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Square Enix Admits Final Fantasy XIV Damaged Brand
_xeno_ writes "It's taken a year since Final Fantasy XIV launched to what can at best be called unfavorable reviews, but Square Enix CEO Yoichi Wada is finally willing to admit that the (still subscription-free) MMO 'greatly damaged' the entire Final Fantasy brand. Despite this damage, Wada said Square Enix will continue to work on 'reviving' the game, with an upcoming patch promising to finally introduce such series staples as chocobos and airships. Even so, there's still no word on the PS3 release, which was delayed until the game was 'fixed,' nor is there any sign that Square Enix feels the game will be worth a subscription fee any time soon."
FF11 and FF14 never seemed like they were FF games in the first place, so they didn't tarnish my perception of the brand, at least as far as I'm aware. On the other hand, FFX, FFX-2, FF12, and FF13...
It wasn't just "Stability and Performance Issues" that caused the game to suck so bad.
It was, well, everything.
A map that wouldn't show you where things you wanted to find were
A bizarre bazaar and shop system
No real story or major quest line (that I could find at least, in the week or so I spent playing it)
A UI that was designed for consoles - which is ironic since it never launched on the PS3.
Sloow animations on the menus. You have to hit menu (and wait for all the elements to slide in) then click on the submenu, and wait for all the elements to slide in and then click on "map" (instead of just being able to hit 'm' or whatever).
Class system didn't make any sense.
I dunno, there were other things I can remember really hating about the game, but it's been a year and I've tried to black out that part of my memory as best I can.
they are still JRPGs, and the industry (outside of Japan) has grown. Western RPGs keep growing and innovating. I feel like Western developers learned from Japan back in the 16 bit era, but Japanese developers are stuck in a time warp. There is more to life than turn based combat and angsty teenage heroes.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
No such thing as brand dilution. No sir. At no point did they stretch the brand thin.
How could you spend so many millions on a game without springing for a competent game designer? I mean seriously....how can a relatively successful game producer make such a colossal flop? Sure...anyone can try something a bit experimental and have it not pan out, but this game failed in so many ways. Further, they were failures that should have been outright obvious from the get-go as failures to anyone who has spent any time at all in the industry.
Did they give the job to someone's son or something? With no oversight?
I am honestly baffled as to how they could have dropped the ball this badly
A chocobo is a giant chicken that you can ride.
I haven't even played this game but I'm quite positive that the lack of airships and chocobos (which I'm about as fond of as Cait Sith and Moglies) is not the problem here.
I have played FF since the original on the NES, I really liked FFIX's take on the original character theme. FFX was so weird and boring though, I didn't like the story or the characters or the weird skill sphere thing. Then FFXI was a MMO and I'm not a fan of MMOs because I already have a job. Then I was too busy to even bother with FFXII, I still have a PS2 though, maybe I will give it a try as it looks like people like FFXII.
The damage to the FF brand really started with XIII. XIV only made it worse.
Chocobos are a species of giant, normally flightless bird sort of like ostriches or large chickens, that have basically appeared in one form or another in every Final Fantasy since Final Fantasy II (and now XIV should have them too). They are most often used as mounts, but some have magical abilities as well. One example of their appearance is in Final Fantasy VII, where the party has to capture a chocobo which they can ride across a swamp inhabited by a swift and deadly serpent monster. Crossing the swamp on foot without getting attacked by the serpent is all but impossible, and the serpent is too powerful to be defeated at the levels your characters are when they reach that point, but mounted on a chocobo your party can move fast enough to escape the serpent and reach the caves beyond.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
It isn't perfect or anywhere near it. The economy is still nonexistant. There is basically infinitesimal endgame content. The UI still needs a lot of work. But it certainly doesn't deserve mouth breathers trolling about it day in and day out. My wife and I enjoy it. Things are improving a lot. The communication is absolutely lightyears beyond where things were a year ago. The fact that they're still running it without money a year later shows that they're dedicated to making it work for the PS3 release. Most botched MMOs don't live that long. Hell, even highly rated MMOs don't last that long. Are people still playing Aion? Rift? TERA?
If the summary had defined chocobos I think there would have been a bunch of comments asking "why the hell did you define chocobo? Isn't this slashdot?". I honestly think on this site it would be considered "common knowledge".
Asheron's Call 1 sometimes comes up as best MMORPG ever. I played both AC1 and WOW, and AC1 was far more exciting. AC1 let you dodge arrows and magic if you were agile enough. AC1 wasn't the perfect MMORPG, drain health1 broke the game by itself, but it seemed worlds more fun than WOW. AC1 had free updates and they happened every month. AC1 had a bigger explorable area when you're low level, not containing you to zones. If your stats were primed enough, your low level could take on things far outside your level, not using some artificial level comparison rule(if monster over 7 levels, you can't hit it).
However AC1 died when AC2 came out. AC2 was flawed in many major ways such as armor didn't work very well, and fighting in a group is much more profitable, especially with a tactician. People went from AC1 to AC2 and when AC2 flopped, people didn't flood back to AC1.
So AC2 hurt the franchise far worse than if it was never released at all. Still, I think people are not sour on Asheron Call series. I bet if they'd release an AC3 similar to AC1, but with several basic things fixed, they'd be set.
Sadly this probably will never be since they made LOTRO, and forgot what made AC1 awesome, and adopted WOW game design laziness.
God spoke to me
I agree with all of the above, except that FFX was one of my favorite games in the series, rivaling VI as my favorite.
However, I generally haven't liked anything put out under the Final Fantasy brand after the Square-Enix merger (except for FFTA & FFTA2). While the DQ series of games has done well post-merger, and KH was surprisingly fun, FF has pretty much gone straight into the crapper, IMO. FF12 was pretty good up until the halfway point, at which the plot fell apart under the weight of tedious side-quests and poor pacing, and I don't even want to go into FF13. Plus, I've never liked MMOs at all, so FFXI & FF14 never appealed to me. And don't get me started on FFX-2, Dirge of Cerberus, Revenant Wings, and other half-hearted spin-offs.
Ok, in a nutshell...
FF1-5 = Good pre-steampunk overkill. Nice balance of traditional JRPG, not terribly grindy.
FF6 = Awesome, for cripes sake if Square wants to remake a game and haven't got sick of the FF7 weeaboos, do FF6. FF6's principal win was that you could play ANY of the characters, not just "leader + 2 others", and you could train them to have EVERYTHING except the one unique skill.
FF7 = builds on where FF6 was good, but introduced certain elements too early (pre-rendered game backgrounds , yuck. Also yuck in FF8 and FF9) Although they were good, the pre-rendered worlds pretty much killed the exploration bit that made the previous 6 awesome.
FF8 = Was more character driven, but it was basically FF7 with some time travel related elements. This is when FF started to go down hill as it started introducing annoying minigames (With FFX taking the cake for annoyingly stupid minigames)
However there's been no PS3 Final Fantasy game. FF13, stepped away from the pre-rendered backgrounds of the previous games but didn't introduce any free world except for the one excessively large random-monster field. You couldn't go back and do anything.
FF11, I didn't play, and FF14 I bought, but... good god what were they thinking. The game is a god damned chore to play, has nothing but ugly customization and even worse clothing. If it wasn't for the world being open (albeit repetitive copy-paste) I'd have quit playing during the open beta. After beta I bought it, but was deeply disappointed as the RMT bots took over quickly.
Ever since the merger, the company's games have been shit, and I completely blame the Enix side of the family. Square Co. produced some of the most memorable and genre defining games, such as FF, Chrono Trigger, Xenogears, Secret of Mana/Evermore. (full list here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Square_games). WTF has Enix ever released that was as noteworthy or even approaches the quality of Square?
At this point it's hard to tell if they're earnestly trying to polish a turd, or if they simply don't know shit from Shinola.
Oh great. It hardly seems worth even starting playing the series now that you have totally spoiled Final Fantasy VII for me!
FF Legend is a rebadged SaGa, and FF Mystic Quest is a spinoff from FF Legend. The other fighter might have been Ehrgeiz (rhymes with "air kites"), which had some FFVII characters. Fast fact: Square's PS1 fighting games developed by Dream Factory (Ehrgeiz and Tobal No. 1) were among the few PS1 games to run at 60 fps and 480i; most games for that system ran at 30 fps or less and 240p.
Lets be honest: mostly no one ever accepted the MMOs as official Final Fantasy games despite them being numbered. Yes, the game is horrible, and likely many will never again touch a SquareEnix MMO ever again (I gave them too much credit expecting them to not be capable of doing worse than FFXI again.)
But the Final Fantasy brand HAS been damaged big time and it had little to do with XIV. It was the horrendous XIII that had those honors. I think to this day I have not met a single Final Fantasy fan (in person, online I have seen very very few) that has not hated that long corridor game.
Now, I am talking from a western perspective. Perhaps the japanese market took the online games seriously? Doubt it but who knows.
You know what harmed the brand? Final Fantasy XI, XII, XIII AND XIV. Changing the basic formula of "you control a party and its actions in battles" and going with completely linear game play and odd online experiences killed Final Fantasy. X was the last game that embraced the Final Fantasy brand, since then its been throwing crap at the wall hoping it will stick. These games are Final Fantasy in name only, the magic, the SOUL is gone. Long gone.
Crossing the swamp on foot without getting attacked by the serpent is all but impossible
I've managed to get past the Midgarsormr in FF7 without a chocobo. It's just timing and a lot of luck.
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
and the serpent is too powerful to be defeated at the levels your characters are when they reach that point, but mounted on a chocobo your party can move fast enough to escape the serpent and reach the caves beyond.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
Well, this article is about damage to the brand, so it's largely about the fanbase.
And for FF fans chocobos are a staple, even a bit of mascot, of all FF games since FFII. We've come to expect finding chocobos in every FF and now there are none.
It's like buying your favourite doughnuts just to find they left the sprinkles out :(
I hear they're also going to apply lipstick to all the game's pig models.
Comment of the year
Heh. I can't be the only one that leveled up long enough to beat the serpent monster before crossing the swamp. I think I finally hit it about L24 when Cloud learned his limit break Finishing Touch.
If you want some continuity, but not obstructive levels of continuity, there is a JRPG franchise that provides precisely that; Dragon Quest. The developers even listened to complaints over the 100+ hour length of Dragon Quest VII and made the sequels shorter.
Now, don't expect newfangled features like an active time battle system or a complex plot, but if you don't mind selecting all your battle commands from a menu as you defeat a demon lord bent on conquering the world, check it out.
Well, any fiction this fan would have made certainly would have included Lulu and her busty goth goodness. :3
You can have the other girls.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
Same here... I've always been a powerleveler.
When I replayed a few of these games more recently, I actually tried to move through without overleveling and it was like a whole new game... sometime a character would actually die fighting a boss, for example. :)
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
... I don't know what you guys call mediocre.
I'm not a big gamer but always make time to to play the newest expansion to the FF franchise (imo only the FF(int) titled games excluding MMORPGs). I have played all of the above mentioned games and, with exception of FFX-2, have been entertained by all of them for many many hours (my usual game times are about 120h).
FF10 had a great story, beautiful beautiful soundtrack and tons of side quests. I have to admit that side questing was a bit of a grind IMO. Especially those hunting missions I never got finished. That mostly is because I don't like "fetch X" missions though. those missions are a lazy programmers meze
if(killedAnimals('animalName','X')) mission('title')->completed();
but anyway, there was lots and lots of other stuff to do and that was much more fun.
FF12 had an incredibly designed world that was very expansive, it had very well crafted characters. Not to mention a world exploration mechanic and fighting mechanics that made exploring an unprecedented joy. This game wanted you to wander off and discover it yourself. Not to mention hours of falling from one quest into the other. The best part? The sidequests now were less than in FFX but at least they were less grindy, usually well presented with dialogues and back story and very accomplishable. Also while talking about this game lets not forget the Hunting guild, that was an awesome implementation and I was more than happy to see it implemented in FF13 aswell (cie'th stones).
FF13 is excellent fun if you take it for what it is, a beautiful story in a beautiful world, presented through an interactive interface. FF13 has lots and lots of lore that you acquire during the progression of the storyline. The settings are incredible, the feeling of ascension and manipulation ever present. Most people really didn't get it, because it is such a deviation from the classic jrpg prototype, but you have to look at it (and everything actually) for what it is and not what you want it to be.
tl;dr version: FF10/12/13 are very good games, just take them for what they are and stop nagging
-- no sig today
Am I really the only one that actually LIKES ffxi and ffxiv more than the rest of the ff games?
The Japanese have a different attitude towards gaming, or at least it appears to us that way. Insane hardmode seems to be done not through AI but by explaining nothing at all. They also don't tend to do PC gaming.
Having all the configuration outside the game, in a seperate program that doesn't even start up automatically for a first time config... what year is this again? That was the days of DOS. In 2011, PC gamers expect something better.
Especially in a game where tuning your config is so damned important, increasing resolution in this game didn't cost you a few fps, it turns the game from playable but ugly into pretty but a slideshow, and I MEAN slideshow, 2-3 FPS on a high end machine. The game, when it runs is beautifull in places, especially the characters are gorgeous but you have to run it (for PC) insanely low resolutions. Meanwhile the CPU barely ticks in. You got to wonder just how bad the PS3 really is when a game designed with the PS3 foremost in mind is choking a top end video card but barely touches the CPU. Multi-tasking seems not even to get a look in.
The entire interface as well is insanely complex, even simple things as a map or chat are a chore. Combat is even less clear with the game STILL taking minutes to register an action.
And finally the game itself... it is if they google "how to make a fun game" in reverse order and implemented only those ideas that nobody else had because they are not very good ideas.
FF14 has two good things, the into/presentation is gorgeous and so are the characters and the outfits. Everything else should just be dumped. The entire setup, menu, engine and game is just rotten to the core and shows that you should not allow console freaks to ever get near a PC.
That they continue working on it and offer the game for free shows that at least they get that they screwed up (Funcom, learn from this) but this is a game only a mother could love and I doubt Square Enix got the money or the skills to fix it. Lets face it, this doesn't require a change of leader, the entire team should be fired and the beta testers hunted down and killed.
But perhaps this is the fate of of when you have fanboys as beta testers. There are still people defending the game. Probably the same who think consoles are better then PC's because you don't pay a high fee for a high end machine but still must have bought a high end PC besides their PS3 to play this game.
But we should have been warned, FF11 was in many ways just as bad with the same "WTF were they thinking" approach. Just back then MMO's were still new and players were more open to see if being different for difference sake was going to produce anything interesting. Time has moved on and we now know that this never happens.
Maybe the next FF online will be made by Bioware, rescuer of badly done licenses in MMO land.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Actually the Mythril Mines, after the swamp, is a great place to powerlevel. Enemies in groups, easily killed with Matra Magic, to boost your kill counts for Limit breaks. You can also steal Ethers from the Ark Dragons. Put Aeris in your party with her limit level at 2 for Fury Brand....so you can use your Limit Breaks more (and learn the second one of each level faster) You can also buy "Hyper" at Fort Condor, and get Yuffie in the forest.
... my ass!!
The parent is not flamebait. There is a very serious lack of good deep western RPGs. If you haven't played games like Champion's of Krynn, then you don't know what you're missing.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I don't know if you're kidding or what, but that's hardly a spoiler. I didn't even remember that part of the game until I read that post, so how significant could it really be?
Dangerous, sexy, turing complete: Femme Bots
I don't understand how they could have screwed up this game so much when it was their second time making a MMO. Usually you learn from your previous mistakes and things get better the second time around. It's almost as if they just threw all their code, knowledge and experience out the window when making ffxiv.
When I played FFXI back in 2004 they had auction houses, chocobos, airships and many other things. I would have just reused a the code for those things when making the new game, refactoring and making improvements as needed.
I liked FF12 going on phase. I like turn based, but I liked that type of gaming too. I am just sad I can't load it on my PS3...
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I hear they are turning the pigs into airships.
Some of the best games have had female protagonists or at least strong female characters. See for example Terra (and also Celes) in FFVI (in other games, see Samus in Metroid, Ming+Seth in Lost Odyssey (which, BTW if you liked the older FF games, you should try). Female Sheppard in Mass Effect, etc
Not take FFX-2. The gameplay and much of the storyline reminded me a bit too much of a bad Sailor Moon episode (DressSpheres, cmon!?). Moreover, retarded cutscenes like the hot-springs-breast-comparison were just SAD. Yes, other FF's had scenes that were lame, but in more of an "odd" way rather than the infantile way that FFX-2 was
final
adjective/fnl/
Coming at the end of a series
They're something in the Final Fantasy Game Series. If you knew about Final Fantasy, you'd know what Chocobos are; so my question to you is: If you are so clearly disinterested in the Final Fantasy series of games, why are you wasting your time reading about it? Clearly your time is so valuable to you that you can't even spare the 0.18 seconds to Google it.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
They're still all based on tolkien lone
The Final Fantasy series started its slow death from what made it unique since VI, which I still think is the greatest of the series. The thing that VI started the beginning of the end was the Espers. Up to that point each character was a unique class and only had special abilities. Once everyone could start using Espers Square slowly widdled away the uniqueness of the characters and the other things that made the series fun. For example...
VII- started the single type of weapon system. Character A has a big sword, character B has a gun for a hand, etc... The materia system made characters less unique, everyone could use magic, anyone could become a thief, anyone could summon monsters, etc... The only thing that set characters apart was the weapon that they used.
VIII- Again the only thing that set each character apart was the weapon that they used. Everyone again could use magic, but each character did have a unique attack that was somehow based on the uniqueness of their weapon.
IX- Went a little more traditional with character classes, unique roles and skills, etc... Since I'm an item hoarder when I play the games I even liked how in one area weapons and armors inverted, where if you had a strong weapon and armor the were actively weak, but weak weapons and armors were strong.
X, X-2- I did like the story of X, X2 not so well. Here we took a much larger turn away from what I've liked about the series. The skills system allowed for truly unmemorable characters as far as abilities. Each character was a blank slate aside from their special weapon that each was strong against a certain enemy characteristic. I have a game where my Black and White mage characters hit harder than who is supposed to be my ultimate warrior, and my thief can cast Ultima spells as strong as the black mage. Here we also lost the fun of wold exploration by losing the airship. Sure, there is still an airship or two in the game, but you don't actually fly them, you just point and click to go to your destination. No more leveling or skill building "Islands Closest to Heaven/Hell" like in VIII.
XI- Never played, didn't think the series would carry over into a MMO world
XII- Again, no more character uniqueness, taken even farther in that you can let your spell casters use heavy armor or heavy melee weapons. As gameplay went on I got tired of the live action battles because instead of being able to sit back and enjoy the action I was too busy trying to keep track of my characters health, trying to figure out why the archer wasn't engaging the enemy, or why the healer wasn't curing anyone. Kind of had the same problem with Arkham Asylum, I'm too busy watching the goons trying to attack to pay attention to the moves that Batman was actually doing, I ended up missing more than I got to see.
XIII/XIV- Haven't played either but they never appealed to me. XIII did away with exploring, period. Whatever they did with that linear gameplay had way too many reviewers up in arms that I didn't even want to play it because of the fond memories of the series. They also did something with the shops if I remember correctly that was a break from the past titles too
With today's gaming, I'd like to see a FFVI-X style game come back but also bring back a few features that have gone by the wayside.
Bring back truly unique character classes. Don't let the ninja become a spellcaster in the way that a mage is, but ninjas can have their deceptive type of "magic" if you still want to include it.
Bring back explorable worlds, enough said.
Take the airship to a whole new level. While flying have visible flying enemies or other monsters for "random encounters" or challenges. Remember Doom Gaze? Create a battle platform for while on the airship. How is it that a fleet of airships with canons on them can't turn the canon around and shoot a freaking bird that has landed on the deck? Add a crash system. We can create these great 3D worlds now that would be great to explore or even have planned crashes
Chocobos were basically ripped off from Miyazaki's awesome Nausicaa manga.