"Where has the magic gone?"

[Skyrant_Kangaroomouse]

Dear SE,

I am writing you today because i feel that some things have bothered me for far too long and i need to get them out.

~

Growing up playing your wonderful games (Squaresoft), the many stories and iconic characters like moogles and chocobos blending together into living and breathing world where you felt almost at home, is one of the things i will never forget as long as i live.

I will always remember the laughs and tears i shared with friends, the heated discussions about who or what is evil and good. The anticipation for the next big title to be released that brings plenty of the known characters and even more new adventures and stories. Amazed by every new title you released, always surprised how you could maintain such a high standard.

When you released FF11, i was excited. I always wanted to share the world of Final Fantasy and the many adventures with friends, online at the same time. And you did again, give us a great experience so close to your single player games, yet able to share it with friends.

Epic stories unfolded, friends would start to identify with nations and races, roleplaying was never that easy. It was not just about finishing a quest, it was about pride and achievement. It was about friendship, exploring and adventures.

It felt good to share all these adventures with friends, and surprisingly, it still is at this day.

~

But, something has changed, it has been lurking all these years and we, the fans, always feared this day would come. And when it came, i was in denial, i tried really hard to like your new games. I forced myself to like them although they were shallow compared to the greatness i have seen from you before.

At what point, SE, did you loose your magic? I can't really tell anymore, can you? Why did you give up what made you unique and stand out from all the other RPG developers?

Why SE, do you try to be something you are not, you must have by now realized that you are terrible at it. You must have realized that you alienated and lost most of your fans.

All these fans, that stayed with you, like me, for many years, miss you. We are still here, we are grown up now, most of us i assume have maybe less time but plenty of money to spare.

We are not going anywhere soon, we are still waiting for you to come to your senses and make both of us happy. We are happy to give you our money, you just need to give us a reason to do so and you do know how to.

You remember, do you, SE?

Sincerely,
Skyrant Kangaroomouse

[quantumsaint]

Pepperidge Farm remembers.

[Greencactaur]

Hironobu Sakaguchi

[Seif]

Hironobu Sakaguchi

Lost Odyssey was pretty magical to me. The writing makes XIV walls O' text seem amateurish in comparison.

Why can't they hire talented game designers!?
Character designer is doing Vs. and the director of XIII has nothing but utter failures in his CV ("My life as a King"anyone?) Japan is stock full of genius game designers hire them!

Why don't you hire the directors of previous FF games (other than Sakaguchi) to do new FF titles?

I don't get why they keep hiring these incompetent people to these important roles.

Yoshida's greatest achievments are that he has once played Everquest?! Are you kidding me? Hire the staff of XI they CLEARLY can handle a job like this.

Btw producing a MMO takes more than just reading forums and writing letters. Hire Yoshida to do community management that's what he's obviously good at. Hire a game designer to create a FF title like you have done for 2 decades.

It's not rocket surgery people =)

[SuzakuCMX]

Lost Odyssey was pretty magical to me. The writing makes XIV walls O' text seem amateurish in comparison.

Meh

Why can't they hire talented game designers!?
Character designer is doing Vs. and the director of XIII has nothing but utter failures in his CV ("My life as a King"anyone?) Japan is stock full of genius game designers hire them!

They're already hired by other gaming companies, deeeerp.

Why don't you hire the directors of previous FF games (other than Sakaguchi) to do new FF titles?

I don't get why they keep hiring these incompetent people to these important roles.

Yoshida's greatest achievments are that he has once played Everquest?! Are you kidding me? Hire the staff of XI they CLEARLY can handle a job like this.

The staff of XI were hired. Tanaka was the producer for XI and Komoto was the director for XI. Both of them were responsible for the complete mess XIV was at release/still is. Additionally, they stated somewhere that a lot of the staff that worked on XI are also working on XIV. They want the direction of XIV to be much different. Also, Sakaguchi directed or produced Final Fantasies I through X, Tactics, and Tactics Advanced, so it's not like there's more than him to get as director.

Btw producing a MMO takes more than just reading forums and writing letters. Hire Yoshida to do community management that's what he's obviously good at. Hire a game designer to create a FF title like you have done for 2 decades.

It's not rocket surgery people =)

No it's not, but that doesn't mean anyone here actually understands what's happening, least of all you.

[Eekiki]

They lost their magic (Sakaguchi), but gained an Enix.

We got the shaft.

[quantumsaint]

Serious answer, they've been bleeding talent for years.
Interesting read:
http://ca.kotaku.com/5778294/is-maki...sy-a-nightmare

[Sepix]

It has alot to do with the workload that increases with every game generation. While an engine for a NES Final Fantasy was probably done in a month it took years to create the (crappy) Crystal Tools Engine.

There just isnt much time left for the actual game after years of engine coding. Alot of stuff probably looks good on paper but if they cant even display a LSMES with an engine that was in the works for 5 years i doubt they have much choice beside making it mainstream food.

[Skyrant_Kangaroomouse]

It has alot to do with the workload that increases with every game generation. While an engine for a NES Final Fantasy was probably done in a month it took years to create the (crappy) Crystal Tools Engine.

There just isnt much time left for the actual game after years of engine coding. Alot of stuff probably looks good on paper but if they cant even display a LSMES with an engine that was in the works for 5 years i doubt they have much choice beside making it mainstream food.

Unfortunately that argument is wrong. Coding an "engine" for the SNES or any 2D platform was as complicated since it was mostly done in assembler and no rapid development tools where available in those days.

All the hand drawn animations, sprites and backgrounds are much more time intensive than simple 3D polygons that get textured, lit and rendered.

I give you a simple example. The scaling of the enemies they have done in FF14 can be done with a few simple parameters. Polygons naturally scale to any size and tessalation takes only a mouse click in modern 3D modeling software.

If you would have done that in a 2D game you would have to hand draw all the sprites and graphics again. Something that would take months not days.

The whole argument about 3D beeing more complicated and time intensive is rubbish.
Why you think people that have no experience in game design can use the free editors to make levels that are sometimes superior to the original game?

[Kafeen]

Unfortunately that argument is wrong. Coding an "engine" for the SNES or any 2D platform was as complicated since it was mostly done in assembler and no rapid development tools where available in those days.

All the hand drawn animations, sprites and backgrounds are much more time intensive than simple 3D polygons that get textured, lit and rendered.

I give you a simple example. The scaling of the enemies they have done in FF14 can be done with a few simple parameters. Polygons naturally scale to any size and tessalation takes only a mouse click in modern 3D modeling software.

If you would have done that in a 2D game you would have to hand draw all the sprites and graphics again. Something that would take months not days.

The whole argument about 3D beeing more complicated and time intensive is rubbish.
Why you think people that have no experience in game design can use the free editors to make levels that are sometimes superior to the original game?

Fact is, games take a lot longer to develop now and by much bigger teams than what were used back on older platforms. Back in the SNES days, games were often developed by a single person or a small teams, a couple of coders, a couple of artists, nothing compared to the 100 man teams you can see on a large project now. There are some games developed by small teams now, but Final Fantasy certainly isn't one of them.

While scaling polygons is a simple process there's a lot more to a modern game than that. The hand drawing done on 2D games is still needed to create textures that go on these useful polygons. Where as with a 2D game, you knew how it was going to be viewed, with a 3D game the player could be a lot closer, pushing right up to a wall for example. This means you either have a nasty pixelly mess, or nice high resolution textures that take a lot longer to create. There's also a lot more required than there used to be. A simple wall texture now is likely to be much bigger than the entire sprite sheet for a 2D character. On top of the textures, there's a lot more that has to go in to modelling and animating the character.

Then we have the world, collision is a much bigger process than what is needed in 2D, there are a lot more places that players can get to, the collision has to be robust enough to ensure that players aren't going to get suck on terrain or fall right through.

You're right that a lot of things are simpler to do now than they were in the past, but a lot more is required now.