Quote Originally Posted by Felessan View Post
Yoshida made a game that 2 millions plays in 2 years, while Tanaka didn't make it in 5 years and upper limit for his creation still would be around half a million.
Yes, oldschool FF11 lovers would like it and probably consider it an amazing game (like people loves EVE even though its really a relatively small niche mmo), but it still would be a niche game and a failure for SE, given how much resources they poured in in FF14.
Argumentum ad populum, I don't care about the success of the game, we are discussing here the quality. And I don't negate the fact that 1.0 was implemented terrible, because I experienced that myself by first hand, but given the previous games Tanaka made, I'm sure his complete vision for FFXIV would have been a blast and not only for FFXI loves, but for everyone. If you look back for his interviews and the info we got before release, he was aiming to do something different to XI, and he wanted to made it accessible (which by no means equals dumbed down or with a lack of depth). Also we don't know how much of his old plans and things have been taken into account by Yoshi, who said that if he thought any idea was good, he would put it in the game, maybe we'd be surprised.


Quote Originally Posted by Felessan View Post
Constraint was obviously money. Zones were bloated and it was not really needed, you just can cut zones in half - and loose nothing but those "20 mins to run through zone" moments. And to create huge landscapes - you either copy-paste or require a lot of money as artists work ain't free.
The pacing and overall feel of 1.0 where far better for my liking, not everything has to be clogged up, there can be wild areas with dangerous monsters that are not civilized. 1.0 created the feeling of a medieval world perfectly, where you are only safe in the cities or merchant hubs, but you are alone in the wilderness, and that was a good thing, because the sense of adventuring was there, and there's no reason ARR had to take that away completely.

Also, SE has the money and the artists.