Rumor about SE's next MMO...

[TheGrandMom]

Re: Rumor about SE's next MMO...

Sorry but, for me, FF8 > FF7. Each had their good points and bad points but 7's materia system is what I hated the most. But I think it has a lot to do with gaming style too. I'm the type of person that levels up their characters till they are uber. I spent over 160 hours in FFX. So add that fact to the materia system and each one of my characters was so insanely uber that the game was boring. My son always tells me to stop exploring and checking every darn thing and leveling for endless hours and just ENJOY THE GAME.....but I can't. I guess it hearkens back to my old gamer days of game testing.

[Fliegar]

Re: Rumor about SE's next MMO...

I love how you could tweak certain things with the junction system to make your characters invincible. Had a friend tell me what to junction before to get it, so I forget what exactly to do now.

I loved both FF7 and FF8 equally, FF7 for the story, and FF8 for just being fun.

[Armando]

Re: Rumor about SE's next MMO...

Sorry but, for me, FF8 > FF7. Each had their good points and bad points but 7's materia system is what I hated the most. But I think it has a lot to do with gaming style too. I'm the type of person that levels up their characters till they are uber. I spent over 160 hours in FFX. So add that fact to the materia system and each one of my characters was so insanely uber that the game was boring. My son always tells me to stop exploring and checking every darn thing and leveling for endless hours and just ENJOY THE GAME.....but I can't. I guess it hearkens back to my old gamer days of game testing.

I haven't played more than 2 hours of FF8 but can't you make your characters downright broken from the very beginning with the junction system if you knew what to do? I remember Lmnop telling me something along those lines.

[Raydeus]

Re: Rumor about SE's next MMO...

Depends on what you call the very beginning, because you need lots of cards and other GFs to get to the downright-broken stuff.

Even if it was somehow possible that would require a guide, and if you start with a guide on your first play through you've already destroyed your experience with the game (any game) before even starting anyway.

[Taskmage]

Re: Rumor about SE's next MMO...

Sorry but, for me, FF8 > FF7. Each had their good points and bad points but 7's materia system is what I hated the most. But I think it has a lot to do with gaming style too. I'm the type of person that levels up their characters till they are uber. I spent over 160 hours in FFX. So add that fact to the materia system and each one of my characters was so insanely uber that the game was boring. My son always tells me to stop exploring and checking every darn thing and leveling for endless hours and just ENJOY THE GAME.....but I can't. I guess it hearkens back to my old gamer days of game testing.

I felt the exact opposite way about the systems in FF7 and FF8. Junctioning to me was extremely boring and abstract while at the same time being ridiculously abusable. I had a friend that froze his character levels at like level 5 when he got the card ability, then managed to beat the game that way by refining his cards into weak magic, refining the weak magic into stronger magic and then junctioning stacks of 99 -ga spells to all his stats. He had everything but Pain and Ultima and I think one other spell on disc 1. Materia on the other hand had a bunch of cool combos to explore and made for more interesting choices by shifting your stats toward whatever you equipped more of. That, and materia leveled by itself while you fought normally instead of making you go around spamming draw magic on enemies to get what you needed.
___________

Oh and yeah if you did the card thing, you freeze everybody until you got the Cactaur GF which boosts all of your stats every time you level, then level each character with Cactaur from level 5 and get maxed stats without even junctioning anything. Freakin nuts.

[Armando]

Re: Rumor about SE's next MMO...

Yeah, that's what Lmnop told me. Well, not the Cactaur bit, but the card refinement.

Reminds me of a data me and a friend started after we beat FFVII. Got every Limit Break for Cloud and Barret (except for the Lv.4's obviously) in the first reactor. By the time we accomplished that, they were level 20.

[ospeff]

Re: Rumor about SE's next MMO...

I'll give you all that except the bolded. Mages, wars, plds, druids, and rogues can all tank endgame bosses quite effiecently. They are also all very good DD's. And half of the classes are great nukers. So.... rigid grouping structure? Definite no. I've seen a mage and a rogue 5-man Gruul's and Illidan. Youtube it if you doubt me.

And no need for grouping... ever.... it so easy to solo to max level in three months? No need for grouping ever unesless you want twink drops that become useless in three levels. Grouping or a 75 to run you is needed for twinking, but hardly anything else, expect late games bosses where structure doesn't matter and there is no exp, and your doing only to get gears or see the abyssmal story.

Mages and rogues can't tank. There are some adds in certain boss encounters that they are designed to tank per the encounters, but it's like 1% of encounters. The 5 man thing happens because of being overgeared, WoW is all about gear and it gives you extreme advantages, a level 80 in blues vs an 80 in epics is really like a level 80 vs a level 90, there is no chance for the poor geared character at all.

As for not needing to group, true you don't need to for leveling up purposes but if you're a new player I would reccomend you do group for instances just for the fun, lowbie dungeons like Shadowfang Keep, Maraudon, etc. are still very fun for brand new people to explore.

[Amberly]

Re: Rumor about SE's next MMO...

I dont know if this is new but I found it at : JPButton Final Fantasy XI: Profitable but Dying?

Square Enix Holdings released a bit of information on budgets and profits today for the 9 month between April 1, 2008 and December 31, 2008. Online games and mobile content are still very profitable for Square Enix.
The bulk of sales for the Online Gaming Division is, of course, FFXI with around 500k members. The remaining portion comes from other groups under Square Enix like Smile Lab. For this 9 month period, sales for the entire division were around 8050 million yen with profits around 4572 million yen. Online Gaming was the most profitable division during this time period.
Square Enix also put out an additional information packet (only in Japanese at the moment). You can find the document on Square Enix Holding’s website here. Page 9 has a little bit of information on the Online Gaming Division. Looking at the graph, it’s easy to see that sales from FFXI have decreased compared to last year in the same 9 month period. It is mentioned in other parts of the document but the exchange rate has really hurt profits for Square Enix. This helps explain part of the decrease.
The first line in dark blue on page 9 of the supplementary report is sure to be of interest to everyone in Vana’diel.
They are developing a game to replace FFXI.
Click (Read More) to see reactions and analysis from Elmer and Corinth as to what this might mean for the future of Final Fantasy XI.


—–Corinth—–
I first saw the financial information reported on a Japanese news site. Nothing terribly exciting outside of the fact that it confirms FFXI is still very profitable for SE. There was also a link to the supplementary report so I thought I’d check it out. Imagine my surprise when I read the sentence above. It’s the word replace that caught my attention.
Lots of people have been wondering what will happen to FFXI when Rapture is finally released. With FFXI as profitable as it is, I can imagine a situation where they continue to support FFXI up until the release of Rapture. So what will SE do until then? Perhaps we’ll never see a full expansion again but a series of add-on scenarios which are cheaper to produce and release. It’s unlikely they would turn off the servers or stop making any new content before Rapture is up and running because the loss of profit would be too great.
I decided to check out some Japanese forums to see how Japanese players are reacting. They are having the same reaction to the news that I had. Rapture = The End of FFXI. Some are going so far to say that if SE is going to release a statement like this, they should also announce the day service will end for FFXI. Many worry that the developers will stop fixing problems in FFXI to work on Rapture instead. There is also a general feeling that the people SE hopes will play Rapture (current FFXI players) will not actually play the new game for a variety of reasons: average age of current FFXI players, lack of the FF branding, or unhappiness with the way service has gone with FFXI to name a few.
While I’d love to see FFXI and Rapture both run at the same time, SE may not have (or hire) enough staff to keep up development and customer service. It’s sad, but I feel like I see the end of FFXI with this tiny statement SE made today.
—–

—–Elmer—–
Ah, man… that guy I rated down on Allakhazam was right - FFXI is dying. Don’t wet your subligar just yet, though. Let’s take a look at what’s going on here.

「FFXI」に代わる大型タイトルの開発
Development of a large-scale title to take the place of FFXI

Take the place of? You mean replace FFXI? Well, not quite.
A lot of the translation work I do involves quarterly financial reports just like this one, so this is a very interesting topic for me and I hope I can give you some insight beyond the scary blue font. These slideshows are accompanied with an oral presentation, and without that, we’re already missing a huge portion of the picture. So right off the bat, I would advise against taking that one sentence and running with it.
Recently, the economic climate has been absolutely horrid. Companies need to reach an international audience, yet the strong yen reduces the value of their overseas profits. It’s a mess, and everyone is scrambling to minimize the damages while looking for new ideas and big changes to pull them out of the muck. The old style of keeping straight and steady is quickly being eschewed in favor of prosperity through developing new ideas. Many companies are looking for what they call a “blue sea,” or a new concept that has limitless possibilities for expansion.
Cue Rapture, and Final Fantasy XI’s shift to the back burner. Now, a lot of people have been guessing this for ages, so it should be no surprise. However, I think this report will be unsettling for a lot of people. I would remind you, though, that “replace” doesn’t necessarily mean “eliminate.” What I mean is, Everquest II came out to replace Everquest as its sequel. It wasn’t intended to erase it from existence, but rather replace it as Sony’s premiere MMO title. In the end, the users’ dedication to the original has kept it going strong; more so than the sequel itself some would argue.
Rapture may be planned as the next premiere MMO for Square Enix, (though who knows with so little information available about it) but with Final Fantasy XI’s strong share within Square Enix’s Online Games division, it would be ridiculous to think they would simply axe the title. This brings me to the second bullet point:

「FFXI」以外の収益拡大
Expansion of revenue outside of FFXI

This second sentence is important to consider as well. Square Enix realizes that FFXI is not going to substantially increase in popularity. In fact, FFXI is slipping and there’s nothing to pick up the slack. Within Online Game sales, there’s FFXI, and then “everything else,” which doesn’t hold a candle to the fading MMO. It’s either watch their most successful division die, or get their rears in gear developing another “blue sea.” That is, another game like FFXI that revolutionized international gameplay with Auto-Translator, holiday events from Eastern and Western culture, and conventions around the world that sell out seven years after the game’s creation.
Rather than worry over FFXI’s impending doom as a new project looms on the horizon, I think what we, as dedicated FFXI players, should take from this report is that FFXI is a success. A damn good success for Square Enix. It became the foundation for the growth of their Online Gaming efforts, and produced enough confidence to allow for the development of a new, large-scale online title. Rest assured, as the Developers are often quoted as saying, Final Fantasy XI will live on as long as there are fans to support it.
—–
**Please note that the analyses written within this article reflect the opinions of the JP Button staff and are no definitive indication of Square Enix’s current or future business decisions.

[hexx]

Re: Rumor about SE's next MMO...

Well that was an awesome report Amberly, I can see where SE is coming from on a business standpoint. Knowing how much of a fan I am of SE games, ill prolly give Rapture a try and see where it goes from there. Cant say ill leave FFXI (at least, not until they decide to pull the plug) but it would be difficult enough to dedicate time to one MMO, let alone TWO of them..............So the next question would be........how many will jump ship right away, how many will play both, and how many will stick to their guns till the plug is pulled?

[Raydeus]

Re: Rumor about SE's next MMO...

A lot of former players like myself would probably jump on the new MMOG as soon as it was released. And I also think they mean replace as in replace as their main product rather than shutting down XI.

I just hope the next MMOG is more limited-time-to-play friendly because that's the reason why I stopped playing XI in the first place. Could play every day, but only less than a couple of hours at a time. Which doesn't sit well with the social aspects of the game.

[Balfree]

Re: Rumor about SE's next MMO...

lol Corinth is quick to jump the gun...

FFXI will live until everyone quits, SE can't just pull the plug on something that's giving them money.

And not everyone will quit when Rapture comes out because not everyone owns a PS3 or a better computer, for now.

[hexx]

Re: Rumor about SE's next MMO...

Gotta agree with you there, I find myself being able to log on less and less as I need to make more money to provide for my wife and daughter. FFXI is my escape from the troubles of the real world, and I sincerely hope Rapture is the same once it comes out ^_^

[Balfree]

Re: Rumor about SE's next MMO...

Here's hoping it just doesn't horribly fail as a game... :/

[Armando]

Re: Rumor about SE's next MMO...

I can't afford two MMOs and I can't see myself quiting FFXI until I finish all storylines.

I couldn't care less about quiting before having totally pimped out my character, but I'd be sad if I quit before I experienced the game's story completely.

[Balfree]

Re: Rumor about SE's next MMO...

Relax.

If FFXIII isnt coming out until 2010, I'd say Rapture is still a long ways to see the light of day.