Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

The Final Fantasy series of games, without a doubt, have been some of the most widely heralded, best-selling, and genre progressing video games ever released. Millions of copies have been sold all over the world, and few brand names are as recognizable by gamers of every generation. Characters like Cloud, Cid, Squall, Vaan, and Tidus have become household names to Japanese RPG fans and common gamers alike. Fans of the series - and it’s development company, Square Enix - can’t get enough of the blend of storyline, strategy, and old-fashioned hardcore leveling, and there's so much excitement for the series that it has spawned a huge collection of merchandise that aficionadoes can collect. Every iteration of Final Fantasy brings even more players into the fold, and more gamers to support the growth of the franchise.

Even after nearly seven years of live service, it's amazing to know that FFXI is still going strong.

With this knowledge in mind, it comes as no surprise that Final Fantasy XI, despite being almost seven years old, still retains several hundred thousand players and continues to support a very strong and active community. For those of you that remember, the idea of an auction house was first devised by the FFXI developers, and the widespread implementation of this facet of MMOGs can rest squarely on the developers at Square Enix. Few games can claim to continue to retain so many regular players after such a long amount of time, and couple that with the population sucking power of World of Warcraft, and the longevity of FFXI is astounding.

However, every game goes through its fair share of changes, growing pains, and obvious overhauls. Even with its longevity, Final Fantasy XI certainly isn’t the same game that players logged into years ago, and nor should it be. When it was released, FFXI had a reputation for being a game that focused almost exclusively on group-based play, and leveling as a solo player wasn’t recommend or easy.

Yet in one of our most recent play sessions with the FFXI client, the Ten Ton Hammer staff discovered that soloing had become easier and the FFXI developers had created a way for higher level players to group up with their lower level comrades without totally unbalancing the gameplay or taking experience points away from the party. This system, which was dubbed “level sync”, changed the face of FFXI. But solo friendly gameplay still is something that a large number of potential players are clamoring to have more of in FFXI, and this reporter is one of those individuals. While I’ve heard nothing but good things about the communal experience in FFXI, the group-based aspect of the game is terrifying.

So when I (along with a small group of other media outlets) was given the opportunity to interview a collective panel of Square Enix developers at their annual Fan Festival, I couldn’t help but touch base with the devs to see just what they had planned for the future of gameplay in FFXI.

“Solo play is definitely something that we want to engage in and that we want to introduce more of into the game,” the developers said. “But even when players are engaging in solo content, we want make it so that players are exposed to party play and find out that party play is also fun. The depth of gameplay is there [in party play], and they definitely want players to develop an appreciation for that area of the game.”

“Games that focus on solo content; people don’t tend to play them as long as games that include a variety of group activities,” they continued. “A lot of games that have solo events and solo gameplay, those gamers finish all the content quickly, then there’s no gameplay left for them to enjoy.”

“Final Fantasy XI has been around a long time,” the developers stated. “We have to make it so that even the players that come in recently can enjoy themselves and level up and have a good time.”

Another area of the game that could use improvement – but not as drastically as the solo play aspect in this reporter’s opinion – is their current level of graphics. Although the game still looks above average at its ripe old age, the fact that all of the graphics are built to be supported on the PS2 is a bit of a hindrance. With more and more games like Age of Conan and Warhammer Online coming out with fantastic graphical experiences, it seemed obvious to ask the FFXI developers if updating graphics was something they wanted to pursue.

“Nope,” the developers said plainly. “There are no plans to do this.”

The level sync system in FFXI has certainly helped rejuvenate the community.

“Even with things like clouds or terrain,” the developers continued, “we can’t really do graphical updates to specific elements in various areas; the game areas aren’t like puzzle pieces that can be moved around. When an area was made, that’s the way it was designed.”

One of the issues that has plagued Final Fantasy XI throughout its lifespan is the continued abuse of the game by real money transactions and gold farmers. Even with a veritable treasure trove anti-goldfarming technologies [Editor’s Note: You can read more about these later in the week!], the developers still face a regular infusion of gold farmers that they have to fight on a daily basis. While many games try to do away with gold farming by making high end weapons “bind on equip”, this hasn’t been a technique commonly used by Square Enix. When the question was raised - “Do you feel like the currency requirements for the more expensive weapons encourage real money trading?” – here’s how the FFXI devs responded.

“It certainly may be the case that some people do do that to get the higher end weapons, but we’ve found that the majority of people buying gil aren’t even level 75 (max level),” they stated. “One of the major reasons that people buy gil is to help them along in their leveling process. They don’t see mythic and relic weapons as a big contributor to RMT.”

An active “banhammer” can lead to inadvertent bans being distributed out to the community, especially if players are buying gil without knowing that this activity breaks the game’s Terms of Service. These individuals may end up getting banned, along with those people that bought gil to buy the higher end weapons and items. However, one of the press members in the discussion suggested that perhaps making some in-game items saleable again might be in order, since there has been such a dramatic decrease in RMT sales in FFXI.

“The moment we make those items saleable, there’ll be another new spike in RMT activity and we’ll become VERY busy again,” the developers said. “We feel like most of the banning that they do is to selling agencies and people like that. We didn’t feel it was affecting a vast number of buyers, but if they are buying gil, they shouldn’t be doing that.”

Speaking of items, another major aspect of FFXI is the fact that the game is incredibly itemcentric. Just like EverQuest II or World of Warcraft, players need incredible gear to progress through the various stages of the end game in FFXI. However, it’s become difficult for many players to collect some of the older gear that is available in the game, even if it is comparable (or better!) than some of the newer items in the game. The collected press wondered if there was ever any consideration put into making identical items to the older ones in the newer areas of the game.

“There’s comparable gear you can get from newer things, but old content is stuff that we want people to continue to play,” the developers said. “We don’t want to make [particular areas] totally obsolete by making it easy for people to just go and get an exact replica of that piece of gear in a newer area. We want people to continue playing old content.”

On the topic of older versus newer areas of the game, the developers also stated that although there was some arguments for overhauling some sections of the game world, they weren’t planning on making certain areas into instanced zones, simply because doing so would break what they considered to be part of the game world. “In some of the areas, they really just wanted to push the idea that there really is only one area and one world that the players are in, so it can only be accessed by one group at a time.”

The first downloadable mini-expansion to FFXI will be available to players very shortly.

In a short amount of time, the newest content in FFXI will come to the game via downloadable mini-expansions, which Ten Ton Hammer announced last month. Since that time, players have had plenty of time to stew on this latest advancements to FFXI, and a vast number of them are probably more than ready to jump into the scene and grind through the new content. However, the FFXI devs are notorious for keeping content grinders relatively in check. The current estimated time for completing the new storyline expansions is somewhere between one to two months, and we wondered exactly how the Square Enix developers were going to keep players from devouring this content without taking the time to enjoy it.  

“Certain items that you’ll need to get to progress might take a week to get or something like that,” the developers said. “Or perhaps a piece of content that you’ll need to finish to complete the storyline will be hard to get your hands on. However, if high end players really focus on the content and want to get it done as fast as possible, it’ll probably take less than a month. End game linkshell guys will probably have it done extremely quickly. But who knows?”

So why did the FFXI developers opt to go down the mini-expansion route rather than develop another full-blown retail expansion. We asked them this question as one of our final “general” state of the game questions, and, according to the developers, the answer was simple: they wanted to release more content on a quicker timetable. “The live team is so busy with the regular version updates that we decided to bring in an outside team; a different development team to do this story,” they said. “It’s really a different concept for us, and we had to restructure a few things to make sure it got done. It’s just a different concept from the previous expansions that we’ve released.”

We’d like to thank the Square Enix development team for taking the time to sit down and chat with the media, and the Ten Ton Hammer staff certainly looks forward to more conversations with the team in the future. Make sure you continue to come back to Ten Ton Hammer over the course of the next few days to hear all about the future of Final Fantasy XI and what is in store for current and future players of the game!