So Why Did You Quit? (and Still Read FFXIAH?)

I dunno, but I'm fully with you here. While you can certainly define basically any work of imagination as 'fantasy', FFXV had very few elements of a traditional fantasy game. I don't doubt that people enjoyed it anyway, but wasn't for me. I see FFXVI has a more traditional setting, but I'm not going to assume it'll be better in that regard until I see it.

that kind of decision usually isn't left in the hands of the technical teams.
He might be the front-man of the company but when it comes to a P&L and resource allocation, especially in SE, that's not his call.

Again not his call. The decision to make a single-player game or an MMO will be a much more democratic, and indeed strategic process, and I highly doubt Yoshida is playing much of any influence at all in what type of game is made. He's more likely receiving marching orders and direction from the top.
When it comes to XVI in particular there were much much larger forces and influence at play including external such as Sony.

tl;dr: Yoshida plays no role at all in what commitments SE makes in terms of internal resource allocation and strategy. The role he does play is domain expertise and at best he would be consulted on somethings in strategic direction as a qualifier or contributor that something could be done. He might get asked "could you do x with y amount of resources/funding" and that would be his que to put a proposal forward to achieve "x" with the "y" they're ready to allocate.

Yoshida is much much lower in the hierarchy than everyone seems to be assuming. The decisions are all made by corporate executives who depend on a great deal of information and data to make decisions, way beyond Yoshida's capabilities to do alone.

He's essentially the talent, and you never let the talent run the business.
The management does.

Board of Directors
Naoki Yoshida

https://www.jp.square-enix.com/company/en/officer/

"Director
Naoki Yoshida
that's the "talent" I speak of. Creative Business Unit, 1 of at least 3.
It's not to take away from his influence, importance or success he contributes to SE.
But its the strategy officer, the commercial officer, the Corporate MBA's/Business executives who understand how to win and when to deploy the likes of Yoshida and on what.
Capital, funding, strategic alliances, market conditions, cost of sales.. these are not things Yoshida speaks, nor should he.

This guy, and Saito are the ones who influence, decide, commit resources:
President and Representative Director
Takashi KiryuEDIT: That's a ***load of power heavily concentrated on one individual. I've rarely seen such a strong concentration of power. He's got both finance and strategy reporting into him. These are two divisions you usually keep seperate as checks and balances over each other. But to top it all off, he's also the President.

Basically what I am saying is, as a result of this kind of concentration of power, Yoshida probably plays even less of a role in strategic decisions than I thought.

I wouldn't invest in SE. seeing so many remits concentrated into one individual is kinda crazy. Huge risk

edit: I just read a rare explosion by Rooks to stay on topic. My bad. dont topic ban me Rooks.
I'm using my "I helped you farm your excalibur almost 17 years ago " get out of jail card.

Square-Enix is having exactly the kind of trouble that Disney has had.

The creative decision-making has left the producer and gone to the hands of the a board whose focus is all on marketing.

The result is high skill and production cost and low artitistic merit when it comes to expression and continuity which translates into falling appeal.

The stories and messages go down the drain. The gameplay goes down the drain. The music and graphics/animation remain fantastic.

FFIX recovered because they rebuilt the whole project under the focus of a creative lead... but that didn't change the overall structure for 15 and I'm guessing its the same for 16.

I don't know about you, but ffxv: The boy band goes on tour... was not really interesting. I didn't appreciate the combat either. The strategic aspects are greatly diminished.

I thought FFXII did the best at having the turn-based strategy elements applied to an pseudo real-time battle. XI does it great too.

so yeah, I don't have high hopes for 16.

I don't know what people think Marketing is these days but if they think its just advertising, no company ever wants to focus on advertising because its expensive as hell and cuts into their profits. Boards, CEO's, CFOs hate hate hate advertising.

If in this context you mean market development/product development/distribution, well all companies focus on that so they can sell and make profit.

Disney didn't focus on Marketing. Disney is focusing on ESG. Because Uncle Larry (Blackstone) controls the purse (10 trillion in assets under management) and with that comes a lot of influence.

ESG is complicated, but all anyone needs to understand in terms of what is relevant to them is more or less "woke politics"

and if you go woke, you go broke.

To understand it all just got to go back to basics.
There are capitalists (they hold capital, Money, $$$) and are usually funds and private equity.
Then there is the working class. Professionals. This includes corporate executives that everyone demonizes these days.

they need to secure capital (money) to be able to pay for projects/businesses/ or movies and tv shows in disney's case.

ESG guidelines, pushed heavily by Blackstone, determine whether you get funding for said projects.
Or they can make it very painful for you by making the terms so bad that you cave.
(Blackrock not blackstone. I always get the two confused but they are pretty much one and the same, as both entities came from two partners)
Sanchez is the people's champion. Sadly the people don't know it. He went after Disney first, and then blackstone/rock, their main patron. I don't know how the guy is still alive and hasn't been JFK'ed yet.

Been playing since 2003. Now I'm in my mid 30s.

I've always loved FF11, the music, the style, and certainly exploring the game when it was new and dangerous. It's been the most influential and deep experience I've had in gaming and probably ever will.

I even went to Vana'diel cafe in Japan in 2004, and bought some FF11 manga. The staff there were wearing blue woollen robes from the game, and the entrance was designed like a Mog house.

I even met my long term partner on the game, and we've been together 16 years.

I mainly dropped off around Abyssea, and have come back in year long stints on and off since then. Today marks the longest time that I have not played at all (1.5 years), and I genuinely think I will not return at all now.

I think the main reason I have quit is still actually influenced by FF11. I've been working on an indie game in my spare time, where you make parties of 6 heroes with various different jobs, with an emphasis on environmental challenge. Having to train mobs to the zone, sneak, invisible etc. I've found this more satisfying now, in a way, as I attempt to recreate the amazing sensation of playing FF11 for the first time in my own way.

In terms of the game in its current state, I think merc'ing and triple boxing really are off-putting to me. I mean, I get it, and I'm sure people get a great amount of fun out of it. I suppose the sense of adventure is long gone now, and now the game feels like it's played by the sort of people who would enjoy speed running.

I mean, it makes sense, the game is old, and it's only people like myself still playing it.

To go deeper, I feel that on a gameplay level, there isn't actually that much variation if you stop and think about it. It all feels deep and meaningful because of how long everything takes to do. But if you took out all the leveling/augmenting/grinding, the strategies boil down to kite, zerg, magic zerg, or some gimmick strategy involving one skill from a certain job.

That may be a reductionist way of looking at it, and I appreciate there is more thought that goes in to min maxing for the plethora of different gear sets to perform each task.

I feel they were on the right track with things like Nyzul, in the sense that you had to cooperate on the fly, and handle unprecedented situations, like your healer being away from the group around dangerous aggro to pull a lever. These are the sorts of dungeons I would like to have seen more of. Pits, levers, riddles, puzzles, splitting groups on the fly etc.

Having said all this, when you consider modern games, FF11 stands above them in this respect even now I feel. FF14 simply involves memorising where to stand and memorising rotations, as does WoW etc.

Another thing I loved about FF11 was how down to earth things felt. Every modern MMORPG has the heroes looking like superheroes from the get go, with huge flashy lightning attacks on every hit etc.

FF11 felt exceptionally humble in contrast, as if you yourself could be there with a woollen robe on and a sword in your hand. Coupled with the fear and challenge even at low levels, this helped make the world feel genuine and interesting.

I love FF11 and always will, I think there could be another MMORPG that could match its greatness, yet I feel developers should play more Dungeons & Dragons and less League of Legends to discover how.

I'm quitting at the end of the month because I've done more or less everything that there is to do and don't want to spend months grinding out a Prime weapon. I'll still check back in on FFXIAH and the official website because I'm not opposed to another stint if the content improves.

Merc culture isn't a thing outside of Asura.

You know that FFXV's "boyband" concept was started by Tetsuya Nomura who 1) is an artist with great artistic talent 2) completely ruined the project because of his artistic personality. His team would build a cool "concept demo", ditch it, rebuild it, ditch it until the company finally can't sustain money loss anymore.

Basically, being a "creative people with talent" doesn't necessarily mean they are good at making good games.

FF15's problem has nothing to do with SE's upper management, it's mostly Tetsuya Nomura's terrible management ability not finishing the project on time. If SE's upper management made any mistakes, it's them trusting Tetsuya Nomura too much.

That being said, Yoshida has the reputation to get ***done on time and polish it, and so far ff16's demo review has been very, very positive in the gaming community, which is kinda a rare scene to see for a SE title lol. As a FF fan I'd say SE's best decision in past 20 years was promoting Yoshida as FF14 ARR/16 producer. I literally don't trust anyone else in SE except him at this point.

proofs, everywhere I've been looking it's not at all. Even Resetera hates it.

Amen sister ^^b

ALSO:

[Placeholder for Rooks nuking y'all off-topic mofos]

We probably live in a different universe then. Or trollbait, or both.

*Googles Resetera FF16 thread*

*Switch to the last 2 pages of discussion*

https://www.resetera.com/threads/final-fantasy-xvi-demo-available-now-impressions-thread.729000/page-22

I stopped reading after p22 done, it's mostly the same positive opinion as every other game forum. Also I'll have to ignore your trollbait posts from this point since you posted too many.

Oh dear. This doesn't sound like it will end well.
Probably a failure on SE's part to deconstruct the success of "devil may cry" type gameplay/games.
Fast,stylish, glitzy combat visuals isn't enough. DMC did well because it had both low entry requirements skill-wise, with very little punishment for button smashing, but rewards for actually pulling off complex combos.
The combat in FFXV was just too slow paced for me.
Well at least they're learning and now it's faster paced.
And there's always the story and plot of an FF game to look forward to. I just hope the gameplay isn't so bad that I can't play through it and enjoy the story.
But then again, there's always someone who will make a "All CS's " or a plot summary video on youtube.

lol. I find staying on topic challenging. I have *** syndrome.

Stopped playing for now in March because of new job, and because I was content with my profession/completion to the point where I didn't want to do anything else

Look here because was interested and seeing how VR turned out

And not upset that I'm not playing, lol

I'll come back when mastery rank 9 is a thing (never), or maybe to finish VR one day

The 20th anniversary blunder was the last nail in the coffin for me personally. Seeing some form of updated ffxi being worked on was super exciting to me. That was my last holdout of something actually happening to fix the game. Once it got here and all we got was a white chicken I was out lol. Years of other issues led up to that though. Poor developer choices, mediocre and reskinned content, RMT and multiboxing galore, etc...

My main issue really came from the fact that the devs thought it would be a great idea to introduce OP gear and weapons like naegling. Then when the community started to use strategies using said gear and weapons they would nerf everything with walls. Summoners using their OP 1hr? Bloodpact wall. People spamming Naegling? Weaponskill wall. People actually using magic bursts? Burst wall. What use to be a fun sandbox of creativity slowly became "Play it my way, or we will nerf things so you have to". Pair that with the fact that most of my playtime later on was just being AFK playing another game. So... why not just play another game? So that's exactly what I did lol

Seeing how sortie and prime weapons left a sour taste in everyone's mouth lets me know I made the right decision a few years ago. It does make me sad though at the same time on how the game has gone downhill from poor developer choices. Since then I have went to ffxi alternatives that shall not be named because people have a hard time staying on topic as it is.

I would be willing to wager that this was the beginning of the end for a huge number of people and the immediate end for others. I had tempered my expectations considering the games age and development staff allocated to the game, but I never expected such a dismal 20th anniversary. I was already on my way out pending the end of TVR, but the 20th anniversary combined with the poor implementation of Sortie and Prime weapons put the writing on the wall for the future of the game.

(To try to get back on topic)

I've played this game practically since launch, but quit multiple times for all kinds of reasons. Life happens, but I'll freely admit that once I've completed all the non-grindy endgame content, I lose interest. I don't really see the point of grinding endlessly just to be able to grind somewhat more efficiently.

As to why I still lurk around here: 'cause I wanna see how the game is going. I've completed all the game's story content up through Rhapsodies, am thinking about popping back in to do Voracious Resurgence, so it's always nice to see how current players feel about the game.

Can include Bst "adjustments" which completely ruined my previously favourite job and Geo nerfs to that list.

Also still bugs me that Nin can't run around with staves and 100% nuke stuff anymore. Let whoever wants to play casting Nin play casting Nin, jeez.

Yeah and you end up quitting that one too, maybe the grass isn't always greener

I've come and gone a lot over the years, since around 2003 or so. Usually because of IRL stuff. This time around has been the most I've been active, followed by this wild endgame LS I was in (on Shiva I think?) years back (around the 75-99 transition w/ Abyssea) where everyone was a sackholder, nothing was ever planned, and despite leeroying everything we still managed to kill stuff with everyone playing whatever job they wanted. It was wild, I was real sad when I logged back in and the lsmsg was "We had a good run.", with no one on, and that was it.

Since starting back around 3 years ago or so, I've taken breaks here and there. I've found this game can be a really nice thing to do at the end of the day (chat with friends, fight stuff, etc), but it can also do a number on my mental health so I have to keep it in check and not let it run out of control. If I start feeling like it's causing more anxiety than enjoyment, I take a few weeks off and see if I revisit it later. I expect one of these days I'll take a hiatus, log off, find I don't miss it, then not get on again. Either that or all my friends will quit. I do a lot of stuff IRL that keeps me distracted (cycling, sailing to name a few), so sometimes I get wrapped up in those things during the seasons they are available then come back to 11 during the winter also.

When I wasn't playing, I'd check what was going on every so often here and on Reddit to see where the game was headed. You reach a point where it's been a part of your life for so long that it's just kinda natural you keep up with it.

What's wild to me is that I would go 3-4 years without playing, log in, then reach for the same buttons and macros almost instinctively. I could still, through muscle memory, cancel shadows before Utsusemi: Ichi finished casting even having not done it for several years.

I played from around 2004 to 2012 and ended up quitting.
The straw that broke the camels back was buying an item for 10 times its value by accident lol.

Was never very good at the game but really enjoyed it , it just had something about it that compelled you to play.

Anyway 10 years later I decided to return just to see how the game was 10 years on , the old ffxi magic got hold of me and I have been addicted again ever since.

Ironically the first tell I got after a 10 year absence was somebody asking for a refund because they bought an item from me in auction in error for stack price rather than single , I gave the gil back and was blown away to receive a 5m gil gift for doing so.

Still really enjoy the game but dont have the guts to do group content due to some bad experiences in the past where people take things too seriously, its a game after all.

Even during my 10 year absence I would still occasionally look here to see what was going on and if old friends were still playing , was pretty typical that the last few had quit just before my return haha.

The game has grown a lot , much of it for the better and some not so but if you look at it objectively it necessary but does seem a shame that alliance content its now almost non existent

This thread prompted my first ever Ffxiah post.
Enjoy the game , its fantastic and hard to believe its 21 years old.

Master levels. It's not the idea of grinding them, it's that I cannot keep up with botters, especially when you listen to the gloat about how many levels they have over you and people revering them. To me, once cheaters are revered as "the greats", you know marbles have been lost and it's time to move onto something else.

Back in 2001 games were still a throwaway medium, hundreds of developers created them and within months of release they were pretty much consumed and done. The put their heart and soul into making these games and within a short time they were irrelevant, onto the next.

It's cool to think the people worked on this game created something that stood the test of time and they are still relevant today, tens of thousands of people are still fighting those monsters, still chasing those armors and weapons created long ago.

An MMORPG is like a game that takes on a life of its own, it's gotta be cool to be a developer that worked on this game and check in and now and again and still see people appreciate and enjoying your work when most of the things you made in your career are effectively forgotten.

The same applies to people who make things for the game, guides, addons, websites, number crunchers, modders etc

When you do this stuff for some single player game it's done and within a while it's forgotten, there are people who made things or figured things out for XI 10-15+ years ago and people still take advantage of them today. Your efforts last.

Many of us have quit at some point, but it's always here to come back to.

Thank you for
Thank your for participating! It's awesome that you were able to come back and have a positive experience with another Asuran player.

Sometimes I think, the only thing SE wants to balance is that our competitive knives remain pointed at other players' throats. Such a shame.

I'm really glad you had a positive player encounter and made your first post here.

^ This is exactly why I continue to come to FFXIAH, Felgarr!

I tried to explain this muscle memory to someone (a very high ML DPS player) and the concept was just lost on them. It's a good feeling when it starts to come back, even if you just haven't played a job in a while.