20th Anniversary Reddit AMA

other similar testimonials found recently regarding how companies spend their revenue. Thought y'all might find a kindred spirit here.

"I'm upset that profits from Coca-Cola sales go into improvements for Diet Coke and other frivolous flavors. I want all the money they make from sales of Coke Classic to only be spent to improve Coke Classic."

"I just found out that McDonald's takes profits from their Salad Sales and applies them across their entire operation without deference to Vegans. This means that my Salad is funding the slaughtering of animals! How could you do this to me, Ronald?"

"I find it absolutely offensive that when I buy an electric car from General Motors the employees who worked on their Gas Guzzler models get paid. I refuse to allow any of my hard earned loan to benefit planet killers."

I get what you're saying, and you're right. Those are also not good comparisons. It's more like if I said "man, I wish Pepsi would take some of their sales from Mountain Dew and refine the recipe instead of using it to come up with new Doritos flavors."

FFXI development was also funded by profits of Square's single player games. I imagine FF purists complaining XI isn't a real numbered game and they didn't approve of their support of FFX going into XI's development.

...which is still 100% perfectly OK. About the only way you can guarantee these days that dollars spent on a product will 100% be dedicated to the costs associated only with that product and its longevity is to shop local farms.

This idea of consumers thinking they can dictate billion-dollar corporate policy needs to die, and die fast. This is how we end up with companies spending more on social messaging than their employees and quality.

At what point did I imply we should be dictate their policies? I just was saying I wish they made an actual investment into the game to help ensure its longevity. They can't keep running on PS2 Devkits and Playonline forever -- eventually it will be impossible to continue updating the game. Zero dollars profit is a lot less than a few million.

They will throw XIV devs at it to quickly convert over if it's profitable enough. If not, you're only getting ambu swaps until they shut it down.

my apologies. My comments are much more based on the general thought I see expressed than your personal feelings- your post was simply the latest to be in that sphere of thought and so I quoted that one.

But your comment of "they can't keep running on PS2 Devkits and Playonline forever"- so very true. For the longest time I felt that SE would constantly invest in making sure that XI was at least available for its fans to play, seeing how it is a numbered FF title, and that does mean something to the company and its history. But I've always felt that approach doesn't guarantee two things that I see people just assume- first, that "always available" translates to "always being maintained/updated"- and second, that it will be modernized to keep it relevant.

But I do strongly feel that SE execs wish they could let XI just die on the vine. I'm sure in a way Yoshida et al feel a lot like Henry Ford after the Model T. Sure, it created an entire industry and was beautifully made for its purpose so well there was almost no need to change things. But as a creator, all he wanted was to improve and move on...while all his customers wanted was that trusty Model T. Its a damn good thing he didn't listen to just his customers.

This is the point I've been preaching for ages. MXI has existed for half the game's lifespan at this point iirc. "Decoupling" is just creating a series of web services and a new launcher.

It's not an insurmountable task. It's a task with measurable requirements and a fixed budget. Realistically it's more web development than anything. Protocols like JWT, OAuth, etc make authentication relatively trivial..

I'd hazard a guess that it's nowhere near as difficult as they make it out to be. More likely is they don't want to risk a 100-200k investment and hope people will just quit playing.

I've also made the point that the XI community will buy just about anything they sell. So the opportunity to generate increased revenue for an undertaking like this is there.

I've heard this somewhere before. Oh right, it was Blizzard right before 1 dev at the company proved to them how it was not only possible, but not that difficult to modernize a legacy version of the game with a lot of the same limitations.

They subsequently took advantage of that and the demand to revitalize their failing live service.

Only difference here is XIV isn't failing, but instead bringing in a ***load of money from the store.

Excuses are rough.

thank you for noticing me 14 dweeb <3

Yeah, Blizzard with Classic WoW is apples to oranges on this. It's a terrible comparison.

One, that's not AT ALL the same situation. I'm not calling for a classic server, I'm just saying we (eventually) need a new client if we want the game to continue existing (online) at all.

Two, the player base of WoW is SIGNIFICANTLY larger than the player base of FFXI ever was, even at its peak. It's like comparing a regional chain of grocery stores like Meijer to say... Walmart.

Three, the limitations are not even close in scale. Like, not even a little bit. Final Fantasy's limitations were apparent even at initial release, AND instead of two years of content that needs to be remade (at least initially), we're talking about 20 years of content that would need to be remade or transferred over. It's not even remotely the same. It would be an insanely daunting and expensive task to create a new client for the game... but they need to do it eventually if it's going to continue existing.

SE doesn't really care about the player base in general. this 20th anv is pretty much a slap in the face, look what they did for the 17th anv compared to the 20th. I mean really give us 6 days of all campaigns when they should have made it for the whole month. Anyone that thinks se cares about anyone but the JP player based is blind. If it wasn't for all the RMT accounts SE would have shut the servers down 5 years ago. They care about their bottom line and that is it.

EOR:

I get the comparison, but cars ultimately all perform the same basic function. Whereas there's nothing like FFXI to move on to afterwards (DQX is JP only and still too different) because the setting, story and a lot of gameplay systems are unique. It's a holistic experience. Even if other games capture part of it that still won't scratch the itch.

So yeah, I don't want to see the game I've played for a large part of my life wither and die. And if that means I'll been seen as delusional and unreasonable then I'm fine with that.

Aint no way we're Meijer. At best we're Piggly Wiggly, and more likely we're a run down Wawa.

*dollar general

HAS EVERYTHING!

Dollar General only has everything if they get their weekly truck delivery with products. The last time FFXI got a truck delivery was in 2013. Now they are pulling products from the top shelves and they are running out of anything to put out. We have become more of a gas station I think. Everything is overpriced and you have to check the dates because there is no telling how long it's been there. They also don't carry everything you want, but they have enough of it to save you a trip into town.

lol you're salty as ***

Most people are right now, stop acting like that is somehow uncalled for or rare. Many people loved/love this game and want to see it do well. Apparently the will is there but SE and most likely Yoshida, dont want it to do as well as it can.

Start the petition, ill sign it! They should know how many want an expansion or would be willing to pay for extras like race changes where they commented they would like to see if theres demand.

If NA (or really non-JP) wants have a chance at making an impact on expressing demand, they would have to be properly organized. Between here, BG wiki, and reddit we already have 3 different community hubs. I'm sure there are more as I browse BG articles but usually not forums, I post here occasionally, and barely know anything of the reddit community.

The AMA showed off how unorganized and fractured the reddit experience was for a fair amount of people.

If we take them at their word (which people clearly don't) then we'd have to put together something on their official forums. One of the biggest problems I see there, other than its setup is mediocre, is that a fair amount of people are banned AF on the official forums. I assume these are the more passionate and outspoken members of the community and thus we are probably missing key and vital members of our communities.

I don't have a conclusion statement. I don't know the answer to trying to get their attention, but I'd love to see this game get a second wind. Anyone with suggestions, it seems like the time is now...before they blow all their extra money on NFTs.

It would never happen, but having a month or two where everyone decided to drop all their subscriptions would be interesting. Money talks louder than words. It would be hilarious to see RMT shouting and nobody actually playing to buy their services.

If people did that, they'd take it as a sign that FFXI is dead and just cancel it entirely. There is no path that we players can take that will make them give it an actual budget again.

If anything was to change, it'd require a big mindset shift from the SE bigwigs in charge of project prioritization, and none of them are people we can reach.

Question: Do dev kits explode after use? Why are they said to be somehow rare?

I mean I get that no more will be made by Sony or whatever, but what happened to the ones they used to begin with?

They're like 20+ years old now, and everything wears down, especially with use. They're probably just old and failing, and they don't know how to perfectly repair them.

A lot of PS2 dev kits are likely snatched up by retrogaming collectors for "muh museum."

I guess that's fair. PS2 limitations and spaghetti code. The anchor around FFXI's neck.

The scapegoat(s). Easily remedied. Simply by being willing to spend resources.

Dumb question, what makes a ps2 dev kit - a ps2 dev kit? In this modern era, what about them can’t be virtualized or emulated or whatever? Is it the physical ps2 hardware? Is it impossible to just emulate? It kinda gets old to keep hiding behind this “PS2 limits” tagline.

It seems so absent minded in the gaming industry, that if this is your “unfixable” crutch / huge problem, not to be at least activly working on this issue… or bring in experts… They literally have been off the ps2 / xbox plaforms for 7 or is it 8 years!

A "Dev kit" is just a specialized version of that console. That's all. it just has more stuff on it.

They can convert essentially any pc into a new dev kit, if they wanted to spend the $1000 for the parts.

(it's not quite that simple, but it is) https://www.retroreversing.com/playstation-2-development-hardware