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 Post subject: Letter from the Producer, XXXIII (08/08/2012)
PostPosted: Wed Aug 08, 2012 6:00 am 
Square Enix
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FINAL FANTASY XIV fans the world round, the thirty-third Letter from the Producer has arrived for your viewing pleasure!

Pore over the complete letter.


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 Post subject: Re: Letter from the Producer, XXXIII (08/08/2012)
PostPosted: Wed Aug 08, 2012 9:18 am 
Crumpet
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Hello again to all you FFXIVers out there, and to all of you looking forward to FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn. Letter from the Producer #33, incoming!

Well, I’m back from ChinaJoy and the blazing hot metropolis that is Shanghai, and now my sights are leveled on Cologne and gamescom 2012. At the same time, we’re busy preparing a little something special for the upcoming 25th anniversary of FINAL FANTASY, and getting ready for the FFXIV alpha test. The heat is on—figuratively and literally.

Like I wrote last time, there’s been a lot going on. The new teaser site’s gone live, the new game title’s been announced, the new logo’s been revealed, and a new trailer’s been released. We’ve thrown a bunch of stuff out into the public, and now we’re finally shifting into full-blown A Realm Reborn mode.

There’s tons of topics I’d like to get into with you—what’s on the teaser site, what’s in the trailer, the imagery of the new logo, the meaning of some of the keywords we’ve been dropping… But in this letter, I’m just gonna talk about what’s going on in the trailer. Hope that’s cool for now.

The title of the trailer is The Fate of Eorzea, and in editing, the cuts, voiceover, and music were put together with the aim of appealing to people all around the world in a big way. That’s why it might look a little different from other FF series stuff you’ve seen up till now. We tried to make it as much like a hit Hollywood blockbuster trailer as we could.

I know you’re all jonesin’ for some in-game footage, though, and I promise it’s on the way. We’re going to be introducing some of the new content and features, doing walkthroughs on some maps, and showing the overhauled combat and Battle Regimen systems. It’s all going to be coming gradually as part of A Realm Reborn’s marketing leading up to release. I know that’s a bit longer than some of you would like to wait, but I hope you’ll bear with us and keep an eye out for it all!

FFXIV: A Realm Reborn isn’t meant for any one region or specific generation of gamers. Whether you know FF or don’t, whether you’ve ever played it or not, whatever hours you keep, whatever language you speak—it’s a game meant to be enjoyed by anyone in any part of the world.

I hate to repeat myself, but I really want to show the appeal of A Realm Reborn in a gradual and easy-to-understand way, even to people who don’t know anything about the FINAL FANTASY series.

Still, I admit there’s a bit of a persistent traditionalist in me. I did want to use the FF Crystal Theme in the BGM of the trailer, but in the end I decided that it just didn’t fit the vibe. This first trailer really needed something with more punch.

So after really having that inner voice nag at me for a while, I decided to have another trailer made up, which we did thanks to the hard work of the Visual Works crew, Masayoshi Soken and the others from our sound team, and our marketing and PR teams.

For old-school FF fans out there like me, I hope that you can feel a nice mix of the old and the new—some nostalgia and some novelty. This is the second trailer for the game. The last one was The Fate of Eorzea. Let’s go ahead and call this one A Realm Reborn. Boom. That just happened.

And what a rebirth it’s gonna be! The disaster that will usher in the Seventh Umbral Era is threatening Eorzea with darkness and danger. The themes of destruction and rebirth are more powerful than ever for FFXIV, and so what better time to drop a few keywords in the trailers to hint at what’s on the way in the wake of the coming catastrophe. I think it’s a little something special for those playing the game now, since it shows the worlds of the current version and the future version side by side in a way that hasn’t been done before.



Alright, let’s get back to the Eorzea of the current version. Patch 1.23 went live a few days back, and just like with 1.22, we are going to be releasing a 1.23a and 1.23b as well. Look for 1.23a to go live on August 13.

The Seventh Umbral catastrophe looms! Get ready for the grand finale, and dive headlong into your final adventure before the realm is reborn!

Talk to you next letter, or on the forums!

Alright gamescom, here I come!
Bis bald!


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 Post subject: Re: Letter from the Producer, XXXIII (08/08/2012)
PostPosted: Wed Aug 08, 2012 9:49 am 
Crumpet
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I find this potential revival of XIV rather facinating.

I can't think of any other game in the industry's history that has managed (or even tried) to make such a come back after flopping. Some companies try maybe going Free-to-Play to convince people to play their game, others just kind of string themselves along for a year on life support before eventually closing down. But any other company would have probably just cut their losses and moved on.

Admittedly, I've also never known any other game in the industry's history have such a massive budget to flop ratio either. I mean, there are AAA games that don't live up to expectations, AAA games that disappoint people, and AAA games that are kind of overhyped, and heck AAA games that are kind of buggy or have launch issues, but they all tend to at least be technically sound. No other massive AAA release has ever bombed so damn hard by being a completely unplayable mess.

But it looks like SE are pulling out all the stops here, they've got the Visual Works guys (who do all of SE's FMV stuff) pumping out multiple trailers, and there's a recent report that the game currently has 200-300 staff working on it, not including outsourcing. That's a ton of people; your average dev-team usually has more like 50 people. It seems SE have pulled all their staff off of Versus and other projects to get XIV fixed first, which answers where that game disappeared to.

Now we just have to hope it's actually going to be good. Gamescom is next week my friends, the day of reckoning is almost here.

In summary:

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 Post subject: Re: Letter from the Producer, XXXIII (08/08/2012)
PostPosted: Wed Aug 08, 2012 11:36 am 
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The lady narrator doesn't bother me as much as the guy, but I could still do without it lol.

I had no idea they are using so many people for this project. I thought they only had like 20 people haha. That news is refreshing. 2.0 should not dissappoint.

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 Post subject: Re: Letter from the Producer, XXXIII (08/08/2012)
PostPosted: Thu Aug 09, 2012 10:31 am 
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I should be getting internet the first week of September and might be back on FF14. I will be living by myself for the first time since 2000. Twelve years with Thunderstomp, and now he's moving out with his g/f. But they'll still be in town.

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 Post subject: Re: Letter from the Producer, XXXIII (08/08/2012)
PostPosted: Thu Aug 09, 2012 12:41 pm 
Honey Muffin
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time to get a dozen or so cats!


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 Post subject: Re: Letter from the Producer, XXXIII (08/08/2012)
PostPosted: Thu Aug 09, 2012 1:17 pm 
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oh god no, i hate living with pets. i sneeze so often the whole day just becomes one prolonged sneeze.

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 Post subject: Re: Letter from the Producer, XXXIII (08/08/2012)
PostPosted: Thu Aug 09, 2012 3:13 pm 
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After taking a small break to play other games. I really cannot stand the FFXIV engine. My GPU spikes to 80-99% just from looking at random things like bushes or aetheryte crystals. And that's on pretty standard settings with no multisampling.

Games don't normally push it that hard running at max settings with AA X 16, ambient occlusion, depth of field, etc.

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 Post subject: Re: Letter from the Producer, XXXIII (08/08/2012)
PostPosted: Thu Aug 09, 2012 5:11 pm 
Crumpet
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I'd noticed that ever since the damn beta. For whatever reason, the current engine has an absolute shitfest the moment any any flat planes with transparent textures are rendered on the screen. I have no idea what the hell they did.

Basically any foilage, grass, trees, etc near the screen = graphics card fan goes into overdrive.

I found for now the best thing you can do is force the game to 30 fps instead of 60 fps from the in-game system menu. I hate having to run at 30 fps when my computer can handle 60, but it's lowered the temperatures in my room while playing this game massively.

Hopefully, the new engine should run pretty damn well if they expect to get 30 fps or more out of a PS3 with it. The current engine probably couldn't pull more than 5 fps out of it which is why it was never released.


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 Post subject: Re: Letter from the Producer, XXXIII (08/08/2012)
PostPosted: Thu Aug 09, 2012 8:19 pm 
Decent Challenge
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I enjoyed that trailer much much much more than the first one, also i've pretty much ducked out of XIV until 2.0... i figured i'd save my last 20 levels or so for the new version, should enjoy it more i would hope.

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 Post subject: Re: Letter from the Producer, XXXIII (08/08/2012)
PostPosted: Fri Aug 10, 2012 9:19 am 
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Ketrebu wrote:
I'd noticed that ever since the damn beta. For whatever reason, the current engine has an absolute shitfest the moment any any flat planes with transparent textures are rendered on the screen. I have no idea what the hell they did.

Basically any foilage, grass, trees, etc near the screen = graphics card fan goes into overdrive.

I found for now the best thing you can do is force the game to 30 fps instead of 60 fps from the in-game system menu. I hate having to run at 30 fps when my computer can handle 60, but it's lowered the temperatures in my room while playing this game massively.

Hopefully, the new engine should run pretty damn well if they expect to get 30 fps or more out of a PS3 with it. The current engine probably couldn't pull more than 5 fps out of it which is why it was never released.


Does it run choppy at 30 fps?

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 Post subject: Re: Letter from the Producer, XXXIII (08/08/2012)
PostPosted: Fri Aug 10, 2012 9:30 am 
Crumpet
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Pretty much every single game you play on a console in the last 6-7 years runs at 30 fps, it's choppier but you get used to it.


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 Post subject: Re: Letter from the Producer, XXXIII (08/08/2012)
PostPosted: Sat Aug 11, 2012 8:40 am 
Star-Spangled Subligar
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oh man I cant wait for this, I just made my wife watch both trailers.

I logged in yesterday to finish some more quests, I cant beleive how sluggish the engine is in this game. Even when running at 60fps, theres so much input lag its like dragging my mouse through mud.

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 Post subject: Re: Letter from the Producer, XXXIII (08/08/2012)
PostPosted: Sat Aug 11, 2012 8:45 am 
Crumpet
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Did you turn hardware mouse on from the config app? The mouse cursor itself tends to be pretty smooth.

But I agree yeah i'm more excited for the brand new engine and the new UI than anybody. I could deal with the crappy zones/gameplay/etc while playing with friends but the engine always made it such a chore.


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 Post subject: Re: Letter from the Producer, XXXIII (08/08/2012)
PostPosted: Sun Aug 12, 2012 8:55 am 
Star-Spangled Subligar
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Im still surprised its gonna be all zones, thats a big step backwards. Are there any other MMOs that still use zones? Games that have been released in the last 2-3 years.

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 Post subject: Re: Letter from the Producer, XXXIII (08/08/2012)
PostPosted: Sun Aug 12, 2012 9:30 am 
Crumpet
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It's a shame, but it's not that big of a deal if it only takes a few seconds to load. At least the current XIV (and presumably the new one) fixed the most annoying part of it from XI, that you'd lose messages while you're zoning; doesn't happen in XIV.

It was probably required as part of also getting it on the PS3. A PC would have had no trouble streaming everything with like 2GB+ memory per process and always having additional virtual memory on the HDD to hand, but a PS3 only has a measly 256MB of main memory (+256MB video memory).


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 Post subject: Re: Letter from the Producer, XXXIII (08/08/2012)
PostPosted: Sun Aug 12, 2012 12:54 pm 
Even Match
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I can already hear the bitching about the PS3 holding the game back the way the PS2 did for ffxi...


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 Post subject: Re: Letter from the Producer, XXXIII (08/08/2012)
PostPosted: Sun Aug 12, 2012 1:03 pm 
Star-Spangled Subligar
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I worry that the new engine wont be as pretty as the current engine. While it takes a monster computer to run it, it does look really really nice.

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 Post subject: Re: Letter from the Producer, XXXIII (08/08/2012)
PostPosted: Mon Aug 13, 2012 6:53 pm 
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I'm getting more and more excited as the days go on, i need to hurry up and finished skyrim and other stuff i've been playing so i can dedicate more time to this when they finally release it

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