With Rift going free to play...Follow

Critics do not equal fanbase, XII got a perfect score in famitsu, yet it is still considered a departure into the series(And i love the game) XIII sold well because it was the only FF on this generation, and never before had we seen up to that point, such outrage at a FF game... Well until XIV.

Plus I think when reviewing a game (much like reviewing or critically analyzing anything) you have to take into context other factors:

The game compared to the rest of the series, the game compared to other games, the game compared to the current zeitgeist, the game compared to, well I think you get the point.

For example, was XIII as bad as the inital launch of 1.0, no way.

I admit I was a bit harsh on XIII when it came out because objectively it was an OK (and I stress) OK game. It was very pretty and the music was good, but there were so many misteps and such a departure from what Final Fantasy feels like, that it just missed the mark....and that's something that a Metacritc score won't tell you.

After playing Mass Effect 2 (a series that I love and had just came out prior) XIII fell very, very flat comparatively.

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To analogize Kachi's point, the score is equivalent to living in a neighborhood with million dollar homes. Are all of the homes between $800,000-$1,200,000, or do you live in an area where there are multi-million dollar homes, but is right next to a slum, making the range say $200k-12mil. The average home price is the same for both examples, but one is a much nicer area overall.

A little more off topic here:Spoiler but when people complain and say "Oh the average house price here in my neighborhood is too high" I laugh, because just 5 miles out of that neighborhood (in most states) you can find a house for considerably cheaper. Whereas in California you're paying that high average price (in most cases) throughout the entire region.

Lastly, and somewhat more on topic, I think that FFXI was a bit of an anomaly, but shows that if ARR is decent that it can survive for probably the same amount of time XI did; just on name alone (no matter how tarnished).

Look, assuming all things are equal; assuming that ARR is "better" than FFXI, that the leadership/communication is better than FFXI, that there is no tolerance for failure, the game will do well.

I look at P2P (and it should be marketed this way) as a "luxury" badge. Companies need to have a backup plan when subs dwindle. And if companies are losing subs those companies/MMO developers need to look at why that's the case, rather than saying "Ooops! Better go F2P now."

It just seems like a lazy short sighted business plan.

Yeah as soon as I see the phrase P2P I try to skip the thread from there on out if possible lol

Edited, May 27th 2013 5:47pm by LebargeX

Is there a smiley that looks like a nail being hit directly on the head?

I can link you to LOADS of posts/topics of ppl asking that very question whenever FFXIV or any P2P MMORPG comes up in a discussion.. Ive NEVER seen such posr sin the FFXI, WoW launch days.... SO clearly theres something different about todays gen gamers than the ones that came from 10+ years ago

Even if you didn't personally find significant deficiencies in their management of the game, you only need to look at the early posts in the FFXIV forums to hear from the throngs of people who expressed that they didn't trust SE after FFXI. Much if not most of the conversation centered around whether or not SE could turn around their management style.

The new director of XI made a huge error in judgment with the latest expansion in XI, and accidentally made half the new content they released as well as all previous relic/mythic/empyrean weapons obsolete. Oops.

However, unlike Tanaka, he's admitted his mistake and they're trying to figure how to fix the problem. So far their fixes have made things worse.

well mythic and relic were alreayd obselete due to empyrean supposedly but umm how did they acciently make empyrean obselete?

The basic formula that made 1-10 "successful" was the words "Final Fantasy" on the boxes.

That's fine, I just happen to think it had a heck of a lot more to do with games after FFXI than it did with FFXI. I'm not saying there was no skepticism due to FFXI, I'm just saying that I don't think it was near as big a factor as games like FFX-2, FF: Crystal Chronicles, FFXIII, etc. I actually think a lot more people were excited for XIV based on the success and enjoyment they had from XI. I was commenting on the "poorly managed" part of your original post, as I personally don't think it was all that poorly managed. Like I said, it could have been better, as could every other mmo I've ever played.

Released easily obtainable weapons with twice the damage.

This was the dagger I had been main handing.

This is what replaced it over the weekend.

Now they're scrambling to think of ways to make the 99 REMs worthwhile again, but the ideas have ranged from "unlock the WS on other weapons" to "crap I guess we have to increase the damage on the 99 versions too, don't we."

Wow, that is a pretty insane oversight. And good lord, thinking back to 75 cap when my D37 pharpe was pretty much the highest you could get short of a mandau, I'm drooling just looking at that dagger...

Absolutely, and you saw these bizarre design decisions all over the place in XI. Quests that were fun but took incredible effort and clearly had a lot of planning behind them reward you with 1000 gil. Tons of equipment was obsolete upon implementation--a huge waste of development resources. If they do have a lead designer, they're sleeping on the job. Abilities are worthless, areas are worthless... they only require a tweak of the numbers. These are the kinds of things that happened historically throughout XI that lend to the lack of faith in their ability to manage an MMO that I was talking about in the other thread.