20th Anniversary Expectations...

What are people's expectations for the 20th, sometime I think most people were expecting big things such as the mobile remake which some people were also claiming would come to PC so we could have a proper remake to play but those plans seem to be canceled and I myself kinda have lost hope for the anni, I think it will mostly be the usual all events into one and the empy+3 usual patch now w/ mastery lvup and that will be it?....

Although I do remember that they mentioned in a patch that when empy+3 hit it would come w/ job adjustments so I guess that could be it too.

Made this topic cause it's always nice to see what people think ahead off, so, What does everyone think we will get?

Less than what we were hoping for.

Not going to happen.

• Remake

• Expansion

• Jobs
  

Will probably happen.

• Empy+3

• An end to Resurgence.

• New Dark Relic weapons.

A new piece of Mog House furnishing featuring Prische or something else underwhelming.


/s

I want to see the release of new battle content or at least a preview of it next month.

I want a new expansion more than anything... but seeing how things are going its a little depressing to be honest. The new storyline just felt kinda tacked on and rushed, they dont even care to put a lot of resources into this game and it shows. We pay more than XIV players per account and yet get 1% of the effort. They get surveys asking how things are and why they quit and we get radio silence on anything new. Theres no hype for the event, they aren't even bothering. So that alone is a bit worrying.

I wouldn't even be surprised if they added new story content to XIV saying Vanadiel was some shadow fake world in x point of their timeline. Just anything to ***on this game. It's been pretty sad seeing how much love they give that game over XI and how the communities are slowly turning against it and just labeling it dead or filled with zealots.

Just isn't fair in my opinion, not at all. I would just expect the bare minimum from them. I remember how happy I was when Adoulin was announced, the game was going thru a sluggish period also at that time. People were quitting and writing the game off, but after that announcement it brought a lot of life back into the game. I'm hoping for that again but given XIV's recent "success" with their expansion that followed the exact same formula as every single other expansion, but this time has the WoW crowd backing it up, I doubt we get anything.

Rotating 1 week long super campaigns, another limited use CP ring (20 charges!!), maybe another limited time Trust, some more interviews about the game's past and development, and maybe a soundtrack on Spotify/the SE store.

I haven't got any high expectations for this anymore. I also don't expect the end of TVR/whatever the new endgame content is going to be to happen for the anniversary. If that actually comes out this year it'll be toward the end. They're gonna milk V30 Odyssey first.

Calling it now, next month we get a 4 part series with their accountant Jin, each consisting of 5 paragraphs about how and why he become a CPA.

I still think there's a chance for a big announcement like a remake or reboot or whatever you want to call it. It doesn't seem right that they'd cancel what they were already working on as the game's popularity surged if they weren't planning something even bigger on the flip-side.

But Square-Enix's recent publications have made me less than enthusiastic for that possibility. I'm actually quite fearful of "FFXI-R", as I could easily see it drowning under in-app purchases, ads, daily chores, and battle passes. Or worse, it'll be their first attempt at a blockchain-based economy.

Honestly, my only hope now for the 20th Anniversary is that they acknowledge it and maybe try marketing it a little bit.

They didnt even advertise this game when XIV was full and having issues that they took it off the stores. They didnt bother to say hey we have this other MMO too maybe you can try that or the free trial! Nope, they wont ever advertise this game again lol

In the NoClip documentary regarding FFXIV 1.0's initial development, there was a lot of information revealed about FFXI. Initially the game was only ever made to last for 5 years. We've already sailed the ship for 15 years longer than they had ever intended for us to originally do so, which is pretty wild.

It's clear as day that XI was never made to be a forever product, and their lack of financial support to extend its life via marketing and development budget makes that even more painfully obvious.

Regardless of our thoughts on it, we are and always will be a minority in the MMO space, and ultimately their market research likely suggests that it wouldn't be worth dumping untold resources into rejuvenating XI or throwing us more (expensive) content bones.

Much as it sucks to say and as much ***as he gets, Ninja is probably the only marketing this game will ever see again (and he is promoting an unofficial server, go figure).

Square thought they'd be wiping their hands with the release of XIV. Then they thought it'd be dying down with RoV.

I wonder if Matsui and Fujito are grateful or resentful for our continued support.

Impossible to say without knowing the inner workings of the XI dev cycle but I suspect it's a less stressful environment than meeting XIV content deadlines

Sometimes I think that way too, but then I wonder how much do they even think they will make with remastering and putting resources into such old games and remarketing them? I can't imagine that many people are willing to buy the pixel remasters for the 20th time or these games like chocobo GP or chocbos dungeons remasters. I can only hope they have integrity with their older games and want to preserve them or re-introduce them for a new generation. Hopefully they would want to keep XI around at least for that and knowing theres a market for it and retro gaming.

Honestly if they ever did a full on redo of XI similar to those other games, I think I'd want it to be a single player or light online multiplayer conversion. Would probably be received much better that way. A lot of the necessary underlying systems are already there with the XP buffs over the years, Trusts, etc.; they'd really just have to improve the quest log, adjust drop rates, things like that. A big job but hey, we're talking fantasies.

Yeah, but you're essentially working on a dead product.
So developers think their career has stalled working on FFXI? Or is it a retirement job for some?

If you're a graduate, do you really want to work on tech that was coded before you were born?

I think I'd be happiest if they modeled the gameplay after XII, as that ostensibly was an offline FFXI where you could program your "Trusts" to function as you wanted. As long as they keep the other gameplay dynamics like Enmity and Skillchains, I'd be really happy.

I'd want them to make the quest log less cryptic, but still keep it off-screen. I actually really like how unintrusive the quests are in XI. When the UI is constantly reminding me of the 25 unfinished quests I've got, I become very obsessive and burn out from trying to clear them all. It's not fun (for me) when I'm staring at a map or GPS instead of exploring an environment.

There is no reason they cant keep it an MMO. There is a large fanbase for retro games and older styled combat. How many people been asking for various FF games to be remade or remastered or new games in that style. There is always a market for these type of games. They may not be super popular like candy crush, minecraft or WoW but they sell well and certainly there will be a profit over their expenses in the long run. I don't think they need to remake the game, but making it so it isn't reliant on those old systems and hard to update, would be a start.

I just despise XIV with every fibre of my being. The only reason I had an account was due to fear of them taking this game down and its the only FF online game. I think if that was to happen I would def quit it though.

Agreed. But if they did decide to turn it single-player, I think FFXII would be a decent base from which to model it.

I'm expecting them to hang a big "HEY YALLS WE MADE IT #20 VANA" Banner in every game town, pay the FFXI_EN Twitter account Intern double for a month to post about it, and call it a day. Just listening to their announcements about the 20th anniversary has slowly tempered my expectations to nearly nothing. Prob most expected thing is an AMAN Trove (Plus?) campaign where you get vouchers daily. New event changes, so I expect that to be given even more attention for "returnees".

I also wouldn't be surprised if empyrean +3 didn't come until after the 20th anniversary. They can use the built in excuse that May is a month of "Celebration" and they want the players to enjoy it, so "please look forward to it" in the future. Empy could easily get pushed to the summer. Is how they do things. No reason to double up on content for a celebratory milestone (it will be F2P anyways, but not F2P newly released content for non-paying slackers. They aren't THAT nice).

Matsui has made some comments previously on this, I believe. It's been at least a couple of years, IIRC.

$50 sublime sushi anniversary t-shirt (do you need it?)

I figure at best we're gonna get Abyssea 2.

It's the last major popular content they've yet to come back to.
It fits in with Empy +3 and job adjustments.
Built-in avenue for more relic improvements, or even a new set. Though I think more likely we'd get a new piece of gear akin to JSE capes/necks.
Built-in avenue to Master leveling beyond apex mobs.
Easy way to give the new story an end game zone, which will drive players to complete it.
And they can easily milk it for a long time, especially if they release it in stages like the original Abyssea.

What if, we get a new lockstyle?

Yoshida did an interview in Jul 2021 with a popular Japanese tech personality, Hiroyuki, and spoke a bit about FFXIV and FFXI. THe impression I get is that, yes, they never really expected FFXI to last as long as it did. But now that it has and they can keep running costs down they think supporting it is a good thing.

He says,

• He would like to leave the FFXI servers on forever. Even if there were no updates, just to have FFXI as a place for memories.

• If there were to create a new MMO after FFXIV, he says it would have to be made with the idea in mind of having all XIV users shift over to the new game but he thinks it's not possible and not a good idea. He'd do it if he was told to do it by the CEO but his preference seems not to pursue something like that.

• He credits the graphics of XI for helping it last so long. He thinks the graphics are amazing given the memory resources they use.

• XIV engineers also work on XI in terms of system maint. related to windows versions etc.

For me to re-sub it will need to have a new expansion
(Or maybe, but i doubt it, go to a private server)
Single player would be neat, but not holding my breath.

Jesus Saves!!

Actual Expectation:
New battle content in reused zone using reused mobs
Good campaigns for May

Possible yet unlikely:
Chemist job (can be made using reused resources, so its possible)
New zone (Valhalla) for TVR
New endgame boss that isn't reused (Chaos is hinted several times)

Simply not going to happen:
New expansion
Remaster
Remake of any kind

Not quite what I was getting at. IIRC, Matsui was speaking pretty frankly about how working on the game causes the developers to miss other opportunities. They're getting older and I don't think they ever anticipated getting "stuck" on a single project for so long.

At least their salary should be increasing. I've been told in Japan it's typically based on your years of experience in software development. Sort of how teachers are paid in America. Pennies initially and then a fairly decent salary after some time.

New expansion to the far east... Time Mage and Chemist new jobs. We will be introduced to a new avatar who was sealed away for a long time, Odin will stop being the one doing everything because its his father Raiden.

I hope for a new expansion, new jobs, graphics update and updated connection. I know it's all unrealistic but a girl can dream lol.

Chemist job sounds like an inventory nightmare.