Burned by 1.0, Stoked for 2.0Follow

ARR {Can I have it?}!

2.0 is the XIV I was waiting for.

I was all psyched to play back at launch having bought the CE and everything, but sadly rage quit after 1-2 months due to its lackluster identity crisis. Then, after checking in on it on a whim recently and seeing all the progress it's made after these years and by all the hard work of the new Dev Dream Team, it blew me away. Now I can't wait for the 2013 launch.

I really hope all the players who raged furiously at the time forgive that they were burned at launch, and see how hard the new dev's are working to turn things around. I was skeptical about 2.0 at first, thinking it'd turn out just another lofty dream better on paper than practice, but after all the recent changes and road map completion...especially the Gamescom footage and Limit Break trailer...

!@#$ just got real!

I feel bad for ditching it so soon, since I was rooting for another decent FFOnline title. But clearly, I should have had more faith.

{Please forgive me.}




Edited, Nov 12th 2012 11:26am by justamemory

Yes yes, we get it, you don't like XIV. Are you going to keep sh*tting on everyone else's excitement?

I'm talking about the now sub-defaulted post above mine replying to the OP (and quite a few other threads in here today).

Oh I missed that one. Haha my bad.

oh I didn't even see that sub-default post either xD

but ya my lack of faith in XIV has been disturbing given 2.0

the revamped weaponskills and TP system /drool

Edited, Nov 6th 2012 8:07am by justamemory

I think everything Justamem0ry wrote applies to a LOT of people. Me included. After going thru the alpha/beta, I only lasted about 3 weeks after release.
Why condemn anyone for this? I think most FF fans felt the pain and frustration of the original, after we had such high hopes. I applaud those who've stuck it out over the last 2 years.
I'm getting psyched for ARR, the more trailers I see, the more letters written by the dev team...makes me think this one will stick. Everybody wins.

So...will Justamem0ry be making more music? ^^

I can also vouch for the OP's mood representing a lot of us out there. In fact, this is the first time I've logged into zam since uhhmm...maybe 6 months after FFXIV released. That's about how long I played it? idk. :O

Can't really say I've felt it worth the effort to sink time into it because certain things were majorly lacking. But I'm really really excited for 2.0 and will give it a renewed effort. I just hope I can d/l the game in it's entirety online and use my cd key from my CE copy instead of having to install my CE copy, activate w/ key, then d/l the entire game again X_x

My experiences are similar to the OP in that I purchased the collectors edition and excitedly jumped into the game at launch. My excitement was quickly met with disappointment at the shallow game play and very limited gaming experience. However, after reading of the plans in store for relaunch, I'll admit to being impressed.

Prior to reading about some of the added and updated features, I all but turned my back on FFXIV. However, I'm willing to give it at least one more try, especially since they'll allow a free trial for previous players. I'll be seeing you guys in game!


Edited, Nov 23rd 2012 3:11pm by AuryanofAsura

If this was the first major screw up from SE, many people would have been a lot more forgiving. It wasn't. Add that to the fact that virtually everyone in Beta was screaming for a better game and it looked like SE just didn't care about what the fans said.

I'll check in on the revamped game, but I'm going to be damn hesitant to pick it up.

Seems like hyrist is on fanboy mode

Let's give you a rundown:

FFXIV, Front mission Evolve, Front mission Online, The last Remnant, Infinite Undiscovery, FFXIII-2, code age commanders, and Dragon Quest X (Which is garbage :) )

So hmmm let's do a recap, SE had made some hicups here and there since the PS2 Era, but it never EVER! Translated to their flagship tittles, yet now we got a failure in XIV and in DQX... Their 2 major flagship tittles.... Both of them online.... I sense a trend.... maybe just maybe SE does not know how to do MMO'S... Since aside from XI (Yes it's the most profitable tittle they have ever had blablabla) all their other MMO ventures have flat out SUCKED!

SE has had more than a few 'hicups' before and after PS2 Era. These always tend to get overlooked as time goes on by other flashier titles show up.

But your viewpoint is skewed to begin with, especially if you think FFXIII-2 did badly. It was, in fact, the highest selling PS3 console game in Japan in 2011, and is a 79/100 meta-critic rating in general. It sold less total because it was a sequel to a controversial title to begin with, on top of a poor console year. Which really sours your assumed authority as to what DQX is going to turn out like.

The Last Remnant and Infinite Undiscovery were also widely acknowledged as 'diamonds in the rough' type games. In which was funny as where they excelled in one, they had problems with in another (TLR had graphical issues where IU was more of an underdeveloped design principle.)

I don't particularly follow or care about the Front Mission series as it's never had a truly strong presence in NA, and less in EU. We're still missing the better part of six titles there. I wouldn't call FEU or FEO more than spin-off attempts anyways. If we are to include those flops, we might want to include the successes of numerous handheld and mobile titles SE has come out with (Kingdom Hearts games most noted among them). Double the note for the mobile titles that are selling at price-points people still bemoan, but are doing well.

You might think I'm fan-boying, but I do my bookwork. If FFXIV did not catastrophically crash SE's other game failings could have been easily passed off as the common Japanese game developers' lack of being able to follow the trends, which far more than SE is guilty of as far as companies go.

Final Fantasy XIV was a total crash, not just in terms of disagreeing with design decisions but in production values as well. Even when people love/hated FFXIII, they did not expect FFXIV to fail as hard as it did.

Side titles, however, have always been prone to strife. And I'll wait on the word of DQX from professionals, thank you.

Actually there is some truth to this statement. As a true sequel for an FF game, meaning same universe, there are people out there who wouldn't want to play it without experience of it's original for story purposes, then there are people who wouldn't play it after being burned by the original whether XIII-2 corrected those issues or not. I myself was in the former until I managed to get XIII for 8 bucks and now I'm in the latter. I might play XIII-2 if I can get it for less than 15 bucks, just not worth it in IMO.

I never played XIII-2, but obviously a direct sequel will always sell worse and be worse-received than the original. That's pretty much the case with any high-investment entertainment medium, like television series or video games. Sales don't necessarily reflect the quality of the product, since they're so heavily mediated by the reception of the first iteration.

X-2 was also dramatically different from X, and a lot of people hated how different it was. Other people loved the combat but hated the fact that they were playing with dress up dolls. (I contend that X-2 was flavored as a tongue-in-cheek shoujo parody, a fine niche genre in its own right in Japan, but far less appreciated everywhere else.)

I think what we've seen played out with SE and XIV is just a lot of unlucky breaks and bad attitudes all hitting at precisely the wrong time. SE execs weren't listening to the devs, the devs were caught in their own evolution from the traditional waterfall mode of programming necessary for console games to the much more modern agile, or iterative programming, which is much better for MMOs in general. Combined with a glutted market for MMORPGs, a newer PC game generation less familiar and less enamored with the Final Fantasy name, and their own short sightedness in going after WoW's Cataclysm when they were never even really competing in the same space to begin with.... yeah, it was a recipe for disaster, and disaster it was.

But, if there's one thing Japan is very good at doing, it's picking up the pieces after catastrophes and cleaning up the mess.

FF13 and FF13-2 (which I'll defend below) for starters. SE was also pretty lackluster about dealing with issues in FF11 for a long long time. While I very much enjoyed FF11 overall, SE could have been a lot quicker to deal with aspects of the game and community that very few people enjoyed.

FFX-2 was not terribly well liked (though, I personally did enjoy it).



On the surface, sure, FF13 looks like it did quite well. However, the numbers tell a different story. From wiki on FF12...



And for FF13...



Now if we we were to simply compare those numbers it looks like FF13 did better than FF12. But what everyone seems to forget is that FF13 was released on BOTH the PS3 and the Xbox. So, yeah, the total sales were higher, but the penetration into the market was significantly less. One would expect a much bigger swing in sales by releasing it on another system. That didn't happen.



Part of the problem was probably the execs at SE. However, the developers made a bad game. Even had they been given another year, it wouldn't have fixed the fundamental flaws in 1.0's design.

And its never too late to make sweeping changes to the code. Granted it shouldn't be done except in the most extreme cases. This case was one of those extreme cases. They opted to let the game be released in 1.0's state. They didn't have to do that.



I've nothing bad to say about Yoshida. I hope he does turn it around. I'm just not expecting him to do it at this point. I think way too much damage has been done. Most people who got burned won't be coming back.

Edited, Dec 2nd 2012 12:40am by Caia

Lost Odyssey is one of my favorite games. Ever. Just sayin. I miss the old "Ring-Attack System"