An Important Announcement for FINAL FANTASY XIV Fans

[Lucavi]

^ Its not sad. Its what a business is supposed to do when restructuring and working on a complete turnaround that cannot simply happen in one day. This reminds me of the Chevy bailouts a bit. Prideful company churning out shit products gets slammed, has to eat a lot of tasty crow, rededicates themselves to capturing what the public wants instead of what they think the public thinks it wants, and slowly but surely makes a worthwhile turnaround.

It was fun to mock SE when I felt that they weren't getting it. Now that I know they do get the fact that FFXIV is literally too big to fail (much like the automobile bailouts), I'll support their efforts.

I don't think you realize just how hard it probably was for SE to do this. The Japanese are probably still the proudest people on the planet when it comes to shit like this, outside of supremacists. This could not have been easy for them, but they deserved it, and it was absolutely necessary to right the ship.

[Darkdreamer]

This news is really impressive. SE actually admitted they fucked up and publicly announced a bunch of people got put out on their ass and replaced. I hope they make this game what it really should be. I was really looking forward to this game but as more and more came out the more I wanted to never go near it. With all the changes since release I was slowly getting some desire to maybe try it out once there was a PS3 release. Now with all this it's making me take a lot more notice of what's going on, and while the date is pushed back for PS3 released I'm 100% ok with that so long as they make a huge turn around in the process.

And I do agree with one of the biggest things they could improve on would be an AH system and definitely not like XI, but more like WoW. While I don't want SE to roll over to every whiny bitch that plays XIV to change everything to make it into a WoW clone but they can at least look at other products out there and focus on their most successful elements and try and incorporate that without it looking like a blatent ripoff and still make it their own.

[Darkmed]

good news

[Enkidu]

I'm glad they've finally did this. It was probably 3 years over do. SE just seemed to have this air of superiority coming off of FFXI since it was, before WoW, a pretty successful MMO in its own respect. I think they felt as if their ideas were somehow better then tried and tested ideas that the gamers obviously wanted. I didn't want FFXI-2, but I certainly wanted aspects of XI that made it a fun game, along with aspects of other games that made them fun. Instead we got the guinea pig treatment and it obviously blew up in their faces.

Personally I think it's too late for XIV. It's reputation in the west is broken and it'll take an immeasurable amount of saving face to dig them out of the hole they've dug for the last few months. I really wouldn't be surprised if XIV eventually ends up F2P and that this restructuring is based around that premise. We'll see!

[Lucavi]

They can still save this from being another Warhammer / Age of Conan, it'll just take real, honest work. Lots of it. Not charging people until the work is well underway is a good start. People will play just about anything if its free, but I certainly wouldn't pay to play the tripe that currently is FFXIV.

[madcow]

This is the ace in the hole a company like SE has. It seems like the community as a whole is ready and willing to give them a second chance right off the bat.

No other company, other than Blizz, would have the money to do this or the community support. It's like everyone was standing around with bated breath to see if the head coach would actually be fired or not.

^

SE has the built in fan base that has shown a willingness to go through growing pains. It's good to see them man up and make the hard decisions. I am sure it wasn't easy, but it was the right thing to do. It's only the first step though. They still have to deliver. But based on these recent announcements I am much more optimistic that they can right the ship.

[Sagacious Sundi]

I never thought I'd see SE sorta-humble.

[baroom]

I thought the game was doing much better from when it started hope this can only make it better. One thing id like to see gone or lessened is gear damaged fight for 3 hours and everything is at 0 very lame.

[Katlan]

I hope this is the guy who is in charge of TouA and WotG, or the same team. This is unheard of in the mmo department. The game must have flopped more heavily than any recent mmo in history for such drastic changes so early. But it still blows my mind that they couldn't of pushed back the release date for the PC... and this could of been prevented (well... at least most) if they took a seat off of the ego chair and realized their game sucks ass and needed more development time. Time tables and deadlines don't mean shit if you have a product that is so bad that people aren't going to want to play it.

This is all good news though, hopefully by the summer of 2011 they can turn this game around.

They can still save this from being another Warhammer / Age of Conan, it'll just take real, honest work. Lots of it. Not charging people until the work is well underway is a good start. People will play just about anything if its free, but I certainly wouldn't pay to play the tripe that currently is FFXIV.

i wont play XIV and its free, its that bad "too me"

[Hyan]

I thought the game was doing much better from when it started hope this can only make it better.

Yep, I didn't think this was really needed either after seeing what they've done Oct./Nov., but hell if it does make things so much more interesting. I thought 2010 would be awesome but 2011 is shaping up to be, if not maybe a good year for this game, at least intriguing as hell, even with SE being the underdog (for PC at least).

It's entertaining enough to just see what happens at this point. Who needs to actually play MMO's?

[bruiser]

The game was already declining even after the last patch. I've known at least 10 people who have quit just since the miracle November patch (including myself). And that was the update that was supposed to make things better. Combine with the fact that Cataclysm just shipped the other day, and I think they are seeing their numbers grow dangerously dangerously low. I wouldn't be surprised if they lost 50% of their logins on Cataclysm release day, if not more.

It might already be too late to save FFXIV, but they are definitely doing everything right if they hope to try. I kind of want to play it again now, even though I still get bored to tears, just to show my support of their decision in firing Tanaka and that lead UI designer.

[Hyan]

If your problem is content, a game mechanic update is not going to make you stick around.

Are you seriously claiming the Nov. patch didn't make the game better? I am thirsting for content as much as you are, but that's besides the point.

[bruiser]

If your problem is content, a game mechanic update is not going to make you stick around.

Are you seriously claiming the Nov. patch didn't make the game better? I am thirsting for content as much as you are, but that's besides the point.

The november patch is what caused me to quit actually. At least before the patch, grinding in a 15 person party was fun... In a grindy, abusive sort of way. The only thing to do now is remain stationary for hours on end while you press enter over and over synthesizing items.

[Lucavi]

I dunno, Hyan. MMOs, and more intensively, MMORPGs are my favorite types of games now. I'm a huge swords and sorcery fanboy, and thats why I get so annoyed when devs continously rush MMORPGs out the door and they bomb as a result. I wanted both AoC and Warhammer to succeed. I wanted the market to have 3-4 "giants" that were trading blows with one another - forcing the others to continously innovate - in order to capture the subscriptions.

It would have been like a game in itself. We, the players, would have been the "resources" that the companies would battle over. Their tactics would have had to advance and improve if they wanted to successfully "capture" us. Sadly, none of that came to pass because every company that wasn't WoW rushed their shit out the door in an initial cash-grab attempt, and games like Mortal Darkfall Online never had a chance. I didn't want it to simply be Blizzard Blizzard Blizzard, like it currently is.

There's a new crop of games on the horizon, so maybe my vision will still come to pass, in a sense.

[Agito]

You can throw a party in celebration but is it really worth celebrating just yet? I think not, the replacements might just be worse than the people who originally occupied the positions. The PS3 release was going to bring in alot of new players and fill up all the servers that are quite empty but the server populations will remain very low until that happens. Now the people on the PS3 are going to have to wait until 2012 to play FFXIV because it sure as hell won't be released in 2011 and even if it were scheduled to be released in this year then it would be delayed again because the game is still not satisfactory. lol

[Appie]

Dear FFXIV players,

Give us back our awesome director.

Signed,
FFXI players.

Well, isn't the new guy:

The development team is pleased to announce that Mr. Mizuki Ito, director of the Abyssea series of battle area add-ons and creator of a wide range of battle content to date, will be taking over the helm as director of FINAL FANTASY XI.

Considering how much people love Abyssea, win director replaced with another win director?

I was personally expecting to see a "Der Untergang" video in this topic with Tanaka and Sundi banhammered with some nice quotes. I am disappointed :/

[Hyan]

I wanted the market to have 3-4 "giants" that were trading blows with one another - forcing the others to continously innovate - in order to capture the subscriptions.

This whole stealing subscriptions thing is pretty dumb concept in itself.

I see myself being interested about what goes on behind the closed doors rather than playing the games these days. They just don't capture me.

Hopefully this new big boobs and grid based battling-guy can fix that for me.

[Vuitton]

If someone should be blamed, it's Tanaka. Don't feel bad for him. And Komoto is still the Lead Game Designer.

Komoto was actually demoted to Lead Game Designer. He was Director before this. As for Tanaka, his photo is there with those other two guys, so I am confident he still going to be playing a role. Maybe as an advisor or something.

[Lucavi]

I don't need the game, so I don't need the servers to be packed. If I'm going to play the game, however, I need it to be fun; a decent game, which it currently is not. Just like we'll play Diablo III "when its done", we should have played vanilla XIV when the core of the original game was finished; bugs and all. All we should have had to look forward to were balance tweaks (happens in any modern game with an online component, even if not a MMO), content additions, holiday events and the eventual expansion pack.

They done fucked up. If it takes a year and a half to fix, then that's a year and a half that I can mess with my character off and on while not paying a cent. It'll make up for the $75 dollar bust I pre-ordered for a few months back.

@Hyan: I guess the concept would be "dumb" for you if you don't actually care about playing the game. I'm the polar opposite of you: I don't give a shit if they're having orgies in the office and sniffing cocaine off of their intern's tits as long as when I sit down to play their game, I'm having a great time. Conceptual ideas and "making of" videos don't interest me. Getting my money's worth in a game I pay for each month to play, however, does.

[Hyan]

Komoto was actually demoted to Lead Game Designer. He was Director before this. As for Tanaka, his photo is there with those other two guys, so I am confident he still going to be playing a role. Maybe as an advisor or something.

From what I've listened to him, he never seemed like the director type guy to me. He has talent and it would go to waste just leading. He actually said his work is usually solving problems that arise in the development and being in the "front lines". That sounds like exactly what a Lead Game Designer would do.

At the same time, I think being director and the producer works better for this new guy. Basically he's the "big picture" guy.

@Hyan: I guess the concept would be "dumb" for you if you don't actually care about playing the game.

I think the concept is dumb for both the companies and the gamers. Might be just me tho.