Tasha and hian:
You two realize that Square Enix has A LOT riding on this game and everything surrounding it right? This could likely do serious damage to the company and impact the future of any more FF games if the end product is not where they want it to be.
XII is one of my favorites, and the executive producer of the game even admitted that they thought the end product was not 'perfect', and it looks to me like you both are overanalyzing the word.
Bottom line, if Tabata and the team are not satisfied with the product, what makes you think we would be? Better delay a good game then not release it at all.
If I may quote Auron in X, "Hurry up and wait."
Did you even read my post lithium?
Let me quote myself :
"I get that Tabata is stressed out - the game's a behemoth, and the future of FF, and Tabata's own job probably rests on its success.
But really man, if it isn't up and working to a relatively high-standard at this point - it's never going to.
Just accept your fate."
This could likely do serious damage to the company and impact the future of any more FF games if the end product is not where they want it to be.
Let me quote myself again :
"There is no such thing as a perfect piece of art. Tabata, and his team, at this point, need to get their heads out of the clouds and realize that whatever last bit of polish they can do at this point is very unlikely to make much of a difference on the total experience of most players.
If there's something wrong with the game at this point, it's much more likely to be deep-running fundamental problems that can only be addressed with extensive re-design - and the small-fry problems like a low-res resolution at one of the countless rocks in the game, are not worth addressing at this point in either case."
Let me rephrase the bolded part to make it more clear :
If there's something wrong enough with the game
to warrant an addition of extensive amounts of time and resources at this point, it's much more likely to be deep-running fundamental problems that can only be addressed with extensive re-design - not something that can be addressed in a month or two.
And whatever they can address in a month or two, is not likely to be significant enough to warrant stalling a release to begin with.
XII is one of my favorites, and the executive producer of the game even admitted that they thought the end product was not 'perfect', and it looks to me like you both are overanalyzing the word.
How is this relevant and what word are you talking about?
I wasn't doing any word-analysis of the term "perfect" in my post.
XII is another game that is a perfect example of bad management and a game suffering from it. If there's any game in Square history I wouldn't want XV to mimic (except Vagrant Story) it's XII.
That being said, that's exactly what happened to XV, except 10 times worse.
No sane producer in the world is going to think that their product is perfect. That's not the issue here - the issue is how artists striving for perfection, or ridiculously high standards, often end up hurting their own works because they can't let go, and they're essentially at one point or another just wasting time and resources on nit-picking non-essentials that nobody but they will really care about.
Bottom line, if Tabata and the team are not satisfied with the product, what makes you think we would be? Better delay a good game then not release it at all.
I don't know - Perhaps I don't form my opinions on the basis of Tabata for one?
He's not an authority on what I like or don't like - and as far as I know, he hasn't made a single game for SE that I consider above mediocre, and so I have no reason to assume that what he considers "good enough" is going to be consistent with what I think in either case.
Secondly, false dichotomy.
Why are pitting delay against non-release? This is the exact opposite thing of what Tasha and I was talking about - namely how perfectionists often keep on delaying and delaying stuff until it is never release, or released with more problems as a result of the messy development that followed from all the delaying and nit-picking.
Anyways, Lith - sorry for this, but it's time for me to rant and rave for a moment. This is not a rant aimed at you, so this is where my post ceases to be a reply to you.
Rather this a rant provoked by SE and people who back-peddle on their behalf in regards to the development of FFXV :
We don't really know why FFXV is being delayed. Again, for all we know, this is just strategical PR bullshit meant to time the release of FFXV with the Neo in order to earn Sony and SE more money.
For all we know, Tabata noticed that there's a 5 frame drop during some of the summon animations and just really reeeaaally wanted to fix that.
My issue with the former is that it's disingenuous and exploitative.
My issue with the latter is that, as I said, there is no such thing as perfect, and if you start combing your game for slight frame-drops, slightly under-ressed graphical assets, under-efficient code, clipping bugs etc. then you're literally never going to finish - in which case Tabata is just wasting our time sifting though sand because of his own nerves connected to the release of the game.
And while that's understandable, because if the game flops (which it probably won't do in either case granted all the hype) his ass will be fired faster than he can say "please be excited", at the end of the day, the consumers and fans shouldn't be punished for that.
Being prepared to face that pressure is something any and all producers and directors need to be as they take on a project like this to begin with.
It's a minimum requirement, and so SE and Tabata aren't getting any good will from me on this.
They've spent more than enough time on this game - or any game for that matter - the vast majority of which was a complete waste due to horrible mismanagement at an almost unheard of level (the only comparable instance that comes to mind is Duke Nukem Forever) - and now they keep inundating us with a bunch of spin-off trinket bullshit whilst further delaying the core experience which is already long long looooooong overdue - on top of which we have little reason, if any, to think that there's actually going to be much meaningful difference as a result.
No - as much as I look forward to playing this game - and as much as I think it will be a relatively good, if not great game - SE does not deserve any good-will
in regards to how this project has been handled.
It's been an utter catastrophe, and people need to call them out for this bullshit unless they want SE to keep on flushing time and resources down the shitter, and then punishing the consumers for it by bugging down everything they make with a metric-shit-ton of spin-off trinket bullshit, multiple different versions of the same game, and tons of paid DLC.
We have the FFVIIR down the pipe-line - probably the most asked for and awaited FF game of all time - and how they handle that, how it turns out etc. is probably going to be largely shaped by the development process and reception of XV.
There's nothing wrong with stomping on SE for their handling of this game.
In fact, it needs to happen - regardless of how well it turns out as a game - because SE needs to realize that this shit is unacceptable.
I'm of half a mind to not buy the game just to make a statement, and it pisses me the hell off that at the end of the day, I'm probably going to buy it simply because the game itself looks great and I tend to separate art from its authorship.
SE has also put me in the uncomfortable position of almost having to buy it to ensure the future of the franchise simply because they've fucked it up.
It pisses me off because in buying it, I'll end up silently endorsing the game, and SE might not realize the distinction between me buying the game, and someone else who just doesn't care.
However, FF is a franchise, and it's a franchise that's being overseen and owned by SE, and so if we care about the franchise it behooves us to be frank about how they're treating it.
They're not treating it well, and they're not treating its fans well, and have not for years and years.
It seems that they're trying to turn it around - but if they're going to make it, they need honest feed-back, and that will only come from fans capable of critically evaluating the stuff they do, not just blindly eating up the shit they sometimes try to spoon-feed us.
FFXV's development cycle has been shit. It cannot be justified, end of story - and the recent delay just runs that home even further.
Even if we grant that Tabata miraculously drastically improves something about the game in this period of delay, that doesn't change the fact that they've already had so much time on their hands, that whatever those issues are, they shouldn't even be there to begin with.
A game that's been this long in development should be so fucking perfect at this point that I can put the disk in an oven-toaster and it'll spit out diamonds.
If it isn't that perfect, then how about this SE? How about you don't waste millions and millions of dollar on a feature length film, an anime, and a mobile game, and instead use that cash to hire more people to work on the fucking game?
No, Tabata and SE, you're not getting shit from me at this point.
This game should've been out several years before yesteryear, and the fact that you're still delaying it at this point is emblematic of only one fact -
You're shit at planning, and you need to restructure your fucking company and start firing some people, and then hiring some new.
I'll do my part by not spending any money on FFXV except what it costs to buy the very cheapest box edition of the game, and nothing else what so ever. That's what you get from me SE.
I didn't wait 20 years for a box of trinkets and a feature film, or a bunch of additional content (that by any standard should be in the fucking game from day 1).
I waited for a god damn game. That's it.
/endgoddamnrant
