What Happened Casual PT Shouts..

SE themselves refer to Abyssea specifically as "battle-content" rather than expansion. They also stated that the game isn't getting any expansions, just more adjustments and "battle-content". I think it's unrealistic to expect Prime weapons to come from an updated Abyssea, but that's as far as the optimism should go honestly.



Expansions contain new story told mostly in new areas featuring new assets (models/music/ect.). SE has been clear that we should not expect this to happen and it's the reason why we continue to see 'new' content that is basically recycling old assets. The game is profitable, but not enough to warrant hiring/reallocating/training a team to create something that is actually new.


Next month marks the 10th anniversary of SoA, XI's last true expansion. People really should consider settling in to the idea that there will be no further expansion. Only more updates, adjustments and the occasional "Battle-content".

I'd rather lose a shiny plate/ moglophone/ canteen then die with some random people who can't work together, or the one dumb *** that has to be carried. The game has changed, lots of people willing to waste time on failure, just shout.

You tried to degrade me for misspelling something than i asked you if u can can speak or write in another language than you responded that you can write and speak a lil bit of Spanish sure, you can maybe u still remember a word or two and right a sentence, i don’t need to smoke weed or drink to chill.

Theres always a chance!

I think it would be naive to think we ever will get another full fletched expansion, but that's just the realist in me. It would be nice, sure but not realistic until they could port and rework the game engine but I don't see that ever happening.

Anyway, I sub and play actively and enjoy the game. If I ever quit for good I wouldn't go to a PS to "re-live" my teenage years. IMHO it's just a rosetinted glasses type thing. I'd just play something else at that point.

Unless my timeline is wrong, didnt they say that before SoA and RoV and TVR?

VORE is pretty clearly building up to valhalla being a new endgame event/zone, so there is that.

I don't have the exact wording now but the way they described the endgame content at the end of VR sounded very similar to how they described Abyssea. As in a zone you warp into with stuff to do in it and not just a dungeon like Omen.

edit

I'm drawing from their most recent statements during the 20th anniversary. RoV and TVR are both "battle-content" so any prior statement would still remain accurate.

For reference, I played NA launch through Abyssea, left in SoA and returned just after RoV. Based on that, my rough timeline...



FFXI peaks as ToAU is released and adds support for 360

Enter Project Rapture. /plant "Seed of doubt"

WotG releases with mostly reskinned old zones. Nearly nothing was added to endgame and people legit wondered if SE had even bothered to write the story before they released it. At least it had new jobs. Less new jobs, but... whatever

Then we got the ACP/MKD/ASA. Episodic "battle-content". I personally wasn't a fan and I don't think they were well received at the time. More doubt sprinkles on the ***sundae that was "Wings".

Keep in mind that at various intervals here, we're receiving information about what is quickly evolving from Project Rapture to FFXIV. It's got similar races and nearly identical bestiary so it's starting to shape up as the successor to FFXI rather than another game that will co-exist along side it.

If you weren't already tilted, here comes the announcement of the level uncapping and all the gear you just spent years grinding becoming obsolete overnight.... /ma "Water XIV" <seed of doubt>

This is followed by reports about how poorly optimized FFXIV is during the alpha/beta testing....

Abyssea launches.

Mere months later, FFXIV launches. It proceeds to fall firmly and squarely on it's face.

Finally, the he announcement of SoA. I believe this came at the fan festival that occurred just prior to FFXIV 1.0 being taken offline. I don't know whether or not that's just coincidental, but we were still within the realm of XI being the 'current' MMO of SE. At the very least, we'd sustained so much whiplash leading up to this point that it wasn't surprising to me, anyway.

RoV isnt battle content.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/46414

literally in the link you posted.

Coming along with the scenario are exciting new battle content, never-before-seen rewards, and a variety of other additions to engage players of all different stripes.

yes, its literally in the link I posted.


RoV is the scenario
Omen + co is the battle content

Getting people to not argue semantics of a translation is the real battle content. The terminology that is being translated isn't generic...

We don't need full fledged expansions to not expect big shifts in content to bring new eras. Voidwatch was a whole thing and came without any real storyline or expansion. I would think the ending of TVR will be similar to Escha w/ROV. Something we'll be doing for years (hopefully.) I really don't think it will take them that much more effort to do another expansion similar to adoulin. It reused a lot of assets for many things, and they could do that again without having to revamp everything.

We'll never know the "truth" for real, but to me it's obvious how SoA wasn't really planned/approved and it was a last minute project because of how bad FFXIV 1.0 did.

Regardless, I think despite all negativity SoA turned out to be an incredibly good expansion.

The way I imagine it went was Seekers was in full production for many years, and then they decided to go ahead with FF14 instead of the engine rebuild of FFXI on ps3 and stopped all work on it. So most of what you see in seekers is probably very old.

Then when ff14 flopped, they finished off seekers and threw it out there to try recover some money while they worked on ARR. Seekers effectively paid for ARR.

damn you xiv

FFXI truly is the sweaty camel that kept SE afloat through all their 2000s debacles.

It's easy to make the case either way is my point. Abyssea flung the door wide open. There really wasn't anywhere else to go in the game for challenge at level 99 without further expansion. SE also had the playground to collect the necessary data on what happens when you overload players with stats. It's easy to make the case that Abyssea was a testing ground for what was to come.


What is most curious to me is why did SE obviously model XIV after XI, but keep it separate? It creates unnecessary contention between players who would benefit more from being a part of the same community. They completely shifted their support for that to thrive to XIV for the sake of not absorbing the costs associated with maintaining both.


They left us to police ourselves. No offense, but you guys make shitty cops.

While in my opinion that was undoubtely the case, that Abyssea provided them with lots of data on what happens if etc, I don't think they created Abyssea with that idea in mind.

Going and assuming this means that they had very long term plans and, to me it looks pretty clear, they did not.


It's the same with SoA.
I think the case is more that they constantly create very rough and approximate ideas of things that could potentially become something else, more structured. We never hear about them because, well, they never become real.
Then sometimes these rough ideas they create during short brainstormings become something else, sometimes they've become full expansions, most of the time we simply never even know they exist becuase they remain that, just ideas.

To go back into more specific examples, I think it's quite possible that some of the ideas they used for SoA were old and have been around in their offices for quite some time, but I don't think they clearly had planned SoA thoroughfully and kept it hidden in a primordial state to use it as a wild card if something ever happened.
I think it was just a bunch of very rough ideas, some of the plentitude that they made through the years.
Then something bad really happened (FFXIV 1.0) and at that point they received the green light to create something bigger than usual, and that's exactly when they picked those specific ideas/plans (which were just some among many created) and worked for a very short time to turn that into a full expansion.


Again: we'll never know what truly happened but I consider this to be the most likely scenario of how things have truly been.

Abyssea was designed to strategically end FFXI, nothing more. It pushed progression to max speed, it allowed people to cap everything, it made all the gear we collected worthless and it killed every single HNM ls that existed becasue people could duo or even solo things with ease. Abyssea was really fun, but it 100% killed the game for a lot of people in a matter of 1-2 years. If you were to employ a psychologist to surgically kill 11, abyssea would of been the result.

They wanted to kill XI so we moved to XIV, they fully intended to close it but they had to allow it to be "our choice". More people did quit FF11 because of Abyssea than anything else, I even quit for a few years and I can say it was directly because of Aby letting me cap stuff. I would log in and have nothing to do, for the first time ever.

A lot of those people slowly came back in the years after Aby when they started rebuilding XI with the ilev / trusts / job points etc but it decimated the player numbers for a good 4-5 years.

The problem they have now is that XIV today is so far removed from what XI is, that closing XI would result in them just losing a ton of revenue to some other company.

XIV today has more in common with second life than FF11. ARR at launch was way more about content, challenge and progression than it is now, even though it had more in common with wow than 11. Today though, it's not even in the same universe.

Just as original ff14 failing forced them to make more content for 11 (SoA), 16 failing will force them to do the same for 11 and 14 again.

FF16 being made by the online division is the worst thing to ever happen to 11 and 14, and I hope it bombs hard. As with everything, money drives decisions.

I'm not getting your sentence about 16.
Mind to elaborate further?

What does that even have anything to do with XIV and XI? Other than the fact that the team behind 16 is clearly the same behind a good part of XIV?

FF16 is being made by the online division of the company, that currently runs 11, 14 and DQ. That's all they previously did, all their efforts were spent on making those games as profitable and successful s possible.

Now they are being tasked with making a AAA single player game.

To use an analogy: If you have a plumber and he gets paid 10 times more to dance in your house, he is gonna be dancing all day and not fixing sinks. Similarly, if you have an online gaming division, that makes way more money from making AAA titles they are going to devote more of their time, money and efforts into doing more of that.

FF16 doing well will be utterly catastrophic for their online games, I hope it bombs hard. It will make them concentrate purely on their online titles, which is what they should be doing anyway.

They can't possibly be doing less than they already are for XI so XVI's success or failure is meaningless in that regard. They already put in less than the minimum required to keep it going.

It could be bad for XIV but who cares.

No impact whatsoever.