Fujito 4gamer Interview

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Fujito 4gamer interview
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By Sakinah79 2023-08-09 10:03:33
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If the suits at the top had any smarts they'd be on social media with ads highlighting the fact that FFXI has 20+ years of content, nearly 2 dozen unique jobs, a worldwide playerbase, solo and multiplayer content, an inflation free montly subscription fee, and more.

They could even spin it as the longest running Final Fantasy game to date.
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By Godfry 2023-08-09 10:32:05
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Meeble said: »
Tarage 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.

Very valid point. But this seems to be the downfall of every company that turns into a big corporation. At first, legendary content are created by passionate artist, which create a huge fanbase. Then the soul-harvesting corporation takes over with the promise of greatness through mindless business expansion. Once artist sell their soul, they forget what made their content outstanding which makes them start talking like corpo. "Servers, maintainability, profit, career".

I doubt that him and his team are as proud of their accomplishments as the people behind No Man's Sky.
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By Hopalong 2023-08-09 17:55:11
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At this point, there are already hundreds of thousands of files, so converting everything for use in a different system would require an enormous amount of effort. If we were to do it, it would cost the same as creating a new game, if not more. In that case, it would be more reasonable to create a new game instead.

So, SE, this is analogous to the Sortie grind so either step up on your side or we're gonna step out and find a new game on our end.

They could start today and get 300 files done a day between 3 people and in 3 years it'd be done. Pay them each 225k total over three years and it would only be 935 a month in subscription load across a world-wide game. Or better yet pay one person to develop an interpretor/translator software for the old middleman. I bet the new AI machines could figure that out pretty fast.

Time for SE to get their grind on and when they finish, I'll have just completed a prime weapon!
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By Hopalong 2023-08-09 18:11:23
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Quote:
we knew there were people playing, but when they approached us with the collaboration proposal, I was like, "Is there something going on...?" and was quite suspicious (laughs).

Quote:
**4Gamer:**
It really felt like they genuinely love "FFXI." In the future, if there are passionate proposals, could collaborations with other works also be possible?

**Fujito:**
Collaborations need to be mutually beneficial; otherwise, they won't make sense. Considering that we don't have a lot we can offer, it's realistically challenging. It's enough if people have the feeling of liking it, even if it's not a collaboration.

Sounds like Fujito is a real downer with no faith in FFXI
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By Tarage 2023-08-10 00:48:46
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Asura.Gweivyth said: »
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.

You are absurd. You are comparing a handful of people to what would be required to break even for a massive rebuild of the game. You think the number of people who would sub would justify the cost? You absolutely have no concept of how much money it takes to make a game. Plus given how much people whine about private servers and Abyssea there's probably a good chunk of people who would go "Ew, I don't want to play with HD graphics, I want to play OG". Private servers have a fraction of XI's playerbase, which is already borderline unprofitable.

Afania said: »
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.

She appeared in one major game outside of XI, and it wasn't even a mainline game. You could show Prishe to most gamers and they wouldn't know who the hell she was, or at BEST, would say "Oh that girl from Dissidia". Now try that with Vaan, or Lightning, or Zidane. More people know who those characters are than ANYONE from XI. More people know who the characters are from XIV than XI! Again, I adore Prishe, but she is not in any way "iconic", which is defined as "widely recognized and well-established". She is neither. Please learn what words mean.

Hopalong said: »
Sounds like Fujito is a real downer with no faith in FFXI

Sounds like he's realistic about a 20 year old dead MMO being kept alive on dead hardware for a handful of very vocal people who also regularly throw shitfits. WoW Classic has more players than XI right now. Stop being dumb.

Sakinah79 said: »
If the suits at the top had any smarts they'd be on social media with ads highlighting the fact that FFXI has 20+ years of content, nearly 2 dozen unique jobs, a worldwide playerbase, solo and multiplayer content, an inflation free montly subscription fee, and more.

They could even spin it as the longest running Final Fantasy game to date.

No one wants to play a 20 year out of date MMO. Most people would take one look at XI and go "Holy ***this is awful" and move on. XI might have been state of the art back in the day, but now? It's dog ***. Want proof? Remember when XIV launched the first time and was missing BASIC features and bombed? It was basically XI.
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By Tarage 2023-08-10 00:58:18
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Hopalong said: »
Quote:
At this point, there are already hundreds of thousands of files, so converting everything for use in a different system would require an enormous amount of effort. If we were to do it, it would cost the same as creating a new game, if not more. In that case, it would be more reasonable to create a new game instead.

So, SE, this is analogous to the Sortie grind so either step up on your side or we're gonna step out and find a new game on our end.

They could start today and get 300 files done a day between 3 people and in 3 years it'd be done. Pay them each 225k total over three years and it would only be 935 a month in subscription load across a world-wide game. Or better yet pay one person to develop an interpretor/translator software for the old middleman. I bet the new AI machines could figure that out pretty fast.

Time for SE to get their grind on and when they finish, I'll have just completed a prime weapon!

Sorry for double posting but holy ***, as a game developer, I HAVE to call you out on your complete and utter ***.

Let's start with your "300 files a day between 3 people". That's 12.5 files an hour, or 1 file every 5 minutes. You HONESTLY think any artist can upscale a complex 3d model in 5 minutes? You have never touched graphics software in your life have you? Any artist would laugh their *** off at your absurd proposal. I'd ask one of my artist friends who worked 10 years for 343 but I don't want to waste her time.

Now let's go with your salary idea. 225k for 3 years is 75k per year for THREE people, or 25k a year for ONE person. What the actual ***? That's literally 5k UNDER $15 an hour. Do you KNOW how much video game developers make? I'll give you a hint, ENTRY LEVEL take your cost and multiply it by FOUR. And that doesn't include overhead like management, hardware, benefits, ect. Jesus *** Christ do you even have a job?

"I bet new AI machines could do it" is probably the most hilariously inept thing you've said. Please, ask an AI to program you anything and tell me the result. Have you SEEN the hands on AI art? And that's *** ART, where you can throw MASSIVE amounts of data that is similar and find patterns. One game engine is nowhere near similar to another. You are the Dunning-Kruger effect to the extreme. Please, next time you have a thought, let it go.

EDIT: I appear to have read part of the post wrong. You seem to be suggesting 75k PER person, not total, per year. Regardless, my point stands that no artist in the world would accept that offer because it's still THOUSANDS under the industry standard, and it still doesn't take into account hardware, software, management, benefits, or literally anything else. If you honestly believe the listed salary on a job offer is what the COMPANY pays IN TOTAL, you know nothing about businesses or taxes or anything, but that's really obvious from your idiotic idea.
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By Dazusu 2023-08-10 02:24:30
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Tarage said: »
...

Are you okay?
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By Tarage 2023-08-10 02:39:35
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Dazusu said: »
Tarage said: »
...

Are you okay?

Like I said, as a professional programmer, it triggers me seeing something this HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE.
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By Tokimemofan 2023-08-10 03:06:35
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Tarage said: »
Dazusu said: »
Tarage said: »
...

Are you okay?

Like I said, as a professional programmer, it triggers me seeing something this HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE.
I completely feel that myself. Sadly most people have absolutely no clue what it takes to program. It’s even worse when dealing with 20 year old code that is highly reliant on obsolete hardware’s behavior. People always dismiss PS2 limitations without any understanding of the depth of the problem. People forget that third parties such as those who maintain windower have the luxury of not being financially liable if a couple of lines of code brings everything to a screeching halt. Look at the backlash when Sortie was released in such a broken state that it crippled vagary. Or that time when they edited a few tiny textures in Southern San d’Oria and crashed people out of the game for several days. Those are both fine examples of how maintaining code can go wrong in unexpected ways. I wonder how many people would quit if for example a bug required them to roll back everyone’s characters by a month. The game would be dead the next day. So yeah best not to punch the programmers, they deserve better.
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By GetHelpNerd 2023-08-10 06:29:19
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as a professional programmer, everything all the other professional programmers in this thread have said is completely wrong.

also i probably make more money than them and have a bigger PP so i'm right and they're wrong
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By Lili 2023-08-10 07:16:11
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Hopalong said: »
They could start today and get 300 files done a day between 3 people and in 3 years it'd be done.

Ah yes, and since it takes one woman nine months to make a baby, it must take nine women one month to make a baby, right?

Tarage said: »
No one wants to play a 20 year out of date MMO.

Eve Online, Anarchy Online, Dark Age of Camelot, Ragnarok Online, and about a dozen others have entered the chat. Not to mention all the asia-only MMORPGs that are still thriving.

Asura.Gweivyth said: »
I have more experience than most people when it comes specifically to running a server for this game

I don't believe you realize how irrelevant and non-comparable your experience running a private server is compared to what it takes to run a retail game in its entirety, in terms of development and upkeep cost, technical requirements, human requirements, etc etc etc.
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By Bahamut.Belkin 2023-08-10 08:22:06
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Tarage said: »
No one wants to play a 20 year out of date MMO.

That's certainly not true. My opinion is that most "to date" MMO's are complete dog *** -- and I've given earnest attempts to a lot of them. It turns out the only one I like is FFXI. I would say the only thing outdated is the back-end stuff and that's to be expected. The world is fantastic. Exploring said world felt fun and fantastic. The graphics hold up surprisingly well compared to something like WoW. The content isn't even out of date -- V15 (and maybe even V20) were fun and challenging. I disliked V25 however. Dynamis was still a neat thing to do. I did daily segments since the Odyssey release and it was good enough to keep me coming back, sometimes twice a day.

I think that if there was an honest marketing attempt, they could draw people back -- an official SE FFXI 75 vanilla server would absolutely pull old timers for what could possibly be minimal cost. I just look back to that Horizon launch when the server population was 4000 nightly and that was just word of mouth without any SE marketing budget behind it.

I'm still holding on to that SE FFXI vanilla dream. Horizon was fun until the inevitable dev overreach.
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By Asura.Melliny 2023-08-10 08:50:14
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I don't think most of the people in this thread fully grasp the amount of time it takes to create a single functional model in a game engine like FF 14. On the previous page I posted some insight on the makeup of a model, but there are other aspects that also have to be integrated into the model besides the physical appearance that I didn't mention. It takes quite a bit of effort to create the mesh and get the normal, diffuse, and specular maps laid out and functioning correctly. But then you have another whole whale of a task beyond that..... motion and skeletal weights. So now I'm gonna give a brief explanation of how THOSE work as well.

Skeletal weights, motion, and the physics engine

Every 3D model has an underlying skeleton. You can think of this as a virtual representation of a skeleton in real life. A model's skeleton is basically an invisible bone structure that connects different skeletal points to different groups of polygons. Each "bone" is assigned a weight, and the point where each bone connects to the next bone is called a vertex. These bones and vertices each have individual weights assigned to them which interface with the game's physics engine to create motion. If the weight of any of these bones is disproportionately off from the rest of them you end up with ridiculously out of context movement where one limb could flail wildly in all kinds of weird directions. Properly setting skeleton weights allows the physics engine to render smooth swings of a characters arm when they take a great axe and lunge forward to cleave through a group of enemies, or to jump in the air over a chasm and land gracefully, and yes.... it's also responsible for the infamous "jiggle physics" term that everyone is so fond of.

Do you want to know what happens when skeletal weights are NOT set correctly? Think of what it would look like if a jogger were running down a stretch of track, but instead of a human this jogger was the infamous stretch armstrong, and his right arm was flying 100 feet in the air and then clipping through the ground the next moment then flinging forward 150 feet then backwards 25 feet. His head was rolling in 360 degree motions going through his chest then flying 500 feet into the sky and pulling his neck along with it then ping ponging in every which direction like a yo yo, and his feet were twirling around themselves in circular motions like the blades of a helicopter. This is what happens when skeleton weights are not set correctly. Fine tuning how a model MOVES is actually just as much of a challenge (if nor even more of a challenge) then creating the LOOK of the model is.

Guess what? Final Fantasy 11's models have a much more limited bone structure than 14's models and once again... are not compatible with the physics engine in 14. This is yet another thing they would have to deal with if they wanted to make 11's models work in a 14 style engine.

Here is a link to some reference material that explains in a bit greater detail what I just went over. I only wanted to cover the basics here because motion modeling is an extremely complex subject and I can't go into too much more detail here without getting into complexities that make the explanation too in depth.

https://deepmotion.medium.com/character-animation-101-weighting-your-rig-d63118b86edc
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By Carbuncle.Nynja 2023-08-10 08:53:34
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Asura.Gweivyth said: »
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."
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By Ymora 2023-08-10 09:35:01
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Dazusu said: »
Tarage said: »
...

Are you okay?

When you (Tarage) start breaking down other people's replies into an entire essay, you lost. Even if you're right, you lost.
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By Meeble 2023-08-10 09:50:17
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Bahamut.Belkin said: »
I'm still holding on to that SE FFXI vanilla dream. Horizon was fun until the inevitable dev overreach.

They could make a copy of retail with a 75 cap, but they don't have vanilla era server code anymore. It's literally easier to set up a "vanilla" private server for yourself and a few like-minded friends than it would be for SE to dig through 15+ years of mama's best spaghetts. Not that they want to in the first place.

It's not that SE upper management hates XI, it's that they're busy (poorly) playing big boy poker in the triple-A/NFT/latest trend room, and they're annoyed any time they have to pay attention to grandma XI plinking away on the nickel slots.

The hard truth is that if you want something from XI that isn't in retail today, it's going to have to come from the community, either as a private server offering or a retail client customization.
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By Asura.Essylt 2023-08-10 10:06:55
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Taint said: »
Would it really be that hard to port it over to PC core?
From a technical standpoint, it'd be challenging, but far from impossible. Same goes for business viability - the OG Everquest is still releasing new expansions and that game is older than XI by a few years. There is just no one left in the company with both enough clout and interest in the project to champion investing resources into it. Matsui bailed (if I'm interpreting his last message correctly, because they let him lead one more "big" project before he retires) and Fujito is a literal nobody when it comes to JP corporate hierarchy.
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By Asura.Iamaman 2023-08-10 10:29:43
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Are they preparing for another FF MMO? Maybe 17?

I've been wondering if 16 is kindof testing the water towards moving to a more ARPG type game the way 12 was the migration from turn based FF to what we got in the years that followed. I'm curious if another more action RPG oriented MMO (maybe Diablo 4-esque) is where they are headed and a lot of this scaling down of 11, moving people around, etc is to prioritize not having to maintain 3 MMO titles.
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By Asura.Rekcuf 2023-08-10 11:48:37
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so basically now they are actually killing it by purpose?
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By Godfry 2023-08-10 12:24:55
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People are missing the mark with their LOTR size replies.

Like I said before, when creators start talking like corporations, it indicates that they no longer care for the players. Remember, Final Fantasy came from people who put their careers on the line to pursue a dream.

Who here wouldn't agree that we deserved a new Reisenjima for the 20th anniversary? Didn't have to be better graphics, new engine, nothing... I don't believe the revenue we generate isn't enough to grant us a new small zone.
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By Asura.Iamaman 2023-08-10 12:31:01
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Asura.Rekcuf said: »
so basically now they are actually killing it by purpose?

No, again, I don't think so.

Killing it on purpose would be easy, you could make minor changes and cause the player base to rage quit. What they'd really do is do what every other MMO has, announce a shutdown date and just shut it down. They wouldn't put this much work into it just to have it die.

They are moving it into a mode where they can sustain its operation with minimal input and maintenance. They will keep it alive, but it'll be alive just in the sense that the game exists, you won't see any new content or major changes.

This is the way a lot of software works, they move it from active development to maintenance/end of development. It's still available, it's still there, but largely unsupported aside from critical changes/fixes. The people who work on the project are either moved to other groups or retire while the next projects are in development.
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By kinkanat 2023-08-10 12:31:52
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Tarage said: »
Want proof? Remember when XIV launched the first time and was missing BASIC features and bombed? It was basically XI.
To say that FFXIV 1.0 failed because it resembled FFXI shows your ABSOLUTE ignorance of the subject.

I was there, and I have played FFXI for years, and FFXIV 1.0 had NOTHING TO DO WITH FFXI.

FFXIV 1.0 failed for other reasons, among them that it had incomprehensible decisions like that after doing 10 levequest a week the experience you gained was derisory, that its gameplay was crap having to always press a button constantly to do autoattacks and many other incomprehensible design decisions. But none of those reasons had anything to do with FFXIV 1.0 being even 1% like FFXI.

So stop repeating the lies you hear on Youtube and inform yourself.
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By Dazusu 2023-08-10 13:49:16
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Tarage said: »
Dazusu said: »
Tarage said: »
...

Are you okay?

Like I said, as a professional programmer, it triggers me seeing something this HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE.

I'm not sure what the difference is between a programmer and a professional programmer, is it: "has a job"?
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By Carbuncle.Maletaru 2023-08-10 14:00:09
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Dazusu said: »
I'm not sure what the difference is between a programmer and a professional programmer, is it: "has a job"?

Is this just a rhetorical or sarcastic joke, or an actual question?

Hope this helps.

The difference is "has a job, and that job is programming".

Some would imply/assume that professional programmers are more credentialed, skilled, experienced, or have better practices. On average, that's probably true, but there are plenty of amateur programmers who are brilliant and plenty of professional programmers who are morons (I know at least a few). That doesn't mean the distinction isn't important though.
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By Afania 2023-08-10 14:37:24
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Asura.Gweivyth said: »
My spend: 250/month, or 3000 yearly.

Your personal spend doesn't represent how it's like to run a big company though.

If you run a big company you also need to add salary for employees from multiple departments involved in the project, including content planners, project managers, marketing team(including NA team), hardware maintenance people, law department, HR, admin, network engineers, localization.....

You also need to add equipment fee and office rent+maintenance fee.

I am pretty sure I may miss other potential cost, the above is what I can think of quickly.

Asura.Gweivyth said: »
Assume I charged them even HALF of what a base FFXI subscription is:

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

This estimate is also not accurate. In the field of business if a consumer paid $13 to a company, a company isn't going to receive full $13 because every "middleman" wants a cut. The platform will take a cut, % depends on the platform used. The payment system like PayPal will take a cut. Your bank will take a cut when the transfer comes in and your government will want sales tax.

After you paid all of these what's left would be your real profit. It is certainly not monthly fee earned minus hosting fee paid = profit sort of deal.
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By Dazusu 2023-08-10 16:30:49
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Carbuncle.Maletaru said: »
Is this just a rhetorical or sarcastic joke

Both.
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By GetHelpNerd 2023-08-10 16:48:19
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it's funny to watch threads devolve into this back and forth every month or so.

is SE lazy and a ***company in general? yes
is coding on a game this old not fun or easy? yes

my hot take is that you all are to blame for not bitching about how lazy and ***SE was being sooner, to the score of a decade ago. they got complacent because they have so many *** white knights who think they can do no wrong and now that complacency has turned into them doing literally nothing
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By Asura.Eiryl 2023-08-10 16:56:42
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That's not a hot take, that's just exactly what happened.

Not just to XI. Everything. Complacent. Apathetic. Zombies. Bringing shame to the species.
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