Did Ff16 Flop?

wym deplete the stagger bar is such a deep and interesting mechanic, you don't love knocking something on its *** or it sits in a stunned status for a duration while the bar refills itself and you deal a bunch of extra damage? You don't love that every attack you do the enemy model doesn't flinch or react to being brutally pummeled until there is an awkward forced cutscene that has them suddenly up and staggering away to let you know you're now in the next phase?

I'm honestly fabbergasted, completely and utterly bamboozled and dumbfounded that they would exclude such a deep and rich mechanic from the pixel remasters they did last year. Maybe we'll see it in the next re-remaster in 5-10 more years when the current assets just aren't feeling polished enough.

Appreciate that FF games might not be considered difficult in the traditional sense (XV's Pitioss Ruins was an intense platformer though), but I've always felt that the real battle is the finding the comfortable and personal balance between time taken and progression. Especially true for FFXI where the time taken element dovetails into efficiency of simultaneous completion of multiple elements.

Secondly, being able to think about your character builds and tinker with stat bonuses/abilities to match your playstyle whilst you're repeating content for resources and/or XP keeps your brain exercised.


Personally, I find it lonely playing single-player games, even though I don't much interact with others in XI/XIV - the sense of a shared, persistent world with an economy is something I hope they bring to future 'single-player' FFs. That and perhaps an episodic release schedule so that players can chat about storyline and builds as stuff comes out.

The Echoes of the Fallen DLC felt like a flop to me. I'd be pissed if I paid 10 USD for this DLC standalone just to only get 3 hrs of content.

not as bad as Nintendo DLC but still pretty bad. hope the 2nd one is more substantial

Speaking of DLC, just compare how much you'd like to know when Elden Ring's DLC is releasing vs anything about XVI. Both have action combat, both have rpg elements, seems like jrpg+action can work.

And that wall of nonsense folks, is why you should not bump this thread!

I thought it was written by ChatGPT lol.

No, which was a shame to be honest. I was just thinking about entering the market near the end of December because technical analysis shows that SE stock price will bounce for 20%+ on Dec 27.

Then the price went from 4674 JPY on Dec 22 to 5909 JPY on Feb 5. So I missed that chance to make +25% in a month. but oh well. Always more short term trading opportunity in the future.

Your chatGPT post is not entirely wrong, but it is surface level of conclusion. Many creative companies like Nintendo are publicly traded, this did not kill their creativity. You can always find opposite examples to counter the arguments that you made. So the conclusion of "public traded = no creativity" is not universal fact.

Same can be said for "investors want the game made cheap" bit. Literally anyone involved would want the game made cheap and fast, investors or not. The reason is simple: you need to pay people to make a game, but no one has unlimited resources. So at one point people involved in the process will need to find ways to lower the cost or else nothing gets done. This has nothing to with investors or public stock trading, it is the reality of life. The real question is what do you sacrifice when you make it cheap.

That is why I call it ChatGPT, your made incomplete conclusions bases on partial data, without actual in-depth experience of any of these things.

Nah, games from many smaller companies flop all the time. You just aren't a fan of them to care to begin with.

Just this year we have Gollum, their dev (Daedalic Entertainment) had a fair share of fans from adventure games community. They flopped anyways. And then there is Saints Row, which killed their developer Volition games.

Games flop and studios shut down all the time, big or small, private or public. Such is the nature of this business. The reason why game dev often copy other successful formula is because the chance of pushing a new idea and fail in the market is just too damn high. Since failing a game may lead to the death of a company, of course game developers would rather play safe.

At least SE did fair number of experiment on smaller projects with external studios over the years. Games like Paranormasight(visual novel), Harvestella(farm sim+rpg) doesn't feel mainstream at all.
Their bigger budget games like DQ12, FF16 and FF7R are more mainstream titles.

To me this feels like a good spread of genres for different fans. If you want indie budget games you get farm sims or visual novel. If you want AAA action oriented narrative games you have FF16. If you want a more traditional big budget jrpg you get DQ12, FF7R or remasters of old IP.

I have no idea you got so mad because you don't like FF16. Yoshi-P said it is a narrative focused game for casual players. And they delivered exactly that. If you don't like it you could play something else instead of attacking the people who worked on it.


But you are here complaining every game from them has to be exactly what you want, this is NOT reasonable.

This was just a bad game in general though.

FFO was a *** banger.

My two cents:

I think most people just have the mindset of "if something isn't broken, don't fix it" when it comes to their game franchises. SE is trying to "fix" Final Fantasy to make more money.

We all (or most of us all) want the traditional FF combat with a lineup of 3/4 party members in an old school RPG enviornment and the comradery/companionship that has come with that through the story. Instead we got "this is Clive's story" action-jrpg with one character.

Don't get me wrong. It was a good game. I'd even say a great game, but it was so far from what we know as Final Fantasy growing up that it was tough pill to swallow for many, which I can understand.

Not me. I prefer real time battle system without party member swap. They can add companionship with AI companions or none combat support NPC or use story to convey that.

I honestly can't see myself go back and play 90s old school turn base rpg with 5-30 seconds animation time after every action, with super simple strategy aspect that was basically just picking a damaging move from the menu then heal up when HP/MP is low.

I think the old school FF combat system needs to change in this modern era, if they want to do turn based at least do it like Larian studio games. I am not sure if there are that many FF fans still want a 90s era combat system tbh. It feels SO dated. Not because of turn based, but because of how the entire system is designed.

It's been my experience that people fall back to emotionally arguments (I feel like... vomit) / attacks (you're a bad person) when they simply can't respond with reason or logic.

You nailed it. People can't muster the strength to say they were wrong and move on.

afania hasn't been arguing in good faith anytime this topic comes up.

the fact that he's still arguing SE as a company is doing well or putting out quality product is absolutely wild.

SE is doing crap creatively but they are going to put out another console Mana game this year so they can be doing whatever so long as that makes it to release.

There isn't going to be another Vagrant Story. My expectations are unimportant to my personal happiness.

I'm interested in the Mana series, Trials was pretty damn good. Thought I really wish they would remake Vandal Hearts II, that game was awesome.

lolno

1) I didn't say all of the SE game has high quality. Some games like Babylon's Fall is obviously bad. Many other games like FF7 remake, octopath traveler 2, star ocean 2 remake, FF14 all has generally positive reputation in the gaming community. This is fact if you read game forums.

FF16 to me feels more like having polarizing views than flopped. Having polarizing opinions in the community is NOT the same as flopped. I would use the term flopped to describe games like Gollum.

2) Whether a company do well or not is relative, not absolute. Compare with companies like Ubisoft, which has more than 70% stock price decrease in the past 5 years, SE isn't that bad. I simply referenced a number of companies that did better and worse than SE to show where SE is in the entire industry.

But you like to cite a top 1% company in the industry that did better then argue that SE is failing, this is not arguing in good faith.

Like, you even said FF14 does not have good performance because wow(a MMO that is unlikely to be beaten by any other mmo) has more sub. How is that arguing in good faith lol?

If you want to make an argument that SE is not doing well, reference ALL of the companies in the same industry. Don't reference the best company in the industry then exclude the rest, don't reference companies from another industry.

Otherwise I can not take your points seriously.

Ff7 rebirth will outsell ffShiteen day 1.

The funny thing is that a some of the complaints about FFXVI being repetitive action combat with a lesser focus on character building is basically a staple of the Mana series. It's also chasing broad appeal with a cuter fantasy aesthetic and will be all ages. Maybe there will be some sad/dark plot points but there won't be any sexy adult themes that get handled awkwardly. It'll probably still be awkward, but in a localization kind of way.

It only has to be better than the ps2 version for me to be completely happy that they are still making them.

And yes I will play any tactical fantasy rpg at least once so long as they even remotely tried and I have the time. Triangle Strategy wasn't FFT but it was good for a once through.

Speaking of this topic....aren't you the one who attacked anyone as SE fanboy for judging SE stock price objectively using financial data instead of personal hatred on their games?

https://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/57464/square-enix-holdings-has-shed-nearly-2-billions/3#3678303





Well SE stock price is 6343 JPY today, or +20% if you enter the market in 2023 Sept at 5318 JPY when this discussion happened.
ヽ(ヅ)ノ

I said it again and again, I am not a SE fan nor I care about SE game direction. I only look at financial data and metacritic score and compare them with every other companies in the same industry when I judge SE's current situation. You really need to stop labeling anybody who disagree with you as SE fan.

it's down 11.3% over the last year.

minimizing datasets so that your opinion looks stronger is a sign of someone arguing in bad faith.

if the stock dipped 40% tomorrow and then the next day it rose 10% you'd use that as a metric for why it's doing good.

overall just moving goalposts and incredibly disingenuous.