Letter from the Producer LIVE Part VI (April 3, 8:30PM JST)

[Tomino]

as a modern mmo it has been a little lame. But with that said I will most likely play it a lot since it's FF.

With all its pros and cons, I think that is exactly their goal.

[Saxon]

With all its pros and cons, I think that is exactly their goal.

Yeah, and they have done well in doing so. But it all comes down to gameplay at endgame and the variety of events etc. I felt like the game played fine, but I quit playing WoW because I got bored of the endgame being the same shit over and over again, so I'm hoping that the endgame events in ARR will keep me entertained and keep me wanting to play for a long time. Simply being a "modern MMO" isn't enough to cut it nowadays, you need to branch out and make your game unique otherwise people will just end up playing WoW again, unless like myself you have a strong brand loyalty to the Final Fantasy franchise.

I would love MMORPGs to take the Elder Scrolls Online stance, from what I've seen of it so far it will play nothing like the generic MMO and more like a "massively multiplayer" Elder Scrolls. I'm hoping that after ARR gets relaunched and trys to recuperate some of the bled cash from 1.0, they can start taking more risks and let the game evolve into something of its own.

[arus2001]

If SE's endgame focus is just going to be raid, raid, raid, then expect to be disappointed. I'm rather burnt out on that model, myself, but MMOs do have their issues with genre stagnation. I suspect the best thing they'll offer out of all of it is storytelling, but good luck enjoying that when your party keeps telling you to spam enter so the fighting can start.

[Kami]

Am I the only one somewhat disappointed with the beta? It's leaps and bounds above 1.0, but as a modern mmo it has been a little lame. But with that said I will most likely play it a lot since it's FF.

Shhh are you crazy ?! You're gonna get called OFer ! What's next? you're gonna directly criticize Yoshi-P ? Madness!

http://howtonotsuckatgamedesign.com/...nd-torches.jpg

In all seriousness though, 1.0 had a lot of flaws and clearly SE screwed up. That said it was feeling somewhat unique which is very rare with the mmorpg market these days. 2.0 feels like just another "post-WoW mmorpg". SE lost lots of money with 1.0 so my guess is that this time arround they don't want to take any risk and provide the most consensual, standard mmorpg to ensure some profit based on the fact that very consensual/casual mmorpg + FF licence = money.

Not saying it's plain bad either, but clearly it's a bit disappointing so far. I guess that just like many others I'll wait for endgame content/quality to give a final judgement. So far? Meh.

[Kurokikaze]

Unique != good. Sorry to burst your bubble.

[Kami]

Yep, and I actually said SE screwed up. I just think its sad SE is lacking design ambition with this 2.0 version. I understand the financial reasons behind it though.

Sure 1.x was bad and I give SE credit for doing what's right and providing a new version, Im just disapointed with the road chosen. Apparently i'm not the only one.

[Tidane]

Unique != good. Sorry to burst your bubble.

Same != good. Sorry to burst your bubble.

It is pretty obvious that any reasonable person talking about uniqueness isn't asking for something to be unique and bad. They're asking for something that makes the game stand out from the sameness in a positive way. 1.0 was unique in many ways, but it was also terrible in many of those same ways. Change simply to be different left them with a pile of crap.

2.0 is following a different philosophy (not one that I completely agree with, but I do see why they would do this). They made a great deal of improvement in their systems by following the examples of others (although there are still areas where their reference implementation is much better). If they follow their own example of story combined with the other games, the final product will be playable, but it may not be something most people want to play.

And that, really, is the problem people have. The game appears to be following trends, but it isn't doing anything exciting. The systems aren't more polished than the ones they're referencing. They don't have a system that showcases their creativity and ability to design new game systems. The only thing they've shown that is even close is the controller interface which, while interesting, appeals to a subset of the MMO audience. Hopefully beta three will expose more of what will make people want to play.

[Waraji]

Wtf is "=!"? Are you being that lazy and not using ≠?

This angers me. I've seen that bullshit in this subforum the past 3 days.

[Raldo]

!= is commonly used in many programming languages to mean "not equal to". I don't know how long it took you to find the legit "not equal to" sign, but I certainly wouldn't know where to find it before I stopped caring about a forum post, so most people will use !=.

and in the spirit of being lazy and using a sub-par replacement for something...

dealwithit.gif

[Jamison]

People hated 1.0. People hate 2.0. People love/hate WoW. FF should be more/less like other MMOs. This just in, people have opinions. You can't please everyone, and folks are going to be damn sure everyone else knows about their displeasure.

[Lucavi]

Unique != good. Sorry to burst your bubble.

Hey, 1.0 was unque. Apparently these guys loved it enough to consider 2.0 a downgrade at this point.

Ah well. You most certainly cannot please everyone. I'm pretty fucking pleased, though, so good for me. <3

Shit, Age of Conan was super unique, haha. Look how that turned out. Its cool, though, offering nothing more than "its too much like wow; make it different but I don't know how". Just come right out and say that you want a reskinned XI and stop wasting time beating around the bush.

[Izzy]

After all the rage, after all the opinions, after all the discussion, the determining factor about how good the game is will be known when the sub counts come out for 2.0.

All this bullshit arguing between us about whether or not this game will be good means absolutely nothing. We honestly have no idea.

[Lucavi]

But then you've limited the thread to simply releasing new information, which is currently under NDA. You might as well lock the entire forum section until P3, then.

[Deuce]

After all the rage, after all the opinions, after all the discussion, the determining factor about how good the game is will be known when the sub counts come out for 2.0.

All this bullshit arguing between us about whether or not this game will be good means absolutely nothing. We honestly have no idea.

A thousand times this. We've only seen a fraction of the game at this point, so I'll reserve my judgement until after release; however, so far I'm enjoying myself and that's all that matters to me.

[Lucavi]

To me, this is more about whether a paid sub MMO can "recover" after a disastrous launch. We've already seen plenty of evidence that paid MMOs that go F2P can retain or even exceed profitability, but this'll be the first time someone starts out paid, fucks things up royally, gets slammed everywhere, then tries to re-start the game while continuing with a paid model.

I don't know what kind of industry impact this will have, but I'd imagine that if things turn out well, other companies will take notice, at least on the critical reception end.

[Izzy]

But then you've limited the thread to simply releasing new information, which is currently under NDA. You might as well lock the entire forum section until P3, then.

We could still discuss other things about FFXIV. But the "This game will/will not fail" stuff is pretty worn out by now.

[Izzy]

I don't know what kind of industry impact this will have, but I'd imagine that if things turn out well, other companies will take notice, at least on the critical reception end.

I think the only reason SE can get away with this is because of the "Final Fantasy" name. Could you imagine if Rift had been a complete train wreck on launch? They wouldn't have even been able to get players f2p. The FF name keeps people coming back imo.

[xopher]

Wtf is "=!"? Are you being that lazy and not using ≠?

This angers me. I've seen that bullshit in this subforum the past 3 days.

Angry at your ignorance there, old boy?

[Manako]

To me, this is more about whether a paid sub MMO can "recover" after a disastrous launch. We've already seen plenty of evidence that paid MMOs that go F2P can retain or even exceed profitability, but this'll be the first time someone starts out paid, fucks things up royally, gets slammed everywhere, then tries to re-start the game while continuing with a paid model.

I don't know what kind of industry impact this will have, but I'd imagine that if things turn out well, other companies will take notice, at least on the critical reception end.

I agree, this is the key point. The one benefit of having failed is that when the game launches it will already have many of the initial startup kinks ironed out, and hopefully with the number of people they have testing the game there will be less server issues at launch than a standard MMO. Their issue will be marketing the game and trying to pull players that are either entirely new to the brand or who gave up -- and also whether the subscription model is still viable in the current market. Will Elder Scrolls (or insert new MMO here) have a smooth enough launch to be able to keep people after the first month versus will FFXIV have enough draw. It isn't worth imagining being able to pull people who are happily entrenched in a different game, the "new" players will either be unhappy or bored with their current game -- or people who are excited about the brand.

As an aside, there are certainly things that make FFXI and FFXIV unique compared to other MMOs, for example they are currently the only game that allows the player to change their job/class on the fly. I think that taking ideas that work and incorporating them into your product is a smart way to do things personally, so I'm glad they are looking at other people's successes when developing their own plan.

[Cutriss]

Phase II again Friday morning through Sunday morning.

Off The Record

In addition to getting the game ready for the upcoming phase 3, it appears the development team is also preparing for another marketing blitz...and that means trailers...and that means we’re back in the recording studio!

Let us hope that the almighty ones in Publicity actually allow us poor mortals something to look at rather than cockblocking the dev team time after time.

I'm reminded of the HIMYM episode where Barney goes on a "date" with Quinn at the Lusty Leopard and she keeps blaming the "stupid manager".