any questions?

[User201109011315]

...

I'm afraid that's the truth.

[Gennosuke]

Interesting character as always Gifthorse. I actually enjoy your posts because they challenge the opposition on this forum which are a vast majority while maintaining a good tone and not stooping down to a personal level. I commend you for it, regardless of what most say here, i personally don't believe you're a troll, alas there is a silly notion here that if you oppose the game in any sense, you're a troll. I can clearly see however from your previous posts that you're attached to Tanaka's vision which i am not fond of, but that's your own right. That said, you raise some good points and questions there.

I do disagree with your Armory system vision, i've personally hated the Armory system and feel it's full of flaws but i agree with many other points you raise. I do also agree with you that job system as a 2nd layer on top of Armory system is not a wise idea and will potentially produce many probs down the line and be a source of redundancy and imbalance. Though contrary to your goal of saving Armory system, i'm more for saving the job system.

Anyhow, i'm interested to also put my mind to rest with where this game is headed. It feels like the game is causing more confusion with every patch introduced. Valid post, Valid concerns. Perhaps it will get through to dev team.

[Rydin]

At the end of the day... the main goal of this game is (And always has been) to bring a Final Fantasy MMO to the masses that appeals to all the people who buy the offline numbered titles
Everything that was done (or wasn't done) was to this end...

Gift is asking a bunch of subjective questions, but I must say, it would be extremely interesting to see Yoshi P answer them....

Honestly though, we don't know how much pressure was (is??) put on the design team.
I bet this is what it sounded like during development

Yoichi Wada: Hey Tanaka, Final Fantasy X is up to 8 million in sales... FFXII did 3 million in the first week.... How many subscribers did FFXI have?

Hiromichi Tanaka: like half a million, but here's the thing... thats not bad numbers for an MMO. People are hesitant about paying monthly fees to play a game

Wada: You're right... no MMO has millions of subscribers.... OH WAIT.....

Tanaka: Very funny.... But I'm just saying... you can't even play FFXI on a slim PS2. It got a bad rep...

Wada: Whatever... look... FFXIII just did 2 frikkin million sales in its first week... IN JAPAN ALONE.... and we let interns write the story.

Tanaka: Well work on FFXIV is proceeding beautifully. The tech demo was very well received.

Wada: That's all well and good.. but I swear to God, you give me FFXI-2 and the next game you'll be working on is "Game Designer Sepeku"

Tanaka: This one will be different. You will see... Come Fall 2012, the world will be blown away

Wada: Yea... about that... I was thinking we should bump that up... to say... Spring 2011.

Tanaka: But Crystal Tools was designed for PSgl, not directX. The networking API is brand new. These things take time..

Wada: You know what I'm hearing from you T-Knocker, Excuses. PSGL, DirectX, MS-DOS 5.1... its all the same shit.. And I know I'm no computer guy... but can't you just use the networking API from the FFXI engine?

Tanaka: No, not at all... even if it wasn't owned by someone else, it was based around much smaller bandwidth needs. This new one was developed by our staff in China

Wada: Yea, whatever. Just get me an MMO that millions of people will buy, and have it ready by Spring 2011. And I am so serious.. If I see an FFXI clone, You're going to be the new custodian at the Beijing office

Tanaka: Fine, it will be released well ahead of schedule and it will not resemble FFXI.

Wada: You know what... make that Fall 2010... I'm feeling generous

[captainpicard]

...

I particularly like the "staff in China" part. No doubt there was some BPO involvement in this title as illustrated from the use of Chinese in the game.

[Tsukino]

I particularly like the "staff in China" part. No doubt there was some BPO involvement in this title as illustrated from the use of Chinese in the game.

You people are morons who don't know anything about Japanese or Chinese language and believe everything you read on some guy's blog. A guy who purposefully uses the language barrier to make his BS seem credible.

[captainpicard]

You people are morons who don't know anything about Japanese or Chinese language and believe everything you read on some guy's blog. A guy who purposefully uses the language barrier to make his BS seem credible.

Actually I just believe their investor relations information.

Asia Holdings
----------
SQUARE ENIX (China) CO., LTD. January 2005 Digital entertainment in China and Asia
HUANG LONG CO., LTD. August 2005 Sale and management of online games in Asia

http://www.square-enix.com/eng/ir/li...0corporate.pdf

Final Fantasy XIV, previously codenamed Rapture (ラプチャー) was first mentioned in August 2005. Notice the establishment date of SE China, and the acquisition date of HUANG LONG CO.

I think they said this sucker was in development for what 5 years.. I dunno do the math.

[Tsukino]

Actually I just believe their investor relations information.

Asia Holdings
----------
SQUARE ENIX (China) CO., LTD. January 2005 Digital entertainment in China and Asia
HUANG LONG CO., LTD. August 2005 Sale and management of online games in Asia

http://www.square-enix.com/eng/ir/li...0corporate.pdf

Final Fantasy XIV, previously codenamed Rapture (ラプチャー) was first mentioned in August 2005. Notice the establishment date of SE China, and the acquisition date of HUANG LONG CO.

That's because they were going to release the game in China, in Chinese, to expand into that market. Those holdings would be responsible for adapting the game for China, and the former is responsible for publishing their games there in general. They didn't and do not develop anything for Final Fantasy XIV or any other title in the series.

There is no "Chinese" in the game, nor was there ever. That misconception comes entirely from a crappy blog post on a certain triangular site that shall remain nameless that was widely circulated as legitimate journalism for some reason. Anyone who knows either Japanese (like I do) or Chinese would know that it was all complete BS. The things people said were "Chinese" were just some weird and tiny examples of poetic license gone out of hand - roughly the equivalent of making up pseudo-Latin words in English.

[Rydin]

I particularly like the "staff in China" part. No doubt there was some BPO involvement in this title as illustrated from the use of Chinese in the game.

I think they actually ended up acquiring a Chinese networking middle-ware firm...

[MrKupo]

It was never confirmed as a "bow harp". The most confirmation we got was a bow that transforms.

The job system is meant to enhance party play and leave the class system for a soloing focus.

You forget to realize that this is still an early step to the process. That fact alone can help to answer alot of your questions...


One of the main points of the game when it came out was the armoury system. I have played no other game like it and I have heard of no other game like it.

The idea of a cookie-cutter build is near sighted at best. This is presuming that you are basing off your predictions on 1.19, which is abolishing physical levels and point allotment for automated point allotment. You forget that this is temporary and that it has been said that point allotment for individual classes will come later.

Terms like the "Bard Archer" are speculated and made up.

Will crafters now only be "materia users"?
Is there merit in a player-run economy?
Have the HQ changes removed some depth to the crafting system?

wtf is that even asking? Everyone will be materia users. Being a materia user is not something that is exclusive. You use materia according to your plans for a specific class.
The economy question is ambiguous. Does "merit" mean it justifies its own existence or does it mean it helps anything? Either way, a player-run economy is a game mechanic. Is there merit in leveling up?
Your last question... yes. But you do realize that that question is a loaded one. It's fishing for an answer that oversimplifies the situation by being a yes or no question.

Don't get me wrong, you have some good questions in there. But your post couldn't be more loaded. It's passive agressively attacking the developers. You can't hope to get real answers when most of them are leaned towards making the devs look bad.

If you want to know the direction the game is going, then look at the producer's letters. At least that gives some information. And judging by your questions and concerns, you have not read at least a few of them.

PS: You post a seemingly neutral post that is actually loaded, you get a loaded reply.

[Xmbei]

Don't get me wrong, you have some good questions in there. But your post couldn't be more loaded. It's passive agressively attacking the developers. You can't hope to get real answers when most of them are leaned towards making the devs look bad.

If you want to know the direction the game is going, then look at the producer's letters. At least that gives some information. And judging by your questions and concerns, you have not read at least a few of them.

PS: You post a seemingly neutral post that is actually loaded, you get a loaded reply.

It's what gifthorse does... He can hide behind "but I am not" which further confirms he is passive aggresive about it. Yes he asks some good questions but yes he has always been passively aggresive trying to make the dev's look bad, has been since december.