Random Thoughts.....What Are You Thinking?

Outside of VII-R (which I haven't played, but it seems like on average people liked the gameplay), X and X-2 were the last time a numbered Final Fantasy had universally-praised gameplay. And it just seems like they're ignoring that. You'd think after all the fumbling around they'd at least try it one more time.

Persona 5 has sold 8.3 million copies. And that's coming from a much smaller publisher than Square-Enix with far less marketing budget and a name that isn't nearly as well-known as Final Fantasy. Honkai Star Rail, another turn-based RPG, appears to be practically printing money as well.

Final Fantasy X has sold 20.8 million copies compared to XV's 10 million copies. 14 million of X's sales came during the PS2 era, which is before gaming grew to mainstream audiences. And if you want to compare that to the action game whose combat is being emulated for XVI, the average Devil May Cry game only seems to sell about 1.8 million copies.

In answer to your question, it seems any time TBRPG is published as a mainstream title, it sells like a mainstream title. The problem is most of them don't get that kind of budget in the first place, and Square-Enix doesn't even try. The idiots at the top who are trying to sell you the idea that games are a thing of the past and we have to make way for the Blockchain are the exact same idiots who are trying to sell you the idea that RPGs are a thing of the past and we have to make way for action games.

Having gotten rid of Facebook - the only popular social media I was ever a part of - I can honestly say I can understand why a lot of people have a hard time leaving it. People share stuff from those sites all the time, but unless you're on that platform they often won't show it to you.

You'll click on it and it'll be like "Oh you need to sign into your Twitter/Instagram/TikTok/Facebook/whatever to view this". It feels like you're missing out, even if it's only funny enough to generate a small gust of air from your nostrils. But that's how they get you.

Sigh…

Just today i had two harsh discussion at work.

So tiresome…. I dont want to work today anymore….

It seems the dweeb who crashed a truck into the white house fence was a 19yo from Missouri who was going to "seize power."

This says something about the educational system in Missouri. Nothing good though.

Don't limit it to just Missouri. He's just the one who either got there first or had the balls do to more than post about it.

FF as an IP was created and owned by SE, and they appointed Yoshida as the producer now. They can make FF into whatever they want because they are the creator and owner.

Imagine if you write a sci-fi fiction that sold well, then after the 2nd book you decide to change the story into romance focused, either because romance has a bigger market or because you like romance story now, or because you feel you aren't good at sci-fi stories. Then angry fans tell you your way of writing your own book is wrong. Umm...

Maybe, just maybe Yoshida doesn't like to play turn based games. Or maybe he wants to create something that isn't turn based. Maybe he loves dmc and game of thrones so much that he wants to create his own version of it. That doesn't make him a western bully. Every gamer has their preferred genre and maybe turn based just isn't his cup of tea.

If I am Yoshida Id rather create whatever I like and feel comfortable creating. Why is it wrong?


What do you mean by western bullies and proper jrpg lol. You sound like turn based haters are all westerns. Ironically some of the best turn based rpg like Divinity original sin2 was made by a western company. Genre defining arpg like Dark soul/elden ring were made by Japanese. No stereotypes plz.

More like opinions of certain individuals.....

Been playing FF since 1, Id call myself a diehard FF fan. X's battle system is somewhat terrible in my mind compared with the rest of the FF. It's less intense than ATB system from 4 5 6 7 8 9 10-2 13 trilogy. In terms of immersion it's worse than 11, 12, 14, 15 which doesn't have a separate screen for battles.

In terms of strategy it's mostly "if enemy is weak to X, use X" which offers very little depth and choices. The characters are visibly unbalanced in the original version(never played international). I fail to see anything positive gameplay wise from ffx tbh.

It's story presentation was strong in 2000s with voice acting, music and realtime cs. Because of story It did left a strong impression in my mind back then, but the gameplay was painful all the way for me, and really gameplay was the main reason why this game didn't enter "my favourite rpg top list" despite story was strong tbh. I highly doubt ffx's good reputation comes from gameplay but not story.

I have no idea why turn based fans prefer turn based ff so much tbh. I've played all of the FF mainline titles and sequels since FF1, I just don't get the appeal. I can name a dozen of indie rpg with deeper turn based battle system than any of the old FF. Imo turned based battle certainly isn't FF's main selling point. To me it has always been the world with FF references and FF classes.

There is no need to try to define what ff is as if your opinion represents all FF fans.

Must just be the articles that come across my feed and the people in my friend circles then because it definitely seems like it's pretty unanimous that at least the gameplay itself of the Final Fantasy franchise started diving after 10.

Even people who hate FFX say its gameplay is its one positive, and people who love FFXV say its gameplay is its one negative.

Hell, while I was looking for sales figures so no one accuses me of pulling numbers out of my rear-end, one thing I stumbled upon was an article which seems to just matter-of-factly state "To many fans, Final Fantasy X was the last great entry in the series. To bring back the glory days, Square Enix may have to do the unthinkable and start creating direct sequels."

Besides, I just came up with a mountain of evidence that shows both that companies that make turn-based games are finding success, and Square-Enix's repeated attempts at throwing crap at the wall without testing it is failing them miserably. The burden of proof is now yours.

EDIT: And just so we're clear, my original point was that Square-Enix is being led by idiots. Have fun proving that wrong. (Yes, XIV is successful. But with their track record of everything else from the last 10-15 years, that would be a fluke. If anything, they just got lucky that the game just started picking up steam at the same time as a global pandemic forced everyone indoors and WoW saw a mass exodus)

One more great trailer. Really looking forward to the PC release in a year or two.

Yeah, gameplay in FFXV is definitely a big negative. But it isn't because of arpg, but because of its utterly bland open world and side quests.

It would have been a much better game if it's a non-open world, narrative focused arpg like they originally planned.


Of course, if you constantly read posts from certain jrpg group it will feel like majority of people thinks this way. But this does not mean people outside of the circles thinks the same.

Case to the point You have no idea how many "Noooooo turn-based rpg sucks!!!" kind of Posts came from Genshin Impact and Honkai 3rd community after Honkai Star Rail was announced. That is because most of the Mihoyo fans grew up playing Mihoyo arpg, so turn based is not fun for many people in such community. By that logic I can say turn based isn't popular too because my game friend circles are full of turn based rpg haters?

Many jrpg fans experienced golden era of 90s to 00s. They look for specific experience happened at that time. That's really the reason why they took every chances to bash current gen games. It isn't even turn based v.s arpg problem imo.

I have no problem with turn-based genre btw. I just don't think old FF or even all of SE's rpg did turn-based well enough compare with indie games these days. Most of the SE turn based rpg suffers from optimal strategy being spamming specific enemy weakness elements or using limit breaks/summons, or spamming cure or potions to heal when you lose HP, or having status ailments mostly useless. Even in 2018 this wasn't improved in octopath traveller at all. OT pushed the same strategy-less weakness spamming to the max lol.

Even if ff16 is turn based I highly doubt its battle system will be competitive against indie games or Larian Studios games. Good gameplay is not SE's strength from my experience. So what's the point to compete in an area that they aren't good at?

SE's strength has always been art, music, presentation, story, ....in that case genre doesn't matter. FF6, 7, 8, 9, 10 were all very memorable to me at that time, because of the incredible presentation that was way ahead of every other competitor in the market. But gameplay wasn't what I remember the most about them in anyway. All I remember about the gameplay was annoying random encounters and spamming the same optimal move with very little strategy lol. Honestly I don't miss it.

I feel people just want good old experience from 90-2000 (which is legit) but totally missed why older games gave such feel. Then blame the missing feels on a different battle system, which isn't fair.

A very fair assessment.

The dog keeps trying to kill the crab

But its cute!

PSVR2 RE4 remake, might be fun. I wonder why they decided to remake metal gear solid 3 over 1... lol.

PS5 portal device, seems bad if it only remote plays over wifi. They should have just copied the switch. Remote play always been horrible from my experiences in hotels or anywhere.

Yoshida knows what he's doing.

Frankly, older players aren't much of his concern. Younger players want faster paced games, less skill required - which makes it more accessible, which means more people can play it, which means more people might buy it, which makes them more money plus Yoshida gets to do what he wants.

I'm not really against it, I don't think he's a bully or that it's an insult. What I think Yoshida does is make games - like making a new rubix cube, or monopoloy game, etc. He knows how the various parts work in turn based, action, theme park, etc. He's doing it with FF, which makes long time fans miffed, but for people who've been playing FF games for 20+ years, times change. I think it's a poor direction to go in personally, but it might make them more money and it'll probably be decent for what it is.

Idk if Yoshida choose dmc/Game of thrones hybrid entirely because of money and market size even though he said that. It's possible that it is one of the reason, But I feel there may be something more.

I am a strong believer that every game creator has their strength and weakness. Or their "style". It is not something that can be easily changed with money. Miyazaki Hidetaka's most popular games are souls like, the way he presents the world and gameplay is unique. sid meier's strength is simulation/management. Sakaguchi Hironobu's strength is world building and story presentation.

Tbh, I don't know anybody that can build any type of game then somehow successfully in every area. Excel in one area is difficult enough, excel in all area is near impossible. Those who excels are people with a vision. What I think Yoshida is best at, isn't coming up with something totally unique, but polish a game that he likes and push the quality to the max with SE's budget. And finish it on time:something Tetsuya Nomura isn't good at.

We all know Yoshida is a big fan of wow. So he studied wow thoroughly and made his version of wow with extremely good execution. That's why ff14 was successful. It wasn't because it's a wow clone, too many wow clones in the market was never successful like ff14. Yoshida was successful because he made a game that he truly loves.

If you look at things this way, rather than "Yoshida doesn't care about us old gamers anymore!!!", based on what he said about turn-based genre I personally think Yoshida picked arpg because it fits his narrative game vision more.

In that case it isn't fair to ask Yoshida to make something else that isn't his style. Yoshida isn't Sakaguchi, of course his FF will be different. He explained several time that besides market size and money, turn-based doesn't feel right for this game and it will be difficult to do it right. Let's just respect his vision.

I am quite a huge fan of turn-based games btw. But I'd rather see a good turn-based game in the market with chess-like deep choices and strategic combat: which has never accomplished by SE in the past. If Yoshida only wants to make a narrative focused experience with combat that is easily accessible, he can do action battle system, idc personally.

nice so basically we can do stage 3 fast if its just 1 mill

Endings c&d done. why is this game so frigging weird? I have complaints.

My point is more that he's just a game-maker. Some people like some games more than other games - but he's just a game-maker.

No different than one guy is good at woodcarving and building toy soldiers, another guy is good at building rubix cube, another guy is good at making card games. They're all a kind of game-maker but they don't build the same thing. Think of them as game-smiths, or game-engineers.

I think it's *us* who cares too much about this, like the people in that Star Trek: TNG where Wesley brings a game on the Enterprise and everyone gets addicted.

Finally a FF that has some grit and doesn't look like a boyband or kpop music video cast.
Really looking forward to this.

All food is food. Doesn't mean I want to eat just what the chef decides he's in the mood to make. There are other restaurants I could go to that will make what I want to eat, and I'll dine there. Sure, the chef is the expert, and has more knowledge than I do....but sometimes my tastebuds don't want the newest trend, they want an old favorite.

The problem with the genre of turn-based is that when the king of the genre is abandoning it, it doesn't make those of us who prefer that style have much hope for the future.

This really isn't about doubting Yoshida's intellect in the field or choices- trust me, we understand its their call and yes, its what a larger segment of potential buyers want. But two things keep ringing in my head- the power of a Loss Leader on marketing and sales; and why does a company with the track record of SE feel they need to listen to their customers at the expense of beauty? They're the pros at this. They spent decades giving us not what we wanted, but what they knew we would want. Why so cowardly now?

As an XIV alpha and beta tester they should listen to their testers.

And they may be professionals, but their record in AAA releases for the past few years hardly shows it.

very fair point. I'm probably like most rose-colored-glasses fans of SE, thinking a lot farther back in time than their current track record.

Dog just trying to skill up!

Hmmmm....

Im cuter than him

I mean....its a dog. They eat their own poop. Vladimir Putin is cuter.