20th Anniversary Reddit AMA

Realistically, most avenues are going to lead to nothing.

Rooks very eloquently articulated what any fundraising campaign would lead to. It's a legal nightmare.

The goal is to provide them with analytical data substantiating interest which is overwhelming enough to assume that even after you remove as much as 40~50% of the "pledges" that will fall through for one reason or another, you're left with enough revenue to justify investment into new ventures.

With that goal in mind, a well-worded petition with clearly outlined "requests", pledges of influencer/streaming support, and wording to back that anyone who signed the petition would reasonably buy into any fundraising efforts to generate revenue for the game, we can present "demand".

The same strategies are used to *** valuation for seed-stage startups that are pre-revenue.

That being said, I'm reaching out to a handful of people who have a large enough following and have recently shown great support of Square Enix. Might lead nowhere, but you can't win if you don't play.

right, so management does not want to make it.

Maybe my usage of the word 'want' has been a poor choice.

Management is not going to make it. for reasons. that i do not have enough information to speculate on. but they probably include some of the things you said.

idk if the bargaining line was directed at me or not, but I accepted this ***years ago.

I have zero doubt that if the developers setup a kickstarter to make a Tanzania expansion or whatever it would be funded easily, and probably go way over. Also, people who don't donate can still buy it after it's done if they don't.

Most of the games funded on kickstarter barely go over 1-2k backers.

This is the answer to the problem, it's just down to if they are allowed and want to try it.

it's too big a PR risk, if it succeeds then it gets heavily covered everywhere in 'gaming journalism' because it's such a unique event for a major game company to do something like that

no matter how much is raised or how well they do, they'll still be under scrutiny and the expansion won't be as good as people are hoping, resulting in a PR nightmare

all for a few million upside best case, SE would never do it

For a numbered mainline FF?
Yeah... I seriously doubt they would ever.

I think it's difficult to have a PR disaster with a game nobody plays.

Given the backlash on Wardrobes. It's difficult to predict how other indirect monetization strategies would be received.

I imagine mostly positive, but I understand their trepidation.

I wonder if we started a fake Kickstarter instead as a kind of bluff. Like "Attention idiots of Square-Enix, we raised a boatload of money as proof that people are willing to put money down for new content in XI", with shameful media coverage that one of gaming's biggest publishers weren't willing to do it themselves. They'd take it down, but we'd have been heard.

Man. You guys still don't get it.

S-E is not going to increase the dev budget of FFXI and it doesn't matter what you do. Coupled subs, 77 wardrobes, a FundMe. FFXI will be in limp mode until the game shuts down.

They do not want to continue pumping money into that 1998 Dodge Neon.

In a perfect world the Community Managers could see this suggestion, and ask them about it. Then they could say yes or no.

In reality, it will just be ignored.

If someone can write Japanese can you make a post suggesting it on the official JP forum?

you should have used a car with a model year matching the release of the game... that would have at least made me laugh.

don't be that guy who says 'you guys don't get it', thereby placing everyone in the thread in opposition to you, despite half of us clearly 'getting it'

or do be that guy, idc, it's just a pet peeve of mine.,


regardless, i 100% agree with you re: 1998 dodge neons get no love

Bold of you to assume the media would give a single ***. If they did, I don't think it would go the way you think. I've been on the internet long enough to know that we wouldn't be looking at a revolution, or millions of random internet gamers rallying behind the flag of a dying MMO that they've probably never heard of. Instead, the people involved in setting it up and "raising awareness" would be labeled childish crybabies and white knights of a dead game.

I also think that many of you are vastly overestimating the amount of money this hypothetical Kickstarter would make. Even a few hundred dollars from every member of the vocal minority of the already small remaining XI playerbase who would care to invest into something like this isn't a lot of money overall.

It's funny the biggest defenders of FF14 are going all out against this idea. Just sayin.

This has nothing to do with XIV you moron lmao. I find it funny that whenever anyone says something that goes against your shattered mental image of how the world works, your immediate defense is injecting XIV into the conversation to spark conflict.

Grow the *** up you absolute manchild.

Damn son you're turbo mad.

Just pointing out a fact.

Beginning sentences with the word 'just' is always an interesting choice.

It's sad when a game with a passionate audience can and would fund something big and they just don't want to even attempt it.

This was asked in the AMA and it was ignored, which means it would probably never happen but it's nice to have some a little bit of hope in a sea of garbage over the past few weeks.

I was about to try and refute that point, but then I remembered what happened literally just a few months ago here in the Great White North. And, yeah, you're right lmao

Going to assume I'm being lumped in with the biggest defender crowd, so: I'm against it because it is not viable. No good can come of it. The only question is how much harm comes to a game and community I love, so I'd rather it didn't happen at all, so that the answer is "none".

Lets be honest, we all know it's not going to happen but it's nice to have a small bit of hope it might. It's not all that fun to see that one sliver of hope shot down in about 20 different ways, especailly when the last few weeks have been a sea of depressing let downs.

That's called delusion and it leads to an unhealthy mental state

FFXI was never meant to last as long as it has, They had the choice in the mid / late 2000's to either remake FFXI, or come up with something new, they went with project rapture. I wonder how close they came to remaking.....

It's a discussion on a forum.

That's an interesting attempt at redirection since it goes both ways, but no, that isn't what I was referring to. Clinging onto "small slivers of hope" that go against the most logical outcome and getting upset that people would inject realism into your bubble is practically the textbook definition of delusion. It's evident that several posters on this forum alone had their psyche at least temporarily shattered by the anniversary stream. Now imagine becoming financially invested in a grandiose plan to revive the game only to have the entire thing Hindenburg into oblivion.

Rooks is 100% right in his assessment, and watching the community death spiral into depression over what should have been a predictable outcome has been upsetting.

If this Kickstarter for an expansion actually started, how much would people actually be willing to give?

I could maybe justify $100 if they gave a good enough pitch, keeping in mind I’m still paying for subs and the eventual retail release of this expansion at $30+.

Thanks for the diagnosys doc.

You should change your avatar to something more fitting, try this one.

Delusion isn't always a mental disorder and doesn't require a diagnosis, try again

They only have themselves to blame. Rooks said it on the first page of the expectations thread. We aren't getting an expansion, we aren't getting new jobs, yes, expect emp+3 upgrades. That's it. So what do those posters you speak of do? Immediately start building up hopes for an expansion and new jobs. That thread was derailed on page one. It was absolute nonsense.

The stream finally comes and what do we get? Emp+3 upgrades. TVR continuation. Exactly what we should have been expecting. And now we are dreaming of starting a Kickstarter and crowdfunding an expansion? Hoping the "media" gets involved? Talk about delusion. The "media" didn't even cover the 20th Anniversary event. I can't tell you the last time I saw a FF11 article on a videogame website. The most you can hope for is a YouTube stream.

I don't think a Kickstarter would accomplish a thing, so $0

I'll continue to pay my XI sub though