20th Anniversary Reddit AMA

Yeah mass unsubs would be the quickest way to turn SE's passion project into a statistically liability.

I get some people's sassy revenge motives but they are only good for letting us all move on from FFXI because it's actually dead and no longer available, much less being worked on as generally desired by everyone here.

Why don't some of you incredibly hardcore fans who want to see more done for the game do something different for a change?

They just acknowledged money isn't being funneled into FFXI much anymore. Start up a Go Fund Me or Kickstarter and Tag the Dev Team/FFXI_JP US Twitter handles. See how much money yall can raise for the things they said they wish they could do if they had more resources. I'd love to see how they would react to seeing the players raise a few dozen grand for future improvements to FFXI. GFM even has a policy where if you don't reach your goal, everyone gets their money back. Try it, see what happens.

It would need someone that can communicate with the developers.

For instance if the person that runs the reddit sub they just did an AMA with could communicate with them, they could potentially set one up and promote it there. It needs to be asked if they would accept it.

If you goto kickstarter they raise money pretty easy, there are lots of things on there with under 1k backers and they raise 70-100k

It would need to be for a specific thing though, like an expansion? or something.

This is what the money would be used for

I don't recall if it was the 4gamer or Famitsu 20th anniversary interviews but you can find them linked on r/finalfantasyxi

But Matsui mentioned when they hire on staff on XI, it's mostly experienced older staff passionate about the game. They don't want to hire newer /younger people as it is detrimental to their careers

I think was was left unsaid speaks volumes. We went from a game limping year to year with content just randomy dropped with no lore behind it to some true story and expansion level story content with battlefield tied to that story and no termination date (for now). We should celebrate that instead of berating the passionate people keeping the game going. Honestly, the issue is internally, SE still sees XI as dead MMO that is making them money and Matsui managed to convince them to invest something for the 20th anniversary. I really hope they get another 3 year budget after 2022, but if SE execs are reading reddit or this forum, i'd imagine they'd just pull the plug and think there is no future

I think if FFXI is still bringing in enough money, which it seems to be, we'll continue as we have for the past 6 years basically. Nothing huge, but enough to keep the game drudging along for the foreseeable future. 2-3 decent sized updates per year and fluff for the rest.

People who are asking for more are bound to be disappointed and really just need to let it go at this point. The 20th anniversary we got versus what the unrealistic people wanted might have served as the wake up call these people finally needed.

I'm not sure what you don't understand.

If you give SE more money for FFXI they will spend it on NFTs for ffxiv.

This is a lose lose situation, the company has shown over and over again they do not want this old game to progress, they are morons. no amount of money is going to fix the fact that SE is incredibly stupid.

PS2 Dev Kits had specific libraries used for software compilation to run on PS2 machines. I'd be surprised if they still actually use PS2 dev kits though. I think it's a scapegoat.

Honestly, if there's a native JP speaker among us to translate the petition very accurately, I'll write something long-form up. PM me if you're fluent.

The harsh reality is it's not a matter of voting with your wallet. If you do, the game is gone. It's about validating it as business expenditure and renewing interest within SE. Honestly, we need a Yoshi-P-like champion for XI. Matusi isn't doing what needs to be done. The people above him need to be convinced that it makes since.

They still use it, not for all changes, but i assume for new assets and models and cutscenes. the issue is the middle ware since FFXI was developed in a time where there was no Unity/UE4 so it's just bespoke software running on in this case bespoke hardware because PS2 was the lead platform for this game.
https://www.4gamer.net/games/005/G000546/20220511037/

The machine translation is pretty good here

To be honest, maybe this makes me a fool but I'd be willing to commit a couple hundred bucks for a Kickstarter to call that bluff.

We're all middle-aged now! Like, we're not poor!

I honestly say it jokingly usually but really what do we have to lose at this point? I would really whale it up if it meant getting meaningful additions to the game like pol removal, expansion, or anything making it easier to get into.

I'm sure given most of us are in our 30s/40s and generally stable, they would do something to see new things for XI. Of course like someone said it requires more important players to get things moving but I dont know where to begin. Wish there was something that could be done, I care a lot about the game. We already know voting with our wallet would just make them shut everything down easily. Really does feel like a lose lose situation.

You would have to iron out the details beforehand, that the money would only be used to further FFXI via expansion and the other things the Dev team claims to want to do, but is hindered by money. You're not just giving free money to do whatever. If they say no, everyone gets their money back, like any other kickstarter or go fund me campaign.

Happy to translate questions and have them native-checked if they are worded clearly. Can also make it bilingual and post on JP sites to gather their responses.

What makes anyone think they would even do anything with the money raised via a Go Fund Me? The players already fund this game with overpriced subscriptions and we have seen that it doesn't go back into FFXI.

ok, well, they won't agree to that because they don't want to do it.

NEXT

I mean seriously.

Yeah, they make it sound cute, if I had a million dollars I'd "definitely do this"

Yeah, but, no. If you literally dropped a bag of money on his *** desk, he would not do anything that was said. It's not a bluff that you need to call, it's a guarantee.

Prove me wrong though.

Oh, ok.

What does it hurt to try? Worst case they see numbers for potential if they ever do consider allowing that type of funding

The biggest problem with technical debt is that the ones close enough to see it are farthest from having the decision-making power to get the budget to fix it. The longer it goes, the more expensive it becomes to resolve it and eventually the person who would sign off on it is so far removed that they don't typically see the value.

Every corporation that I've worked for as a developer had some level of technical debt that only got addressed when directly traceable financial loss exceeded the cost to do so. And then everyone had to deal with the budget and schedule decisions being made by people who don't understand the problem, who are more concerned with getting the problem out of their face than actually resolving it.

It feels like in XI's case, it will just eventually either stop getting updates and become a museum piece or get shutdown entirely. If that happens, the best we can hope for is a decent sendoff like XIV 1.0 getting nuked by Bahamut. Though at this point, I'm guessing that all we'd see is a nostalgic message on the POL site letting us know when they're pulling the plug.

The Devs will continue the game into its 25th anniversary at least. They said they also intend to make it to the 30th. After that, is a toss up in the air. Articles about it are out. My feeds are loaded with these things.

Okay, I’m sorry but this crowd funding thing isn’t happening. SE is not some little baby indie game studio. “Here’s a bag of money. expansion, hd remake and classic servers pls”. I doubt they would even be allowed to accept the money by the higher-ups because it would look tacky af for a multi-billion dollar corporation to do so.

Are you joking…..?

https://collective.square-enix-games.com/en_GB/

Not really the same though. This is a platform to help indie developers to crowdfund, release and market their games, not S-E crowdfunding their own games.

No one would blink twice at a 20 year old MMO looking to get pre-funded for development costs against certain features.

They would never actually do it, obviously. Too busy planning how to bone consumers with NFTs. SE have made a string of really questionable decisions that are obviously purely bottom line led... Which is why they wouldn't put the time and effort into a 20 year old game when they have FFXIV as a cash cow.

Also a minor addition to all the people spouting how much money SE make on this game... Somehow you're forgetting corporation tax and other overheads of running a business. That profit number you come up with can be reduced by 30% in tax alone, then another 25% at least for operation costs. That's on top of the magical salary and server costs you've pulled out of your arse.

I personally don't think crowd funding is going to bring about anything useful. If the FFXI dev team is somehow allowed to accept this money, I think it will send the wrong message to the higher-ups. Even assuming it would work, I'm not sure such a campaign would raise the sort of money needed for the team to do anything meaningful.

The main issue from my point of view is that those higher-ups are not going to be convinced to spend more money on FFXI in any scenario other than a massive bump in longer-period subscribers to FFXI. This is unlikely to happen in FFXI's current state, and less likely as time goes on.

Additionally: The people speaking ill of the current developers are really barking up the wrong tree. You will not find anyone in a position to take over their roles with the kind of passion they have for the game.
More broadly, there are very few developers on the ground level who do not sincerely want what is best for whatever game they work on. This holds true for even the simpest cellphone game.
I find it really damning that (a vocal portion of) the game's community keep trying to convince themselves and each other that the devs are actually bad at their jobs.

Online petitions do nothing, ever. Waste of time, infact counter productive.

Kickstarter could 100% work to fund a new expansion or something specific if done correctly and the developers agreed to take the money and use it for the game, you don't even need that many people to make it work. You're not even really just giving money away because the way it works is your money buys the product (expansion), you're just paying up-front. Then others can buy it later if it's funded and made for the normal rrp.

As said, if someone can communicate with the community people and they can ask the developers if they would be up for it, someone can set one up and we can try it. I would personally suggest the person that runs the reddit sub since they can promote it with a sticky and they can be seen as somewhat trustworthy. They already talk to the community team, since they setup that AMA.

Someone could even translate and then promote it in the JP community too, money to most of us isn't as big a deal as getting some big new content. I would drop £300+ on it today, cause big new conetnt on a game I spend a ton of time on is worth more to me than £300.

Here is a random kickstarter game as an example

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/375726835/shadows-kiss-vampire-mmo-by-clockwork-throne-studi?ref=discovery_most_backed&term=mmo

Step 1: Will they take it and make an expansion and how much do they need.

I think a kickstarter is an excellent idea, but not for the intended reasons.

The only good that would come of it would be that it would sort of shame SE.

Like, they aren't gonna take a handout, so let's just stop fooling ourselves. That would run counter to the perception that they are a successful company that can easily self-fund all of its projects. So they're not gonna take the money.

If they refuse the money because they 'don't need it' and then they STILL don't invest more $$ into FFXI, they just look like ***.

They don't care if they look like ***, though, because 'don't look like ***' is not in the company manifesto. But at least we'd have the satisfaction of proving that the management is completely full of ***on this.

I think it's worth a try. More productive than being a black pilled doomer. With a crowdfunded campaign the money directly goes towards making a product.

My issue with the new wardrobes is that there is 0 indication this new cashflow will go back into content for the game. Without a roadmap on where my extra cash is going, I refuse.