Did squenix make a mistake by investing too much in graphics and not enough in

[Winterclaw]

I was just watching the Jimquistion on pc gaming (NSFW) and I was wondering, did sqaure make a mistake by over investing in graphics instead of gameplay and content?

Jim makes a great point. Consider Eve. It's one of the older MMOs (people are still playing UO and EQ though) and despite its age, it's still growing and save for server lag, runs well. Or take the old infinity engine games (all 9000 of them), despite looking old, those games are still fun to play. People still love planescape and I was even thinking of playing the BG games again for the nostalgia of the glory days of bioware... before they turned to the dark side... before they joined EA.

Yes, some PC games can benefit from hardcore gfx, but a lot of them (doom, ultima 4 which is free on GoG, retticlear, the two MOO games, the earlier civ games, etc) don't look all that great anymore. But who cares? They are fun and you can still play them.

[RickJames]

Yes they made that mistake and a ton more.

[Rau]

IMO SE made two big mistakes:

1. Trying to reinvent the wheel. Getting rid of standard features of an MMO in the name of being different.
2. Releasing the game prematurely (probably hoping to steal some sales from Cataclysm). Retail was essentially the same thing as Beta minus level cap. Another year under Tanaka, I'd like to think we wouldn't have a number of the problems were having now.


Then again, we'd probably still have fatigue...

[weeble]

i'd say so too, i been saying it alot, i rather play with stick figures and tons of content then this "great graphix" i don't need to really stair at any of it, i don't really eww and ahh over it, the oohhh shinney mode in warhammer is just too shiney u can't see what is going on with all the explosions and crap lol.

i say games need to take a step back an work on 1. a lag free game for all that are playing it, pointless if looks great and only some can even play it that way ..let alone performance be equal to all.

and 2. tons of content over what it looks like, we not paying for aol chat with toons, we paying for a game.

but yeah other stuff by the tons mistakes too, but i bet they bit off more then they can chew with the engine? then just got so backed up and screwed ...then just launched forcefully early. i'm wondering if they went with a lesser quality if the game would of acually came out complete. /stickfigures /cheer.


edit to add i don't think the inventing the wheel thing is what broke them, truthfully i would of loved to see the game if was completed b4 in the vision of tanaka and his team, there was lots in it that was more to par with what i was expecting from this game. they just never finished and now paved the way for complainers to have that right to do so to change the game. ...15man campaign battle like grinding, supposed to have boats and owned companies, the missions were the only thing ifffy for me but i think again it was just slammed together just to make launch or we would of probably seen more. the killer was time and giving the game to the people that complain. also i bet behest and leves would of been way better if not for the graphics, i mean look at campaign battles in ffxi, or maybe i am giving them more credit then deserve. but i think the engine played a huge part in there screw ups.

[MrLion]

IMO SE made two big mistakes:

1. Trying to reinvent the wheel. Getting rid of standard features of an MMO in the name of being different.
2. Releasing the game prematurely (probably hoping to steal some sales from Cataclysm). Retail was essentially the same thing as Beta minus level cap. Another year under Tanaka, I'd like to think we wouldn't have a number of the problems were having now.


Then again, we'd probably still have fatigue...

This...

Although I don't understand why they were scared of Cataclysm (other than the world being shattered) if WoW lost 900,000 subscribers from when it was released till now...

[nasomi]

The graphics are "available", but you can easily play the game on low settings with an 8800gts 320mb. These cards go for $25 on craigslist, not much more elsewhere. And the game still looks pretty good on lower settings. Personally, I love eye candy, so I upgraded my 8800gts 320mb to a gtx280, still far from the top, they go for $100-150, not much either. And quad core computers with 6+gb of ram are coming way down in price. Dell sold a brand new inspirion quadcore with 4gb of ram for $400 that included a 17" monitor and 1tb hd. I slammed my 8800gts in there and bam, i have 2 computers that run ffxiv.

So you can do it for $400-500 on low settings, or if you want the ooh and ah, spent a few hundred more and get the goodies.

[Coldfire]

SE only invested in the graphical design and not the engine. That's the main problem. Without a properly and efficiently running engine it's impossible to make a good mmorpg. Still SE insists on spamming us with small ideas from other mmos instead of fixing horribly broken stuff.
And this game is definately not playable on a $25 gpu. You can start the game but as soon as the scene gets full your framerate will be at the bottom.

[Victor]

I adore XIV's graphics, I really do. But given where we've ended up now, it just wasn't worth it.

[Verecund]

Gameplay is definitely something they could've invested alot more in (not to mention all their western competition has and will be competing on this very point). The biggest mistakes, I think, were in not expanding on current systems as well as not perfecting their game engine before releasing the game. They counted too much on their western audience buying the graphics alone and they have definitely reaped the repercussions of relying on that strategy...

[Kirith]

Imo, they just rushed and released the game one year early, for one reason or another. Their mistake was simply thinking they could get away with it like they probably would have 10 years ago. I kinda suspect that Tanaka was dismissed mainly because of his assurance the game would work even with an early release, but we can't really know.