release interviews aka Tanaka, the face of FF14: Tanaka was a vocal one, preferring to have his say in all the FF14's good and bads, instead of relying on PR people. This lead many people(and should be since he's the producer) that Tanaka was the man at the helm.

-Executive meetings an financial meetings: We know now for sure and from before, FF14 was projected to be a major major revenue stream. Both stock holders and the higher ups were all giving the image that even with all of SE's problem (it stocks was half of the decade before) and their repeated problems, FF13 and FF14 were major revenue drivers. They were not "meant to fail". We know for a fact after the disaster, SE cut their projected revenue by 90% for fiscal year, due to FF14.

There was no hint that higher ups made "FF14 pushed out to die". Considering for 8+ months we the small beta-testing public already knew it was doomed, the higher ups would have smelled it even sooner. They would have cut all PR, slowly made plans to minimize their stake in it, and smudged the financials.

- This is probably the strongest argument against the "release too soon theory". Basically every higher up and every major stock holder would have been slowly pulling out before FF14 hit, not before.

So where does that lead.. There were definite signs that FF14 was on a collision course with death, but it's pretty odd that SE financial didn't hint at it. So if you start blaming CEOs and CFOs or even boards...that's kind hard to prove. They would have made their moves long before it was too late to cushion the damage. That leads the producer and the director.

It was pretty obvious why the producer got rubbed out in this case. How deep it goes down the latter or up the ladder we'll never know. But he is the go-to guy. Producers should be having daily if not weekly or at least monthly status report updates, by at least the director, more likely every department head. He would have have managed the financial and scheduling. He would have also known about the Press and the fan community input.

It's hard not to paint an arrow on the "all roads leads to" position. It does sucks when you're that person, but it was a 4+yr project. You don't get off lightly for things like that.

Thank you for this write-up. I enjoyed reading it and hope others will too.

[Malakhim]

Take FF12 for example. The story was really supposed to revolve around Basch, and be a little more somber than other FFs. The marketing team freaked out because OMG WHO WOULD WANT TO PLAY A CHARACTER OLDER THAN 20 YEARS OLD?! and created Vaan and Penelo. Pretty much the entire story arc changed. While Basch still plays a significant role, he is not the main character and the game isn't as serious or dark as it would have been, given SE had the choice.

Geez, don't remind me about this one... >.>