This game is not finished - Truth?

[Loony BoB]

I don't know if its a first or not, but whether it is or not, it only further validates the fact that they really messed up bad. When I read this, its like, why wouldn't they? They HAVE to given their big big big screwup. If that makes any sense.

Oh, yeah, I was just meaning more that from what I understand, usually games that aren't good enough just fizzle out to about five servers and stay that way or alternatively they just get cancelled. I'm obviously not very well schooled in the history of MMO's but I imagine that what SE is doing is something far different to what any other developer has done when their MMO has initially sucked. I don't know if what SE have chosen to do will end up making financial sense or not, but I do admire their dedication to the title.

[Lionx]

I attribute it to the fact that they have enough money to keep it up being as big as they are. If Blizzard's WoW 2 failed, they would be a-ok financially and have enough diehards to keep the game revamped just like it is now. If it was any independent company or smaller one i doubt this would happen.

Also its an FF title.

But there might be other reasons, just thats the only one I can think of realistically...

[Roogle]

Yes, and the genre's expectations, standards and even underlying design structures have changed dramatically since 2001 (a full decade). You pretty much can't compare it now.

Ah, what a good point. I suppose it could have been a lack of foresight on behalf of the company that they expected it to be all right to release a massively multiplayer online role-playing game in a scaffold state. It has been a full decade after all, right? I think that Square Enix should have adjusted their expectations during development and profit forecasting if they were planning to release it as they did.

[Ouch!]

Again, I'm kind of left asking what content you want FFXIV to have that others have at launch. You're right in that I'm new to MMOs overall, but I did play FFXI and I did experience the content up to level 40 there, and I still think that FFXIV is currently around a similar level of things to do. I do agree that it's not at the same level, but then, I played FFXI in 2008 with four expansions included.

Let's take a look at where Final Fantasy XI was at this point in its lifetime. The game launched with each of the nation storylines in development. I'm not sure about the exact time (and can't be assed to do the research), but by this point, players had access to an entire storyline that progressed with missions from level 1 all the way to the Shadowlord at level 50. That was twenty-four story-related missions to complete throughout the grind. That's not to mention that the game launched with a plethora of quests in each town, advanced job quests at level 30, a number of BCNM battles, and loads of NMs. The lack of content at launch was inexcusable, and it's only now getting to the point where it may be compared to where Final Fantasy XI started over a decade ago.

As for how hard it is to keep up with the game without playing it, well, yes, I suppose you could do so by watching YouTube and whatnot, but if that's your way of keeping up with a game and how it's improving then I do still suggest actually getting at least one class to rank 20 and having a shot at the relevant quest. Unfortunately I know you (Rostum) use a gladiator and that was probably the most boring of the class quests I've done so far. xD The Marauder one wasn't that much better. I prefer long cutscenes, so I really enjoyed the Miner one. I wish they did these class quests more regularly.

As I understand it, these job quests are not repeatable, and therefore they're not much in the way of solid content. It's acceptable for the big storyline quests, but it seems that the biggest thing you're arguing for in the way of content is a quest here and there to break up the grind. That's not enough to keep people coming back. The addition of NMs was a step in the right direction, and I think that adding mid- and high-level raids into the mix is taking it the one step further, but as I understand it, most of the repeatable quests are essentially just structured grind in the form of guildleves.

The cryptic updates (I do assume you're referring to the Last Word news updates and the Hatching-tide updates?) are more for people playing the game than not playing. I wouldn't consider them to be anything remotely to do with updates to do with what changes are being made to the game. They're lore, basically. If you're wanting actual updates on the game, wait for Yoshida's posts. If those are what you were referring to as cryptic to you, then okay, I can respect that. They don't explain exactly what is happening. It would be nice if they did, I agree.

Lore is great as long as there's a way to engage with it. Cryptic messages that often seem to have little manifestation in the game (I still remember the poem or whatever at the beginning of Yoshi-P's first post; so far as I know, they've not taken that anywhere) are a poor substitute for content.

It's very easy to say how involved fans are with the development of games these days but this is a Japanese company. GW2, SW:TOR, are they being developed by English teams? If so it's perfectly understandable that they would provide a lot of feedback opportunities to English speakers. But it's insanely difficult to get regular conversation going between the likes of Yoshida and ourselves. It's just not workable without inevitable lost-in-translations scenarios.

Blade and Soul, on the other hand, is being developed by a Korean team. Many games on the MMORPG market are being developed by Korean teams (NCSoft is huge on MMOs), and they understand the necessity for interacting with their market. Sorry, Square Enix, but if you want to take a big share of the MMORPG market, you need to engage an English-speaking audience. If your company is incapable of that, you're archaic. It all comes down to the fact that they have not kept up with the genre.

Regarding the stats being insignificant, we're due an update in June that will update the battle system. There is also a job system in the works. What kind of systems these will be are unsure, but the goal is to make jobs/classes more unique. With this in mind, I'd expect stats to become more significant going forward. Hopefully.

"Hopefully," does not deserve praise. We know almost nothing about the changes that they intend to make to the job system. Hopefully they improve the game, but I'm not willing to praise Square Enix based on hopefully. I think the big difference between our approaches to this is that you're willing to believe that Square Enix is working towards improving the game and pulling it out of the gutter. I've spent the better part of a decade having Square Enix slap me in the face with their updates to Final Fantasy XI. I do not have faith in them. I thought that with some of the changes they began to make to FFXI before FFXIV I had cause to be optimistic, but then FFXIV's dismal release dashed all hopes. I do not know how Square Enix has earned your optimism, but they do not have mine.

Outside of Japan, the console MMORPG is almost nonexistent.

That's weird, roughly half of the FFXI players I knew had it on console. =| Many of them had it on both console and PC for some reason, but hey. I do prefer PC, but when the PS3 version is launched I do think they will get more out of it than "just another shot at reviews" - I know many people who have stated that they were waiting on it being released for PS3. You have to keep in mind that not every average joe out there who wants to play FFXIV is willing to upgrade a PC just to get it running. Yes, the PC market for this is massive compared to the console market, but you do need to take competition into account and where there is little competition, there is more chance for success.

Others have already addressed this issue, but I'd like to emphasize that Final Fantasy XI was an oddity among its peers. The console MMORPG has never been very successful, and towards the end of its lifespan, the console not only dragged FFXI down technically (if I have to hear "PS2 limitations" one more time for inventory expansions, I'm gonna choke a bitch), but also became very limited on gameplay. As the MMORPG market moved toward the development of third party tools such as extended macros (which Square Enix outlawed out of an unrealistic fear of abuse--the same fear that led to the dismal UI for FFXIV), PS2 players couldn't keep up. This became even more of a problem as FFXI continued to develop at cap and the distinction between a good player and a bad one became more and more about the ability to swap in the proper piece of equipment for the proper situation--something that became clunky and unwieldy for PS2 users. Now that they've finally decided to expand things such as macros, they can't because of PS2 limitations. Vicious cycle.

I think FFXIV will get to a worthy place because I can't think of any company out there who would have waited this long with F2P before going P2P without intending on it being a success, one way or another. They're obviously determined and since Yoshida took over he has done a lot to show that he is interested in taking ideas from the community. There is still work to be done with regards to communication but I do respect that a Japanese company will always struggle to communicate regularly with English players. They actually have to accommodate for the French and German, too, which probably makes it even more of a nightmare. But yeah, SE have used FFXI as a cash-cow for what, ten years or so? If that's the case then I think they will happily keep plugging away at this until it works, because when it does work, they will have a cow that they will hope will last them for many years to come.

I think you grossly overestimate their time frame to start turning a profit on FFXIV, and also grossly overestimate their ability to really make a splash with this game. There's a very good chance that the game's reputation has already been irreversibly damaged.

Defence from criticism is something everything deserves so long as people are willing to defend it. That isn't to say it doesn't deserve criticism, very far from it. But criticism without defence? Going by that, the game should have shut down before it even began. As should almost every othe game out there. Everything deserves criticism, but all criticism should allow for a rebuttal/defence, or at least time to make corrections based on the criticism. Optimism? Well, that's another story. I'll say it many times though: If you haven't played up to even rank 20, it's very difficult to take the criticism laid out at the game too seriously. Experiencing content first-hand is the main way to understand how good a game is or is not.

And I would still argue that the level of defense you give this game is unwarranted and largely undeserved. At least you acknowledge your optimism. I would, for the record, like to point out how few others seem to take your stance. You are one of the few people I see who so readily defend this game. Most discussions I encounter on the topic are less and less pleased. Also for the record, most of the people I've been seeing criticizing the game are people with a job or two at rank 50. I'm hardly the only person pointing these kinds of things out.