Fujito 4gamer Interview

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Fujito 4gamer interview
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 Quetzalcoatl.Khajit
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By Quetzalcoatl.Khajit 2023-08-08 18:42:59
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Bahamut.Shozokui said: »
They didn't simply rip models out of XI and put them into XIV, they remade them from scratch. XI's models are mirrored, which means the model data is split in half. XI also doesn't use any physical-based rendering materials, so there are no bump, normal, spec maps, so even if you could re-rig the model to a skeleton XIV knows what to do with, you would have one terrible looking asset. They also don't have nearly all of the models from XI. There are nearly 1800 unique models in XI (This does not count gear models).

I feel like there has been a communication gap here somewhere because much your argument in response to me boils down to the idea that xi models ported to xiv can't work in the xiv engine adjusted to work like xi when they have actively been used in XIV for a decade. You're also doing things the hard way after I explicitly pointed out I would aim to skip that step via using xiv tools/resources (if not heavilymodified) instead.

As for the other unique models that aren't there in xiv already. This depends severely on what exactly the unique models are and if they can be co-opted into the theoretical Vanadiel expansion for XIV Yoshi-P said would be a possible idea. Are they misc environmental models? (eg part of the maps.) Equipment that they could ask the XIV team to make for XIV so that they don't have to put the work of creating it in the xi budget? Something that looks similar to an xiv model already, so they could just edit that instead?
NPC models that bloat up the numbers like Prishe and her 8 separate models because each npc is a whole model instead of using the character creator?

Of course, maybe me pointing out the whole 15~ odd years of finishing touches to cover what isn't already ready made might have included using the xiv character creator to recreate the npcs instead of trying to carry ps2 limitation baggage was too vague a statement?

Is it still going to be difficult in the end? Yes. The sheer size of FFXI means it will always be a large undertaking, but it sure makes things easier if you can adjust or use something you already have instead of remaking everything from scratch for a vast majority of your assets.
There would still be way more heavy lifting than SE would ever care to fund, but if there is an engine where the misc formulae can be edited for xi gameplay emulation (whether it be existing or created), using the far more advanced models of today means a whole bunch of the graphics work is premade. The models aren't even the hardest part, they're just the easiest portion to cut development expenses from when trying to present things to people who want to cut costs. Actual human testing to see where somebody *** up with a copy/paste on all those years of content is going to take up the most manhours as I assume xi had some equivalent of a striking dummy the dev team could use for damage simulation, but I might be overestimating them.
Finding a way to deal with our massive wardrobes is a pretty big concern since that part seems to fall under spaghetti code that might/will break everything that nobody at SE knows how to change.
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 Asura.Splendid
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By Asura.Splendid 2023-08-08 18:55:59
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All I got from the interview was “The top brass said they aren’t giving us anymore money to keep FFXI going and I have to justify why.”

SE doesn’t want to invest in their properties. Even their well-established properties. It sort of reminds me of how Konami was after MGS V was finally out. I wish they would just say they don’t want to invest in the game at all instead of give us this run around. It’s pretty clear that none of the “part-timers” on the FFXI team are getting paid or getting paid very little. All that talk about taking on risk for developing or maintaining anything on FFXI seems like evidence for that.

I will enjoy the game while it’s still around but goddamn Square makes moves that aren’t sound.

FFXI is like the annoying busy work those guys have to do on the side. Call this speculation but I honestly think Matsui left because he got into some kind of argument with the head duders.
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 Carbuncle.Nynja
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By Carbuncle.Nynja 2023-08-08 19:37:59
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XIV isnt resusing models, nope

They just added Mamool Ja, lizard type beastmen that ride on Wivres, run by a twoheaded Mamool named Gulool Ja Ja. They dont have that in FFXI, nope.


Rebuilding character models or sprites for updated engines doesnt make something brand new and not reused considering 80% of the work is already done.
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 Valefor.Philemon
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By Valefor.Philemon 2023-08-08 20:04:50
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Before the servers shut down, I'd love to see SE add a brand new set of gear with new, unique models just for SAM. No other jobs, just SAM gets this really awesome set that makes it the strongest job in every situation.
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By Draylo 2023-08-08 20:08:44
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We still need Bahamut and Phoenix summons, not shutting down until we get those!
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By Valefor.Prothescar 2023-08-08 20:17:49
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Valefor.Philemon said: »
just SAM gets this really awesome set that makes it the strongest job in every situation.

So nothing would change!
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 Bahamut.Shozokui
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By Bahamut.Shozokui 2023-08-08 21:10:18
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Carbuncle.Nynja said: »
Rebuilding character models or sprites for updated engines doesnt make something brand new and not reused considering 80% of the work is already done.

TIL character design is 80% of the work. Good news artists!
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By Afania 2023-08-08 23:34:39
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Quetzalcoatl.Khajit said: »
I'm not sure anyone gives a damn if HQ gugool jaja has an extra polygon or two. If you mean the player models, I'm not sure why you think that's a hurdle when all of the mods for xiv show updating minor changes to models to be an insignificant hurdle in the grand scheme of things.

I do.





If you pay attention to models in game they are WAY different. FFXI's model shadows are hand painted but FF14's looks like it's baked. FF14's texture looks more vivid with high contrast but FFXI looks more desaturated. FF14's texture also has more detailed patterns, see the shoulder and legs.

When you place FF14's HQ mamool ja in FFXI's environment it'll look completely out of place because the environment doesn't have same amount of details, shadow style and saturation. It'll look like a cheap indie game getting assets from different asset stores and using them together in the same game.

Further more they are actually different in terms of design too. FF11's mamool ja uses different elemental staff depending on the job/ability. FF14's mamool ja only uses a staff according to the image.

FFXI's mamool ja feels like it belongs to the same world as the player by having the same equipment, players can also predict mamool ja's moves by looking at their equipments.

In other words, the design with elemental staff adds immersion AND it enchanced gameplay. If you use FF14's model all of these would be gone.

And that's just one model's texture problem. There are hundreds of models in game and we haven't even discuss other potential problems like special move animations and hit box and such.

Basically, even if you wrote an entirely new game engine, it's probably better to use all the old models and animation data from FF11 together instead of merging assets from 2 different games. If you are going to use FF14's enemy assets you need to remake every other environment and the equipment assets to match it AND change some of the existing FF14 models to keep same level of production quality. Not the best choice I think.

From business point of view, rewriting the entire game engine and production tools for a MMO but keeping the same look and mechanic is probably the worst investment anyways. Literally no players can see the difference because they can't see the code. So whoever isn't already interested in FF11 aren't going to play new FFXI with nothing but an updated source code if everything else stays the same.

Then you have to go down that rabbit hole that in order to get the attention from the new players so the investment is worth it you need to remake every asset, UI, game mechanics and everything for current gen players....which means FF14 ARR level of remake.

And worst of all, old FFXI players may not even appreciate it. When FF11 entered Abyssea era fanbase were split. Many players left the retail and go to private servers. If this FFXI remake try to please current gen players old players will leave again. If they don't make big change then new players won't come. It's in a difficult position.
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By Afania 2023-08-09 00:28:38
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Bahamut.Shozokui said: »
Carbuncle.Nynja said: »
Rebuilding character models or sprites for updated engines doesnt make something brand new and not reused considering 80% of the work is already done.

TIL character design is 80% of the work. Good news artists!

Imagine a world that enemy character designers(not even the main character designer, but enemy character designer...) from a project make 4 times more money than 3D modeler, texture artist, rigger, animator and special move vfx artist combined. MIND BLOWN!

Quetzalcoatl.Khajit said: »
You're also doing things the hard way after I explicitly pointed out I would aim to skip that step via using xiv tools/resources (if not heavilymodified) instead.

As for the other unique models that aren't there in xiv already. This depends severely on what exactly the unique models are and if they can be co-opted into the theoretical Vanadiel expansion for XIV Yoshi-P said would be a possible idea. Are they misc environmental models? (eg part of the maps.) Equipment that they could ask the XIV team to make for XIV so that they don't have to put the work of creating it in the xi budget? Something that looks similar to an xiv model already, so they could just edit that instead?
NPC models that bloat up the numbers like Prishe and her 8 separate models because each npc is a whole model instead of using the character creator?

A friendly reminder, SE and their outsourcing partners should have established 3D production pipelines running at max efficiency for decades. They have some of the best people in this field. Using pre-existing assets and generation tools to cut down the production cost is something ANY production studio would do.

I highly doubt they don't already know more tricks to cut down the costs than majority of people with less experience in this field.

If they choose not to do something, then it probably isn't because they don't know how, but they can't due to various limitations and quality requirements that outsiders don't know about.

It's always easy to type things on the internet saying "If I am SE I would do this and that...."

In reality there are probably many, many difficulty that we simply don't see as outsiders.

Edit: like for example, using character creator to create one of the most iconic FF character like Prishe so every player can look like her, this sounds like a terrible idea lol. Money saving ideas like this 100% will reduce production quality.
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 Asura.Jokes
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By Asura.Jokes 2023-08-09 03:18:33
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At this stage I’m surprised the devs haven’t added a game shop function to just buy in game items like Ashera, volte pieces, rema. Mythic weapon purchases and mission skips alone would be a huge market.
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By Hovann 2023-08-09 03:26:39
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Asura.Jokes said: »
At this stage I’m surprised the devs haven’t added a game shop function to just buy in game items like Ashera, volte pieces, rema. Mythic weapon purchases and mission skips alone would be a huge market.

We're on our way there.

https://na.store.square-enix-games.com/final-fantasy-xi-plush---kraken-club

In the mean time: Buy KClubs, commit felonies.
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By Dodik 2023-08-09 03:54:10
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Hit a cat 2-8 times per round with a soft plushy to annoy it.
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 Asura.Melliny
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By Asura.Melliny 2023-08-09 04:45:27
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I want to elaborate a bit on what Afania was trying to convey, because I understood everything she was saying. 3D modeling and design is a programming subject that interests me and I've studied it as a side hobby over the years. I'm familiar with how 3d models are rendered in FFXI and FFXIV and several other major titles, and there is a massive difference between the way an 11 asset model works versus a 14 one.

Final Fantasy 11 Modeling

In Final fantasy 11 Models are mirrored. What that means is that the right and the left half of a model are identical, and only one half of that model actually exists. A FFXI model is comprised of a simple wire mesh, which creates the polygons that comprise the object, and a single layer of paint coating the surface, which is known as the normal map. It's easier to understand with a few illustrations and examples.

This below is the model for the Mithra Rogue's Vest. The wire mesh is depicted in the first image, while the second image is the mesh with the normal map applied. The third is what the normal map actually looks like. What you see is the right half of a model, and that's actually the full extent of what the asset entails. The FFXI developers utilized a system where each model is only half of a full piece, and the game takes this half, creates a copy and then mirrors that copy upon itself to create the full model you see in game. This means an 11 model is symmetrical, where the right and left half of a model are identical. Any element of the armor that happens on one side fundamentally has to exist on the other, from coloring to wiring to movement.

This was a method they used to reduce the number of polygons that went into a model's creation (cutting them in half) to cut down file size so the resources were smaller back in the era 20 years ago where big file sizes were a liability and the amount of data a Ps2 hard drive could store was something they had to design around. Furthermore, in FF 11 there is no interaction between the model and the environment. Lighting and shadow effects are completely superficial and are not baked directly into the model itself.






Final Fantasy 14 Modeling

In 14 Models are comprised of full scale meshes, meaning they're asymmetrical and elements that exist on the right or left half do not have to (and basically never do) exist on the other half. Asymmetrical modeling allows you to create a scarf that wraps around a character's neck and drops down over their right or left shoulder for example, which is something 11 modeling cannot do.

Furthermore, there are multiple layers of mapping that interact with the environment to apply texture, luminance, and color. The 3D assets are tied to a vastly more advanced physics engine that handles bone structure movement as well. The number of polygons in a 14 model is infinitely larger than the number of polygons in an 11 model, which is what allows such fine movements in the 14 environment that you can't get in 11. This is an example of the mapping in a 14 model. I want to draw attention to the second image as well, because it depicts the difference between the type of rendering models. The normal map of the second image is that of an iris, which is something that 11 doesn't do whatsoever. 14 has not only body but eye mapping and more. Normal maps in 14 are detailed in 2000, 4000, and 8000 bit depth, whereas in 11 the bits depth is limited to 128 or 256 at most.

The second type of mapping in 14 is the diffuse map, which is what allows you to render bumpy textures, such as the skin or hair texture. This layer does not exist in 11 and is integral to the model in 14. It gives the model a grainy appearance that 11 models are lacking. Think of how 11 renders the image of an orange in the yuhtunga jungles. It's a flat sphere with color applied. In 14 that object would have a bumpy texture like a real orange, with dark and light spots much like the real thing. This is a result of the diffuse map. Bump mapping in 11 is handled by the system itself, rather than applied to individual models like it is in 14.

There is a third type of mapping in 14 that doesn't exist in 11, which is the specular map. A specular map is a mapping that interacts with lighting elements to cast shadows and give models full luminance. In 14 there are "wet" effects when a character is submerged in water, "shiny" and “glossy” effects that happen when lighting hits an object and reflects it toward the screen, and "dark" effects that comprise shadow elements. These effects are a result of specular map interactions. None of these exist in 11 and are baked directly into the 14 model to interact with other systems in the game engine that don't exist in 11.

Note the vastly higher resolution of the normal mapping in the 14 model below. This is a high definition mapping that does not exist in 11. They cannot reuse 11 normal mapping in a 14 environment without the model looking like absolute total utter doggie poo.




Diffuse and Specular Example

And this is a visual illustrating how the diffuse and specular map layers work in 14 which again... doesn't exist in 11 models. On the left is my Mi'qote standing by a beach. You can see the shiny effects on the metal plate as well as the glossy effects from the sun on her skin. The diffuse mapping is what gives her skin the muscle tone that you don't see in 11. On the right you can also see the wet effect after I dunked her in the water and hopped back out. That's all because of diffuse and specular mapping interactions.




It is fundamentally impossible to convert the 11 assets to 14 assets. You would literally have to recreate everything from scratch to work in that engine. You have no idea what kind of manpower and resources a task of that undertaking.
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By Dodik 2023-08-09 05:59:55
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Asura.Melliny said: »
. On the left is my Mi'qote standing by a beach.

Your Mi'qote Mithra looks like she is advertising her onlyfans.
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 Phoenix.Iocus
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By Phoenix.Iocus 2023-08-09 07:13:37
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Did you know you can get cancer from working on FFXI?

ORLY?

Yeah I read it in an interview with the director. Guy must be an expert because he's all business.
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By Pantafernando 2023-08-09 07:13:46
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Quote:
Your Mi'qote Mithra looks like she is advertising her onlyfans.

I will buy it
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 Asura.Gweivyth
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By Asura.Gweivyth 2023-08-09 08:01:43
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Bahamut.Shozokui said: »
This interview is quite sad. The slow death of an IP by a company that refuses to invest in modernizing its toolset. They certainly could upgrade it. It would take some specialists, but it could be done.
Realistically their best bet would be to move into VR. The game has PERFECT pacing for a VR game since the combat is not super complex, and slow paced enough that you could reasonably navigate its menus and options thru a VR interface, and the worlds are absolutely stunning in virtual reality. I have my home world in VRChat set as Ru'Lude Gardens, and even friends who have never played XI often tell me how cool it is.

They have many options to reuse the IP, and I think at some point they'll probably find a suitable replacement, but I think the biggest issue for them will be finding a third party publisher who is willing to stay faithful to the source material, because that seems to be important to them based on the reasons they ditched the mobile game.
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By Tarage 2023-08-09 08:02:12
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Is this yet another thread where someone who has no idea what they're talking about suggests an incredibly stupid and infeasible idea like "just remake ffxi in hd it's easy" and then the next 200 pages are arguing about the feasibility of said idiots idea? Oh boy. What content! I swear some of you should work for Square Enix with your ability to talk for days about irrelevant things and not get anywhere. Hell, maybe you already do, given SE's selling of Tomb Raider to invest in NFT support for games...

The only important takaway beyond "yeah, we're in maintenance mode" is the fact that they picked "upgrade the servers" over "shut the game down", which seems to indicate we have around 10 years to accomplish whatever we want to accomplish and retire. Most MMOs in this position would salivate at the idea of such a long wind down...

Also ffs, just because an ip is storied and long does NOT mean remaking it in VR or whstever insane idea you have holds water. Uou REALLY think people would pay to start from scratch in a remake of a 20 year old MMO with the same outdated mechanics? You're insane. The "legacy" of ffxi is ***like them reusing mobs in 14 and occasionally having retro throwbacks. That's it.

Ffxi is not ffvii. It is not something you endlessly remaster or remake. It NEVER had that level of importance or impact. I love Prishe, but she is NOT iconic. Less people know who she is, or who ANY ffxi character is, than every single other ff game main characters. Hell, I bet ffxi has the smallest recognition of every mainline ff game. You show a random gamer a major npc from ffxi and odds are they won't know who the hell it is.
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By Felgarr 2023-08-09 08:28:50
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Thanks Melliny for the insightful explanations. I have a programming / technical background, but I know very little about how assets and rendering works.

(Well, I did a project once with a 3D sphere rolling around a plane with a fixed light source....but that doesn't count)

Are there any unique models in FFXI that deviate from the explanation you gave? (Sure like the beetle, but also mobs like the ToAU Mamool boss with 2 heads, Gulool Ja Ja?

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 Asura.Gweivyth
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By Asura.Gweivyth 2023-08-09 08:33:37
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Tarage said: »
Uou REALLY think people would pay to start from scratch in a remake of a 20 year old MMO with the same outdated mechanics?
Nobody even really has to argue with you on this point since the popularity of classic private servers has already proven that this point you're trying to make isn't actually based in reality. People would, and do, LOVE to restart over and over again on the classic versions of the game.
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By Carbuncle.Nynja 2023-08-09 08:38:55
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You're overlooking one very important aspect of classic private servers:
They are F R E E

Cost zero dollars per month to play (other than the bitcoin miner running in the background or whatever, servers cost money to run afterall)
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 Asura.Gweivyth
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By Asura.Gweivyth 2023-08-09 08:45:58
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Carbuncle.Nynja said: »
You're overlooking one very important aspect of classic private servers:
They are F R E E

Cost zero dollars per month to play (other than the bitcoin miner running in the background or whatever, servers cost money to run afterall)
1.) Wow, long time no see friendo, didn't know you were still around.

2.) I ran one of the most popular private servers for multiple years, and people aren't playing there because they're free. They don't give a damn about that. Almost all of them play there because its 75 cap and they need "muh nostalgia."

As for bitcoin miners, nobody does that my dude. That's insane paranoia, lol. We made our money to break even via Patreon donations.
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 Asura.Melliny
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By Asura.Melliny 2023-08-09 08:48:26
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Quote:
Are there any unique models in FFXI that deviate from the explanation you gave? (Sure like the beetle, but also mobs like the ToAU Mamool boss with 2 heads, Gulool Ja Ja?

There are many NPC's and beastmen that don't follow the rule of mirrored models. The number of unique beastmen models is a lot (and I mean a LOT) smaller than player models. For each armor and weapon there is a unique model for all 8 races/gender combos for the same piece. If you look at the dat files there are something around the number of 380 folders, each with 128 dat files in them. The vast majority of those files are just player equippable armor, because each piece has 8 dats and 1 handed weapons have 16 (one for main hand and one for offhand, and this combo for all 8 race/genders). Conversely, a single beetle or wamoura model is used for each of the 20 or 30 instances of that mob in the zone. So when you see 30 crawlers running around in the nest they each have unique mob id's, but they all share the same model.

So while there are many asymmetrical beastmen models, player armor has always and still to this day does follow the mirrored rule almost 100% of the time. The vast majority of equippable armor is mirrored, and has been for the bulk of the game's lifespan. In recent years they have actually broken off from this perfectly mirrored model for a very select few armors, but even then it's a minimal change. This is the mithra cossie top, which actually does have a small amount of detail on the left side of the X axis (The X axis is the center of the model and is what the model is mirrored around).

If you look at the model in game you only see the floral rings on the right and left side of the model are separate. But apart from that the bulk of this model is still mirrored.




The more interesting thing to note is how many more polygons the cossie armor has over the older generation of models. If you look at the mithra rogue's vest, which is artifact 1 and comes from the 2005 era, and then compare it to the cossie model which was created I think in 2019, you can see the cossie model has almost double the polygons. The number of polygons a model has directly affects the visuals in game, because it provides more surface area for the normal map to be laid out over. So you can get much better details on individual polygons as a result. That's why the cossie armor looks better than older swimsuit models. It's literally a higher resolution image.
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By Afania 2023-08-09 08:55:22
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Tarage said: »
It NEVER had that level of importance or impact. I love Prishe, but she is NOT iconic. Less people know who she is, or who ANY ffxi character is, than every single other ff game main characters.

You misunderstood this part, I wasn't trying to say Prishe is more popular than Tifa or something. What I meant was that Prishe represented FFXI in dissidia before(if I remember correctly that is), therefore "iconic" in a way that she is a better pick than most other generic character generator NPC like Ayame or Excenmille(except maybe Shantotto) to represent one of FF mainline.

The whole point was about why creating a generic looking main character for the story isn't a good idea. It's not about comparing the popularity with other characters in the series.
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By Asura.Gweivyth 2023-08-09 09:06:56
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Dissidia brings up a good point btw - I used to play the Final Fantasy TCG, and I was surprised how many people recognized Prishe and Shantotto from Dissidia, thinking that's the game they originally came from.

Funny enough, when I played against Taoru Kageyama (the producer of the FFTCG) at GenCon back in 2017, we were playing the "title" format, where you can only play cards from a single FF title, and he was playing XI! He doesn't speak much English and my Japanese is pretty rough too, but we spent our entire match struggling to talk about how much we loved XI. He told me his favorite Final Fantasy character of all time is Arciela, and at that time (this was in 2017) they had not printed an Arciela card yet, but he was excited about the ones coming in the future. :) I've still got a signed playset of holofoil Shantottos from that event that I'll never part with. <3

Also, interesting tidbit about FFTCG, Shantotto is one of the most expensive cards in the entire game. She's from the base set, and is one of the only cards from the base set that still gets played to this day!
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By Meeble 2023-08-09 09:15:19
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Tarage said: »
The only important takaway beyond "yeah, we're in maintenance mode" is the fact that they picked "upgrade the servers" over "shut the game down", which seems to indicate we have around 10 years to accomplish whatever we want to accomplish and retire. Most MMOs in this position would salivate at the idea of such a long wind down...

I'll second this. It feels like Fujito watched Matsui battle upper management for the few scraps we got over the years, and didn't feel like he had the standing or connections to continue that fight.

Fujito's strategy seems to be making continued service as un-objectionable as possible. Somebody up top doesn't like XI having a dedicated team? They're gone. Old servers kinda expensive to operate? Virtualize 'em! Merc/RMT spam generating too many GM calls? Term filter function, baby.

I had high expectations going into the 20th anniversary, but it turns out the options were never new content vs. maintenance mode, it was maintenance mode vs. oblivion. I don't know that I'll stick around much longer, but I'm glad to know Fujito will be keeping the lights on for another decade anyway.
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By Dodik 2023-08-09 09:23:38
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Meeble said: »
I had high expectations going into the 20th anniversary, but it turns out the options were never new content vs. maintenance mode, it was maintenance mode vs. oblivion. I don't know that I'll stick around much longer, but I'm glad to know Fujito will be keeping the lights on for another decade anyway.

This is a good point. In corporate land, as long as something is doing positive revenue, does not cost a lot in terms of personnel and time and has a long term support contract for the physical hardware, the odds of it being shut down are slim to none.

Expect bare minimum, which is the usual really.
 
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By 2023-08-09 09:29:20
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 Asura.Gweivyth
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By Asura.Gweivyth 2023-08-09 09:36:51
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Meeble said: »
Fujito's strategy seems to be making continued service as un-objectionable as possible. Somebody up top doesn't like XI having a dedicated team? They're gone. Old servers kinda expensive to operate? Virtualize 'em! Merc/RMT spam generating too many GM calls? Term filter function, baby.
This is pretty much why I expect the game will be around for a good long while even if they never update anything ever again.

We'll always have RMTs and multiboxers paying $100+ a month literally until the day the servers get shut off, and that's likely going to be enough to keep the game net-positive in profit as long as they aren't staffing the game in any meaningful way.

I have more experience than most people when it comes specifically to running a server for this game, and the overhead is laughably low. It felt expensive for me to run as an individual at roughly $250/month, but I also wasn't taking in $12/month per active player, and that $12 is an extremely conservative number because I can't imagine there are many players out there who aren't at least subscribed up to Mog Wardrobe 4.

All that being said, lets do a quick little math problem and say that when I was running my server, which at its peak averaged about 700 players at peak hours, and had around 2500 active players per day...Assume I charged them even HALF of what a base FFXI subscription is:

My spend: 250/month, or 3000 yearly. To add additional servers to this hosting plan, it would cost me approximately 45/month extra to add a virtual private server to my dedicated server box. Most dedicated or cloud hosting solutions will offer this option once you have a base setup established with them. For a company as large as Square, I imagine they also get a much better deal than I would.

Subscription fees charged if I assume only 700 players: 6*700=4200 a month, or 50400 yearly.

Subscription fees charged if I assume all active players are charged: 6*2500=15000, or 180000 yearly

And this just assumes profits based on my dinky little private server metrics, which had less players than the official servers and would theoretically be charging half the price that retail does.

So yeah even if the game fell off to the point where they only had 2500 total players, they're still making over a quarter million dollars a year. There's no way they're spending that sort of bread on staff for the game at this point, so it still has a long time to remain profitable/alive.
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