Quote Originally Posted by Catharsis View Post
FYI, Tanaka was largely responsible for getting FF14 into the huge mess it was in in the first place. They shifted him over to FF11, where he could do less harm. And as for why take it so drastically in the casual direction - please explain to me how it makes any logical or ecological sense to make two games that fill the exact same niche in the market. FF14's chance to lure a larger market audience actually partially depends on it being significantly different from FF11. What's the point of marketing FF14 to people who are already enjoying FF11 and paying S-E every month for the privilege of playing it if it's going to be identical?
Because they already changed FFXI, they already turned IT into a more casual game too. There's NO going back to the old things we liked about it because they're gone. They nerfed the entire game and then implemented a brain dead alliance exp system. It doesn't satisfy their CoP/ToAU era customers who supported it at it's peak anymore. Making 14 too casual is satisfying the same "niche".

And it's OLD, maybe we want to play a game with graphics like 14?

In regard to FFXIV being a mess I would guarantee you that very little of it was Tanaka's doing, it was probably 80% SE's CEO Yoichi Wada. Force a release date and limit funding and things happen. 14 wasn't the only FF they botched, when it's multiple teams botching projects you have to look to who's in charge of those teams.

Can anybody honestly say they've enjoyed 14 as much as they did XI? Nobody's expecting a straight up clone, but asking for a few things that made XI great is not unreasonable.