I'm not going into it now, since i've said a lot about this issue in the past. but FF12 is only a part exemplary game. the part that is made by the FF Tactics team is easily phenominal. they orignally intended for Basch to be the main character, but instead they were "encouraged" to make Vaan and Penelo central characters to appeal to the Japanese auidence. this is also why these characters dont have much input into the game; because they were never designed to be in it.

the key point is that members of the development team expressed their dissapointment at how the story turned out, and Sakaguchi even expressed his dissapointment that Yasumi Matusno didnt complete directorial duties on FF12.

besides a lot of fans dont like the Gambit system. and i can understand this argument, how can you expect fans of say FF10 who spent maybe 30mins - 1 hour exploring and battling monsters, to spend 2+ hours exploring an enormous expanse, facing up to 200+ (tough) enemies. the game is good, but it has balance issues.

Just curious, what part did the tactics team do?

They developed the concept of the world. so the Ivalice setting, the story and the characters. this is because Ivalice is their world, they've developed this world and its concept and improved it from previous games. i asume the Gamit system was also based on their strategic roots in Tactics Ogre and FF Tactics. but it was Hiroyuki Ito who directed the combat side of things.

other than that, anything else is speculation on my part. although i would have thought the Playonline team had mostly programming duties. i'm sure theres information floating around based on the post-morterm they did of the game. so i would take a look at that if your interested.

I'm not going into it now, since i've said a lot about this issue in the past. but FF12 is only a part exemplary game. the part that is made by the FF Tactics team is easily phenominal. they orignally intended for Basch to be the main character, but instead they were "encouraged" to make Vaan and Penelo central characters to appeal to the Japanese auidence. this is also why these characters dont have much input into the game; because they were never designed to be in it.

the key point is that members of the development team expressed their dissapointment at how the story turned out, and Sakaguchi even expressed his dissapointment that Yasumi Matusno didnt complete directorial duties on FF12.

besides a lot of fans dont like the Gambit system. and i can understand this argument, how can you expect fans of say FF10 who spent maybe 30mins - 1 hour exploring and battling monsters, to spend 2+ hours exploring an enormous expanse, facing up to 200+ (tough) enemies. the game is good, but it has balance issues.

FF13... well i'm not happy about that game, it has its moments, but its certainly not exlemplary. i can see some fans are still in denial. the sales are staggering. FF13 alone has been in the bargain bin for at least one year now. that dosent account for all the other FF spin offs. new fans arnt buying these games. FF7s success is unlikely to EVER happen again. and it will be an achievement if even FF10s sales can happen again. and all the while Mass Effect, Fallout, Dragon Age etc are gaining new ground here in the west.

Ah, Ok.  I was just hoping you weren't talking about the license system.  While it was a fine idea and would have worked well in a Tactics game, it didn't work in FFXII.  In a game where you have unique characters it encourages every character to be exactly the same (with a few minor variants).

Since everyone had the same grid there really wasn't a reason to not pick the best weapon and best spells.  Sure, you could pick swords but why would you when polearms are so much better (and I'm just picking two weapons out of the blue, I forget which were best)?

I wish they would have either given everyone their own grid, made ability scores actually matter, or gone with a traditional leveling system.  What they had was just silly and made every character feel exactly the same which made me care about them even less.

I know what you mean actully, but i think the developers actully responded to this by rereleasing the game as FF12 Internation and the Zodiac Job System. however that was only avaliable in Japan. that had individual grids for each character. and some other stuff.

since they are redoing FF10 in HD, trophies and maybe 3D. i'm guessing FF10-2 and FF12 will be next, i can see them releasing the international version, since this wasnt avaliable in EMMEA or NA. so we might get a chance to play that after all. FF12 could actully benefit more from a HD update, since the game used less polygons than FF10. yet the designers were able to add the illusion of more detail using clever lighting and texture effects.

the problems with FF12 went way deeper than that. i think a lot of fans felt alienated with FF12 because of the 2+ dungeons and 200+ enemies you had to fight. at least give players the option for traversing these environments in an easier manner.

i struggled to get through the game; because i always go through twice in any game. the first time i dont intend to train my characters or explore the world. i go through purely for the story and the second time i do everything, getting trophies, etc. so there were balance issues for gamers who just wanted to enjoy the story and those that wanted both. that and the problems i already mentioned with the story; they opened the door to something execeptional, but never quite made the jump through that door.

As much as it might pain you to admit. There are people out there who think XII is exemplary. Just because some people hate it doesn't mean it's automatically garbage and the overall opinion. Same applies to XIII. The fans of these games aren't in denial either. They actually enjoyed the games.

Also it is funny that you mention Mass Effect and DA. Mass Effect 2 slightly outsells the 1st by a few hundred thousand copys and the other failed to meet expectations.

It's amazing to me that people still think FFXIV is going to turn out to be anything other than a complete failure.  First off, no patch will ever save it.  Not even the FF name can save that game.  It had one of the worst launches ever.  That game was such a dissapointment it put Spore to shame.  It was broken, boring, and unfinished.  The reviews are in and no matter what they're there.  People keep clinging to hope it's going to get some miracle patch but the game is just bad.  I've been reading the updates on the game as they happen because I would love for it to be good, but it's just not going to happen. 

The game already has a terrible word of mouth and it's never going to measure up to any of the already much better MMO's out there.  It does nothing better than any game or even as well as any other game.  It's competing in a killer flooded market and they put out an unpolished turd.  There's not much coming back from that.  Even with their great idea of allowing you to change your class on the fly was already outdone by Rift.

You're also talking about it breaking even?  That game has been in developer for, what, five years?  And now they're completely remaking it?  And they haven't collected a penny on subscriptions?  No, they're never going to make money on it.  It's baffling that they're even still trying to keep it up.

I'll be incredibly surprised if the PS3 version ever even releases and the servers are still running by the end of next year.