Are modern console killing Final Fantasy?

[Demonicdan]

A series with 8 games is obviously going to be showing signs of decay, be thankful they made it this far without making "Final fantasy Kart."

Umm... They already did [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chocobo_Racing].

Chocobo Racing!

I don't think mario kart clones get much worse than that...

 

[Manji187]

Its hard to make a game with the same basic concept over and over again.

Heh...90% of all games have the same concept: Protagonist (& possibly also his/ her crew) departs on a quest/ journey/ mission to save/ protect/ rescue whatever is dear to him/ her and/ or others (usually that would be the world)from some form of evil.

Although the latter part (saving from evil) is not obligatory...the quest part always applies because a game story is essentially a quest from point A (beginning) to point B (credits).

Just once I would like to see SE make an FF that is not about saving stuff (the kingdom, the world, the universe)....nor about destroying stuff for that matter. But that's prolly not gonna happen cuz hey...FF's are known for their "epicness" right?

 

[LogicNProportion]

No because all of the talent that was in square left and founded mistwalker.

Now that's the straight forward reason why final fantasy sucks nowadays.

Haha, pretty much, really. Lost Odyssey is 100x better than Final Fantasy XIII.

Agreed. Plus, Lost Odyssey had White Rabbit in its commercial, making it 200x better.

And it's all Square's fault with horrible decisions. They're trying to service a broader market when they should have stuck with doing things for the fanbase they already had. They can't even really use the "The fans were getting older." excuse either, because out of anyone who would truly appreciate the extensive narrative/etc in the games would be an older, already-understanding audience.

It doesn't hurt that they are openly getting publicly butthurt every time one of their games proves to be a steaming pile. The guy who directed XIII, the same guy who directed X-2, BAAWWWWWWWWW'd on so many interviews how fans like FF6/7, and not his stuff.

 

[HyenaThePirate]

FFXI, an atrocity? Clearly you haven't played it. The plot may not quite stand up to its brethren (though it far exceeds most MMOs in that respect), but the world is just so vibrant and alive. The world of Vana'diel is deeper and more fully realized than any other Final Fantasy.

Oh no, I have played it, much to my chagrin.

The amount of grinding required to do anything in this game is mind numbing and hearken back to old mmorpg design that were already getting stale when FFXI was released. It's practically an insult to human dignity.

The combat system was barely one... you'd wait for your long ass timer to actually cycle throught so you could do something or wait for your TP bar to fill up so you could do something. And when that timer is full, better not mistime thing or you'll miss your skillchain... the excitment was almost to much to bear /scarcasm. The amount of waiting in FFXI was incredible, and even combat didn't stop it from happening - heck, combat was all about sitting in a corner and waiting for someone to pull a monster - freaking fascinating. Speaking of waiting... nothing more fun than missing the Jeuno boat and having to wait 30 minutes for it to come back.

Systems wise, S-E had no clue what they were doing - the ninja ended up being the greatest tank despite him being designed as debuff/dps. The Beastmaster was designed has a solo-ing class, and than penalised for his good solo-ing abilities.

Don't even get me started on zoning time, travel time, the whole 'alt for mule' thing which actually cost real money and was made necessary by level capped content, the endless need for gils, the imbalanced classes design, the poorly thought out way Dynamis and other end game activity worked (Nothing more fun than having that 1 week timer monster stolen from you by another linkshell because of a provoke bug! If you thought WoW drama was bad...), the joke that was Sky and Sea, the fact that gear progression being linear means that it all doesn't really matter, etc.

While the zones were beautiful, most of them were fairly emtpy except for some monsters (no npcs to interact with) and most of them were useless - if the zone wasn't a good grind spot, you'd be lucky to ever see a soul in there.

Not to mention that FFXI recycled it's zone shamelessly... you'd do 1-18, than restart a subjob up to 1-33, than go back to your main job up to 75 (assuming you didn't want to have one of the special job) - this mean you'll see the same zone over and over again until you finally broke out of the slump at around level 35. And what more, Genkai, story based mission and so on usually made you go back to the same zone over and over again, except everytime you'd go in a bit deeper.

It had a beautiful setting, a good story (if you can get beyond the fact that you only get tiny morsels of it every hundred of hours of gameplay - why play the game when you can watch the entire story on you tube really...), but everything else it did wrong.

I have heard that it improved itself greatly once WoW came out and the servers started emptying themselves, but I was long gone by then.

LMAO OMG man, I haven't played this game in like 3 YEARS, and with ONE post you brought back EVERY haunting memory. I used to be ADDICTED, but when I left, I never went back and realized how horrible alot of it was.

Dude... man not only were the levels recycled, the "zones" were beautiful sure, but they weren't even that complex... If you really think about it, the majority of them were just like Final Fantasy XIII's areas... very pretty, very beautiful, very aesthetic looking CORRIDORS. I mean, it's not like there was epic space to travel in... within one or two trips to a new "zone" You'd have the entire place memorized. I remember the first time I leveled in Crawler's Nest, I got lost and became scorpion food. After that, I new every tunnel by heart... on my SECOND time there.

Also, what sucked badly was the absolute DEPENDENCE on group leveling... After Level 10, solo-ing was nigh impossible, even with the one "solo" class Beastmaster. I've often complained on these forums about the trap of "scaling enemies," because most times this is implemented badly by developers and results in at some point your character being unable to fight even the simplest of creatures. I mean, two zones away from a city, fighting a creature 20 levels BELOW me could become a Desperate battle for my LIFE. That's just not right. Yet, fighting something 1 level ABOVE me was a recipe for disaster, usually resulting in you getting your ass handed to you on a platter.

So the result was that you HAD to party and level together. Which made things worse because:

1. Once people discovered the good "leveling areas" those were the ONLY places you leveled. EVER. EEEVER...... Need to get from level 17 to 20? Off to the DUNES with you. Then for 2 more levels off to the frozen wastes with you, but you have to run through an entire area filled with high level face stomping monsters that would destroy your entire LIFE if you make the mistake of attracting them... Of course, sometimes you'd make it to the tower trailing a horde of horrible creatures that would then turn around and wreck any person foolish enough not to beat you into the zone. Speaking of.. remember how the zoning and loading weren't always on the same timer, so you could wait for a load screen to finish to find that while you were "zoning" you were getting destroyed behind a black screen by the monster you were fleeing? Oh fun. Nothing worse either than to be in a good pull/kill group getting those chain kills when lo, an asshat cometh trailing a wight and bringing death and destruction down upon all the poor little unsuspecting groups... wiping ENTIRE parties. Worse, Agro from mobs could transfer to OTHER parties nearby.. man.. that was miserable.
Then to top it all off... When you die.. You lost EXP and could even lose a LEVEL! De-leveling can cost you your place in a party... humiliating.

2. People who are grinding become jerks. They expected you to know your job, and be good AT instantly. Nobody is here to have "fun" it's about getting the most kills we can so we can move on to the next grind somewhere else. So if you want to get in and have some "work", you'd better have the BEST gear available for that level... and a sackful of potions, food, ingredients, drinks, and whatever else might be needed. Anything less and you would be either sitting on the sideline like the lanky kid with MS during dodgeball in gym class, or worse, you'd end up in a ragtag bunch of pariahs who couldn't get into other groups either. Being forced to assemble in the "scrubs" league was almost an act of SHAME. The irony is that in most anime or manga, such groups would eventually become the heroes, surmounting all odds to defeat the greatest evil in the world! But no not here... here you are the special olympics leveling group, usually spending more time waiting for someone to raise you or running back from the nearest save crystal than actually killing monsters.

Ah, my friend, I remember those days with you. I served my time as a Dragoon Knight of Vana'diel. I salute you, fellow survivor of that dark time.
I feel we have a bond you and I... "Our time in Hell."

 

[loc978]

Squaresoft began screwing the franchise up with FFVII. The PS1 had a huge capacity for graphics and storage space in its day, and they decided to test the limits of what it could do while still trying to make a fun, challenging game with an engaging story. They succeeded that time, but they introduced the death of the series simultaneously: use of 3D-rendered cinematic cutscenes. It all went downhill from there.

 

[For.I.Am.Mad]

No, really really bad decisions are killing Final Fantasy.

 

[Defense]

Square Enix is ruining their games, because they're being pressured to believe that they need to make it pretty while having absolutely unintelligible dialogue.

You want to know how to make your games great again? Simple. Make your games less pretty and include more content. I wasn't completely butthurt just because I didn't have the freedom to get lost for hours on end in FFXIII, but everyone would like a bit of space to move around. Your linearity crap isn't going to be accepted these days, which is exactly why Versus XIII is likely going to be a better game than XIII.

Nah. Final Fantasy has never been good in my eyes, maybe the first three, but after that it was the same thing over and over, and there was better games for me to play.

By first 3 do you mean the actual first 3, or FFI, FFII(SNES), and FFIII(SNES)? Because the actual Final Fantasy II was absolute garbage in my opinion, I don't see how anyone could even tolerate that piece of crap, especially compared to the better Final Fantasy games like VI and Tactics.

Time is killing Final Fantasy.

It's simply not fun anymore.

This happens with any IP after 10-15 years of the same crap.

I wholeheartedly agree.

 

[Sehnsucht Engel]

Nah. Final Fantasy has never been good in my eyes, maybe the first three, but after that it was the same thing over and over, and there was better games for me to play.

By first 3 do you mean the actual first 3, or FFI, FFII(SNES), and FFIII(SNES)? Because the actual Final Fantasy II was absolute garbage in my opinion, I don't see how anyone could even tolerate that piece of crap, especially compared to the better Final Fantasy games like VI and Tactics.

I played the ones for SNES, didn't know about other versions. I think I've played Tactics, but that game is alot different from the usual ones. I'm not a fan of the series anyway.

 

[Something Amyss]

Well, no.

Modern consoles aren't killing Final Fantasy.

Square Enix is killing Final Fantasy.

They're trying to do too much. They're focusing way too much on the presentation, and not nearly enough on story and gameplay.

But to be fair, FFXII is one of my favorite games of all time, and easily my favorite FF game. So I don't completely agree with what I'm saying.

They're not trying to do too much, then. They're just focusing in the wrong areas. But shiny games generally sell.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

I seem to recall that they said trying to make games in the style of "older" Final Fantasy games on today's consoles is next to impossible. The world map would be too big or something like that. That's one of the reasons that they won't remake Final Fantasy VII on the PS3 (that, and Square hates making money. Sorry, had to say it . So, I guess you could be on to something. I do miss my many side quests that tell stories about my characters...

 

[emeraldrafael]

No, and its dumb to say so. developers are killing it. The people who make the game are killing it. You cant really compare it to anyhing since most games on the new system dont have long standing series on them, but when you have XIV main games and more spin offs you're bound to stagnate.

Blaming the consoles because you can do more isnt an excuse. that just means you have more to work with, and can make it the "epic" everyone who likes it claims it to be.

I mean, when Mario first hit 3D on the N64, his game got better because tehy could do more. Consoles have nothting to do with it when your team behind the game is slowly sinking to garbage.

 

[Hollock]

I've only ever played the last one, and I was severly dissapointed. But It's not even like it's stuck in the 90s because games like Chrono Trigger have phenoninally better battle systems. Their problem is that they tried to innovate a stagnant idea, only to have it become worse than the old idea ever was. And they've been super concerned about graphics, ect. since forever.

 

[Tarkand]

So while my theory that it's the newer tech that's causing the problem isn't really accepted, nobody dispute the fact that FF is being killed, that's kinda funny

Ah, my friend, I remember those days with you. I served my time as a Dragoon Knight of Vana'diel. I salute you, fellow survivor of that dark time.
I feel we have a bond you and I... "Our time in Hell."

A paladin here, who was made obselete once it became apparent how good Ninja Tank were...

 

[Carter0108]

Last time I checked you couldn't kill shit.

 

[Computer-Noob]

I think its the other way around, in that Final fantasy is killing modern consoles, but thats just me.

Personally I think Square just needs to replace a large portion of their staff, in hopes of getting something new. From what I see, its as if people are complaining about the same things with each game, so I would imagine a trend like that should give a hint.