Alpha Video #7 - Levequests and Party CombatFollow

This assumes everyone that liked/would like FFXI is playing FFXI (clearly not the case, given that the population has dropped, what, 300k since peak?). The first thing they should have thought about is regaining those 300k players, not trying to emulate the success of a game (WoW) which is totally unknown in their domestic market (Japan).

Making FFXI-2 would have been the best business decision they could have possibly made.

Not really, the chances of getting everybody from XI into XI-2 are very slim, people that still play XI, have an emotional bond with the game and the progress they had acquired in that game, is like people that still play EQ1.... They will not leave the game, why make a game where you will not get 100% of the players from the game is supposed to succeed ? Even if you get half of the players of XI, that still what ? 150k.... That is a sad number LOL, Spent 50+ million dollars, to draw 150k players... yeah! success

I do not know how this thread trickled into Square history and best rpg of decade on 360. Yes, alot of development talent has left. But this is happening to all companies not just Square-Enix. They still have two big shots in Yuji Hori and Hiroyuki Ito(Their best talentwise as far as I'm concerned). They still have their major artist in Yoshida and Nomura with Kamikokuryo coming up strong. They still have many of their good composers. They still have Kitase who I believe works best when he collaborates with Ito. Even Hiromichi Tanaka is a well respected developer in Square's past. I think a huge problem is that some of their development staff is getting pushed into areas of development where they don't excel. I think Yoshi P is going to do pretty well with the company in the producer/director role. Where is Hiroyuki Ito? He played a huge part in the most critically acclaimed Final Fantasies according to review sites. They should hire new meat in the producer/director section and stop moving developers from their core strength. Maybe they should headhunt Fumito Ueda?

Square-Enix has dropped off being the best in the business a bit. But it's not because they just lost alot of talent. Alot of companies have stepped up their level of quality as well. It is not uncommon to see many rpgs nowdays rating near the 9/10 review scores.

Also I disagree with the best rpgs made by japanese companies on 360 this decade. The top three in my book are Tales of Vesperia, Dark Souls, Lost Odyssey being third. But that's only because jrpgs in general were not super great on the 360. Lost Odyssey borrowed a mechanic from Legend Of Dragoon, the magic system was as barebones as you can get, and it just felt archaic like a stripped down Final Fantasy. If it weren't for the decent story, good pacing and great music, I maight have fallen asleep playing at times. I still love Sakaguchi though and The Last Story shows that he still has the rpg intuition. TLR was above average to good but not great. I enjoyed the scale and layout of the game but I never got an "Oh sh*t/jaw dropped" playing it.

I agree they should milk the Luminous Engine for 10-20 titles at least. So they can focus on development and not the tech. Also while I had fun playing XIII and XIII-2. I hope we get no more sequels in Final Fantasy unless it is the epitome of being well received by fans and critics alike.

Rate ups for this. Working on a 100% completion run right now, should be done in... 3 years or so.

I remember taking 14 hours to get a Soboro-Sukihiro. I was tired of joining Shout groups that disbanded after one person got it so I made my own....

Well it took about 3 hours just to max an alliance. I got mine on the second or third kill, but I promised that everyone would get one. Of course, this didn't stop other people from dropping once they got theirs, which meant replacing people, who then wanted one....

Yeah... never again.

Extreme exaggeration. The main story itself is suppose to be 80-100 hours of gameplay but trying to complete every side quest, unlock skill trees, complete the items list (collectepedia), etc. might push it up to 200 hours. Anyways...

/thread derailing

Look, not to be an ass here but either you not telling the full story or I call BS. NA PC release was like end of Oct 03 if I remember correctly, need to find my box and receipt. NA PS2 dropped around Apr 04. Unless you were playing on the JP client on a JP PS2 or had an import JP PC copy and were playing since the end of '02, either you didn't play at all or only 2 months tops. At that point, that was hardly enough time to give the game a chance.

I started on RDM and wished I hadn't at times. Every few levels I'd have to stop and farm for spells and gear. It wasn't fun at times and felt like a job, but I just worked through it. Maybe coming up from the UO/EQ days prepped me for endless farming as part of the game and I was used to going on "SLOWWW" mode to the point of not seeing anything wrong with it. Do I want to go back to those days? Hell no, but in the same breath I don't want sh*t handed to me cause I killed 3 bees and rabbit. Quest hubs (ala WoW/Rift) make the game Single-player-mode in my mind...destroying any chance of meeting with people. Just grouping for instanced raids/events seems so impersonal, more so when you have part of the game do it for you.

I don't see anything wrong with having content that takes time to complete, aka weapons/gear. But here's the point, it must be the type of items that the player base doesn't use for it's yardstick on picking players. Using FFXI as an example, relic weapons used to be the "Oh damn, dude has a <insert relic>! We going to rock this sh*t!" rarity. But at no point was it expected that every <insert random DD job> have one, minus some top tier LSs. It hasn't been until recently that almost every swinging dick has a relic/mythic/empy weapon because SE caved and made them stupidly easy to obtain. To fix their errors, SE designed stupidly gimicky fights to counter the fact the small groups can destroy anything placed infront of them. Did it make the game fun to be steam-rolling content? Sure, but everything became too easy and peeps started quitting again since they were finishing content faster than SE could add anything worthwhile. The content they did add was so heaving on time limits and gimmicks, that you were almost forced to use 3rd party apps just to complete it.

As for FFXIV, I believe you'll be forced to do group XP parties at some point. Given that the quests won't reset if you change jobs, you'll have Guildleves or grind for XP. Unless you've saved up the max on Guildleves, it will either be solo grind or grouping. I think that should work out half-way decent enough. I guess it will be a 'watch and wait' thing in the end.

I agree completely but, let's be honest, usually a quest wouldn't have you killing 3 bees and a rabbit: they'd just have you kill 4 bees and be done with it.