Final Fantasy XIV - Kiwi Free Company

[Troon Whisperer]

FF7 part 3, KH4, and FF14 8.0 are at the point where they should be an expected release, but instead, nothing.

FF7 Part 3 is in it's final phase, and it's director was hinting at a early 2027 release date, which lines up with the 30th Anniversary of the original's release. 8.0 is being revealed in a month so we should know more, but it's KH4 is just vaporware at this stage and I suspect it's because Nomura has been tard wrangled to the FF7 Remake.

 

[Not your Buddy Holly]

FF16 must have cost 100s of millions.

as much as the game is mid, I have to be the devil's advocate here and tell people there's been some crazy misconceptions about this game:
Firstly it didn't "bomb": It's got an 85 media review (and 8.4 user review) on metacritic, which actually puts it above a lot of FF titles. A lot of the (earned) negative talk on the internet was because it was a Playstation 5 exclusive for a whole year (and I'm pretty sure that was a Kiryu decision, not a Yoshida decision, because the other FF7 remake games were also PS5 exclusive)
Secondly, it made a profit: JPY to USD, costed them about 50 million to make and generated 90 million in sales. Only reason why SE was "disappointed" in it was cause it didn't make a trillion dollars... BECAUSE THE FUCKING GAME WAS ON A CONSOLE NO ONE GIVES TWO SHITS ABOUT FOR A YEAR.

As for XIV, it's still generates revenue for SE, which is probably why until now there's been zero meddling. But they cannibalized their Western studios (way too late) and still bleeding, so I can start seeing them trying to bite off bits and pieces to keep XIV afloat. There's been datamined info about the minion that comes with the preorder of 8.0.

Spoiler: Genuine 8.0 Spoiler

It's Red XIII

Don't want to be in Yoshida's shoes. All eyes on him to deliver and even IF it's good, it might not be enough.

 

[Übertroon]

A lot of the (earned) negative talk on the internet was because it was a Playstation 5 exclusive for a whole year (and I'm pretty sure that was a Kiryu decision, not a Yoshida decision, because the other FF7 remake games were also PS5 exclusive)
Secondly, it made a profit: JPY to USD, costed them about 50 million to make and generated 90 million in sales. Only reason why SE was "disappointed" in it was cause it didn't make a trillion dollars... BECAUSE THE FUCKING GAME WAS ON A CONSOLE NO ONE GIVES TWO SHITS ABOUT FOR A YEAR.

There's also several Internet autists that have devoted all their time and effort to shit on anything Yoshida makes.
There are still Barry threads on /v/ daily to this day

 

[Baron Reginald]

BECAUSE THE FUCKING GAME WAS ON A CONSOLE NO ONE GIVES TWO SHITS ABOUT FOR A YEAR.

Yeah this is entirely the reason it did not perform better.
I like FF16, do not get me wrong I thought it was enjoyable enough for what I paid for it. But I avoided spoilers for an entire year. Anyone who would of actually been interested would of already watched the playthrough and the game is just not engaging enough to warrent much replay value, a true victim of "cinematic experience videogames". The first time experience is where it was best and they lost that with exclusivity. They leant into a niche and then refused to capitalize on it effectively. I am not sure why, because they made that exact blunder with 15 as well.

I think it's over-hated but it is absolutely mid. It is a Final Fantasy of all time. Far from the actually terrible FF games out there, like 13.

There's been datamined info about the minion that comes with the preorder of 8.0.

Joke is on them, Remake ruined that character for me entirely.

 

[kestewin]

tl;dr incoming;

Yeah this is entirely the reason it did not perform better.
I like FF16, do not get me wrong I thought it was enjoyable enough for what I paid for it. But I avoided spoilers for an entire year. Anyone who would of actually been interested would of already watched the playthrough and the game is just not engaging enough to warrent much replay value, a true victim of "cinematic experience videogames". The first time experience is where it was best and they lost that with exclusivity. They leant into a niche and then refused to capitalize on it effectively. I am not sure why, because they made that exact blunder with 15 as well.

I think it's over-hated but it is absolutely mid. It is a Final Fantasy of all time. Far from the actually terrible FF games out there, like 13.

I'll have to go and finally beat XVI, but I think that it was really amateurish from the time I played. Sometimes the wardrobe made me embarrassed to play it. Kinda felt like Stranger of Paradise wearing XV clothes.

I do agree that it killed most of the mainline FF games of the past decade. XIII and XV were clown shows, and XVI definitely played like a modern game.

As for XIV, it's still generates revenue for SE, which is probably why until now there's been zero meddling. But they cannibalized their Western studios (way too late) and still bleeding, so I can start seeing them trying to bite off bits and pieces to keep XIV afloat. There's been datamined info about the minion that comes with the preorder of 8.0.

Spoiler: Genuine 8.0 Spoiler

It's Red XIII

Don't want to be in Yoshida's shoes. All eyes on him to deliver and even IF it's good, it might not be enough.

Funny that's the case, given it feels like he gave up on XIV this expac. That's a lot of amateurs and children running the show in the future. My theory was that he might've been a lot more bitchy in real life about DT and got passive-aggressive in the Japanese way, leaving the blue-haired girl that much power to waste. Catering to western VAs was a good example of the absent-mindedness.

As VII was my favorite title the minion seems nice, but VIIR as the next crossover was something to dread being in XIV. It wasn't a good sign that they did such a disgraceful job steamrolling over IX and XI this expac just to jump on VII for money. Classic SE I guess. When they took the Ra'Kaznar stuff from XI and made it cyberpunk-themed it was pretty obvious how uninspired they're feeling on that dev team.

The “Ascians were brought back because the writers slammed the panic button” argument I see in the community as a whole would hold a lot more water and be believable if 7.3 and future patches revealed they brought back Emet (especially if Hyth returns with him,) or they brought back the other unsundered

Late, but that one triggers me on a different level. What's really a shame is that in FFXI's New World expac, Seekers of Adoulin,

Spoiler

the final villain is an Elvaan who runs the country's government that you find out is possessed by Hades. He reveals that he comes from a different dimension that, should he open the portal to 'Tartarus' XIV monsters will pop out and do the Calamity to XI. You beat him and it's ambiguous enough whether he actually dies that you can buy he's a facsimile.

It came out at the same time as ARR, so the crossover would make sense. And worse, Hyth arguably makes a reference to Emet that he got clobbered on another star (though XIV primaries see this as a reference to WoL on the Source, which it sadly probably was). They wasted any references to it during EW and completely abandoned it by DT. Shame, because it was set up to be the biggest crossover event I think. None of the kids who made this expac bothered playing XI long enough to get to that in the MSQ.

Spoiler

Hades v. Haded. The latter kinda looks more like Hyth now that I think about it.

 

[Baron Reginald]

XIV monsters will pop out

You need to be absolutely sure on that, because to this day FF14 still uses a lot of FF11 mobs/models. Especially if it was ARR era, they used almost exclusively FF11 models. I think the only unique model used during that event was the Spriggans

 

[Tanner Glass]

as much as the game is mid, I have to be the devil's advocate here and tell people there's been some crazy misconceptions about this game:
Firstly it didn't "bomb": It's got an 85 media review (and 8.4 user review) on metacritic, which actually puts it above a lot of FF titles. A lot of the (earned) negative talk on the internet was because it was a Playstation 5 exclusive for a whole year (and I'm pretty sure that was a Kiryu decision, not a Yoshida decision, because the other FF7 remake games were also PS5 exclusive)
Secondly, it made a profit: JPY to USD, costed them about 50 million to make and generated 90 million in sales. Only reason why SE was "disappointed" in it was cause it didn't make a trillion dollars... BECAUSE THE FUCKING GAME WAS ON A CONSOLE NO ONE GIVES TWO SHITS ABOUT FOR A YEAR.

As for XIV, it's still generates revenue for SE, which is probably why until now there's been zero meddling. But they cannibalized their Western studios (way too late) and still bleeding, so I can start seeing them trying to bite off bits and pieces to keep XIV afloat. There's been datamined info about the minion that comes with the preorder of 8.0.

Spoiler: Genuine 8.0 Spoiler

It's Red XIII

Don't want to be in Yoshida's shoes. All eyes on him to deliver and even IF it's good, it might not be enough.

It was pretty decently a bomb.

For Square (or any company) it's not strictly about short-term profit, despite how most companies seem to be run in <current year>, you have to consider the opportunity cost as well. For every employee you have working on FFXVI, it's one not working on something else. This really becomes an issue because fairly clearly having several key FFXIV devs working on FFXVI demonstrably harmed that product (Dawntrail).

There's also the issue of longevity - even if FFXVI had decent box sales, the game being being really unfun isn't going to translate into DLC sales or excitement for FFXVII whenever that finally rolls around and not only was it a PS5 exclusive but it also (to me at least) felt fairly unfinished, after FFXV and FFXIV were both released unfinished is really going to put people off the entire brand or company eventually (see also Ubisoft).

There's plenty of legitimate reasons the company would be disappointed in it, even if it made a bit of positive cashflow - it's probably not a good ROI.

 

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

Secondly, it made a profit: JPY to USD, costed them about 50 million to make and generated 90 million in sales.

Marketing costs are not usually factored into the development costs for the game. Development usually takes into account wages/benefits, facilities, and capital expenditure.

There isn't really a metric to accurately capture average marketing expenditures, as it varies from studio to studio and game to game, but it would not be impossible to think that the marketing costs put this one either at break-even or in the red. For a small studio, breaking even is a pretty good deal; for Square, they have a long legacy and more importantly a veritable mountain of debt that they can only dig themselves out of with ludicrously well-performing titles.

 

[SnowBall]

You need to be absolutely sure on that, because to this day FF14 still uses a lot of FF11 mobs/models. Especially if it was ARR era, they used almost exclusively FF11 models. I think the only unique model used during that event was the Spriggans

1.0 took a lot of stuff from XI that carried over to ARR including the obvious straight up copying its races. I’ve also seen some mobs in even Dawntrail that are from XI (brown lizards.) And you’re right that Spriggans were exclusive to the crossover event link.

 

[Well Intentioned]

1.0 took a lot of stuff from XI that carried over to ARR including the obvious straight up copying its races. I’ve also seen some mobs in even Dawntrail that are from XI (brown lizards.) And you’re right that Spriggans were exclusive to the crossover event link.

Goblins would be the biggest and most obvious lift from XI. Plus the blue crabs.

The other big new one in DT would be the orcs.

 

[SnowBall]

Aside from blue crabs and Goblins the bees with the final sting move, the Mamool Ja, the Mandragoras and one of the bird models are also ones from XI I can remember off the top of my head.

The blue crab minion you get from one of the FATES in ARR also has a funny reference to XI players and their hatred of them. Basically back in the old days of XI when you couldn’t solo level the whole game, the exp grind was a lot nastier and you were pretty much required to group up with real people (prior to exp buffs and trusts) blue crabs were the most common mobs everyone killed for exp. They had a huge level span, were in most leveling zones and they were just the same crab model but with different names as you moved to another place to level. They could also be really nasty with their attacks and also had a skill that increased their defense to make them harder to kill. They could easily wipe an entire party if people were unprepared or messed up too much. Not to mention people would spend hours grinding levels in exp parties so you were stuck killing crabs for all that time. Also you lose exp if you die (the amount lost can get extremely harsh. Over time they lessened the exp loss and exp loss now starts at level 30 instead of level 5.) and can even delevel so if you get killed by a crab guess what you have to spend even more time killing them. hey became widely despised and a meme from XI fans back in the day of exp parties. As someone who played during those days and remember the nonstop blue crab massacres to gain levels it made me laugh.

 

[00R-Gundam]

Did the new patch saved the game?

 

[Sheep King]

Did the new patch saved the game?

Currently working through the Advanced Variant Dungeon, beaten 2/3 bosses. Honestly it's probably the most fun I've had with current content in a while, the difficulty actually feels like it's appropriate for clearing with party finder and being able to do the bosses in any order makes it a more casual affair than an EX. The rewards suck so it's hard to get people to do it with you and we can expect it to be dead in a week.
But hey, they finally added good midcore content to DT after... a year and a half.

 

[SnowBall]

The new criterion dungeon dropped the ball hard with the rewards but I’ve heard good things about the dungeon itself. The general take seems to be meh.

 

[Smug Chuckler]

*checks PF on the more populated data center in the region*

*sees no listings for Advanced and 3 for Criterion*

Yeah it's ded already.

 

[Baron Reginald]

Did the new patch saved the game?

Not even interested enough to complain about it or how it was handled.
Take from that what you will.

 

[Plagas]

I am flabbergasted they made new Variant dungeon rewards so garbage , just keep it with the mount reward like all the previous ones. There is no real incentive to do this new one.

 

[Well Intentioned]

I am flabbergasted they made new Variant dungeon rewards so garbage , just keep it with the mount reward like all the previous ones. There is no real incentive to do this new one.

I've seen people happy about the weapons.

But I dunno. I always see people angry over what the rewards should be and I guess what people would want to see as adequate rewards?

 

[Smug Chuckler]

I've seen people happy about the weapons.

The "hardcores" are mad now that they are easily obtained but since criterion savage had abysmally low clear rates, I haven't seen anyone wielding them, and they are literally tome weapons with a relic glow, who cares.

 

[Well Intentioned]

The "hardcores" are mad

This seems like a positive.