Tanaka or Yoshi?

[Jocko]

To be fair, the engine that Tanaka had to work with (And I'm not sure if it was his decision to use it or not) was poorly optimized and implemented. Even if he had remained on board, he would have been just as limited as the current developers.

As for his vision, if had about 2 years more time, I believe XIV truly would have come out something special. There were a number of concepts and ideas given to us that sounded amazing, but all we got to truly experience of his "plan" was a forcibly rushed, unfinished, unpolished...well, you know

But yeah, either way, the current game engine and server structure needed to go, regardless of who was at the helm

[Starlord]

In the O.P., it says that neither Yoshi nor Tanaka are the full package. And that's true, I feel. And if you look at the art direction changes and the heavily instanced gameworld we are to expect on version 2.0, I think it's pretty rich to say "if we didn't have Yoshi, we wouldn't have an awesome game now" because if you didn't have Tanaka, you wouldn't have an awesome game now either. If Yoshi created this game from scratch, and left to his own devices, how do you know Yoshi wouldn't have given you Final World of Warcraft online with hideous vibrant primary colours everywhere? Yoshi's idea of an MMO is an instanced themepark. And that's straight from the horse's mouth, too.

So the fact is, under Tanaka's leadership, the development team failed to deliver a lag-free experience, and there wasn't enough content either, but if you think that was intentional and part of the design, then there's no helping you.

Where this concerns Yoshi, heavily instanced gameworlds ispart of the design for 2.0, and that's a mistake.

The game wasn't awesome with Tanaka, if the game was "awesome 450k people wouldn't have left, leaving the game practically a ghost town. I remember at one point my sever only had 700 people... 700 PEOPLE!!! That's nothing. and really come 2.0 its all Yoshi-P's because nearly everything is getting remodeled from the ground up.

Another thing, You don;t knwo nor I know if this game will be Heavily instanced or not. All we know is Dungeons and Primals are to be instanced, AS IT SHOULD BE... Hamlet defense should be open world, and that's exactly what they are doing with Frontlines. Open World Odin, He said theres going to be alot of content. But where exactly is all that content going towards? We know next to nothing on whats going into 2.0.

Where in his Design do you see the words " Heavily Instanced", Untill you have concrete Proof that this game is Heavily Instanced then will talk. Don't say Look at the PDF's because that's what I ment by there barely anything to go by.

[Rokien]

If tanaka was in charge.. i wouldn't be playing FFXIV....

Yoshi-P all the way. Tanaka is too arrogant for my taste...

Tanaka is out of touch. Yoshi P gets it... and thank goodness for that.

What does he get, please tell us. He listens to the fans? The polls are worded in such a way that it doesn't show the full picture. He says hes listening to the fans and he has changed a few SMALL things, but really, lets be honest. They are not trying anything, they are playing the safe card.

[Starlord]

turned it around...no this ship is still full of holes, and the people that jumped ship are still very wary of swimming back to this half sunken vessel.

To you maybe, The game isn't Sunked, just people are sktechy on returning because of the bad tastes they still have in their Mouths.

and it seems like the 3-4 here disliking the game... They are other MMO's you know... or games you can play, other than a game you "dislike" or "not having fun"

[Answa]

What does he get, please tell us. He listens to the fans? The polls are worded in such a way that it doesn't show the full picture. He says hes listening to the fans and he has changed a few SMALL things, but really, lets be honest. They are not trying anything, they are playing the safe card.

Small things? Like complete class overhaul and the job system? Yeah. Those are small...

[Rokien]

The game wasn't awesome with Tanaka, if the game was "awesome 450k people wouldn't have left, leaving the game practically a ghost town. I remember at one point my sever only had 700 people... 700 PEOPLE!!! That's nothing. and really come 2.0 its all Yoshi-P's because nearly everything is getting remodeled from the ground up.

Another thing, You don;t knwo nor I know if this game will be Heavily instanced or not. All we know is Dungeons and Primals are to be instanced, AS IT SHOULD BE... Hamlet defense should be open world, and that's exactly what they are doing with Frontlines. Open World Odin, He said theres going to be alot of content. But where exactly is all that content going towards? We know next to nothing on whats going into 2.0.

Where in his Design do you see the words " Heavily Instanced", Untill you have concrete Proof that this game is Heavily Instanced then will talk. Don't say Look at the PDF's because that's what I ment by there barely anything to go by.

Hey now, dungeons don't have to be instanced nor should they at all.
Just look at the pdf, most of the BIG content is going to be instanced.

[Mushy]

I would of liked to see what ffxiv was under Tanaka's leadership fully realized, but that ship has sailed. with that said - i am loving where yoshi is taking the game. ESPECIALLY with the surprise that they had been working on a new client/and server side netcode. So with Tanaka it will forever remain a bunch of what-ifs. But Yoshi is doing a fantastic job. Especially considering he is making two games at once. Keeping the game running smoothly, adding great additions while simultaneously building the future of XIV.

And really... we already got Tanaka's FF MMO, Final Fantasy XI. it was great and its still there...
Lets keep yoshi!!

[Keres]

The problems with Tanaka's vision for the game go far beyond "being rushed."

- Guildleves being the central focus of the entire game
- Absurdly repetitive zone maps and literally no diversity in geography from one end of a zone to another; the only difference being which camps allow you to do which levequests.
- Market wards/retainers (especially when you include the concept of "pay extra to get additional retainers")
- The ridiculously overwrought crafting recipes
- Stats doing pretty much nothing
- The Fatigue system
- Tanaka's quote shortly after launch to "just use macros" to solve the issue of not being able to communicate during combat
- Wanting to charge players per character slot in the year 2010

Many of these issues wouldn't have been solved no matter how much development time the game got; their problems aren't the implementation, but the concepts themselves. The terrible UI and game engine performance might have improved a little, but given the trouble that the current development team is having while attempting to add new features to this engine, I don't even think that more development time would have solved those problems either.

Now we're looking at getting the game maps redone, the market ward system is no longer quite as terrible, guildleves are repurposed as solo-oriented content as they're more properly suited, and the class and battle systems have been fundamentally redesigned from the ground up to allow for actual dynamic and balanced battle design.

Yoshi-P coming in was the only hope that this game had to save itself, and it was the best thing that could have happened to it. At launch, I didn't think any of us would be here today still able to play the game, and now we're just a few months away from an amazing-looking 2.0 relaunch. Tanaka has a great legacy of games, but his ideas in FFXIV just didn't work out, unfortunately. The game is better off now.

[Starlord]

Hey now, dungeons don't have to be instanced nor should they at all.
Just look at the pdf, most of the BIG content is going to be instanced.

As they Should be.. Dungeons should be Instanced and Primals as well. How do you know that's the "Biggest" content? theres like 93% of the games 2.0 we don't even know.. the PDF's just scratch the surface.. Do you really think the PDF's tell the whole FFXIV 2.0's Story? If he "wanted" a heavily instanced game.. he mine as well stick with this Version and Expand on it.... Don't say something you don't even know about.

[bobbygunz]

The game wasn't awesome with Tanaka, if the game was "awesome 450k people wouldn't have left, leaving the game practically a ghost town. I remember at one point my sever only had 700 people... 700 PEOPLE!!! That's nothing. and really come 2.0 its all Yoshi-P's because nearly everything is getting remodeled from the ground up.

Another thing, You don;t knwo nor I know if this game will be Heavily instanced or not. All we know is Dungeons and Primals are to be instanced, AS IT SHOULD BE... Hamlet defense should be open world, and that's exactly what they are doing with Frontlines. Open World Odin, He said theres going to be alot of content. But where exactly is all that content going towards? We know next to nothing on whats going into 2.0.

Where in his Design do you see the words " Heavily Instanced", Untill you have concrete Proof that this game is Heavily Instanced then will talk. Don't say Look at the PDF's because that's what I ment by there barely anything to go by.

I never said it was awesome with Tanaka. When this game was released, it was riddled with bugs and under-developed. But just because it was undeveloped doesn't mean it needed to be redeveloped. Sooner or later we will be playing any other MMO on the market with crappier combat mechanics (another thing you have "Yoshi" to thank for).