Square Enix Attempting Final Fantasy XIV Damage Control

basscomm writes "Just the other day, it was discussed here on Slashdot that Final Fantasy XIV was released into the world as a buggy, incomplete mess. Now, it's been announced that due to 'generous amounts of player feedback' that lots of changes are coming (honest!). And, as a result, anyone who registers their game before October 25th will have their 30-day trial upgraded to a 60-day trial. But will it be enough to keep the game from hemorrhaging players once the free trials end?"

Comments

SE Stole My Play Time

[ThePolkapunk]

I already stopped my subscription to FFXIV. Even though I still had two weeks left before 30 day trial would've been over, they already disabled my logon. To me, this seems inexcusably bad. I paid for the game, which includes 30 days and they haven't given that to me. There's no way I'll be coming back.

How bad is it?

[Kjella]

Let's say what gamerankings says:
Final Fantasy XIV: 51.43%
Daikatana: 54.08%

That's a "throw it in the garbage bin and start over" rating.

If a company must perform damage control...

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

... I would like them to perform this kind of damage control. You know, the kind of damage control that involves listening to your user-base.

Mind you, it's not like they had a choice.

Here's some damage control

[dominion]

Now would be the time to announce PS3 remakes of Final Fantasy VI and VII, available together for $29.

Re:Probably not. Sorry.

[St.Creed]

Never viewed it as too big a deal, if you really need to alt+tab out then you aren't really playing your game anyways.

The developers were with you on that. And that's one of the reasons why World of Warcraft blew the competition out of the water.

I played several games before WoW came out. Horrible, bug ridden messes (EVE Online was the worst offender here, although it kinda survived despite that. But the day before release they patched it and they actually re-introduced most bugs from the last 3 patchrounds). And it was accepted because "everyone did it like that".

And along came Blizzard with the beta for WoW - and it didn't crash. It just ran. Flawlessly. My friends and myself all bought it and played it for years because we could see the quality control behind it and thought "if something's wrong, they'll fix it - because they've already shown their level of commitment". I think I've had about two crashes over the years - both caused by addons, not the game itself.

Seriously: this attitude that you can deliver a subpar product because, hey, there is no choice anyway - look where it got WAR? Everquest? Star Wars Galaxies? Tabula Rasa? Earth and Beyond? All gone. And Final Fantasy is next, and that's not just because of ALT-Tab, but because of what that attitude tells me as customer about their customer care. Or lack of it.

Re:There aren't enough fixes in the world for this

[Daetrin]

Well part of the problem is that everyone agrees FF13 was rather busted, but people can't agree on _how_. I loved the open world of FF12, but i _hated_ the combat engine. Just program the AI and sit back and do nothing. I thought FF13 actually fixed the combat, at least _after_ the 10-20 hour "tutorial" was finished. I do miss the turn based battles (though that was something FF12 didn't have either) and not being able to directly control the other characters, but at least i felt like i was actively involved in the combat. To me a great game would be FF12's world and story (except maybe focused on Basch instead of Vaan, like they'd originally planed) but FF13's combat and leveling. Or FF10's combat and leveling. Anything but the boring mess that was FF12's system.

Obviously that kind of game wouldn't appeal to you however, which is why Squenix is always going to be upsetting _someone_ when they make a new game. It's kind of unfortunate however when they manage to upset _everyone_, which seems to have happened somewhat with FF13 and even more so with FF14.