20th Anniversary Reddit AMA

Feels like you're suffering from the curse of contradiction, you're arguing for action but you want the game to just die? you're not emotionally attached but are posting on a forum exclusive to the game, must be spiritual attachment or maybe some kind of temporal coupling.

I have never understood the passion of those who claim to not care.

It's not about making an impact to their 3B dollars. You are zoomed out too far and are too focused on their bottom line. It's about making an impact on one small project and that business model.

They're very likely to say yes just to make people go away and stop bothering them. In my experience, executives and high profile people very much want to maintain a clean public image. They also want to make you and their problems go away and when your playing around with hundreds of millions of dollars every day, a small rounding error from a crowdsource campaign isn't something you'll be very bothered by.

I think they're likely to say no and I said that from the start but I'll always favor action vs inaction.

This is all going to come down to a staffing problem. They've admitted they have to pull FF14 staff to 11 when they want to fulfill proposals and get work done, which means there is a cost to FF14s development cycle as well. Pulling them off for a few weeks here and there is probably not an issue, but pulling them off to focus on tasks like a full on expansion seems really unlikely to me because it would impact 14s development. I also doubt they'd hire people solely to work on an expansion and then have nothing for them to do.

The only real potential for this sort of thing to happen is if management sees value in more full time staff for 11. I don't think raising money via Kickstarter is going to solve that.

I'm curious, about whom are you speaking in this? Because I've never entered XIV a day in my life and have played XI with only 1 8 month break since 2004. Trust me, I'm a XI lifer- just a realistic one.

I don't disagree with you at all, Draylo but that goes both ways.

I don't care what game you play or if you like one better than the other. Posting comments here will do nothing but despite what certain people want to think, forums are just for conversation and I see nothing wrong with tossing around thoughts as long as people know good and well it won't go far.

Wow I actually agree with you on something

Got me. I don't know what they'll say. Still worth trying. Any other push back other than my inability to see the future?

Look a lot of people love XI and still care about this game. It doesnt make them delusional or crazy, its an unprecedented time period for this game from a company that doesnt care and is creating more and more jaded players each day. There is no harm in discussing ideas on a forum.. its crazy to me these posters trying to label people as crazies and mentally unstable because they care a lot about the game.

Probably the same thing they say when you submit a GM ticket. "We'll look into it" and you'll never hear anything about it ever again.


I can see some viewing others as delusional if they're trying to push the mindset that something unrealistic is going to happen.

Besides, they're just words. I've been on forums long enough to know people will call you every name in the book (even using incorrect verbiage) for reasons including (but not limited to): having a different perspective or different likes. Heaven forbid! Some people are just incapable of being decent.

Liking XI isn't the delusional part. Genuinely believing that you can change the mind or business model of a multibillion dollar corporation via a petition or a kickstarter campaign is

I'm not saying any specific person is crazy or mentally unstable, but if you're looking at a kickstarter as anything more than wishful thinking then there is a lack of understanding or a degree of desperation involved. It's all well and good to dream, but if you honestly see this as a potential way forward, then you are in some way failing to reconcile the reality of the situation with your wishes.

Honestly, the only way FFXI is going to get any serious attention is if someone starts sponsoring real work on private servers. The private server codebase, as messy as it is, is still more extendable than retail is atm. Imagine if you had a couple paid and dedicated workers refactoring and improving it, rather than a handful of mentally ill folks doing it so they can collect donations on a questionable patreon page. Still a risky endeavor, since C&Ds can happen overnight, but it's a finite and doable goal, while the idea of changing SE's mind with a kickstarter is hilariously out of touch.

We are in an unprecedented time, theres no other MMO that has been in this position with a direct competing game from the same company. There have been many cases where it has worked and the team themselves saying they would like to see the demand for additional features. There was 0 harm in trying, but painting everyone as delusional for wanting to attempt anything to try to steer the game from a doomed fate seems dumb and counterproductive to me. I meant a petition or anything close to it, the idea of a kickstarter seemed nice but admittedly not something I am familiar with. It was all a simple discussion, i just had to leave my opinion eyerolling that people are throwing the mental illness thing around

Shared subscription, shared launcher. Put both of the games in people's faces and make it easy as *** to pay for and install/update them.

Thing is a petition would have even less impact since there's no financial backing in signing your name on an eDoc. You're already effectively signing a petition to say that you want to see future support of the game by paying a subscription for it and they don't care as it is.

Wait- haven't we for YEARS been saying that since XIV is in no way a pretty version of XI due to massive differences in gameplay, progression, and the like, how would they be in competition? You could very accurately say that SE is at fault for not exploiting the differences between the two in order to attract a wider base, but saying that XIV and XI are devouring each other in competition sounds like something one would read in a business analysis magazine, not from anyone even remotely familiar with online gaming.

I wouldn't call anyone mentally ill or delusional, but I think the notion of SE letting you run and profit off your own private server is hilariously out of touch and rooted in its own bias.

There are plenty of ways to organize a "crowdsource" campaign. I wouldn't want anyone here running it. SE should run it and it could be as straight forward as "here's an expansion we want to do, we call it XYZ. If we hit this many orders for this price then we make it and if we don't, we refund your purchase".

The day they do this, the game is dead. This will be the point I personally move to a private server and give them my money instead.

Because the only way a company like Square Enix give it away, will be because they have cut all development costs completely and the developers have retired. The only reason I pay for this game, is for content. If they aren't going to update it, there is no reason to pay for it when you can get it free somewhere else.

I would back something for each of my three accounts if SE did it themselves since that would mean they themselves have faith in the product.

Everyone knows its true that XI is where it is now because of XIVs success. Why wouldnt it have success when it literally followed one of the most popular MMOs in structure and had incredible sums of money pumped into it from SE. I cant count the amount of advertising ive seen for the game, including a huge poster in the middle of times square. Things XI never got or will get. How many years siphoning funds from XI to pour into that game before it failed and after it rebooted? If you think XIV has 0 impact on XIs current situation then idk what to tell you. I honestly despise that game with every fibre of my being and now mainly very much with SE too.

They act like gutting POL is impossible. It's not. They could do this to avoid an inevitable bullet taking care of POL later.

It would also increase revenue for the division and subscription numbers for both games.

I didn't say profit, and I specifically mentioned C&Ds could happen overnight. However, it is a reality that the private server community has the understanding collectively to emulate every major aspect of retail, and servers actually are currently running that do actually profit. If someone had the money, and chose to spend it on something this silly, it's a task that can be accomplished. A year from now, we could have a private server that's fully capable of doing every aspect of retail better than retail is. I don't think this is a good idea, nor do I expect anyone with that kind of money cares about this game, but it's got a straightforward path and there are people with the knowledge who would accept the paycheck to do it.

Running a kickstarter to fund an expansion or something is just not realistic. It's been beaten to death, but the idea that the FFXI dev team has the freedom within the company to take your money and make an expansion with it is ludicrous, even if you assume you could raise the hundreds of thousands of dollars it would require. They do not have their own devs, expansion would require taking devs from FFXIV (which have likely already been taken for FFXVI..). So, the cost isn't just the salary of developers, but also the opportunity cost of going for a newer and better project. Training entirely new developers on their archaic methods of creating content isn't feasible either. Aside from them outright mentioning how bad it would be for career prospects, you'd have weeks if not months of catchup before they could even begin to do anything new.

XI would be where it is now with or without XIV's success. It was a product of it's time. We don't live in the era where most gamers want to work for things. We live in the "instant gratification" era.

I don't think anybody is saying XIV had 0 impact but I often see the implication that it's THE reason.

I don't think it's fair to lob a grenade at an entire community when only a handful of servers ever accept any money at all, regardless of how much they take in and how little the servers do/should cost to host.

Also, the people doing the real heavy lifting of the emulator would never accept money for the work they do. It's always downstream groups.

Anyways, making the ask is all upside and no downside. Crowdsourcing content doesn't have to mean random dude on a forum collecting money on a sketchy patreon. It could be as legit as SE selling a new expansion or content with the condition it has to meet a certain number of pre-sales.

The point was about "shared sub"

Square already don't care about XI, when it brings in millions in sub money per year. You think they will care about it when they stop making millions in subs from it and it's a freebie connected to playing xiv?

If they do this I'll bail right away to remake my characters on a private server. Not only will there be no updates but XI has garbage instancing technology and it will take you 3 hours to get into anything.

At this point you'll be playing an inferior version of the game.

That is surely something I would pay into... knowing if it doesn't reach it's goal, I'll get my lunch money back. They wouldn't be the first company to do that but it at least gives the pledges confidence that this "wishful thinking" idea isn't a "take our money and run" situation.

Something doesn't have to be run at a profit to pay people who develop it. If the person bankrolling it wasn't charging for the server, it's operating at a loss. Developers being paid to work on it wouldn't change that.

Granted, you're not making good faith arguments to begin with. SE preselling an expansion was always an option, but they never chose to do it. You can beg them all day long, I'd love to see it, but it's not a realistic possibility.

If you take a paycheck you are implicitly making profit. At least I had the honesty up front to accept the contradiction I made.

Oh and C&D? There are numerous XI private servers running right now when they make money off it. Some of them are near current to what we have now, with trusts and everything.

If they were going to C&D they would do it now, they surely won't later. Hell Ninja plays on a private server to tens of thousands of people on streams regularly, so it's not like they don't know.