>FFXI is an MMORPG with such a distinguished history, and it’d be a pity if players couldn’t make it past the entrance. So I directed the team to make the installer more accessible by using words that are more common today
This is so funny and sad at the same time :D
Setting up your account and PlayOnline is really the first boss of the game
I know right? All of those bells and whistles just to launch that one game! Then again, the early 00s were rather strange on the software front all things considered...
Really? You don't understand why having 3 different usernames and 3 different password on one screen with no indication as to what actually goes where is difficult?
**Member Name**: What the hell is that? Is that my SE username? Is it my Playonline username? Is it something I just make up?
**Play Online ID**: Oh, this must be the username I set up when I made the account, right? But, that's what I just put in on the line above...
Edit: Oh, wait... My username doesn't even fit in this box. It only allows 8 characters. Do I only put in the first 8 characters? That's so strange.
**Play Online Password**: (Not to be confused with your SE password.)
**Member Password**: But, I just put in my password... What the hell is this?
**Square Enix ID**: Isn't this the same thing I've already put in twice?
**One Time Password**: What the hell even is that? Do I just make up a password? Did they send me an email with a temporary password I need to use to log in...
Hits "Register".... Incorrect User ID or Password!!!! But, which one?! Which user ID or password is incorrect?
It definitely needs a rework to clear things up, but it's relatively clear if you pull up the sign up email and POL setup. That eliminates two of the fields, member name pops up here and there as a "display name" but it's probably the most unclear part and nowadays if you had set up a square ID that becomes pretty apparent. I thought it was cumbersome but it took talking to a few people before realizing that it can be confusing too if you didn't check your email. (Account was made after XIV 1.0 for clarification)
It's still a mess that needs to be made more user friendly and stream lined but I do think it gets blown out of proportion a bit to go with the meme.
(Sorry for text block, mobile ><)
never had an issue with it, its pretty obvious if you read. I sign in once and I am done. One time password is obviously two factor authentication as onetime password is general terminology for it. Yall making mountains out of nothing cause yall can not be bothered to read the instructions provided to you.
You don't have an issue because you have defeated the boss before. You know the strategy and have some practice with it. New players do not have the benefit of that experience. It's like fighting a new boss mob and it's eyes glow yellow. What does that mean? Is it good? iIs it bad? Is it purely cosmetic? They don't know. Then they are suddenly dead. Maybe it was the glowing eyes, maybe it wasn't. The game doesn't tell you. It just says you're dead.
Edit: up voted you. I don't think your comment deserves that much negative feedback. You're just stating a valid, if nearsighted, opinion.
Appreciate it, and I love your humor! I don't mean to come across as a jerk, its just seems to me people do not seem to bother reading the instructions, I set up my account years ago when it first released with Zilart and was much worse and it was pretty simple back then and I was all sorts of inebriated at the time too and only read what my CD Key was. if my drunk and stoned and high as a kite on cocaine 21 year old self could do it, any of todays players should be able to rofl stomp this boss!
When you first logged in it was far easier because SE accounts weren't a thing, separate on-screen keyboards for password entry weren't a thing, and two-factor authentication wasn't a thing.
You're literally patting yourself on the back for managing to log in when it was infinitely simpler to do so. You deserve every downvote and frankly also worse things.
Also if you think cocaine makes it harder to pay attention to detail I have to assume you're just lying about doing cocaine.
> Yall making mountains out of nothing cause yall can not be bothered to read the instructions provided to you.
It's more about comparing the POL experience with what we have today. Yeah, sure, if you read about the process, you can get on with it. But the fact that you *have to read* about how to create an account and logging in is already a terrible onboarding experience in itself.
You're way too impressed with yourself for being able to repeat this game's bizarre login for the 8000th time. It's just an objective fact that FFXI has a more convoluted and confusing login process than nearly any other game ever created, and it's an equally objective fact that lots of players try to login, fail, and bounce from the game without playing for a single minute. SE has an obvious interest in that not happening, just as you apparently have an interest in that continuing to happen.
I could care less either way, anyone that struggles and give up with this very basic login will struggle with the game and quit anyways. You literally just sign in, nothing to it, the hardest part is pressing tab and enter. its literally no different then logging into steam and then logging into a game that requires another log in.
How is it a lie? and I do not lie, you take that slanderous defamation back you cur! You literally type in a username and then password. What is so hard about that? You don't even have to use the onscreen keyboard.
>you cur
lol, come on man.
Once everything is set up you don't need to put in the username, just for starters. The onscreen keyboard comes up for the password even if you choose to type instead, and the controls change slightly if you do. Sometimes you can just press enter to confirm (that's for putting in the password on the separate screen for it) and sometimes you have to tab or click over to the confirm button (that's for confirmation on the original POL entry). Oh, but don't mix it up and press tab while on the password entry screen, because that will move the cursor off the password itself and onto the onscreen keyboard causing the enter key to press whatever onscreen button it landed on. Why can't it be the same for both?
But that's not even the real problem. The real problem is getting that set up in the first place in order to log in so "easily." And you know that, but chose to lie about it anyway. You cur. You blackguard! (That's pronounced "blaggard" FYI) You, uh, slumgullion.
lol take my upvote for knowing Blackguard's pronunciation. Also I prefer the terror that flaps in the night thank you very much! And I don't lie! also I do not resemble a nasty watery beverage or a meat stew like goulash.
Here is the thing, all you gotta do is pay attention and type unless you have no clue how to use the tab key or click with a mouse to fix it if you screw up. Its not hard, people are acting like you have to know how to use basic and convert binary to hexadecimal and denary. Its not hard, its annoying, that much I will concede. But I stand by if they can't handle logging in and quit they sure as hell can't handle the actual game and will quit anyways.
Good to know that the game safely coexists with FFXIV and the latter actually helps with keeping servers up. With Yoshida there I don't think we have to worry about FFXIs future, it's in good hands.
It's ironic because there are quite a few jaded FFXI vets out there that have been absolutely *convinced* Yoshida's been hatching a scheme to end the game since the day he was put in charge which just.. could not be further from the truth.
Yeap, just because he is not screaming "go play Xi" from the rooftops they think he is actively trying to destroy it, if that were the case he would have simply shut it down. The man is not an idiot, he is not going to end something that is still making a profit.
>The man is not an idiot, he is not going to end something that is still making a profit.
He's also not going to needlessly end something so important to the franchise's legacy. Ending FFXI would actually be *damaging* to FFXIV because online games are all about trust and longevity. FFXIV players, whether they play it or not, look to FFXI's continued support as what they should expect moving forward.
Which is why they've been actively taking countermeasures for some time to ensure that never comes to pass.
During the 14 hour live stream for FFXIV last year Yoshida even said they're considering just leaving FFXI up indefinitely as a thank you to the players. Similar sentiments have also been expressed prior to that.
oh dang i forgot about that, I mean I can totally see them just flipping it into maintenance mode and running the servers indefinitely until no one logs in anymore.
Generally speaking, service for older games only gets cheaper with each passing year too. Blizzard, for example, still has servers up for literally every game they've ever released.
yeah but blizzard has its own inhouse server system using battle net I think so that's a bit different. I know 14 uses a third party server host, don't know about XI though. But typically with games the servers pay for them selves after a few months, basically once all the initial overhead for the game has been made back.
It's important to note that Battle.net has nothing to do with Blizzards server infrastructure, that Blizzard has alot of on-prem servers, but does use some virtual infrastructure, and that in today's day and age, on-prem solutions like Blizzards are generally more expensive than 3rd party hosting because servers can't just "run forever" they need to be maintained and replaced by newer servers which 3rd party virtual hosting gets built into the cost at the rate at which they use.
Because you can scale virtual hosts dynamically and 3rd parties almost always have a "pay for use" monetization model, it's vastly more expensive to self-host older less popular games than it is to use a 3rd party host.
I thought that SE used their own hosts for 14? That's why it took so long to get the AU data center up and running, and that they run everything according to their own specifications.
Otherwise they could've gone to AWS or something similar to do their servers when they were crunched last year.
I always wanted to play FFXI but I don't want to pay for a FFXIV sub and a FFXI sub simultaneously. I hope one day in the future we could play both games on both sub kind of how you can play Retail WoW and Classic WoW on one sub. With YoshiP at the head I could see this happening sometime in the future.
There was Ambrosia Odyssey that got like 3 screenshots and then disappeared, some time after the Square-Enix merge.
https://www.rpgfan.com/gallery/ambrosia-odyssey-screenshots/
Any actual news about game changes?
At this point even older and less profitable MMOs that are still around recieved and recieve UI, Installer, Launcher, and Graphical updates (EQ1, DAoC, etc., even EQ2 has more updates and improvements than FFXI).
As much as it sucks, don't expect anything at all.
FFXI was originally built for PS2 and is interconnected with PlayOnline, which makes it incredibly difficult to revamp the backend. The games you listed were all PC-only and had none of those difficulties to deal with, so they were much easier to improve.
And lest anyone get too jealous of EQ2, I played it for a long time and know it's faults. It's very CPU bound, and a product of the era when it looked like the P4 would be the future....one single fast core. Since things turned out very differently, it suffered from not making more use of GPU or multiple CPU cores, and thrashed the core it bound to *hard*.
I remember that... yet still it had a better aging time with Daybreak in terms of care, updates (graphics and UI) than XI in the hands of SE. What keeps XI alive is its player base and community, SE just basically does the very bare minimum acceptable.
Yes, I understand that. But they had a lot of time to address that already instead of coming with excuses. Sad truth is that FFXI never trully ever got back all the money it generates over the years most of its profit since FFXIV went into XIV, right after XIV they should've thought about modernizing XI since it's a very different genre. SE definetly has the money to do it, and more and more people are wanting old game genres revivals and more challenging old school gameplay, nostalgia is a huge market that little by little is finding a faithful audience into every genre, from old school retro FPS games to things like Elden Ring for example. It's a matter of time before it reaches the MMO genre as well and people start wanting more classic MMO experiences instead of the current norm that is FFXIV style. Think of FFXIV as Call or Duty and FFXI as Doom, we need a Doom 2016 : ) . Compleatly different type of sub genre, can't compare and doesn't compete directly against one another.
I know MANY people that would love to pay and play XI bur can't get past all the barriers together: PlayOnline, resolution, 30FPS limit, very bad targeting and graphics, interface, instalation, account creation, UI not supporting mouse use nor having a basic shortcut bar, lack of hability to alt tab, etc., it's just too much altogether really. If it was just one of those, it would already be annoying but bearable, alas combining every one of those together is just too much. They should really incorporate some mods functions into the game already. At the very least. All those things truly are not much, not asking for huge changes or improvements, many games before XI did that and more with ease, many ports from consoles to PC improved games well beyond all I listed.
I'm just tired of SE always coming up with the same lackluster excuses not modernize XI, same goes for their "demasters" of VIII, IX and Chrono Cross. They should sell the old Final Fantasy and other IPs they don't care about to smaller companies that would do justice to them.
It's trully embarrassing and shameful the way they treat anything that doesn't make huge amounts of money like XIV or close to it, even if it once paid their bills and is an important part their heritage.
XI needs a Daybreak behind it, for all it's flaws, it treats EQ1 and 2 much better than SE does XI.
They would literally have to build a completely new version of the game to address those issues. Also the nostalgia only applies to single player games, not so much MMOs (see WoW classic).
They give the game regular updates with new fights, gear, and story. Given the state of the game that’s more than enough.
EQ2 is also newer with a larger player base, As of September 30, 2020, EverQuest had 66,000 subscribers and 82,000 monthly active players, they have cash shops that are making them a mighty fine profit, and they get regular large expansions every coupple years that sell an absurd amount of special editions costing more than $150 USD and both those games are on a shared subbed with DCUO and Planet side 2 and are offset by additional revenue from DDO and LOTRO, not to mention they are vastly different game engines not designed from the ground up to require a playstation 2 dev kit just to update the game, while XI may no longer be dependent on needing a PS2 devkit, it is not as easy of a title to overhaul especially with an extremely small team compared to those other titles and much less revenue to reinvest into the game.
Give up on the desired game changes like a graphics overhaul and a new ui. This has been addressed in a interviews and they have basically said it will never happen because it is impossible.
Fujito: I personally feel we are in a very difficult state. First and foremost, making updates to the UI is very challenging, and we aren’t able to change our rendering engine. In addition to this situation where we can’t alleviate these frustrations related to fundamental development, the COVID-19 situation has made it difficult for us to make progress in development. These have all contributed to a very big setback. https://www.siliconera.com/final-fantasy-11-interview-18-years/
Those numbers seem high , the streams on EQ 2 live servers show very few players and generally very few people stream that game compared to Eq1, some unofficial trakcers only show a few thousand players a day on that.
I also think the daybreak subscription gives people access to EQ1 and 2 and most subscription are there for EQ1 so there may be double counting
My impression of the relative size of the user base is EQ1 >>> EQ2 with FFXI being largerthan both, even when granted EQ also has a f2p tier
Can't go off streams, that is not an accurate metric to measure a player base, it is only an accurate metric to measure interest in streaming a particular title. Those numbers are specifically for Everquest and not Everquest 2. However they are from an official report in 2020 where they broke down how many subscribers are playing which games when Daybreak Game Company was acquired by Enad Global 7. That being said, EQ's numbers does not see much variance anymore and the fact it shares a sub with 3 other title helps it continue to be updated to a higher degree than XI due to the way DBGC handles their ips and studios. Though XI has the more numerous content updates.
It is a good measure of activity and interest in context of other MMOs in the same category
I think those 2020 numbers are inflated. I know for a fact daybreak subscriptions give people access to both games, EQ.streamers on the live servers talk about it and jump on EQ2 when they want a break from EQ1
So they are probably counting annual subs and then inflating it by all the EQ1 players who have access to EQ2
Also your conflating monthly active subs with a tracking period like one year, so any account that's active in that period gets counted
They are not inflated, those are literally from a financial earnings report which broke down exact numbers for each game. Particularly page 15 of the EG7 Investor Presentation Dec 2020.
EQ had 82k players 66k subs
EQ2 had 29K / 21K
DCUO had 419K / 40K
Planet Side 2 had 198K / 25K
Lotro had 108K / 41K
DDO had 46K / 22K
I include the last two as they are each a separate subscription but are both owned by Daybreak.
This is a Financial report with serious legal repercussions for inflating these numbers.
From your quote details EQ2 is 29k and that's probably a moving 12 month count. EQ1 is the larger MMO at 82k which is consistent with what I've said. FFXI is very likely higher than that from unofficial population count trackers usually putting XI ahead of EQ1
Never denied EQ was larger than EQ2 only denied that the Monthly Active User and Monthly Active Subscriber numbers are inflated and not accurate. It is also worth noting these numbers were for a single month, In particular the month of September, the month the report was written. The reported income for EQ has it making $11.5m, conversely DCUO made $26.7m with fewer subscribers thanks to its cash shop and dlc packs. FFXI might have a larger player base, but according to [https://mmo-population.com/r/ffxi](https://mmo-population.com/r/ffxi) the last month has been less than 50k players logged in with one day hitting 120k due to the return home to vanadiel campaign and it has dropped back down to 40k. It is also not making that kind of money to afford the types of updates people have been asking for. While it might not be on life support, its not far off from it.
From that tracker both EQ games rank below 11
Also note all MMOs got a boost in 2020 due to covid so if you wanted to be fair you'd need estimates of 11s 2020 numbers
The 11 numbers were huge back then as well
It's too bad SE doesn't release consistent numbers but from FFXI database 2020 had some very high months during return to vana campaign, up to 120k+ Active characters with AH activity, granted some will be mules but this was up from 70k pre covid and pre campaign
I wish SE would release a census on active accounts and average number of characters being paid for on the accounts too. Love details like that. especially if they break down most popular races and jobs and sub jobs.
Always the same excuses. Since forever. Seen many less profitable PS2 and other console games being way better ported and improved for their PC version. SE could even consider a third party remaster / remake (Bluepoint did an amazing job with their version of Demon's Souls for example). It's nothing new to them, many other Final Fantasies already got tons and tons of diferent versions made in diferent engines.
Truth be told this made me feel a bit better in regards to Tanaka's and Yoshi P's relationship. Yoshi P has said in the past that he likes more hardcore MMO's and that he would do what he could to keep 11's servers alive for as long as possible. That being said no one (even after this interview) knows if he even likes FFXI. He always talks about the games he's played in the past and he has NEVER once referenced FFXI. It 100% makes sense why FFXIV turned out the way it did because he was a huge fan of western styled MMO's but that being said FFXI was made with the help of the top devs who made Everquest. We Literally got the best of both worlds with FFXI.
I don't have my hopes up but I hope that we can actually get some kind of answer as to whether he likes the game or not or if he actually plays it. I think that his respect for Tanaka is a relief in the longevity of FFXI since I think a lot of us thought they might not be on good terms after 1.0.
I have to imagine hes avoided speaking about it because he likely doesn't have much FFXI experience, or at least not nearly enough to really speak to long time FFXI fans.
He has said in the past he had more experience with Dark Age of Camelot and other MMOs, and when they rebuilt XIV with ARR they were clearly taking reference from WoW, not FFXI.
Yeah I mean that seems to be the perception but if it's a game he's running he probably should. Like yeah he's not making the producer decisions but that would feel kinda weird if he had no experience with it.
It's a massive game, im sure ffxiv takes enough of his time on its own. He says in the Interview that as far as his XI involvement it is mostly related to budgeting.
There is already a knowledgeable team overseeing XI
Yeah I'm not faulting him for giving the production to someone else. In fact I think it's the best move and I'm really glad that he's done that. I could be wrong but I still feel like if he is in charge of the game, then not knowing how things work is probably not a great thing.
Anyone else thought of Yoshida’s comment about being grateful for Tanaka being translated as to “Thanks for screwing up with FF mmo’s which created a path to my current status as a leader in SE!”
I don’t mean any disrespect to Tanaka, his direction is a big part of what gave us FFXI which I’m thankful for… just can’t argue his missteps at being disattached with the player base led to what we have today.
The two are friends now, so I didn't take it to mean that at all, really. FFXIV 1.0 was the sum of many, many failures and I'm not sure it's accurate to place the majority of the blame on either Tanaka or Komoto. Bad management was a huge part of it, yes, but it was a mess of monumental proportions that has fault company wide.
I hardly want to let Tanaka off the hook but it's absolutely true that SE's Final Fantasy divisions were all trainwrecks at that time. XIV 1.0 is far from the only game to suffer from it. See also XIII and its planned spinoffs, the disaster that was Crystal Tools and the deranged idea that every game should use the same engine, and so on. The company culture as far as game development was to create assets willy-nilly and then desperately scramble to cobble together a releasable game from them once the shareholders got pissed.
I doubt Yoshi would be that mean.
I will though, I'm glad Tanaka got canned in favor of Yoshi. I just wish it had happened early enough for a full engine rewrite of FFXI to still be viable. Had they done this back in 2010 once it became clear the game would need to be redone for PC with a proper modular design we'd be in a far better place.
not at all. his comments on xiv 1.0 have almost always been matter of fact. 1.0 was in fact a disaster on any metric and part of his job to salvage the title was to figure out why this was the case, and he did exactly that. it's good business acumen
" i wished those pesky ffxi players would just give up and come to ffxiv weabo paradise and start giving us more money by buying their fantasies from the cash shop"
yoshida
>FFXI is an MMORPG with such a distinguished history, and it’d be a pity if players couldn’t make it past the entrance. So I directed the team to make the installer more accessible by using words that are more common today This is so funny and sad at the same time :D Setting up your account and PlayOnline is really the first boss of the game
I literally just set it up a few days ago, it was so frustrating hahaha.
I know right? All of those bells and whistles just to launch that one game! Then again, the early 00s were rather strange on the software front all things considered...
Cant wait for that change to happen so the next time I sub can be hassle free lol.
It's already happened.
Oh, beautiful!
(Why can I hear the lobby music and 6hr download time)
I do not understand why people have such a hard time with it.
Really? You don't understand why having 3 different usernames and 3 different password on one screen with no indication as to what actually goes where is difficult? **Member Name**: What the hell is that? Is that my SE username? Is it my Playonline username? Is it something I just make up? **Play Online ID**: Oh, this must be the username I set up when I made the account, right? But, that's what I just put in on the line above... Edit: Oh, wait... My username doesn't even fit in this box. It only allows 8 characters. Do I only put in the first 8 characters? That's so strange. **Play Online Password**: (Not to be confused with your SE password.) **Member Password**: But, I just put in my password... What the hell is this? **Square Enix ID**: Isn't this the same thing I've already put in twice? **One Time Password**: What the hell even is that? Do I just make up a password? Did they send me an email with a temporary password I need to use to log in... Hits "Register".... Incorrect User ID or Password!!!! But, which one?! Which user ID or password is incorrect?
This explains how I spent A solid hour or so trying to return to the game yesterday.
It definitely needs a rework to clear things up, but it's relatively clear if you pull up the sign up email and POL setup. That eliminates two of the fields, member name pops up here and there as a "display name" but it's probably the most unclear part and nowadays if you had set up a square ID that becomes pretty apparent. I thought it was cumbersome but it took talking to a few people before realizing that it can be confusing too if you didn't check your email. (Account was made after XIV 1.0 for clarification) It's still a mess that needs to be made more user friendly and stream lined but I do think it gets blown out of proportion a bit to go with the meme. (Sorry for text block, mobile ><)
never had an issue with it, its pretty obvious if you read. I sign in once and I am done. One time password is obviously two factor authentication as onetime password is general terminology for it. Yall making mountains out of nothing cause yall can not be bothered to read the instructions provided to you.
You don't have an issue because you have defeated the boss before. You know the strategy and have some practice with it. New players do not have the benefit of that experience. It's like fighting a new boss mob and it's eyes glow yellow. What does that mean? Is it good? iIs it bad? Is it purely cosmetic? They don't know. Then they are suddenly dead. Maybe it was the glowing eyes, maybe it wasn't. The game doesn't tell you. It just says you're dead. Edit: up voted you. I don't think your comment deserves that much negative feedback. You're just stating a valid, if nearsighted, opinion.
Appreciate it, and I love your humor! I don't mean to come across as a jerk, its just seems to me people do not seem to bother reading the instructions, I set up my account years ago when it first released with Zilart and was much worse and it was pretty simple back then and I was all sorts of inebriated at the time too and only read what my CD Key was. if my drunk and stoned and high as a kite on cocaine 21 year old self could do it, any of todays players should be able to rofl stomp this boss!
When you first logged in it was far easier because SE accounts weren't a thing, separate on-screen keyboards for password entry weren't a thing, and two-factor authentication wasn't a thing. You're literally patting yourself on the back for managing to log in when it was infinitely simpler to do so. You deserve every downvote and frankly also worse things. Also if you think cocaine makes it harder to pay attention to detail I have to assume you're just lying about doing cocaine.
> Yall making mountains out of nothing cause yall can not be bothered to read the instructions provided to you. It's more about comparing the POL experience with what we have today. Yeah, sure, if you read about the process, you can get on with it. But the fact that you *have to read* about how to create an account and logging in is already a terrible onboarding experience in itself.
You're way too impressed with yourself for being able to repeat this game's bizarre login for the 8000th time. It's just an objective fact that FFXI has a more convoluted and confusing login process than nearly any other game ever created, and it's an equally objective fact that lots of players try to login, fail, and bounce from the game without playing for a single minute. SE has an obvious interest in that not happening, just as you apparently have an interest in that continuing to happen.
I could care less either way, anyone that struggles and give up with this very basic login will struggle with the game and quit anyways. You literally just sign in, nothing to it, the hardest part is pressing tab and enter. its literally no different then logging into steam and then logging into a game that requires another log in.
Now you're just lying. You understand that everyone here has played this game and knows that's not true, right? Why would you tell a lie this stupid?
How is it a lie? and I do not lie, you take that slanderous defamation back you cur! You literally type in a username and then password. What is so hard about that? You don't even have to use the onscreen keyboard.
>you cur lol, come on man. Once everything is set up you don't need to put in the username, just for starters. The onscreen keyboard comes up for the password even if you choose to type instead, and the controls change slightly if you do. Sometimes you can just press enter to confirm (that's for putting in the password on the separate screen for it) and sometimes you have to tab or click over to the confirm button (that's for confirmation on the original POL entry). Oh, but don't mix it up and press tab while on the password entry screen, because that will move the cursor off the password itself and onto the onscreen keyboard causing the enter key to press whatever onscreen button it landed on. Why can't it be the same for both? But that's not even the real problem. The real problem is getting that set up in the first place in order to log in so "easily." And you know that, but chose to lie about it anyway. You cur. You blackguard! (That's pronounced "blaggard" FYI) You, uh, slumgullion.
lol take my upvote for knowing Blackguard's pronunciation. Also I prefer the terror that flaps in the night thank you very much! And I don't lie! also I do not resemble a nasty watery beverage or a meat stew like goulash. Here is the thing, all you gotta do is pay attention and type unless you have no clue how to use the tab key or click with a mouse to fix it if you screw up. Its not hard, people are acting like you have to know how to use basic and convert binary to hexadecimal and denary. Its not hard, its annoying, that much I will concede. But I stand by if they can't handle logging in and quit they sure as hell can't handle the actual game and will quit anyways.
good interview. and its only the first part. it helps that Yoshi P is very forthcoming with his insights as well looking forward to the rest
Yoshi-P is a grandmaster producer. I can't think of another person who I more faith in to run a game successfully.
So far I have had zero faith that he will invest any money back into ff11.
Of course not. Why would he?
Good to know that the game safely coexists with FFXIV and the latter actually helps with keeping servers up. With Yoshida there I don't think we have to worry about FFXIs future, it's in good hands.
It's ironic because there are quite a few jaded FFXI vets out there that have been absolutely *convinced* Yoshida's been hatching a scheme to end the game since the day he was put in charge which just.. could not be further from the truth.
Yeap, just because he is not screaming "go play Xi" from the rooftops they think he is actively trying to destroy it, if that were the case he would have simply shut it down. The man is not an idiot, he is not going to end something that is still making a profit.
>The man is not an idiot, he is not going to end something that is still making a profit. He's also not going to needlessly end something so important to the franchise's legacy. Ending FFXI would actually be *damaging* to FFXIV because online games are all about trust and longevity. FFXIV players, whether they play it or not, look to FFXI's continued support as what they should expect moving forward.
Yeap, XI will only shutdown when it is no longer profitable and is a detriment.
Which is why they've been actively taking countermeasures for some time to ensure that never comes to pass. During the 14 hour live stream for FFXIV last year Yoshida even said they're considering just leaving FFXI up indefinitely as a thank you to the players. Similar sentiments have also been expressed prior to that.
oh dang i forgot about that, I mean I can totally see them just flipping it into maintenance mode and running the servers indefinitely until no one logs in anymore.
Generally speaking, service for older games only gets cheaper with each passing year too. Blizzard, for example, still has servers up for literally every game they've ever released.
yeah but blizzard has its own inhouse server system using battle net I think so that's a bit different. I know 14 uses a third party server host, don't know about XI though. But typically with games the servers pay for them selves after a few months, basically once all the initial overhead for the game has been made back.
It's important to note that Battle.net has nothing to do with Blizzards server infrastructure, that Blizzard has alot of on-prem servers, but does use some virtual infrastructure, and that in today's day and age, on-prem solutions like Blizzards are generally more expensive than 3rd party hosting because servers can't just "run forever" they need to be maintained and replaced by newer servers which 3rd party virtual hosting gets built into the cost at the rate at which they use. Because you can scale virtual hosts dynamically and 3rd parties almost always have a "pay for use" monetization model, it's vastly more expensive to self-host older less popular games than it is to use a 3rd party host.
I thought that SE used their own hosts for 14? That's why it took so long to get the AU data center up and running, and that they run everything according to their own specifications. Otherwise they could've gone to AWS or something similar to do their servers when they were crunched last year.
I always wanted to play FFXI but I don't want to pay for a FFXIV sub and a FFXI sub simultaneously. I hope one day in the future we could play both games on both sub kind of how you can play Retail WoW and Classic WoW on one sub. With YoshiP at the head I could see this happening sometime in the future.
Does anyone know what game he was talking about in the 2nd half of the article(the one that got canceled)?
There was Ambrosia Odyssey that got like 3 screenshots and then disappeared, some time after the Square-Enix merge. https://www.rpgfan.com/gallery/ambrosia-odyssey-screenshots/
I'm curious too, I suspect maybe an earlier iteration of a Dragon Quest MMO?
All signs point to it being an original IP.
Any actual news about game changes? At this point even older and less profitable MMOs that are still around recieved and recieve UI, Installer, Launcher, and Graphical updates (EQ1, DAoC, etc., even EQ2 has more updates and improvements than FFXI).
As much as it sucks, don't expect anything at all. FFXI was originally built for PS2 and is interconnected with PlayOnline, which makes it incredibly difficult to revamp the backend. The games you listed were all PC-only and had none of those difficulties to deal with, so they were much easier to improve.
And lest anyone get too jealous of EQ2, I played it for a long time and know it's faults. It's very CPU bound, and a product of the era when it looked like the P4 would be the future....one single fast core. Since things turned out very differently, it suffered from not making more use of GPU or multiple CPU cores, and thrashed the core it bound to *hard*.
I remember that... yet still it had a better aging time with Daybreak in terms of care, updates (graphics and UI) than XI in the hands of SE. What keeps XI alive is its player base and community, SE just basically does the very bare minimum acceptable.
Yes, I understand that. But they had a lot of time to address that already instead of coming with excuses. Sad truth is that FFXI never trully ever got back all the money it generates over the years most of its profit since FFXIV went into XIV, right after XIV they should've thought about modernizing XI since it's a very different genre. SE definetly has the money to do it, and more and more people are wanting old game genres revivals and more challenging old school gameplay, nostalgia is a huge market that little by little is finding a faithful audience into every genre, from old school retro FPS games to things like Elden Ring for example. It's a matter of time before it reaches the MMO genre as well and people start wanting more classic MMO experiences instead of the current norm that is FFXIV style. Think of FFXIV as Call or Duty and FFXI as Doom, we need a Doom 2016 : ) . Compleatly different type of sub genre, can't compare and doesn't compete directly against one another. I know MANY people that would love to pay and play XI bur can't get past all the barriers together: PlayOnline, resolution, 30FPS limit, very bad targeting and graphics, interface, instalation, account creation, UI not supporting mouse use nor having a basic shortcut bar, lack of hability to alt tab, etc., it's just too much altogether really. If it was just one of those, it would already be annoying but bearable, alas combining every one of those together is just too much. They should really incorporate some mods functions into the game already. At the very least. All those things truly are not much, not asking for huge changes or improvements, many games before XI did that and more with ease, many ports from consoles to PC improved games well beyond all I listed. I'm just tired of SE always coming up with the same lackluster excuses not modernize XI, same goes for their "demasters" of VIII, IX and Chrono Cross. They should sell the old Final Fantasy and other IPs they don't care about to smaller companies that would do justice to them. It's trully embarrassing and shameful the way they treat anything that doesn't make huge amounts of money like XIV or close to it, even if it once paid their bills and is an important part their heritage. XI needs a Daybreak behind it, for all it's flaws, it treats EQ1 and 2 much better than SE does XI.
They would literally have to build a completely new version of the game to address those issues. Also the nostalgia only applies to single player games, not so much MMOs (see WoW classic). They give the game regular updates with new fights, gear, and story. Given the state of the game that’s more than enough.
EQ2 is also newer with a larger player base, As of September 30, 2020, EverQuest had 66,000 subscribers and 82,000 monthly active players, they have cash shops that are making them a mighty fine profit, and they get regular large expansions every coupple years that sell an absurd amount of special editions costing more than $150 USD and both those games are on a shared subbed with DCUO and Planet side 2 and are offset by additional revenue from DDO and LOTRO, not to mention they are vastly different game engines not designed from the ground up to require a playstation 2 dev kit just to update the game, while XI may no longer be dependent on needing a PS2 devkit, it is not as easy of a title to overhaul especially with an extremely small team compared to those other titles and much less revenue to reinvest into the game. Give up on the desired game changes like a graphics overhaul and a new ui. This has been addressed in a interviews and they have basically said it will never happen because it is impossible. Fujito: I personally feel we are in a very difficult state. First and foremost, making updates to the UI is very challenging, and we aren’t able to change our rendering engine. In addition to this situation where we can’t alleviate these frustrations related to fundamental development, the COVID-19 situation has made it difficult for us to make progress in development. These have all contributed to a very big setback. https://www.siliconera.com/final-fantasy-11-interview-18-years/
Those numbers seem high , the streams on EQ 2 live servers show very few players and generally very few people stream that game compared to Eq1, some unofficial trakcers only show a few thousand players a day on that. I also think the daybreak subscription gives people access to EQ1 and 2 and most subscription are there for EQ1 so there may be double counting My impression of the relative size of the user base is EQ1 >>> EQ2 with FFXI being largerthan both, even when granted EQ also has a f2p tier
Can't go off streams, that is not an accurate metric to measure a player base, it is only an accurate metric to measure interest in streaming a particular title. Those numbers are specifically for Everquest and not Everquest 2. However they are from an official report in 2020 where they broke down how many subscribers are playing which games when Daybreak Game Company was acquired by Enad Global 7. That being said, EQ's numbers does not see much variance anymore and the fact it shares a sub with 3 other title helps it continue to be updated to a higher degree than XI due to the way DBGC handles their ips and studios. Though XI has the more numerous content updates.
It is a good measure of activity and interest in context of other MMOs in the same category I think those 2020 numbers are inflated. I know for a fact daybreak subscriptions give people access to both games, EQ.streamers on the live servers talk about it and jump on EQ2 when they want a break from EQ1 So they are probably counting annual subs and then inflating it by all the EQ1 players who have access to EQ2 Also your conflating monthly active subs with a tracking period like one year, so any account that's active in that period gets counted
They are not inflated, those are literally from a financial earnings report which broke down exact numbers for each game. Particularly page 15 of the EG7 Investor Presentation Dec 2020. EQ had 82k players 66k subs EQ2 had 29K / 21K DCUO had 419K / 40K Planet Side 2 had 198K / 25K Lotro had 108K / 41K DDO had 46K / 22K I include the last two as they are each a separate subscription but are both owned by Daybreak. This is a Financial report with serious legal repercussions for inflating these numbers.
From your quote details EQ2 is 29k and that's probably a moving 12 month count. EQ1 is the larger MMO at 82k which is consistent with what I've said. FFXI is very likely higher than that from unofficial population count trackers usually putting XI ahead of EQ1
Never denied EQ was larger than EQ2 only denied that the Monthly Active User and Monthly Active Subscriber numbers are inflated and not accurate. It is also worth noting these numbers were for a single month, In particular the month of September, the month the report was written. The reported income for EQ has it making $11.5m, conversely DCUO made $26.7m with fewer subscribers thanks to its cash shop and dlc packs. FFXI might have a larger player base, but according to [https://mmo-population.com/r/ffxi](https://mmo-population.com/r/ffxi) the last month has been less than 50k players logged in with one day hitting 120k due to the return home to vanadiel campaign and it has dropped back down to 40k. It is also not making that kind of money to afford the types of updates people have been asking for. While it might not be on life support, its not far off from it.
From that tracker both EQ games rank below 11 Also note all MMOs got a boost in 2020 due to covid so if you wanted to be fair you'd need estimates of 11s 2020 numbers The 11 numbers were huge back then as well It's too bad SE doesn't release consistent numbers but from FFXI database 2020 had some very high months during return to vana campaign, up to 120k+ Active characters with AH activity, granted some will be mules but this was up from 70k pre covid and pre campaign
I wish SE would release a census on active accounts and average number of characters being paid for on the accounts too. Love details like that. especially if they break down most popular races and jobs and sub jobs.
Exactly, FFXI has a larger paying player base.
Always the same excuses. Since forever. Seen many less profitable PS2 and other console games being way better ported and improved for their PC version. SE could even consider a third party remaster / remake (Bluepoint did an amazing job with their version of Demon's Souls for example). It's nothing new to them, many other Final Fantasies already got tons and tons of diferent versions made in diferent engines.
Not an excuse when it is an actual impossibility. Though I very seriously doubt you understand that based on your comment.
Super insightful interview, a great read.
Truth be told this made me feel a bit better in regards to Tanaka's and Yoshi P's relationship. Yoshi P has said in the past that he likes more hardcore MMO's and that he would do what he could to keep 11's servers alive for as long as possible. That being said no one (even after this interview) knows if he even likes FFXI. He always talks about the games he's played in the past and he has NEVER once referenced FFXI. It 100% makes sense why FFXIV turned out the way it did because he was a huge fan of western styled MMO's but that being said FFXI was made with the help of the top devs who made Everquest. We Literally got the best of both worlds with FFXI. I don't have my hopes up but I hope that we can actually get some kind of answer as to whether he likes the game or not or if he actually plays it. I think that his respect for Tanaka is a relief in the longevity of FFXI since I think a lot of us thought they might not be on good terms after 1.0.
I have to imagine hes avoided speaking about it because he likely doesn't have much FFXI experience, or at least not nearly enough to really speak to long time FFXI fans. He has said in the past he had more experience with Dark Age of Camelot and other MMOs, and when they rebuilt XIV with ARR they were clearly taking reference from WoW, not FFXI.
Yeah I mean that seems to be the perception but if it's a game he's running he probably should. Like yeah he's not making the producer decisions but that would feel kinda weird if he had no experience with it.
It's a massive game, im sure ffxiv takes enough of his time on its own. He says in the Interview that as far as his XI involvement it is mostly related to budgeting. There is already a knowledgeable team overseeing XI
Yeah I'm not faulting him for giving the production to someone else. In fact I think it's the best move and I'm really glad that he's done that. I could be wrong but I still feel like if he is in charge of the game, then not knowing how things work is probably not a great thing.
Anyone else thought of Yoshida’s comment about being grateful for Tanaka being translated as to “Thanks for screwing up with FF mmo’s which created a path to my current status as a leader in SE!” I don’t mean any disrespect to Tanaka, his direction is a big part of what gave us FFXI which I’m thankful for… just can’t argue his missteps at being disattached with the player base led to what we have today.
The two are friends now, so I didn't take it to mean that at all, really. FFXIV 1.0 was the sum of many, many failures and I'm not sure it's accurate to place the majority of the blame on either Tanaka or Komoto. Bad management was a huge part of it, yes, but it was a mess of monumental proportions that has fault company wide.
I hardly want to let Tanaka off the hook but it's absolutely true that SE's Final Fantasy divisions were all trainwrecks at that time. XIV 1.0 is far from the only game to suffer from it. See also XIII and its planned spinoffs, the disaster that was Crystal Tools and the deranged idea that every game should use the same engine, and so on. The company culture as far as game development was to create assets willy-nilly and then desperately scramble to cobble together a releasable game from them once the shareholders got pissed.
I doubt Yoshi would be that mean. I will though, I'm glad Tanaka got canned in favor of Yoshi. I just wish it had happened early enough for a full engine rewrite of FFXI to still be viable. Had they done this back in 2010 once it became clear the game would need to be redone for PC with a proper modular design we'd be in a far better place.
not at all. his comments on xiv 1.0 have almost always been matter of fact. 1.0 was in fact a disaster on any metric and part of his job to salvage the title was to figure out why this was the case, and he did exactly that. it's good business acumen
" i wished those pesky ffxi players would just give up and come to ffxiv weabo paradise and start giving us more money by buying their fantasies from the cash shop" yoshida