FF14 team fired, going F2P until it's "Good"

[MetalSymphony]

FFXIV Site

So SE sacked the entire FF XIV Team, and has announced that the game is going Free to Play until such time as it is deemed "Good"........which will likely be never.

SE, it's a lost cause. Just sack Wada, kill 14 and work on making VsXIII not suck.

 

[ShadowNeko003]

Oh my god. FFIV is not my style, being a MMO, but it sucks that much?!

 

[Jacky392000]

I heard it was really bad to the core, but I'm not sure if it was that bad. I'm not into MMO games anyway. I actually really loved FFXIII though and hopefully FFversusXIII will be more badass.

 

[Sage Shinigami]

You've played FF14, right? This isn't just generic fanboy NKWTFTTA, is it?

 

[garfield15]

Oh wow, I know it sucked and all, but I didn't think it would suck hard enough to have all those people sacked.

 

[kikaider287]

Isn't that a bit....harsh? I haven't played FFXIV yet, but i didn't look as if it were THAT shitty.

 

[MrMonk]

Let me correct some misconceptions with this article.
http://www.industrygamers.com/news/square-enix-shuffles-final-fantasy-mmo-staff-delays-ps3-version/

Naoki Yoshida has been named the new director and producer for the game, replacing former director Nobuaki Komoto and former producer Hiromichi Tanaka. Yoshida is a relative unknown having worked as a director or producer on smaller Tactics RPGs previously, including Record of Agarest War, Cross Edge, and Record of Agarest War Zero.

It’s worth nothing that while Nobuaki Komoto lost his position as director, he remains a part of the team as Lead Game Designer, having previously served as director for the first FF MMO, Final Fantasy XI. There’s no word on where Hiromichi Tanaka was moved to, but he is one of the original game designers for the first Final Fantasy game and also holds a position as Square Enix’s Senior Vice President of Software Development. Tanaka issued a statement along with the official announcement apologizing for the original state of Final Fantasy XIV.

Of those on the list of new positions:

Senior Concept Artist
Akihiko Yoshida (FINAL FANTASY XII, Vagrant Story)

Was previously the Art Director on the title.

And the rest:

Assistant Director: Shintaro Tamai [Graphics director for various FF games (7, 8, 10, 13) mostly specializing in battle graphics and special effects. He was also the director of Front Mission 5.]

Lead Game Designer: Nobuaki Komoto [Originally director of FFXIV, it seems they're reducing his responsibilities so he can focus on designing the stuff he originally specialized in on FFXI - the scenario and quest design.]

Lead Combat System Designer: Akihiko Matsui [Originally the lead battle data planner for FFXI, he took over entirely as battle director for Aht Urhgan and Wings of the Goddess after Katsuhisa Higuchi left S-E.]

Technical Advisor: Yoshihisa Hashimoto [Ex-Sonic Team programmer, director of Sonic Unleashed and technical director of the Hedgehog Engine. Left Sonic Team and joined S-E in 2009 to work on their next-generation engine platform.]

Lead Programmer: Hideyuki Kasuga [Network programmer for the FFXI client and Dirge of Cerberus online mode. Lead programmer for Gyromancer.]

Senior Concept Artist: Akihiko Yoshida [FFXIV Art director, character designer for all of Matsuno's games, character designer for FF3 DS and FF 4 Warriors of Light. God's gift to S-E's art teams.]

Lead Artist: Hiroshi Takai [Mostly a battle graphic/effects director for most of the SaGa games, more recently overall director of The Last Remnant.]

Lead UI Designer/Lead Web Designer: Hiroshi Minagawa [Director of FFXII and Tactics Ogre PSP. Art director for all of Matsuno's games. God's other gift to S-E's art teams.]

A good number of the rest are XI vets, and the people they're replacing have probably been moved onto another title (possibly even XI). 'Sacked' is a bit much. Essentially, Square did some reshuffling, but the game's in dire shape and the public needs to feel that there's a completely new team handling the project. So the announcement.

 

[Jacky392000]

You've played FF14, right? This isn't just generic fanboy NKWTFTTA, is it?

are you asking me or MetalSymphony? nope, I never bothered trying out the MMO Final Fantasy games since I never liked online gaming.

 

[Lynxara]

The poor shape of FFXIV is not exaggerated. Japanese companies don't apologize for games that fans merely complain about. Japanese companies only complain when there's a perception they've released a product that was fundamentally broken.

If you're wondering "How was a Square game so bad?", it's broadly believed that Square farmed a lot of the development work out to a Chinese studio to help make sure the game would be compatible with the lucrative Chinese MMO market. Chinese MMOs are typically of much lower quality than Japanese and American players expect.

 

[Shir]

FF14 looks pretty. It has a hell of a lot of great ideas and a lot of potential in it... a really damn good atmosphere in it.

It's a shame it is just so fucking unplayable...

Off topic. I never understood why they called this game FF14 and just not call it FF Online... same with FF11.