FFXIV is not a failure, never was.

[Malakhim]

My issue with Final Fantasy XIV(and possibly extends to FFXIII as well), is that it seems to grab my attention mostly by luck that I happen to like several things that they're doing rather than a direct attempt at grabbing me. Basically what I'm getting at is that I feel that the game was designed in a vacuum; improving on things like presentation and a few other key things, without really looking at how gaming and gamers by extension have evolved since FFXI's release back in 2002(JP).

Examples, why is the game still relying on lifeless text for its tutorials instead of doing what many other games have been doing for the past few years, which is creating dynamic tutorials that not only keeps the player's interest, but ensures that they learn exactly what they need to succeed? Why was a hardware mouse implemented so damned late in the beta(pretty much at retail launch)?

I can't help but think that FFXIV's(and FFXIII's by extension) failures were the result of failed communication within and without of the dev team. Things just feel too disjointed. Yoshi and the reshuffled dev team have acknowledged as much, and are working to correct it, so I have some faith that there's a transformation in project management going on in SE that will help things out for the better.

People have mentioned that it's been six months and we haven't seen anything entirely groundbreaking happening. I actually agree that 6 months is an awful long time for the type of stuff that we've seen(which really hasn't been much more than UI improvements and the base for a sidequest system). This however could be due to a multitude of reasons, and not necessarily due to a failure to act, such as logistics, bureaucracy, prioritizing issues, etc. I have no idea. It's quite possible that after this period of "sluggish" action, we might see a much, much larger rate of changes/improvements, etc.

Personally, I always thought that had the game had another year, it'd be in much better shape, so I'm going to be holding out until September 2011 to make any serious judgment.

[Rhianu]

Personally, I always thought that had the game had another year, it'd be in much better shape, so I'm going to be holding out until September 2011 to make any serious judgment.

Eh... if it was a year under Tanaka, I don't know if there would have been much improvement. Tanaka really doesn't seem to know how to give players what they want.

Heck, even in FFXI, there's stuff players have been begging for for years that they didn't start getting until just recently due to Tanaka leaving FFXI to work on FFXIV full time.

Thankfully though, Tanaka is no longer in charge of FFXIV, either.