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Top Final Fantasy XIV Devs Replaced, PS3 Version Delayed
After Final Fantasy XIV's troubled launch and subsequent attempt to placate angry fans, Square Enix has decided that the game's leadership needs to be replaced. They've asked players to patiently stick around until they're ready to unveil their new plans for the game, extending the free trial period to compensate. Square also announced bad news for PS3 owners who were still somehow interested in the game: "Regarding the PlayStation 3, it is not our wish to release a simple conversion of the Windows version in its current state, but rather an update that includes all the improvements we have planned. For that reason, we have made the difficult decision to delay the release of the PlayStation 3 version beyond the originally announced date of March 2011."
Yes, I said "was fired" because this is what is in practice, despite the announcement. The rest is always the same people, with different positions.
Personally, I find this announcement more worrying than the state of the game (which I've been enjoying, despite its flaws). The risk is that the "new" team will try to pull a "NGE-like" thing and scrap what was good and different about XIV to fix the problems the game has.
A CC-licensed illustrated horror novel
FFXIV was and is a disaster but at least Square is dealing with it, not in outright denial like some companies *cough*Funcom*cough*.
The problem with the games might however be beyond fixing. At its core the current game is a Korean Free to Play style grind-fest. NOT a western quest/story MMORPG. And yet they price it very high, the 10 or so bucks is only for the base game, without ANY character slots. You need a character to play and those are extra. An extra charge EACH and EVERY month. 3 chars is 18 euro. EACH month.
And what do you then get? A rather bare world designed on the idea of MORE OPEN SPACE WITH ABSOLUTELY NOTHING IN IT TO RUN BETWEEN, some lovely animation and lots of scripted scenes.
The combat itself is moronic and for a long time (until I stopped) unplayable. Take an action, wait minutes, see it hit. This wasn't lag anymore, this was insanity.
There are no quests and the story while intresting isn't related to the quests. It is more gain X levels, see a cut scene.
Anyone expected a western style MMO was deeply disappointed. This was a korean grind-fest with cat-girls. They are cute but there is only so many times you can /fume before it gets old (20432 times to be exact). Only fun thing in the game.
FFXIV is game that gives you the feeling it was designed by people who never ever played a MMO or a PC game and setout with a blueprint of the previous FF MMO and went, grind is good, content is bad. The game has so many wrongs in it, it is beyond believe. The cat-girls look nice. The ONLY good thing.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The game in its current state is barely playable. Even if you stick with it past the gruesome interface and crippling performance issues, you're going to run head-on into over-complicated and badly explained class and tradeskill mechanics, boring combat and a serious lack of anything to actually do. Oh, and with all of the servers concentrated in Japan, Western gamers can expect fairly heavy lag even at the best of times.
There have been a number of updates since the game launched, but for the most part, these have been window dressing. There is, apparently, an update to the UI incoming, which is something, but even if this patch ushers in a new era in UI-perfection, it will still leave many serious flaws in the game that would need to be fixed before this could even reach the stage of being a low-quality, content-light WoW clone. Believe me, that's a stage that FFXIV can only dream of right now.
Anecdotally, the problem seems to be that Square-Enix resorted to that tried and tested technique for delivering high-quality, cutting-edge software. They drew up a loose, under-defined spec and pushed it at a Chinese outsourcing house. Given the spotless track record of this technique elsewhere, you can imagine their shock on getting back a shoddy, under-developed, non-cohesive game that even Square-Enix themselves didn't understand properly. It's a good thing for gamers that they just decided to push it out the door and hope for the best.
Sarcasm aside, heads do indeed need to roll over FFXIV. Going for the lead developers is a start, but they need to go much higher. They need to go for whoever decided that they could do a modern MMO with the budget, development time and support resources they wanted to make available. They also need to go for whoever decided that Square-Enix should become a kind of Japanese EA, grinding out a constant succession of low-to-middling quality handheld titles, which seem to be locked into a cycle of commercially diminishing returns. As little as 5 years ago, Square-Enix were a great company putting out great games. It pains me to see what they've become.
And as for FFXIV, as it stands, it is dead in the water. A few fiddling-at-the-margins patches and a PS3 version won't save it. I would say that unless they want to flush good money down the drain after bad, they have two options. First, they could pull the plug now and forget the game ever happened. Second, they could close the game down on an interim basis and push it back into closed development for at least a year. Re-release the game when it's actually in a competitive state, ensuring, of course, that those who bought it first time around get a free-pass for the rerelease.
It's another stupid AC...
We have enough ACs and need more real commenters. Not those stupid 4chan/Dig/Reddit/Fox/CNN users that say they're commenters, but in reality, they are nothing more than troll users with commenter elements.
Calling those above mentioned users commenters is the same as calling Commander Taco an commenter because he can post.
The internet needs to release another great commenter like UID 1337.
That's the closest to a real insightful comment/commenter user that the internet has released in years save for that one last week, which sucked. That one was like an commenter with blinders on.
No, this isn't an unrealistic ship date problem. This is a fundamental design flaw problem. This game has the worst UI of any MMO post-WoW, and even most ones pre-WoW (the exception being FF XI). It was clearly designed for consoles with a very bad PC port.
The game was shipped with no AH and no mail, and a completely awful player store system instead that makes it a giant timesink just to *find* things that are for sale, let alone do price comparison and things that any modern game should allow.
A post documenting all the flaws in this game would be about five pages long, so I'll stop now. Suffice to say that the problems are much worse then simple lack of time.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
(Well, normally I wouldn't answer to a sig, but it being in a thread about MMOs I figure it's on topic;)
Aye, but some of us want it to be a loving and intimate relationship, not a quick gangbang with whatever 24 guys were available. Err... I mean... I'm not the kind of slut who'll give everyone a go for attention, you know?
I mean, take my latest case from City Of Heroes. Classic story of boy tank meets girl healer, we seem to hit it off just nice, and soon I invite her to see my supervillain lair. And this time I don't mean mom's basement. They actually have lairs in the game. We hit it off just fine, then we change into spandex and are happily bumping uglies over the head. I mean zombies in the sewer. Can't get much uglier than those.
And then she says, oh God, then she says, "let's bring 6 more guys, it will be FUN!" (Groups in COH have up to 8 members.) I mean, geesh, I'm not even demanding monogamy, but SIX MORE GUYS. It's like she's trying to tell me something. Like that I'm not enough for her. Geeze, it can make a guy awfully insecure, you know?
So I get talked into it against my better judgment. I can tell she's having the time of her life, what with all those ranged DPS-ers all around her, while I'm not even getting a second look. Says that's her role. Yeah, right. More fun in a group my ass. Which reminds me, the only one paying me attention is the melee DPS-er. That guy is practically getting on top of me all the time. I wonder aloud about that guy's sexuality. He calls me weird. Hey, I'm not the one trying to get on top of another guy, buddy.
So then we get to the big archvillain and he's this big and muscular guy, and I get thinking, "I bet HIS girlfriend doesn't ask for six more guys." And I'm in front of this guy as the tank, and everyone is looking at me and expecting me to perform for the big finale, and... oh god... I got performance anxiety and lost the erection. They eventually got the melee DPS-er to tank him.
Made me feel like I wasn't a man any more, it did...
So then next day I go to work, I come back and she's 10 levels higher. I figure she must have soloed it in the meantime. I'm no stranger to soloing an orgasm... err... quest or two myself, lemme tell you.
I ask her what happened, she says, "ah, there were these 7 guys who needed a healer for the respec taskforce, and then we kinda went at it all afternoon." Geeze, like I was saying, I'm not even asking for monogamy, but SEVEN GUYS? And is it that much to ask that I at least be around?
Fucking slut. I threw her out of the lair and changed the locks.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
In that case, fire the designer and the people responsible for making those shitty decisions, not the guys who had to implement it, most likely against their own better knowledge. But don't fire the only people who know the friggin' code! They're about the only ones that could possibly pull the cart out of the moat.
I've been trying my hand at FF14. And I was appalled that a game like this can make it to the release in 2010. We're dealing here with a game that is not even on par with the standards of 2002 MMO gaming. You nailed the main problems quite well already:
1. A console game ported to PC. It feels, smells and plays like a console FF game. Which may be good considering the FF audience, but looking around my friends, few die-hard FF players jumped onto the game. It was rather the MMO players amongst my friends who tried it. And of course quickly tossed it, because of tedious gameplay. Everything you want to do contains a friggin' 5-10 seconds animation you have to endure. I say endure because that's what it becomes after the n-th time. Take gathering. It's not even the usual "We now watch our figure for 2-3 seconds while it does something" kind of animation. It's "5 seconds to get the tool from the back, 2 seconds for the interface to finish loading, 1 second to play the "hit the button at the right time" minigame, 5 seconds watching gathering animation, repeat from minigame for 5 times, then repeat the whole sequence 5-6 times". THIS IS NOT FUN! This is tedious and boring to the extreme. This was acceptable in 2002 when crafting in DAoC was a little like that. But even back then it was less tedious because at least you could do something sensible in the minute it took for your character to finish crafting that bow or staff.
2. Actions are handled by the server. A good idea to prevent cheating (hehe, as if... but I ramble), but it means it's HORRIBLE to play unless you have an insanely good connection... and even then it mostly depends on how much load the FF server has to suffer under. Let's keep it at that, you'd have to try to notice just how "sluggish" it feels. Imagine running on ice.
3. No AH, no sensible group finding tools, nothing to facilitate your interaction with other players. Sorry, but this is just not acceptable in 2010 anymore. Even in 2005 MMOs noticed the need to give their players an easier way to gain access to other players and cooperate, find groups, find sellers and buyers and so on. It needn't be the proverbial ebay AH system, but at least SOME way to facilitate interaction. Right now, if you wanted to buy something, you'd spend hours trying to find someone selling it. Or you keep watching the spam in the trade channel for a few hours. Either is just not what MMO players would accept anymore this time and age.
In short, the game is stuck somewhere a decade ago with its gameplay. Even free-2-play games have better player interaction tools by now. A full price game certainly must not be worse than that. And FF14 is worse.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
There was nothing good about FFXIV.
In the link to the "bad news for PS3 owners", there is actually a lot more info on the dev team changes:
[Organizational Changes to the Development Team]
To improve the service of FINAL FANTASY XIV, Square Enix has made the following changes to the development team:
Managerial Changes
Producer/Director
Naoki Yoshida
Section Leader Changes
Assistant Director
Shintaro Tamai (FINAL FANTASY X, Front Mission 5: Scars of the War)
Lead Game Designer
Nobuaki Komoto (FINAL FANTASY IX, FINAL FANTASY XI)
Lead Combat System Designer
Akihiko Matsui (FINAL FANTASY XI)
Technical Advisor
Yoshihisa Hashimoto (Next Generation Game Engine Development)
Lead Programmer
Hideyuki Kasuga (FINAL FANTASY XI, DIRGE OF CERBERUS -FINAL FANTASY VII-)
Senior Concept Artist
Akihiko Yoshida (FINAL FANTASY XII, Vagrant Story)
Lead Artist
Hiroshi Takai (FINAL FANTASY XI, THE LAST REMNANT)
Lead UI Designer/Lead Web Designer
Hiroshi Minagawa (FINAL FANTASY XII, Vagrant Story)
http://crummysocks.com
Actually, thing is, it's not that similar to FFXI. They reused the races, but past that, they seemed to intentionally do things differently than XI. In the meantime, FFXI has undergone quite a number of changes over the years, much of which has served to make it a more appealing game. The current Abyssea content, in and of itself, is a vast departure from FFXI as originally released - albeit at the expense of the rest of the game, which is being largely ignored now as a result. Either way, XIV would likely be a far better product if SE had actually taken their years of hard lessons learned with XI and applied them to XIV. If they -had- taken current XI and retooled it a little, put new graphics on it, then there'd be a lot more content, and a lot more tweaks already in place. They didn't.
Does that mean that I can claim Final Post?
Of course later I'll have to explain that all subsequent posts are due to consumer demand for more.
That group of bovine standing over there appears quite portentous. That's right it's an ominous cow herd.
In additional news...
Square Enix announced that the people responsible for the sacking have been sacked.
That group of bovine standing over there appears quite portentous. That's right it's an ominous cow herd.
Now everytime I LFG, I will feel dirty :P
Anyway, if you are a guy, you are supposed to get 7 chicks! That is were you went wrong. Trust me, you find it a while different experience.
Try this.
Wife: I stayed home and got all hot and bothered and screwed the mail man.
Husband: Bitch!
vs
Wife: I stayed home and got all hot and bothered and screwed the cheerleader from next door, she is waiting for us upstairs.
Husband: I love you!
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
In that case, fire the designer and the people responsible for making those shitty decisions, not the guys who had to implement it, most likely against their own better knowledge. But don't fire the only people who know the friggin' code!
As far as anyone can tell, that's exactly what they did. "Development" in this case means "game development" and not "software development" - they fired the people responsible for designing the game, not implementing the software.
Of course, the client software is shit too, but...
No AH, no sensible group finding tools, nothing to facilitate your interaction with other players.
This aspect really pisses me off, because these are all things that Square Enix already tackled in FFXI. FFXI had a working auction house. I wouldn't call the group finding tools in 11 good but they were still miles ahead of FFXIV.
Square Enix not only managed not to learn the lessons that they should have from the rest of the industry, they managed not to learn the lessons that they already had learned from their own MMO.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
The couple diehards I know who are still playing XIV play for about 3-4 hours a week. Compare that to your average XI session where if you weren't on for 3-4 hours a session* you were taking it easy. Or WoW, where people will spend their entire free time logged in and playing.
In my opinion, the guildleve system killed the game- I often wonder why the game even has NPCs, since 99% of them don't interact with the players in any way, except maybe for some colour. Give me a quests like any other damn MMO, not this "sorta like the WoW Dungeon Finder, but really not nearly as good due to the 48h cooldown" leve system that is the only thing to do other than grinding.
Oh, and an Auction House please. Nothing in this game demonstrates the developer's lack of understanding of their playerbase than the lack of an AH, in my opinion.
http://marsandmore.com - Posters of space, spacecraft, and astronomy.
Does that mean the game is now a cutscene streamed from a server instead of a disc?
*ducks*
Even Square was releasing Final Fantasy VII in 1997, whereas on the western PC front the world was taken by surprise by Fallout 1. It was like, "whoa, you can actually have a game with a lot of story on the PC?" Though arguably the one that really got the ball rolling and the RPG genre taken seriously in the West was Baldur's Gate in 1998.
Wow... you're missing a whole decade of history. Wizardry? Ultima? Might & Magic? D&D Gold Box games? All of those had great storylines, and were "taken seriously". Hell, Ultima 7 is pretty universally considered the best RPG of all time.
Man, did you honestly believe RPG history started in 1997? It's really hard to take your post at face-value when you're ignoring so many hundreds of great games.
Comment of the year
Quite the opposite. EvE is very "open". Do what you feel like. Mine, hunt, do missions, trade, play FedEx, do PvP, do ... well, nothing if that's your thing.
FF14 is nothing close to that. In no aspect.
Traveling is EvE at least feels like you're crossing epic distances. You're flying between stars! And most of it can be automated. Click-click, fly from system 1 to system 33 in the next 30ish minutes (ok, faster now that you can jump closer than 15km to the gate), go read a book or take a dump and come back to your arrival.
FF14 is nothing like that. Traveling is tedious. Think WoW (or any traditional MMO) without horses or flight/riding posts. You have to WALK everywhere (unless you want to spend some of those rare and precious teleporting points that you get like one every 4 hours and need 6 to travel between teleport spots). And walking means that you tell the server where to move your character. Imagine playing a MUD, i.e. the character moves on the server, not your client, and the client only reflects that once it gets an answer from the server. Yes, that feels quite sluggish and sometimes outright crappy.
EvE also keeps you "busy". Even if you're doing nothing but mining rocks which is pretty input-less. But you still have to manage jetcans, move ore around, fly between base and asteroid belt to haul, etc. Nothing like that in FF14. Hell, even fighting feels tedious. Mining is just plain boring. And it is repetitive to the point of pain.
In short, EvE makes you feel "busy". FF14 makes you feel waiting.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.