"After the game had relaunched, the media reviewed it very well, and the fans were very happy, we had such positive feedback." Yoshida said. This time, FF14-the newly rebuilt FF14-was viewed not as a metaphorical trainwreck, but as an immensely enjoyable MMO that captured the spirit of the Final Fantasy franchise. On August 27, 2013, A Realm Reborn was released to the public. When it came to designing the other content and things that go into the actual game, that's when we started taking the larger development staff and we gradually did that process." On December 31, 2012, service for the original FF14 was terminated, allowing all of Yoshida's development team to shift their focus to A Realm Reborn. "The larger team was instructed to follow suit with my designs, but keep keep up with the old FF14, to keep that running. "A Realm Reborn's design and settings were done with a smaller scale team, including myself and just a few members of the development team," he said. Once his team was on the same page, Yoshida faced another problem: He couldn't transition everyone to work full time on developing A Realm Reborn because he had to simultaneously maintain service on a drowning FF14. There's no point in having people, even if they're so skilled, if they don't believe in the title." "I made sure to weed out the people that didn't believe in FF14, and people who thought there was no saving FF14. We wanted to establish what kind of gameplay experience we wanted to provide to our fans." He then had to ensure the development staff were up to the task.
"I couldn't get a straight answer of what kind of game they had wanted to make," he said, "and so we needed to start from there. He began by interviewing the development staff of the original FF14.
Yoshida points to three primary reasons for FF14's failure. When designing FF14, Square Enix succumbed to the pressures of having to succeed a second time. But great success, Yoshida said, can breed great failure. See, Square Enix had experienced eight long years of success with its first MMO, 2003's Final Fantasy 11-so much so that it wanted to replicate that accomplishment by making a new MMO for a new generation of gaming hardware.
How did the company fail to see that its Next Big Thing suffered from mortal wounds? And once it had no choice but to look, how did it then proceed with releasing that game into the wild? The answer, according to Yoshida, was hubris. What's not been said, however, is how Square Enix originally created such a junky MMO for one of its most important franchises. He succeeded (more on that later), and much has been said about how great A Realm Reborn is. Immediately after FF14's initial launch, Yoshida was brought on to restructure the development team and rebuild the game from scratch.
0 kommentar(er)
