FF14 “So Bad They Gave Players Another Free Month”

I am even ashamed to admit that I once thought of playing this shit when news about a FF XIV in making came out.

yeah me too....now look at it......

What does "continues to pan the game" mean?
Shouldn't that link then lead to a new review,
than some old one?

They are now beating a horse without realizing that it's actually dead.

Stupid players, play on! Clever players, flee!

Wow, so much hate. I'll assume none of you actually tried to play the game. As a tester, I begged that the game be delayed a few more months. There was no response to tester feedback, and now SE is paying for it. However, I am still playing the game and enjoying it. There are several flaws, but I enjoy being on the frontline to guide the game. I am no fan of SE practices, but there really is a great game here. It was a mistake to release it as early as they did, but it's more of a mistake to just brush it off as failure. FFXIV is not a hold your hand game, and those leaving because of that I say good riddance.

I really don't think there's anything there can can be considered acceptable, let alone "great". Handing out a second free month to prevent your servers from continuing to hemorrhage customers is a damn fine indication of that. Having worked on MMOs in the past and being intimately familiar with how these things work from within the company itself, this and SE's request that reviewers refrain from doing their jobs and reviewing the game are damning indicators as to just how bad SE's hurting on this.
I've never heard of a company doing either of those things. I've never even heard the possibility discussed. Give up a full month of subscription fees? That's a RIDICULOUS amount of money for a company to surrender as a simple apology for a little mistake. Realtime Worlds didn't even attempt something like that in the twilight hours of APB. SE is clearly both desperate and terrified, and that does not bode well for the player base at all.
If there were a few problems that could be patched out, I'd probably still be playing, but, unfortunately, most feel that the game is broken on such a fundamentally deep level that there's no way to fix it save for a complete redesign from the ground-up.
The decision to make gear entirely player-created was an interesting one, but there are far too many problems with it for me to list and there's no point in repeating them to someone who's already very familiar with them.
That being said, I understand how you feel. I spent $50 and a good chunk of time on this game and would love to think that it'll reach a point where it'll be at least partially enjoyable, but SE has made it INCREDIBLY difficult for most of us to believe that that's ever going to happen and all these ridiculously desperate attempts to slap a band-aid on their servers to cover up the gaping wounds that are hemorrhaging players are just going to make SE look worse and make a horrible problem turn disastrous..
I'm really sorry that you enjoy the game, but, unfortunately, you're just part of a vocal minority that's going to get drowned out by everyone who's horribly disappointed with this thing. It's the people who plan to keep playing that are really going to be shafted. I really suggest you re-evaluate why you continue to play. Step back and sincerely ask yourself if it's because the game is fun and enjoyable or if it's just because, whether you love the series or SE as a whole, you just really WANT it to be enjoyable.

There actually have been many MMO developers that have given free time including free months FFXIV is far from the first. Even WOW when it was released had many server issues and problems and gave away alot of free time because of it.

Personally I don't think anyone can say the game is dead until the PS3 version is released. In a way SE has a 2nd chance with FFXIV but TBH it was stupid of them to make the PC players basically a large beta testing pool.

WoW gave free time out because of server instability. They gave the free time to customers to make up for the amount of downtime. That's VERY different from giving free time to players in the hopes to keep them playing.

As a beta tester and a player of the game... the game is barely of Alpha quality. I stopped playing not long ago, and I will not be going back for the free month.

If the game survives a year or two, it might be worth checking out then.

God-like...I hope you're being sarcastic...

@ Anon 02:09

No, I'm not sarcastic. Tetsuya Nomura's designs are beautiful, extravagant pieces of art, and although the males look quite gay, thats doesnt change the fact it's awesome.

Nomura's style is an excercise in zipper drawing.

He's better than that, but really he's not that good. He has some fun ideas and a decent style, but really he needs to be more of an artist with his stuff in order to set the bar for character. He's doing Kingdom Hearts stuff so much that everything's becoming a bit like that. He's routinizing his style, and that's a dangerous place for an artist.

I truly hope SquareEnix takes this correctly, meaning that they can admit to themselves that they just rehashed everything from FFXI and completely misread the market. If it was made in China as people claim, then not to do that again. Traditional MMO style is ruled by WOW now, none others are really surviving. All modern MMOs have to be new and do things differently.

Nomura has ran out of style. A lot of his artworks, while still pretty, are mostly copy n' paste of his older stuff. FFXIII is an obvious evidence to this

Not to mention quite a few of his Nomura share grotesque similarities. Starts with FFVIII on Squall that leads to the disgusting similarities between Tidus, the main character from The Bouncer, and the Kingdom Hearts designs. Nomura needs to have more varieties than the style he learned from the Visual Kei era. Quite a few Japanese companies, typically Capcom, is constantly evolving their designs, shows how diverse they can be.

Looking back at FFXIII, almost every character in the storyline looks like somebody from older FF games:

-Lightning's stiff look is very Cloud-esque
-Hope looks like Vaan (even though Nomura didn't work on his design, it shows how the trend work)
-That chick that looks like Payne except blue like Rinoa
-Snow's design looks like Seifer in a beanie.
-That Blonde chick with glasses reminds me awfully lot of Quistis.
-One of Snow's comrade that died had Wakka's 'do

There's probably more but I quit the game halfway. There's so many similarities that its disgusting.

It's funny how More Detail tends to bend out the unique. The CG cut scenes of FF8 where beautiful.. With most if not all the ladies quite Delitable (The blond eye-glassed Babe be the best!) with the simple details.

Now they're trying to be more REAL with bits of Japanese Anime undertones~ Which blows every time I see it!

I can't wait for Comiket 78 Winter...

At least the FF XIV hentai (futa) doujins will never let you down...

Front Mission Evo even got a average rating even some mix reviews mostly bad but it manage to sell a few copys.

Prolly due to its really really cliche campaign story and online hackfest. I think the gameplay's decent enough if unforgiving.

Keep fantasizing.
They'll just churn out more titles like these.

Well.. Final Fantasy has been transformed into Failure Fantasy

Can we even categorize tihs as a Game ?

Even a random hack and slash MMO have better mechanic than FF XIV.

You mean keep "fanatazing" !!

This is completely true for me as well. The story is complete garbage. They need a new writer.

FF needs a new game company.

They won't have that much money for visual effects, then.

Better a good FF with bad graphics than a bad FF with good graphics.

Ugh...

"Hell, even if they could let the fans write the scenario it would be better then expensive and talent-less dude who wrote story for FFXII."

FFXII had a great story, but halfway through writing, the guy in charged bailed out due to sickness, forcing some random person to wrap up the story in the most unfashionable way. FFXII had a lot of promise. Other than that, the gameplay is one of the best grindfest type of game where you can go to areas 15 levels above your characters and make Gambit truly shine.

A crap story would be like FF8 where Squall and Rinoa (her character is paper thin) hated each other on the 1st disc but magically fall in love with each other at the start of 2nd disc, follow by the "lets blame amnesia on the summons" (while you do learn this at the start of the game in the computer, you only learn this once and that is it, and if you didn't bother checking the comp, then it goes right over your head)

FF9 was really good until its ruined by linking Zidane to the Genome and the "out of nowhere" last boss.

"...it would be better then expensive and talent-less dude who wrote story for FFXII."

What silliness you say. I understand that you felt disappointed with FFXII's story if you expected a romance a la FFX, but the story is great if you pay attention to what it's telling you instead of what you want it to tell you.

I, for one, loved that protagonism was evenly shared between all characters and Van was just a vessel to experience the story instead of sticking the player with yet another dumb adult kid who believes everything revolves around what he does or doesn't *Tiduscough*

I actually have a few friends that used to play FFXI that are now playing FFXIV since it's release.

What is shocking is they actually enjoy everything about the game. However, they do complain alot about the UI lag.