Translations (JP to English)

[Kirito]

Don't want to derail too much from the thread but for this one, I think they are already planning stuff for the younger generation. Just looking at the baby Chocobo, Bomb, and Behemoth. They might be planning something easy to start off for the kids while adults can also enjoy those while doing more serious stuff in-game with older people.

I read on other threads people don't want FFXIV to become a amusement park, but for myself, I'm the exact oposite. I'd rather see this game continue and in order for that to happen SE needs to make revenue so why not make tons of little contents from young to older generations to get into. Just like anything, these are just extra options and it doesn't need to be played if you don't want to. SE just needs to make sure there is a fine line that both sides don't interfere, like having really good stat gear from a kids section of the game, while adult side has something that enhances skills/abilities w/e on the kids side. If they do something dumb like that, then it won't work. If they can keep kids contents just for kids, and older contents for them it should be fine imo. If they do continue the game for 10 years like they are doing with FFXI those kids who started FFXI are now grown up, FFXI didn't have that type of content so we ended up having kids in the party sometimes... At least this way we can separate them. That's another thing about Japan, like in the US you got kids playing WoW and stuff, in Japan you probably won't see that. Not just because MMO genre isn't big in Japan but they are more into Pokemon and other games at their age range, and unlike US the handheld systems are all over so they use those trade feature or adhoc systems while in the US you don't see too much of that, so they end up playing more console, computer games. It's just difference in culture, US more kids travel in school bus, or parents driving to and from home/school, while in Japan even the kids have to take the regular city bus, trains where they meet more than their regular group of people.

Wow you've been doing your homework... that is absolutely correct... I just can't imagine how they could implement a system for children. Since in order for most people to know the existence of these features, the game would have to impose all the players to play one round of all the mini-games in a quest... This may cause numerous complaints by the "adult" players. I don't think they should just keep it as a mention by the npc since some players don't read the story. Maybe there could be a note on the map about the "amusepark/kids section" or as apart of the tutorial all the players must go to certain area of the city to speak to some npc and one could be at the park...

And you are right. In Japan the handheld is prime means of playing video games. From what I've read almost all the youth in Tokyo have some sort of handheld. While in the U.S. more people enjoy the console. In fact the reason sony added cross play was to have a feature both the U.S and Japan could enjoy. We know ARR is going to be highly scalable and in order to take into account both of your points maybe a port to the vita would be the answer and have an offline mode that has the mini game feature for both the children playing ff14 and for the adult players that just want to play a mini-game while they don't have signal like in a tunnel, for example. I guess if they added the card game like in ff11 it could also attract more adult players that miss the card game. But I doubt that a solution like this will happen anytime soon for the main reason that the vita is still not in too many households compared to the psp...