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Final Fantasy XIV Failed Due To Overly Detailed Flowerpots

Posted by timothy on from the discretion-is-the-better-part-of-computation dept.

_xeno_ (155264) writes "You might not remember Final Fantasy XIV, the Square Enix MMORPG that flopped so badly that Square Enix fired the original developers. But Square Enix certainly does, and at a recent GDC panel, producer Naoki Yoshida explained his views on what caused its failure. One reason? The focus on graphical quality over game play, leading to flower pots that required the same rendering power as player characters, but without the same focus on making the game fun to play. Along with severe server instability and a world made up of maze-like maps, he also cited the game being stuck in past, trying to stick with a formula that worked with Square Enix's first MMO, Final Fantasy XI, without looking at newer MMOs to see what had worked there."

9 of 195 comments (clear)

  1. Maybe there's also another reason? by the_Bionic_lemming · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Instead of trying for massive multiplayer, Maybe they should of concentrated on the people that got the series there in the first place - the ones not playing multiplayer?

    Thoughts?

    --
    _ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
    1. Re:Maybe there's also another reason? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yeah. They should have learned from Blizzard. Warcraft and Warcraft II were single player, as all things should be. But then they ruined it. Remember what a big flop World of Warcraft turned out to be?

    2. Re:Maybe there's also another reason? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      There's only one reason anybody does anything ever, and that reason is money.

      Spoken like a screwdriver.

      No, a person who lives for money is more like a screw than a screwdriver. They're trapped while someone else tells them which way to turn.

    3. Re:Maybe there's also another reason? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Instead of trying for massive multiplayer, Maybe they should of concentrated on the people that got the series there in the first place - the ones not playing multiplayer?

      Thoughts?

      Anyone willing to endure the ISO Standard JRPG levelling mechanics ("Wander around an apparently empty landscape until a random encounter occurs, fight it out with some NPCs, repeat A Lot because even if you are now massively overpowered, you know that the actual major boss will fry you into a grease spot with just a nasty look unless you do.") is a perfect candidate for MMORPGs...

    4. Re:Maybe there's also another reason? by CastrTroy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      World of Warcraft is to Warcraft as JavaScript is to Java. They arenrelated by name only. Warcraft 1 and 2 were real time strategies, while world of Warcraft is an RPG. Also, Warcraft 2 (don't know about 1), did have multiplayer, although it wasn't massively multiplayer. Still remember playing that game over modem with my friends.

      --

      Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
  2. Easy potshots != thoughtful analysis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    It's easy to shit on the graphic artists, but were they in charge of the gameplay? Were they in charge of the game design? No way. These are totally separate departments, and a producer trying to shift the blame for the game's failure onto the art department is pathetic.

    1. Re:Easy potshots != thoughtful analysis by wisnoskij · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I doubt he was blaming the artists themselves, but the leadership who ignored gameplay and focused on the artists.. But I could be wrong, it is not like I am going to read the original article.

      --
      Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
  3. Re: Ivory tower much? by Scutter · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The article pretty much just says that the flower pots were merely a symptom of a much larger problem - that the developers spent far too much time on graphics and not nearly enough time on fun, story, stability, playability. They were not blaming the failure on the flower pots.

    --

    "Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
  4. Damn straight. by stoploss · · Score: 5, Insightful

    God, yes. I bought a PS specifically to play FFVII. In fact, that's why I ended up with a PS rather than an N64. I played many of the other FF releases on a variety of platforms, with many fond memories.

    As soon as I heard Square Enix was jumping on the goddamn MMO bandwagon with the series, FF became dead to me.

    I want something I can play at home, offline, as the fucking singular, main character around which the entire epic plot revolves. I even enjoy the oddly culturally inaccessible Japanese angst that is imbued in these storylines. I also *like* that each damn JRPG revisits the same basic tropes, albeit from different angles.

    ABOVE ALL, I DON'T WANT A FUCKING ONLINE, SOCIAL GAME WITH A GODDAMN SUBSCRIPTION MODEL! WoW already has nailed that market perfectly, for those who are interested in that kind of experience. For all practical purposes they own the market and the market seems both satisfied and fully tapped (ie. there's unlikely to be a vast untapped market for MMO subscribers so competition is effectively a zero-sum game among the various companies).

    Square Enix, do you want to be an also-ran with a mediocre MMO that everyone compares to WoW, or do you want to once again be the unrivaled master of the JRPG archetype?