Dev Tracker: Discussion

[Edelweiss]

Could probably bring a lot of XI veterans back from XIV on a temporary basis if or when (cough) they do a crossover expansion with XIV or something of that nature to mark XI/Vana'diel's finale (as far as major expansions or storylines for XI and not the end of XI service). I don't really think an MMORPG has ever linked predecessor-successor, and had the former end in a way involving the successor, right? It would be a shame to just let XI go the way of XIV 1.0's lore and cutscenes; plus it's probably the only way XI will ever see more than a shoestring budget and skeleton crew staffing it ever again.

Although something landmark like that would really warrant an expansion of it's own for XIV too (and Heavensward is already on the table). Short of that happening. XI is probaby ded (or dying at a potentially increasing pace).

[Toth]

I wonder if FFXI would ever get a remaster....Would it be THAT hard to do for a dedicated team? Only backgrounds and characters need any real work, FFXIV even reuses the same FFXI enemy models. Though the game still looks great even this far down the line, I think a fresh coat of paint would get people interested in the game again.

[arus2001]

I'm going to say yes, because just reskinning the game isn't what it needs. What it needs is a server/engine overhaul to better facilitate more modern MMO features and eliminate things like BC congestion or no true instancing.

[PSOfanatic]

Haven't played XIV but I heard XIV suffers the same problem with not being able to enter battlefields? Am I misinformed? I would assume I was but idk. If it is the case then I can't imagine an engine rehaul would fix the battlefield instance limits.

[Seha]

Maybe it's just festivities giving the wrong impression, but it feels the dev team has been quieter and in general has given less info for the future for a while now. I hope they're not lost and actually have great stuff in mind...it's like the game has been in sleep mode for the past couple of months.

[arus2001]

They had congestion issues at launch, yeah, but that's kind of that freak occurrence of hundreds of people wanting to do the same thing(s) at once. That may still happen occasionally with certain post-patch things, but I'd overall say the system is better than XI's. Open world stuff is also more lenient about "helping" since mob claims are limited to leve-type stuff. So if an objective is something like, "Go to X, Kill Y!" and you get to X and someone has Y at 75%, you could help out and get credit assuming you did enough to it.

I don't think anything will ever get as bad as lines we saw for stuff like NPC fellows here, both in Ghelsba and Eldieme. Or glitchy like Sandworm and MMM interactions. Heard horror stories about campaign SL and of course stronghold BCs, too.

[Malithar]

Is it?
I mean, after we all spent pages over pages over pages over pages of discussion here and on FFXIAH concerning the "new levelling system" it turned out to be something just for sidegradish AHable 119 gear.
Are we really sure this is what they meant as a new level up system?

We also introduced new systems and features such as the Gifts system as a post-level 99 leveling system

Outside of some flavorful mistranslation, I'd say yes.

honestly im not sure how many people would come back, but it would certainly be enough to add a good amount to the event pool at the very least. f2p would be better, but it's also unlikely to ever happen. I foresee SE closing down servers long before they consider a F2P model.

I don't foresee them ever going the F2P route, nor do I think it'd even work for FFXI without a major overhaul. But if you take their resent annual report for it's word, they seem at least open to the idea of F2P now, which is the first I've seen of them being for it.

“One major approach we are currently taking is to apply variable pricing models, such as F2P (free to play) games, to the HD games area. We are already introducing such models and have achieved success in several cases,” continues Matsuda.

“Last year, platform providers began to promote content delivery services based on the F2P model, in addition to conventional paid content sales, for newly-released home game consoles. Promotion of online HD games based on this new business model is an important pillar of structural reform for us as well, and we conducted a large-scale review of both our HD games development and our European and American studios, in preparation for this course of action. The list of titles that have been announced is still limited at present, but we will be introducing new HD game titles featuring variable pricing models.”

Again, no mention of converting MMOs to F2P or anything, just that they're open to the idea of F2P in general, which is news for SE afaik. Also that they have just over 1 million monthly paying players across their 3 MMOs, whatever that may translate into.

[Damane]

Outside of some flavorful mistranslation, I'd say yes.



I don't foresee them ever going the F2P route, nor do I think it'd even work for FFXI without a major overhaul. But if you take their resent annual report for it's word, they seem at least open to the idea of F2P now, which is the first I've seen of them being for it.



Again, no mention of converting MMOs to F2P or anything, just that they're open to the idea of F2P in general, which is news for SE afaik. Also that they have just over 1 million monthly paying players across their 3 MMOs, whatever that may translate into.

thats sound kinda extremly low oO werent they just advertising with 2.5 million subscribers on FF14 4 monhts ago or so?

Also F2P for FFXI could work with active campaign buffs on chars, but it depends on the buff, double exp and CP gain arent enough for the subscription and increased droprate buff could just be abused by haveing one person in the party with the subscription, increased crafting skill buff and hq rate? Maybe a personal loot buff for stuff that drops instantly into your inventory/personal chest like in incursion or Hardmode fights on EX items? Reduced entry time for stuff isnt an option either, it would just skew too much stuff into the wrong direction.

[arus2001]

Was 1.5m, if I'm remembering right.

[Malithar]

Believe it was accounts, which for the "wow, that's successful!" measure, would count inactive and trial accounts. Here's the relevant quote since IGN is lame and I didn't see another website with it in a linkable format other than pdfs.

Matsuda goes on to play the importance of the company’s MMO presence in Final Fantasy XIV and Dragon Quest X, along with Final Fantasy XI, which is now in its thirteenth year. All three MMOs attract over 1,000,000 paying members each month, resulting in what Masuda refers to as a “solid revenue base.”

[Damane]

well i think the genre (MMO) itself is beating currently a dead horse, while I have fun with FF14 atm, its just the same ole shit. What would be interesting would be 1 giant overworld, like really big overworld with all the subscribers in it starting at 12 different locations or so far away, with an open world fealing, long travels and no shout chat, but the task alone of creating such a big world is undoable. The amount of NPCs, landscapes etc you have to create is a task no developer could do alone, unless they involve the playerbase into it with some form of ingame tool building the world up slowly with citys/villages etc.

[Seha]

We need full diving techonology!

[Shenrien]

We need full diving techonology!

No and that whole anime is horrible.

[dasva]

No and that whole anime is horrible.

Both?

[Sechs]

1 year ago I would have been 101% sure FFXI would have rather died and turned off their server before turning to F2P model.
Now I'm not so sure about it anymore. I still don't see it a "likely" future, but a possible one? Yes.
They already showed will to change beyond our expectations.
The current model is already suited for F2P model. Think about all the login campaign, double stuff campaign, add some other bonus, think about faster recharge for stones were they to add ilevel Abyssea or VW (god please no ilevel VW, NO! PLEASE!)

We're still not at that point, but I'm pretty pretty pretty sure they are at least considering the hypothesys and have been for a while.

Also, even if it's different department, doesn't SE already run some F2P game? Some of the F2P games have proved to be unexpectedly very very remunerative economically speaking, take TERA, a game I wholeheartedly enjoyed and that everybody was given for doomed. Last year it's one of the MMO that produced more money for the respective companies.
It's the same situation for many other F2P games (not all, of course).
My huge bias agaisnt F2P model being the harbinger of the final death of MMOs isn't always true, given data at hand.

[Shenrien]

Both?

.hack was bad as well.

[geno3302]

.hack was bad as well.

Or maybe you're just a bad person?

[nekura]

Believe it was accounts, which for the "wow, that's successful!" measure, would count inactive and trial accounts. Here's the relevant quote since IGN is lame and I didn't see another website with it in a linkable format other than pdfs.

Bear in mind that this report was actually from March 2014, and a bunch of sites were dumb and ran it as recent.

[Spira]

I wonder if FFXI would ever get a remaster....Would it be THAT hard to do for a dedicated team? Only backgrounds and characters need any real work, FFXIV even reuses the same FFXI enemy models. Though the game still looks great even this far down the line, I think a fresh coat of paint would get people interested in the game again.

For PC? doesnt seem to be any point in that at all. in fact if people know how to upscale and tweak with the settings you can already achieve that with the current PC version.. albeit not optimized well at all.

I'd say if they decided to give the game a fresh coat of paint it would need to do so together with some sort of relaunch. A "HD remaster" version could possibly do that... if they took it to the PS4 maybe. All they'd have to do is use the higher quality models that the PC versions already use, clean the textures for terrain/skies/water/etc, increase draw distance... and make some minor UI changes like introducing map markers.. which they have been doing.

i dont think it'd be a lot of technical work. the real challenge would be how to integrate new/returning players to the game.. and its a lot less of one now given that they've implemented things like FoV, Trust, RoE, and Home Point/Survival Guide QoL conveniences. FFXI is a lot much more playable and friendlier today.

it is still some ways to go tho. my impression is if they ever put on a fresh new coat of paint for a new platform "relaunch" or whatever, they'll first make those changes to the PC version.
I'm still waiting for Type II icon implementation and the mouse interface thing if they ever decide to work on that.

[Hitou]

Pretty sure the new UI is dead in the water. There hasn't been any indication they're still working on it and it was in pre-alpha mode the last time it was on the test server, back when that was a thing. Which was probably over a year ago at this point. If they are still working on it, it's going very slowly and they're playing it close to the chest. Some things like multi chat windows have been siphoned off from it at the very least.

As for a full graphics overhaul, I really doubt that would ever happen, same with f2p. I can see them allowing draw distance on PC version and maybe allowing for over sampling without registry edits. But I can't see them making hi-res models or anything like that without doing a full reboot like 14 got. I don't think they could make a cash shop that would make enough money to support the game going f2p. Outside of people buying mythics, which there's probably a good amount of people doing that with gil already, and maybe some new glowing weapons/armor I can't think of what people would want to pay real money for. There's no "mounts" in this game I guess they could let you buy chocobos? I donno I'm not super experienced with f2p games outside of mobile games. I could see a subscription price drop if they though it would make more money than the trickling subs they loose every month, though.