Just remaster XI with XIVs Engine please

[BigCheez]

There just isn't a big enough market for a FFXI remake. It would either be DoA or need to be changed so much that FFXI players wouldn't like it, in which case who are you making it for?

[Ath192]

There just isn't a big enough market for a FFXI remake. It would either be DoA or need to be changed so much that FFXI players wouldn't like it, in which case who are you making it for?

I'm not so sure about that. You know what game reminded me a bit of XI? Elden ring. Quests didn't tell you where to go, the world was very unforgiving, frightening, and it was a massive hit. Combat couldn't be more different but in terms of playstyle it was somewhat similar.

[BigCheez]

I'm not so sure about that. You know what game reminded me a bit of XI? Elden ring. Quests didn't tell you where to go, the world was very unforgiving, frightening, and it was a massive hit. Combat couldn't be more different but in terms of playstyle it was somewhat similar.

I find this comparison to be a bit of a stretch. I think a better comparison would be Wildstar, and we know how that ended.

[Elissar]

The big truth. Probably the real reason why they added more weeks to the patch cycle in the first place. You can create usable spaghetti in 2 years, but untangling that spaghetti will be a near endless endeavor + having to work on new content. That is if the new content will be compatible with existing code and if not well... back to tearing it down and pray what you just tore down didn't have any dependencies because if it does... time to rewrite the dependencies too. But what if the dependencies had dependencies of the dependencies? It goes on forever.

Exactly.
Thanks for sharing your ideas.

Basically...you can carry a body for some time but you can't carry it forever. It's almost a miracle that XIV were able to end Hydaelyn and Zodiark arc. In Yoshida place, i would be taking notes from the market to plan my next big MMO since sometime between Stormblood and Shadowbringers.

They increased dev time to avoid excessive crush. In patch notes we only know half of the truth.

I am not saying they are dumb, lazy or anything like that. They did all they could. Move on.

[MikkoAkure]

there is a place and a demand for an MMO like XI.

I don't think there's enough demand for it that is worth the cost of creating a whole XI remaster and keeping it up. Subscription-based MMOs have become a niche genre in the greater scope of things, let alone a remaster of an old one whose stories have already been told and whose gameplay is old.

There are few games in the industry that are held so fondly by people who played them 20 years ago.

That's the point. It's nostalgic to think about but I don't think any decision SE could make on a theoretical remaster would satisfy everyone who played the game in its heyday to enough of a degree to convince everyone who played it to pay to come back to it. Just like I have fond memories of where I grew up but it's changed so much that I would never move back there.

The scene has moved on and I don't think new OR old players today in enough numbers could stomach grinding for months to level up and at least for me, that experience was proportionally the most amount of time spent playing the game instead of MSQ or anything else. Eureka was proof of that since the Japanese servers tended to level up in Eureka the old-fashioned FFXI way while NA players had no patience for that and went straight to FATE party train regardless of whether or not how efficient it is. But if they were to change exp grind like they did with Abyssea to prevent the need for grinding and exp parties, then the game is already completely different than the one that most original players are familiar with and grew to love. Fiddling with game will always alienate portions of the old playerbase. It's hard enough to find a room full of FFXI players who all unanimously agree on whether or not Abyssea saved or ruined the game.

As well as that, I don't think there's enough to present to new players to convince them to spend a majority of their gaming time to it. The game has fewer races than FFXIV does now, 2 are genderlocked with racial stats that heavily encourage you to play specific jobs, and there aren't as many of those as there are in FFXIV either. The story has already been told and while it was quite good IMO, it wasn't played enough to have a significant number of people talking about it to be as classic as say FF7. I've never even played FF8 and I could at least pick out Squall, Rinoa, and Seifer from a lineup and know enough about them to actually name them without looking them up. I doubt non-XI players who are even familiar with the greater FF franchise know who Aldo, Raogrimm, Lion, or Nashmeira are while Shantotto and to a lesser extent Prishe are only known via crossovers and promotional material.

It would be much more worth SE's time and money to either make a completely new MMO or to take elements of FFXI that have not yet been utilized in FFXIV and port them over.

[Ath192]

I don't think there's enough demand for it that is worth the cost of creating a whole XI remaster and keeping it up.

...

It would be much more worth SE's time and money to either make a completely new MMO or to take elements of FFXI that have not yet been utilized in FFXIV and port them over.

Oh I'm down for FF17 being a new MMO, and call me crazy but it just might be, numbering, time table matches up perfectly for that. I would welcome a new take on MMOs that welcomes social interaction instead of segregating you like XIV does. Whether there is demand for a remake is a subject of speculation of course. No one can say for certain if there is or isnt demand for that style of MMO because there hasn't been a well executed one since those days.

We can go down the rabbit hole of MMOs that failed but they failed for a million different reasons and execution was one of them, in fact, if XIV had not been such a tremendous TURD on a bug/lag/technical level that the playerbase abandoned it probably wouldve succeeded just fine and been a true successor to XI, as it was envisioned. It would be nothing like what it is today.

Alas 1.0 failed for a million reasons, and its playstyle was not the cause of the downfall. But what did SE do? Well it was desperate so of course it just copied the most successful MMO at the time because they weren't in a position to take risks anymore. But the people looking for a successor to XI and its playstyle DID show up at launch, it was just a massive let down.

[Ephremjlm]

The scene has moved on and I don't think new OR old players today in enough numbers could stomach grinding for months to level up and at least for me, that experience was proportionally the most amount of time spent playing the game instead of MSQ or anything else.

I think I generally agree with most of what you're saying but this one piece I HARD disagree with. If anything, the lack of demand goes back to SE never really marketing FF11 that well in the west. That said, FFXI was the number 1 MMO before WOW and the notion that old school MMO do not have demand is completely false. The difference is that they are "MMO" markets and not "general" markets, the exception being WOW where we have a clear example of a private server (Nostalrius) had over 800,000 accounts with NO marketing and then WOW Classic has in the millions. Lets go further, look at OSRS, it's literally the preferred version and arguably the most popular MMO out there, and its nothing but grind and garbage graphics. Diablo II still has a crazy scene. Project 1999 is a classic Everquest server that refuses to die. Hell even Toon Town has decent servers, and the list can go on and on.

Also, Eureka isn't a good example because the leveling and combat is worse than FFXI for that style of gameplay. The two systems are Oil and Water. I personally thought Bozja was a step in the right direction but its still just a fate grind fest.

So to be clear, there IS a market for these kinds of things, but it would need to be marketed well, and the expectations would need to be lowered. And funny enough, if SE was smart they would partner with one of the other options out there because there are some servers that have fixed most of the bugs, and have made custom launchers and so many QOL things that actually DON'T interfere with the core gameplay. This would allow SE to have their foot in all ends of the market, not have to invest too heavily, and collect revenue where maybe before they weren't. I mean FFS like him or not Ninja said years ago now that he offered to pay SE a million dollars to get a private server started. I know people who did it for free with a couple of their friends and the only cost was their time and basic server costs. They could do some basic influencer marketing and I know there are plenty who would accept.

Lastly to make sure it's not misunderstood, I wouldn't be on board with them making a brand new game or even a remaster unless they could really figure out a way to keep development costs low. Again they never pushed FFXI that hard in the west so I don't think it would have the same nostalgic pull vs maybe Japan, so getting it out and getting it to look good enough while marketing properly would probably be the best move.

[MikkoAkure]

Alas 1.0 failed for a million reasons, and its playstyle was not the cause of the downfall. But what did SE do? Well it was desperate so of course it just copied the most successful MMO at the time because they weren't in a position to take risks anymore. But the people looking for a successor to XI and its playstyle DID show up at launch, it was just a massive let down.

I played PS2 launch FFXI through WotG and played FFXIV 1.0 from beta to meteorfall and playstyle was 100% one of the reasons why it failed. I wouldn’t even go as far as to say it was meant to be comparable to XI’s gameplay since they did their own thing and it was just horrible. XI would have been an improvement and some of my close friends from XI abandoned XIV 1.0 for XI soon after launch specifically for gameplay reasons over anything else and only came back when Yoshi-P took over, the job system was introduced, and the game was completely overhauled.

While I can see how some would disagree, stamina system and no auto-attack were not fun for most people and were the biggest complaints I personally heard in-game from other players at launch. Those were some of the things including the dreadful fatigue system that they got rid of quickly before even the 1.21 patch that completely changed everything.

There’s a difference between “taking risks” and “going in a completely whacky direction out of touch with the players”.

[Ath192]

I played PS2 launch FFXI through WotG and played FFXIV 1.0 from beta to meteorfall and playstyle was 100% one of the reasons why it failed. I wouldn’t even go as far as to say it was meant to be comparable to XI’s gameplay since they did their own thing and it was just horrible. XI would have been an improvement and some of my close friends from XI abandoned XIV 1.0 for XI soon after launch specifically for gameplay reasons over anything else and only came back when Yoshi-P took over, the job system was introduced, and the game was completely overhauled.

While I can see how some would disagree, stamina system and no auto-attack were not fun for most people and were the biggest complaints I personally heard in-game from other players at launch. Those were some of the things including the dreadful fatigue system that they got rid of quickly before even the 1.21 patch that completely changed everything.

There’s a difference between “taking risks” and “going in a completely whacky direction out of touch with the players”.

I also played and bought OG ARR. what made me quit was the horrible lag, FPS drops and janky menu. I think you are confused about what I mean with this argument, and it's that the whole of OG XIV, post fixes and refinements would've been a vastly different game if ARR was never developed. But it was such a bad implementation they felt it had to be nuked. Had they not made so many technical mistakes then the games population wouldn't have dropped to the point where they felt they had to clone WOW.

You are arguing from the perspective of keeping 1.0 patchless, and, well yeah, stuff had to improve gameplaywise too, but that wasn't the main factor, at least not to me. Not in the least.

I find this comparison to be a bit of a stretch. I think a better comparison would be Wildstar, and we know how that ended.

Oh jeez, I didn't know Wildstar was so wildly successful as XI, last I remember that thing was a flop everyone likes to bring up like it has anything to do with the topic. Perhaps you can clear up how Wildstar was a follow up or remaster to a successful game that had a relatively stable release and established fan base.

[Canadane]

Counter-suggestion: Remake XIV with XI's engine.