Dev Tracker: Discussion

[dasva]

The proposed changes, while fine, do zero to help with HMP drop rates so I have no idea why the post even bothered to mention them. And I'm probably just being bitter at this point, but whatever other avenue they have planned to obtain HMP is likely to do jack and shit as well.

They have repeatedly stated they don't want to increase rates because they are under some kind of retarded impression that there is any real difference between a shit drop rate in 1 pool with everyone soloing and a shit drop rate with personal pools.

[Kincard]

They already have an untold story to tell us. When we originally go to Iroha's homeland. Granted they obviously don't have the Dev team for a fully blown expansion.

They have to wait 14 years before they release that one.

[Fwahm]

Spoiler: show

Don't you die in RoV?

No.

[Tdizzle]

They have repeatedly stated they don't want to increase rates because they are under some kind of retarded impression that there is any real difference between a shit drop rate in 1 pool with everyone soloing and a shit drop rate with personal pools.

They're under the impression that if they increased the drop rate then people would farm alliances and spam then and flood the market since drops are unique to each party member. What they fail to notice is no one likes to party up so that would never happen, even if it would make a lot of sense.

[Jem]

Just let them be purchasable with Cruor like how HP Bayld is.

Or if that's too easy, create an item that is purchasable with cruor that guarantees an extra drop slot for an Empy mat on the next kill.

[arus2001]

The whole Emp weapon situation is really just SE being stubborn. Soloing to the 90 phase should be easily possible for pretty much anyone now with trusts and ilvl gear alongside atma. It's just time consuming since you wouldn't have multiple players to hold/farm KIs and red procs could be tricky depending on your job of choice. Meanwhile, the HMP situation has just been dumb from day one. Still, even if you complete that and the next phase, you're not even possessing an ilvl worthy weapon.

But really, I could extend this stubborn grind of futility to the other early phases of Relics and Mythics, too. What does the game really gain at this point by keeping them strung out? The more hardcore likely have one already, maybe more. The casuals aren't touching Emps because of the HMP situation while the other two got "easier" with RoV KIs killing event cooldowns. I dunno, just all doesn't make sense to me that they'll do catch up mechanisms on one hand, but ignore these despite being a more fruitful activity if they did.

[dasva]

I've been doing salvage for the last week or so just for enough ichor because still lol 1 hour wait and whole party needing feathers. Actually taking longer than assaults at this point

[Trumpy]

This VW change just disappoints me since they said they would come out with other methods to obtain empy items, and I'm afraid that this is what they were looking at. or supid campaigns. SE can go fuck themselves with makin a temporary campaign to help. this needs to be perma and from some other source than VW.

[steellord]

even if mobile does fail completely, doesn't mean they'll ever remake 11 content or add new worthwhile content. It's not an either or because with the mobile app, they were hoping for a new market. How many increased subs would a new 11 expansion bring in or a graphic improvement to CoP? It's still the same market, so not many i suspect

Even sustaining subs at this point, by the time they could roll out an expansion the only subs they'd have left to keep ahold of would be those who *already* stuck around for like 1.5 years after the last major update (dec 2015). How much would these people really need new content to keep their subs going? I just don't see it worth the expense, but then SE has done a lot of shit thru this whole process that makes no sense to me, so who knows

Honestly, lowering the sub cost would have the greatest impact going forward. I can see a lot of subs dropping soon due to frustration with or completion of escha

[Kyreth]

I dunno, with the story concluded once and for all because of RoV, it kinda kills the possibility to have more expansions, and revamping the PC client without that in mind sounds like a waste of money on their side, imho.
Their "fault" for making RoV what it is (it was supposed to be the "final" story because the game was gonna die blahblah but something must have happened in their headquarters meanwhile, it seems)

Lot of people thought Abyssea was going to be the end of it all, but then XIV 1.0 collapsed.

But a "modernized" FFXI 2.0 wouldn't be a bad thing, given many of the limitations it has now. Or just call them Final Fantasy Vana'diel and Final Fantasy Eozera.

[Keme]

Ffxi 2.0 would be really really nice.

[Sechs]

Lot of people thought Abyssea was going to be the end of it all, but then XIV 1.0 collapsed.

I agree, but you're failing to see the difference between "lots of people thought" and "Square Enix officially told"
And even without that, it's quite clear to see how Abyssea had no ambition to be anything "final", whereas RoV was created specifically with that goal in mind.

[Kincard]

Like Sechs said, the situation we have here is pretty different than when we got Adoulin.

People already speculated that Adoulin only happened because XIV 1.0 flopped hardcore, and what's happened recently only makes the case stronger- XIV ARR was a huge success in SE's view, and it's probably no coincidence that so soon after we got the announcement for Rhapsodies. Wouldn't be surprised that's part of the reason Adoulin's final chapter got axed, too. Unless the building with the XIV servers spontaneously combusts or something it's doubtful SE will make the decision to put money in to make an XI expansion.

And as much as people like to joke about there only being 5 people working on XI, we've never had a straight announcement for a mass restructuring of the dev team before, even during that dead period of WOTG. Most notably, I'm curious if the scenario writers/event planners are still on board XI- regardless of if you love the story or you spam enter I think the status of those members are key to whether XI has even a chance of continuing. Personally I'm most curious about Yoshitsugu Saito and Yaeko Sato- they both did work on Adoulin and I know Sato is also a writer on XIV's team. They are the only ones players heard anything from in recent years, and if they're gone, that would be a bad sign.

We know Masato Kato left Square Enix after finishing Rise of the Zilart.
Kenichi Iwao, who oversaw the FFXI's setting, left Square-Enix in 2014 and got with a couple friends to make a small dev team called Oriflamme (They make some iOS games currently).
Basically no information for Yuusuke Kigoshi exists. Guess he's a real private man.
I don't know what happened to Nobuaki Koumoto after XIV 1.0 flopped, but I'd guess he's still on the XIV team, just not making any public appearances.
Various other dev members who worked on TOAU and WOTG are also difficult to find information for.

[arus2001]

Short of upgrading texture packs, anything more ambitious to "upgrade" the game would literally be like making a new game itself. And at that point, I'd rather SE make a new game entirely.

[Maurauc]

Short of upgrading texture packs, anything more ambitious to "upgrade" the game would literally be like making a new game itself. And at that point, I'd rather SE make a new game entirely.

And if the original textures weren't downscaled, then even making new ones of those will be a gargantuan effort.

[Spira]

I dunno, with the story concluded once and for all because of RoV, it kinda kills the possibility to have more expansions, and revamping the PC client without that in mind sounds like a waste of money on their side, imho.
Their "fault" for making RoV what it is (it was supposed to be the "final" story because the game was gonna die blahblah but something must have happened in their headquarters meanwhile, it seems)

i actually saw this the other way round. Rhapsodies definitively sets out the "ultimate" villain in FFXI and the eventual end point of the game. It's also a metaphor to Final Fantasy XI itself. As long as there are struggles (expansions), Vana'diel won't be engulfed by the void.

So in other words, theres a lot that can happen between now and the Reckoning which would be some ~16+ years into the future. it also implies that there will be future conflicts as thats what is required to keep Vana'diel going (altho that begs the question as to why the Cloud didn't arrive sooner. maybe there were still other unspoken struggles happening).

From Iroha's recounting of your tales, she does mention that you do eventually go to the Far East, so thats kind of like a teaser to the fact that you would have gone there at some point. It just didnt happen for us yet.

The only discrepancy is the Reckoning cutscene where we only see people we already know.. which is just for the sake of storytelling lol.

For all all intents and purposes of the storyline chronology, it seems that Rhapsodies is intended to be the very last story no matter what order possible future expansions (for mobile) may be released in.

[Kanriel]

i actually saw this the other way round. Rhapsodies definitively sets out the "ultimate" villain in FFXI and the eventual end point of the game. It's also a metaphor to Final Fantasy XI itself. As long as there are struggles (expansions), Vana'diel won't be engulfed by the void.

So in other words, theres a lot that can happen between now and the Reckoning which would be some ~16+ years into the future. it also implies that there will be future conflicts as thats what is required to keep Vana'diel going (altho that begs the question as to why the Cloud didn't arrive sooner. maybe there were still other unspoken struggles happening).

From Iroha's recounting of your tales, she does mention that you do eventually go to the Far East, so thats kind of like a teaser to the fact that you would have gone there at some point. It just didnt happen for us yet.

The only discrepancy is the Reckoning cutscene where we only see people we already know.. which is just for the sake of storytelling lol.

For all all intents and purposes of the storyline chronology, it seems that Rhapsodies is intended to be the very last story no matter what order possible future expansions (for mobile) may be released in.

Yeah, this is how I'm currently choosing to look at things. They deliberately left open the window to keep with going to other places if that's how things progress. Not saying there's any likelihood of it happening, but they haven't locked that door.

Hell they can even toss in the new heroes into the mass cutscenes of Rhapsodies, though doubt the (awesomely cheesy) fight scene with the heroines will ever get patched up like that.

I'd still love to go south, and they teased going north with showing an island up north in SoA missions. And would be beyond neat to finally visit Tenzen's homeland and meet baby Iroha.

[Seha]

Even sustaining subs at this point, by the time they could roll out an expansion the only subs they'd have left to keep ahold of would be those who *already* stuck around for like 1.5 years after the last major update (dec 2015). How much would these people really need new content to keep their subs going?

Personally, going back on their decision and releasing a new expansion is the only way they'd make me sub again. I unsubbed right cause RoV marked the end, if that didn't happen I'd still be playing, daydreaming about the future.

[Destinye]

I dunno, with the story concluded once and for all because of RoV, it kinda kills the possibility to have more expansions, and revamping the PC client without that in mind sounds like a waste of money on their side, imho.
Their "fault" for making RoV what it is (it was supposed to be the "final" story because the game was gonna die blahblah but something must have happened in their headquarters meanwhile, it seems)

Well, considering there's 3-4 slots left for expansion data (based on the current structure of how they check if you have x pack/addon installed) there's nothing that prevents it other than SE decides not to do it. They can easily make 4 "Addons" and throw in new zones and what have you through the monthly updates. The Mobile version is by Nexon anyway, so revamping the PC version could be possible.

When you think about it, Shadow Lord was supposed to be "the end" because they weren't confident XI would survive past its first year because they never made an MMO before. The next "final" expansion was WoTG, which it could have been given every XI staff was pulled onto XIV 1.0's development during 2007-2010.

As for the storyline in particular:

Spoiler: show

Nothing is stopping them from letting us experience the "other" Vana'diels, similar to Abyssea and Escha. Think back to the WoTG storyline and how our reality isn't even the "right" one. The "main story" is over but that doesn't mean there isn't other alternate storylines they can go through, hell they could even continue Abyssea's storyline in a sense as it'd also add battle content.

Who knows though, I'd be all over a revamped XI as long as they don't bring that 'rotation' BS into the gameplay like they did with XIV, since that severely limits anything you can do with content and jobs.

[Lyramion]

Acumen, Fend (2016/3/3)

Good thing they didn't yet notice that FOCUS is absolutly broken as well and gives like 160+ MACC making the reign of mages an easy one.