Square Enix: Final Fantasy XIV 'Greatly Damaged' Entire Brand

[Charismatic]

Yes, some people like things that other people don't like. Some people dislike things that nearly everyone else likes. Imagine that.

[Eaglestrike]

The last FF game that felt like the story was anywhere close to compelling was X. Even if you make an interesting and fun combat system, if the rest of the game is designed around a bland storyline, how enjoyable is the game really going to be? Both XII and XIII had these problems, in that it seemed like the areas of the game were just filled in because there wasn't any substance to the plot points happening. I mean shit, XII was just copy pasted star wars, and XIII was a running series of various characters having a mental breakdown -> fight a summon -> epiphany. Couldn't care less about any character from either game.

I quit FFX around Zanarkand my first time through because the fact that it was an FF wasn't enough for me to suffer through the terrible characters and ok at best storyline. FFX's strength was the best single minigame in an FF ever: Blitzball. Past that, it was absolutely terrible as far as I'm concerned.

[notorious bum]

Reply FFs 1 through 9. Remember what made you great.

All the majority of your fans have been wanting are game worlds/storylines similar to 1-9 but in HD. I'm talking world maps, airships, undersea, the works. The best example is something similar to what would be called "FF7 HD" <--- this is what fans have been looking forward to in new Final Fantasy titles.

Saw the headline, came to say this, so QFT

Holy shit, and that post above mine, too. Except, I actually beat FFX, albeit accidentally because it was fuckin childsplay. Sellout, hollow, and overall fakeass RPGs gets no love from me either.

[mightyg]

So many punched kittens, I have to hit one every time someone says FFXII is essentially Star Wars because that means they didn't actually PAY ANY ATTENTION WHILE GOING THROUGH THE GAME YET COMPLAIN ABOUT THE STORY/CHARACTERS.

And yes, Star Ocean and Tales games are certainly more about the gameplay than story but even some of the stories are pretty gewd by JRPG standards, Eternia, Symphonia and Vesperia for example have some pretty sweet JRPG stories. SO3 started slow but then was going great until the "plot twist", seriously... things were getting exciting. But I do agree with your point, it's the gameplay that keeps me coming back to these and recommending them to others, not the story. This is part of the reason my suggestions earlier in the thread were all gameplay related.
Despite what some may say, the gameplay is the lynchpin... NOT the story.

Problem is, all the unique plot points in FFXII ended up not being fully developed/resolved. Like the magicite beings and the whole controlling the fate of humanity thing. Ending was rushed, very few characters that had initial development got any closure. Like Ashes whole power and vengeance themes prettymuch get resolved without her making a serious choice, Vaan/Penelo is just along for the ride, Han and Chewie stay Han and Chewie (Though I admit visiting Fran's home was one of the better characterization moments in the game.), and Balthier and Basch's conflicts prettymuch resolved themselves too through deaths of secondary characters.
While I mostly agree that gameplay is incredibly important, There's thousands of games that can do gameplay well. Without story you get a game that is good, but isn't great. This is the same reason I get psyched every time a Platnium game comes out and then I play it through once, enjoy the gameplay, then think "meh" and throw it in the pile never to think about it again. Same thing with FFXIII, the combat system was fun and interesting, but everything else was garbage to the point where the dragging plot and pacing even seeped into the combat.

[Manako]

Definetly agree with most discussion on this that the "final fantasy" name definititely started going downhill prior to 14.. XIII got lots of negative press, perhaps this is just a scapegoat to convince people to buy more into the XIII spinoffs. I remember when FFXII came out, people didn't know what XI was, many people ignore the MMOs in the series. Also, at least in the handheld market SE seems to be trying a couple new ideas, which are a welcome change.

They should have just made FFXIV an upgraded FFXI, there is a strong core group of people who are happy about FFXI, and they should have looked at it said "what can we do to make it better" and GO. It seems like the older FF's were build incrementally, ATB grew naturally out of a turn based system, the different forms of character growth were unique but similar... making them more approachable. Personally, I also liked that characters had unique backstories and traits. with FF8 and then 10 they moved away from that and I think it hurt immersion.

One thing I think FFXI and FFXIV maintains well, that is not as well done in the other newer FFs is the ability to have very unique boss fights, that require the player to learn specific tactics or introduce certain conditions. mobs that would frenzy when in a specific state, or be invincible were much more common in earlier games, and newer ones are alot more simple-- more about brawn than brains. Perhaps there are specific cases where that isn't true, but it was alot more common in earlier games.

and at the end of the day, failing to remember their audience is a huge issue. it seems like they are trying to go for breadth of audience in more recent titles, while other, more recent, developers are currently developing games that are better targeted towards what was FF's audience.

[Elcura]

While I mostly agree that gameplay is incredibly important, There's thousands of games that can do gameplay well. Without story you get a game that is good, but isn't great. This is the same reason I get psyched every time a Platnium game comes out and then I play it through once, enjoy the gameplay, then think "meh" and throw it in the pile never to think about it again. Same thing with FFXIII, the combat system was fun and interesting, but everything else was garbage to the point where the dragging plot and pacing even seeped into the combat.

No one is saying that a game is better off without a good story. We're saying that in the end, it's the game play that interests people, draws them in and keeps them playing. In order to get to your precious story or characters, you have to suffer through game play. Also, you make it sound like good game play is common enough. It isn't. There should be more games with good game play, it's not like we've magically reached a point where there are no more bad games but stories still suck.

Btw, XIII doesn't have great game play, at least not the kind that keeps you playing even after you're completely done with it. I can still play fun games even 10 years after I've completely finished with them. Games like Parasite Eve, Threads of Fate, Star Ocean, Tales etc. As much as I love Final Fantasy, there hasn't been one I've played more than twice (excluding VII, which I played a lot due to not having many other games), most of them are a single play through to experience everything, then perhaps a challenge run (which is a habit picked up from SO/Tales) if I really like the game.

[Hyan]

You have an odd way to judge good or bad gameplay. XIII's is entertaining the first time, wtf more do you want.. It doesn't have to last 10 playthroughs to be great. Sure it's not prefect or anything but not exactly a bore either.

I guarantee it'll still be entertaining in XIII-2 as well.

But it's too bad the existing fans keep slowing them down. They should be more open for SE to develop better game play but some of them really aren't.

[Lordender]

I found XIII's gameplay interesting, one of the biggest knocks on Final Fantasy games through-out its history has always been slow gameplay, they tried to make it fast pace with some thinking with paradigms like big attack from boss = get into 3 tank specs quickly etc etc. My issue with XIII is that you could just tell it was rushed, the whole last part of the game felt very lackluster kind of like in FFVIII and XII where it just feels like the dev's said "fuck it, time to end it" which resulted in taking a dump in the toilet after the game got off to a great start, the middle held up while the last few hrs of the game just crashed and burned.

Another problem I saw with XIII was in the story telling and I knew many people who complained about it when I asked for their takes about the story, many gripes over SE throwing way too much lingo at people in the beginning of the game like Fal'cie, L'cie, Pulse Fal'cie, it confused the shit out of a lot of people, the bad guy in XIII was probably the weakest in the entire series, it was lame when you compare to the other bad guys of the past.

I think for the most part SE got the gameplay right in XIII, but the story telling, upgrade system, was just down right horrible.

[Eaglestrike]

You have an odd way to judge good or bad gameplay. XIII's is entertaining the first time, wtf more do you want.. It doesn't have to last 10 playthroughs to be great. Sure it's not prefect or anything but not exactly a bore either.

I guarantee it'll still be entertaining in XIII-2 as well.

But it's too bad the existing fans keep slowing them down. They should be more open for SE to develop better game play but some of them really aren't.

They're certainly trying to develop better gameplay. The actual battle mechanics were nearly the same in the early FF's. Attack/Magic/Summon/Item with the major difference in each game is simply how you acquire spells/stat gains. But for the most part you had the same menu and just chose to attack or cast spells, that is that. In XI they let you choose, on-the-fly, who was going to do what, who was equipped with what, etc. And in XIII they had you choose pre-chosen setups which had the same choices as all previous FF's but with a completely new mechanic in it.

I can see some people not like the XIII gameplay, I can. But what I don't understand is people who don't like the XIII gameplay and then make previous FF's out to be exceptional gameplay.

[Hyan]

I actually gave a shit about upgrading in the game. Maybe it's just me, maybe not, but usually I just skip whatever crafting devs throw at me.

The end felt good, the endgame not so much.

[Grey Jorildyn]

Agreed. My greatest issue with FFXIII was that the end game didn't start until after I had already beaten the game. I put down my controller, turned it off, and never turned it back on. It just seemed silly to me that a huge portion of the game did not open up until that point. Huge fail imo.

[miokomioko]

Continuity/story-wise, it makes zero fucking sense. I hate that type of "replay value."

Just give me a notification that "ahead lies the end of the game" at some point, so I can go fuck around and 100% the game before I do that. XII was pretty good about it, as was VII, and a few others. IX and VIII pissed me off because I don't recall it being super obvious before they blocked off access to a ton of locales.

[Hyan]

I liked that part, not the best way to do it but better than making me replay the game through ng+. but the actual endgame aside from unlocking full crystarium was just meh. Grinding money and reskinned mobs just doesn't cut it. Also there should have probably been some sort of closure to finishing the endgame. I liked the way TLR did it with Absolute Conqueror or w/e buffed up version of the regular last boss. Made me want to finish all the extra shit just to fight him.

[Thiefami]

I really liked X, I think what someone posted before is pretty on point - they should have tailored the games to mature with their core audience.

[Crab_Cake]

I agree with the whole dislike of postgame stuff like that (when it could easily be done before the end of the game.) Guess they wanted to just make the final boss hard but I do personally prefer to finish/100% everything before I finish the game for the first time.

I liked that part, not the best way to do it but better than making me replay the game through ng+. but the actual endgame aside from unlocking full crystarium was just meh. Grinding money and reskinned mobs just doesn't cut it. Also there should have probably been some sort of closure to finishing the endgame. I liked the way TLR did it with Absolute Conqueror or w/e buffed up version of the regular last boss. Made me want to finish all the extra shit just to fight him.

I liked how marks can be fought over and over (as opposed to FF12 where it was a one time deal) but I'd prefer if end game was like FF10.

IMO FF10 had the best "end game" out of all the single player FF games. SE should make Monster Arena style end game a standard for all of their games IMO (someone tell SE to do this).

Monster Arena is basically where it's all at. You could do Blitz Ball when bored (thanks to the save sphere being there) or you can grind by defeating a fun variety of bosses all in one place. No having to run around in circles or farm turtles, you could simply grind by fighting a variety of fun bosses with huge rewards. It made what would be boring in other games actually fun.

I didn't mind the whole having to capture 10 enemy things to unlock more bosses. It's temporary anyway because once you captured them all, there is no need more need to travel all over the place ever again unlike FF13 where you do (for marks.) All the bosses were in all one easy place.

Speaking of FF10 again, I liked how in FF10 (and FF10-2) you could abuse/play around with summons as much as you want.

In FF10-2 you had special dress spheres which were basically the limit break/summon for the game but they could use them as much as you wanted and they were kind of overpowered (the fun kind of overpowered rather than the "Press X to attack and win" overpowered.)

In FF13 I wouldn't have mind if they tweaked TP (allow it to be gained much faster and in battle but of course they'd need to rebalance it.) and also tweaked summons and made each summon's "Gestalt mode" something similar to FF10 where you just controlled the Summon (with no time limit or attack limit, just HP.)

My TP tweaking thoughts and ideas:

Spoiler: show

I felt TP could have had a lot more potential in the game as a fun mechanic but TP ended up being used for Libra (need to find every enemy) and maybe Renew sometimes in fights I needed to 5 star badly but otherwise summons/TP abilities in general were rarely used outside of farming turtles and the poison trick (at least for me.)

Really summons were just meant for tanking since you could "usually" stagger and deal more damage faster than with a summon.

For example they could increase the max TP amount from 5 to 9, make Renew cost 5+ TP (since Renew is arguably the most exploitable TP ability if you could keep using it over and over.) but increase the TP gain amount from expending your ATB bars significantly (maybe by 10x the current amount, so you could gain a whole bar within 30-50 seconds worth of fighting in battle.)

Or they could make it so there are two modes of "Stagger", the standard Stagger or a Stagger where once you Stagger the enemy it fills up your TP gain by 2 levels but resets the enemy's stagger rate by to 100%.

So you could use between staggering an enemy to deal more damage or staggering to recharge your TP gain and use it on summons or so.

You could switch the mode of stagger by pressing R2 or something at any time in battle.

Point of this is so more summons and more fun (maybe throw in a few extra TP abilities too so it doesn't feel so empty).

I liked being able to use summons in FF10 and the Special Dress sphere in FF10-2 with no real limit/penalty. FF10 and FF10-2 both avert this IMO which is nice.

They could tweak the balance to make up for being able to spam summons (also give Hecatoncheir Curaga, I don't understand why Hecatoncheir is the only summon to lack Curaga SE >.>. [Unless they knew about the poison trick but still it's not fair ])

tl;dr - SE should make FF10's Monster Arena style end game and FF10's being able to abuse summons standard for all their future FF games IMO. Summons don't have to be the same but I mean if they're trying to go for something like FF10 (FF13 was sort of a combination of FF10 with Gestalt mode and FF12 with summons attacking with you), let us use it as much as we want >.>.

[Hyan]

I liked X's endgame because I was already blown away by the sheer scope of the game at the time and then it just kept going and going and going. "You can get past 9999hp HOLY SHIT"

(I played the int. version tho)

[Cichy]

I loved X's story line, loved all the characters I thought they were pretty diverse and the ending stuck out in my mind. Enjoyed the gameplay alot especially with all the side quests for ultimate weapons, blitzball, and monster arena. I even liked the awkward laughing scene, so there, fuck you haters.

[notorious bum]

I too, loved Avatar.

[Siatdiat]

Agreed. My greatest issue with FFXIII was that the end game didn't start until after I had already beaten the game. I put down my controller, turned it off, and never turned it back on. It just seemed silly to me that a huge portion of the game did not open up until that point. Huge fail imo.

Different strokes for different folks I guess. This is exactly what I have liked about FF games since they stopped taking the extra shit out for the translation to NA version. I make it my goal to fly through the game and beat it on the lowest possible level. Then I either build off that to do all the extra shit that is actually harder than the final story boss of the game, or in certain cases I start over and make sure I dont miss anything and max that shit out.

[Nevex]

Agreed. My greatest issue with FFXIII was that the end game didn't start until after I had already beaten the game. I put down my controller, turned it off, and never turned it back on. It just seemed silly to me that a huge portion of the game did not open up until that point. Huge fail imo.

Game opens up during chapter 11, which is roughly at 2/3rd of the story thanks to Chapter 11 being as long as 1-7 combined.

The only thing that opens up after you beat the final boss is stage 10 Crystarium, which isn't needed to complete most (if any) of the optional content.

It was you and you alone who decided not to explore the game at that point and rushed to the end, quit trying to create flaws that aren't there.
If you want to complain about the game opening up at 2/3 then be my guest, but don't even try to say that it doesn't open up until the very end.

And:

Different strokes for different folks I guess. This is exactly what I have liked about FF games since they stopped taking the extra shit out for the translation to NA version. I make it my goal to fly through the game and beat it on the lowest possible level. Then I either build off that to do all the extra shit that is actually harder than the final story boss of the game, or in certain cases I start over and make sure I dont miss anything and max that shit out.

This is why I wasn't bothered about the linearity and this is how most players play every single FF: beat the story first, do the optional content after.
Those who don't do so are in the minority here.