Square Enix: “FF14 is a Disaster, We’ve Lost Player Trust”
- Categories: Games, News
- Date: Nov 5, 2010 01:38 JST
- Tags: Bugs, Final Fantasy, Marketing, MMORPG, PC Gaming, Square Enix
Square Enix’s CEO has admitted Final Fantasy XIV is “unsatisfactory” and stresses that the company is “trying as hard as it can to regain lost trust.”
Quoth CEO Yoichi Wada addressing investors:
“The FF14 service is currently unsatisfactory, we’re trying to improve it as rapidly as possible. We’re trying as hard as we can to regain lost trust.”
He also admitted that FF11 player numbers have remained stable and that they seem not to be migrating to FF14 in significant numbers.
According to Square Enix, the game has sold a healthy 630,000 copies since launch (190,000 in Japan, 210,000 in the US and 230,000 in the EU). The PS3 version is still scheduled for March.
Server populations have been in freefall since launch however, now standing in the region of 30,000 at peak, despite Square Enix extending the free trial by a month, and the reaction of players to the game has generally been negative.
Wada acknowledges the release sorely disappointed the expectations of fans, but clings to the hope that the game can be patched into a state where it can be salvaged:
“If we satisfy the users who left us, they’ll come back. On the other hand, if they think it’s irredeemable, there’s no future for it. We’ll do everything we can to recover that trust.”
Users seem to agree – in thinking the game is irredeemable. The latest figures for average server populations:
| 
Temptress Wives – “Older Women Are Better!”
“Is It Really Emi!?” – Amateur Selection Guide 07
Zero Time Dilemma Merrily Murderous
Maki Nishikino’s Birthday Widely Welcomed
Caligula Schools Viewers
Sailor Moon Exhibit Brimming With Nostalgia
Svelte Saber Alter Figure
Onizushi Web Anime & Smartphone Game Surfaces
Marshmallow Imouto Succubus Hits The Beach
Bishoujo Mangekyou Fan Translation Emerges
Samurai Rising – Square Enix: You Guessed it!
Mangaka Pay Tribute to Kyushu
Street Fighter V Enlists Guile
Chinese Death Simulator “Hopefully Won’t Explode”
Re:Zero “In The Nick Of Time!”
Muma Astacia Sultry Succubus Ero-Figure
Hundred Sloppy Kissing Anime
Greek Woman “Born Without A Vagina!”
Let It Die Trailer Unforgettably Fierce
Shinjuku Station Reveals “All Yu-Gi-Oh Cards Ever!”
Kashiwazaki Sena Ero-Cosplay An Immense Tease
Goddess of 2ch: “What A Cute Hole!”
Alice Margatroid Ero-Cosplay by Hiyo Nishizuku Full of Cheer
Sheryl Nome Bunny Girl Cosplay by Mike Super Scandalous
Marvelous Madoka Mizugi Cosplay by Mashiro Yuki
Marie Rose Cosplay by Mike Undeniably Sexy
Tasha Tracer Cosplay Truly Tantalizing
Witch Craft Works Cosplay by Kagune Intensely Seductive
Kaine Cosplay by Yuricha Flawless
Kasumigaoka Utaha Cosplay Pretty Pure
theres too many other games out there for them to slowly regain our trust.
Im still playing Ragnarok Online, they renewed the system recently and its a nice breath of air (no more grinding needed to level for example).
FF11 was never even once in my to play list ^^;
Squeenix wants to satisfy the players that left? Admit you fucked up royally, bin the game and refund the buyers.
Refund?
Hahah. Hahahahahahah! What do you think S-E is?
Oh man, just the laugh I needed to sooth my depression before going to sleep. Thanks, man. Really.
The last demand is priority.
How much wasted for such a game.....
anon@02:23 Who Squeenix are? A bunch of retards, obviously.
BTW, this is about consumer satisfaction. Squeenix said they want to satisfy the players who left, didn't they? I don't expect this to happen.
Patching FF XIV to make it good? lulz
More like developing a new game. Won't happen, either.
Irredeemable is the right word to describe it all.
Well, if even the game's creators admitted it just 2 months after its launch, there's surely no future for the game.
OMFG WTF STUPID ANTIFANBOIZ!!!!! Me is frend of squareniks! loov all they games! Mi favoritto is ff XIII and XIIII.
Obviously, im not troll :)
Besaid? Lindblum? Gysahi? Rabanastre? That's interesting callback of location names.
If the player numbers continue to decline like this, I wouldn't be surprised if they shut down FFXI fairly soon to try and force people to move to FFXIV.
Schrobby
i believe that i could patch that game to a point where it is at least tollarable. however it may not be fun exactly any more.
first off, i would have a casino in the game, and make some games like poker, use a real, non refundable currency and give out gift cards for people to redeem, but they play against other real people.
have ingame sections for in game casinos, they will mostly be a money sink, taking out 2/3 the money they get. but if you are lucky you may get a 1 mill jackpot, but the odds are you would likely spend 3 mill to get that 1 mill.
look at other games. like everquest, and figure out how the fuck it lasted 11 (going on 12) years.
first a bazaar zone for player shops.
second, a solo encounter shouldnt take more than 30 seconds at low level to kill
at high levels, a monster should take more than 20 seconds for a full group, but should butt rape almost anyone 1 on 1 (there are classes in everquest that can solo high HIGH end mobs, but there is little point besides the hay mom look no hands effect)
every class should be able to solo, not effectively, but solo none the less, game breaking solo levels are only meant to be implemented at the end of the games cycle because people don't play and groups may take hours to get, even on good days. and by game breaking, i mean takeing 20-50 monsters, all hitting for 1300-2000, and killing them all at the same time and in less than 5 minutes (called swarm killing)
make classes distincitve, and allow armor drops to be decent gear, but damnit what falls off a name at a simmilar level is always better.
have at the very least 10 things a player can do at any give time, such as
-killing for exp
-killing for progression (a multi quest arc)
-killing for quest (generally has an item, or some payoff)
-killing for task (faction and exp only, possibly small amounts of coin)
-collecting items for tradeskills
-collecting items to gear up, or place in gear
-camping new equipment
-skilling up certain abilities
-leveling up items
thats all that i can think off right now, im sure there are more, and yes at points in everquest i was doing all of the above at the same time.
the foundation for an mmo is there, good graphics, and a system that is passable.
fix the glaring flaws, incorporate key features of everquest, wow, and eq2, along with aspects of crappy ones like runescape, and you would have a fairly decent mmo on your hands
No refunds. Punishment for the idiocy of the buyers who actually bit this shit.
SE shouldn't have to refund your guys stupidity for even buying the game.
they are trying to salvage it? good luck with that
i wrote the above when i was REALY tired.
"i believe that i could patch that game to a point where it is at least tollarable. however it may not be fun exactly any more."
should have been
"i believe that i could patch that game to a point where it is at least tollarable. however it may not be final fantasy exactly any more."
there are probably more mistakes, but i still firmly believe that if square passed the game off to an american company, you know, not a eastern developed mmo, that the world they created could be salvaged, with the major patches above, and through HARD work, remaking the land, and possible adding a magic junction system, where you port form point a to b within the zone and it doesn't cost anything. if you want to do major ports, than it does, like in most mmos, but in game currency, not whatever its tied to now.
>> alidan
Then you could say goodbye to the Lalafells likely to be replaced with blood-infused red-eyed dwarves or whatever kewl to a western audience.
Admitting they fucked up is a good first step, Im proud of them~
Anonymous
14:30
have you ever played a western fantasy game? and im not talking about the realistic ones, or the ones that are heavy on violence.
at the very least in almost any western rpg the enemies make sense, allot of the ff ones the enemies look like little more than random pixels.
and so you know, the more distressful ones emulate a eastern art style without having the retardedly abstract eastern enemies. you dont believe me, play ff 10, and just wait for the floating symbols that are water, earth, lightning, or something else element, those are fucking retarded and there are allot of enemies like that.
it has only 32789 players?
What RO server? I play iRO Ymir, and sadly a bunch of recent fuck-ups have been responsible for a decline in server population. I still like that game, though.
As much as I dislike what FFXIV is atm, I was really hoping they would improved the flaws and make the game actually playable. I have friends who play it, and I was going to wait and start up when the PS3 version came out, but only if they made the game good. I'm not going to toss money at them if I know the game is a stinker, like it currently is.
How my friends can play that copypasta world is beyond even my understanding.
^this^
yeah i still want to give Square a chance with the PS3 version but if it turns out to be shit then i won't buy it either
Why would the game be any different on PS3? You sound like you believe they patched that version into something very playable.
^^
Because they are hoping that by the time the ps3 version is ready the game will also have been fixed.
Extend free trial or 1/10 payment until it's been patched to a state of playability.
I agree, I still play just because the battle system is so fucking awesome compared to most/all MMOs. And the people in my Linkshell are fun as hell. But after doing the same stuff over and over again is boring and gets old pretty fast. They need to stop, look at other MMOs (at least FF11) and see what they are missing. They need story line, quests (not fucking levequests, ACTUAL quests), NMs (soon supposedly), entertaining things to do like PvP or some kind of minigame, CHOCBOS!, end game stuff, Auction House of some kind (the bazaar thing sucks my balls), and I think they need to fix the way we party. it seems so pointless and a hassle to get a party. I duo/solo pretty much all the time.
Ragnarok Online is still a keeper. I've been playing for 6 years, and the recent renewal completely refreshed the game and made it new again without ruining it. In fact, I'd even say it made it better.
Ain't surprised. RO was what a successful MMO should be. It creates a charm to attract and keep players, and then proceed to adapt said charm as age goes by.
I would still be playing if I weren't driven off by the goddamned bots!
it's a shame RO2 didn't follow @_@
They're actually reviving RO2 with different mechanics and stuff. I don't know the details, but I imagine it'll be trying for a comeback fairly soon.
haters of RO be hatin'
I;m pretty sure no1's paying 60$ ish~ on top of subscription fees to play a "salvaged" game...
maybe for an "overhauled" game...salvaged could turn out better than you'd like us all to think though.
They're just trying to cover their losses with false promises of hope after they realized the shit has hit the fan and everyone knows it.
They're just trying to cover their losses. They denied it was bad for as long as possible, and now shit has hit the fan and they know everyone knows that. Right now they're just trying to save as much face as possible, as well as try to incite hope with what is most likely a futile attempt to save a failed game.
Yes, perhaps this their "Final" Fantasy,, >_+,, [ hopefully not,.. I'm waiting for their remake of FF VII ( or FF VI - for the best of the world ) ]
well wow wasnt that good when it was first released . They had no pvp grounds , etc . Still square i dont get how they couldn't foresee the consequences of releasing half-baked crap . Its like hitting a mountain and be surprised about it .
Ｉ‘ｍ ｇｌａｄ Ｓｑｕａｒｅ Ｅｎｉｘ ｆｉｎａｌｌｙ ｎｏｔｉｃｅｄ ｔｈｅｉｒ ｆａｉｌｕｒｅ．
Ｎｏｗ ｉ ｊｕｓｔ ｈｏｐｅ ｔｈｅｙ ｕｓｅ ｔｈｅ ｒｅｓｔ ｏｆ ｔｈｅｉｒ ｔｉｍｅ ｗｉｔｈ Ｖｅｒｓｕｓ ａｎｄ Ａｇｉｔｏ ａｎｄ ｒｅｌｅａｓｅ ｔｈｅ ｄａｍｎ ｇａｍｅｓ ａｌｒｅａｄｙ！
W E L L S A I D
Yeah, FF14 isn't the first one to be yet another MMORPG that sucks - the problem is that this particular one was made by Square Enix, so everyone kinda had their hopes high.
How did they manage to screw big time in the first place?
How did they succeed in making FF14 a total-catastrophic-epic fail?
That's because, I think, they never had much experience doing MMOs. They're single player game developers, but no, they got greedy & tried to venture to unknown territories without preparations.
So they fucked up.
FFXI is "not much experience doing MMOs?"
Not sufficient. If it does they wouldn't fuck up like this. Any sensible MMOG producing company knows to cater to players.
Just like people, some company needs more experience than others to get things right.
Lesson learned: DON'T outsource your beloved franchise/cash-cow to those dirty nip-chongs. They'll steal all your money and crap out a shitty game.
Irony that you put "nip" in nip-chong
FYI, Nip is a derogatory term for Japanese...
:( Chinese girls come to Sankaku Complex to get hot animu pix and news too, you know... Don't call us dirty nip-chongs hahaha
so such a retarded thing to say DK....
Lesson learned: DON'T outsource your beloved franchise/cash-cow to those dirty nips. They'll steal all your money and crap out a shitty game.
FFXIV was outsourced? To who?
the chinese
China Quality
-Copy Paste Maps
-Wrong names due to the slight difference in Language (Chocobo -> Toriuma (Birdhorse, and then to ChocoPO)
I'd love to blame China because I don't like their government, but the key planners here are most definitely Japanese employees of S-E. The Chinese were only doing grunt work as instructed by said employees.
It's a disaster even on paper. What everyone should wonder is how in the hell those plans went through. Did everyone in the presentation meeting sleep throughout the session and just clear the plans, thinking anything out of S-E's ass is automatically gold?
uh, you know nip is towards japanese and not chinese right? as in nippon? just stick with chink or gook if you want to universally slam asians, nip is way too specific and outdated.
Chink is specifically Chinese and Gook is Vietnamese you want slant eye.
Acutally Good is from the Korean War, and it was ported to Vietnam.
You got me interested and it apparently was used pre 1900 for Haitians.
That is one hell of a, The more you know.
lol who cares if its outdated...should have never been used and the douche that used it should be beaten with barbwired bats. Racism sucks.
DK, this shows how retarded you actually are.
I've worked in Japanese game companies before in Japan.
The instructions are always almost certainly 90% from the Japanese. No matter how talented you are at animation or coding or how much u volunteer to overtime, so you can get a more challenging or higher level scope, it will most of the time get rejected.
The higher level programmers are all Japanese and they passed down the instructions on what to do.
They caused their own destruction.
I don't know about programming and animation but I believe they f*cked up hard because the shitty gameplay, and they recent stories are shitty as well.