The Shrine

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/3747 ... _Brand.php

The funny thing I find is that on the discussion people talked about it wasn't FF14 but FF(insert number after 6) that ruined everything. Honestly the FF games are all pretty good, even 11, and you can just say it wasn't your kind of game (though FF11 is stretching on what it means to be dedicated). FF14 simply isn't even playable in any sane definition of the word.

I still don't understand why those Final Fantasy MMOs are part of the main # series.

Because money.

Less people would play a Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles Online.

The problem in that case would be to associate your product with known failure.

Final Fantasy Tactics sold quite well for a game type that's always been a niche category (SRPG).

Did Tactics actually sell well the first time around? I know Square re-printed it near the end of the PSX's lifecycle and word of mouth helped move it, followed by the remakes and such.

Wasn't it at least on one of those Playstation classics thing? SRPG is a pretty niche market no matter how you look at it (not hardcore enough for real strategy fans, too much stats for everyone else) so I considered it selling a lot for its niche.

I remember this pretty distinctly, because my first copy of FFT broke, and I went out to buy it and I couldn't find it anywhere except Ebay for $100 or something.

So they released FFT like 4 months after FF7, and it didn't sell so hot and went out of print, I guess Square didn't expect it to sell that well either.

Then at one point Square did some PSX promotion where they brought back a bunch of their older games + FF7 and made it look all shiney(Might have been around the time that FF IV-VI PSX pack came out), then it was re-released again under the PSX classics category.

I'm fairly sure it never broke a million in sales in the US, but it got close, unlike FFVII of course which is probably the best selling JRPG of all time in the US.

Unless you count like Pokemon, then you can just put all of those in positions 1-20 heh.

I think getting anywhere close to a million for a SPRG is impressive in itself. At least I don't know of any other similar games that came close to that benchmark.

Eric wrote:I still don't understand why those Final Fantasy MMOs are part of the main # series.

bovine wrote:Because money.

Less people would play a Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles Online.

True, but in retrospect, it is a pollutant on the main series. I find that these are the only two games that really damaged the brand name; 11 and 14.

While FF13 was disliked by quite a few, this has been true for each Final Fantasy game since FF6; I've read "FF is dead to me" posts after all post-FF6 titles. A large part of that comes with the fact that FF7 was a bigger title over here than previous FF games; and got way more exposure. I don't think the brand name was necessarily ruined by FF7 onward, but the changes made from game to game did alienate fans who wanted a more conservative series towards the game they started with (these conservative players liked FF9; but others may not have liked FF9 as much as the other post-FF6 titles, I can say at least that I didn't.).

FF11 and FF14 are just bad games period that goes beyond the fact it was online. FF11 barely made the original EQ 'hardcore' bandwagon. I played it after WoW came out and I quit the game after killing the first mob because I can't figure out how to regenerate my MP. It just had some really poor documentation and nothing that even made sense. In EQ even if you never figured out how to use Meditate (which seems impossible, because the game would be unplayable), it was obvious that you're supposed to sit down to get your mana back faster even if took 15 minutes or more once you get higher than level 10s. FF11 was only playable because it looked a lot better than any of the games out there at that time, and graphics do count for something. FF14 isn't even playable at all.

FF11 putting you through the PlayOnline hoop is pretty stupid too. My original copy of WoW must had a disc error since I had to put the same disc in 25 times before it'd install correctly, but even that wasn't anywhere as frustrating as using some kind of fake browser to some fake network that's ridiculously sluggish.

Actually it looks like Square just has no idea how to make a game that has to be compatible for the PC. FF14 didn't have hardware mouse on purpose and it's maddening to play a game where you pretty much need to use for mouse for anything, but it takes literally a second before the mouse responds to your movement.

FF11 had its charms. It wasn't a great MMO, but it wasn't bad. FF14, OTOH, at least from what I'm hearing, was like a "Two Worlds" kind of bad.

FF11 had some frustrating gameplay elements that'd not be tolerable in today's MMORPG but since it came out before WoW, back then it was okay to have things like that so despite its problems, it's not a game that was dead on arrival. FF14 is flat out unplayable. It's arguably worse than FF11 in terms of playabilty.

Well, FF11 has some things that you typically wouldn't find in a (western) MMO, like translation and the renkei system, which gave you something better to do than just 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 4, 2. Backstab skills had to be literally behind the opponent.

Still haven't seen much in terms of translation, but current MMOs seem to be better at adding some level of skill to playing MMOs, even if it's some small set of tricks for certain classes.

Even EQ1 where you just press 1 1 1 1 1 has a lot of skill. There's a huge difference between a player at the top to a random guy even if they use the identical keys because timing is often very important. I don't really think any MMORPG system is inherently more or less skillful. They just emphasize different attributes. If a game requires no skills then everyone will be able to beat it, and I'm not aware of any MMORPG that everyone can beat. Going by sites like WoWProgress, even an 'easy' game like WoW is only beaten by less than 1% of the population while the current content is relevent. You can say that you don't care for the skills WoW choose to emphasize (pattern memorization, lots of free time, and later ability to predict nondeterministic rotations), and if you did you'd be able to beat it easily. That's probably a true statement, but the fact still remains that you cannot beat it.