Why did FFXIV 1.0 need a complete overhaul?

Hi All,

I was curious to why Final Fantasy 14 needed a complete rework in the form of a Realm Reborn as normally most games just patch their way out of issues. This video is what I found as I imagine there are a lot of new players who wouldn't know the history or maybe were wondering the same thing.

If you are a legacy player I would love to hear from you in the comments as this is all the information I could scrap together as naturally most the FFXIV press is all about the 2.0 and onwards versions.

Thank you all as always for watching, and I hope you have a fantastic day.

Timeline:
0:00 Dramatic Intro
0:36 Video Intro
1:42 Graphics and story
3:35 Gameplay and technical
7:56 The Developers
9:54 Conclusion

[mills_thecollective]

Hello, Legacy player here chiming in.

1.) Many players are not aware, there are 2 drastically different versions of FFXIV 1.0. Version 1.0 (pre-Yoshida) and 1.x or patches leading up to 1.23b (which was about 2 years of Yoshida working on version 1.0.) Edit. Naoki Yoshida, took over FFXIV 1.0 only 3 months after it initially launched.

In fact, version 1.23b is the time that Naoki Yoshida gained his reputation. He did a lot of work with version 1.0, and I am not familiar with a single person who complained about a single thing he did through 1.x patches.

2.) The biggest and main reason Naoki Yoshida decided to create A Realm Reborn, was the lack of ability to implement a duty finder/party finder systems.

"To be honest, when I first took over FFXIV version 1.0, the first thing I did was check to see if it’s possible to implement a cross-world matching system with our server team.What I found out was very disappointing. Not only were we not able to implement a cross-world matching system, we could not even implement a matching system within the same world. I felt that this feature was so important that I was willing to toss all of the server source code for FFXIV version 1.0 and completely rebuild the server structure for FFXIV: ARR."

Touching on the first part more, version 1.0 had the fatigue system, and stamina systems. Both systems were gone by version 1.23b. 1.0 didnt have jobs, chocobos (as you mentioned, ) instanced dungeons, trials or anything. By 1.23b jobs were added, combos, materia, chocobos, dungeons, both instanced and open world, and a great deal of other systems were added, such as Hamlet defense, Skirmish (my personal favorite!) and other exciting and fun things such as chocobo caravan, trials, including Ifrit Extreme and Darnus Hard mode, and a large majority of 1.0 players were enjoying FFXIV, and excited to be part of the FFXIV community!

Note: for anyone who forgot or didn't know, yes Ifrit extreme was in version 1.23b, and was required to complete your relic, which back then relics were extremely rare, and very powerful!

[bamma]

Best part was how they melded the current story with old. That was simply genius on their part. Once again great video man, I'm becoming a huge fan of your ffxiv videos.

[Uldihaa]

1.0 didn't even have auto-attacks at launch. Combat was _entirely_ Skill/Spell based.

Just want to note that there was a successful Japanese MMO at the time: Phantasy Star Online. It was more pure arrogance (something Yoshi-P has stated very openly) that caused them to go so wrong with 1.0.

[Ryuujinv]

"The whole game was as bad as the system for buying a house currently is"

[nighttimestalker]

I love they didn't just abandon it.
They did such a massive turn around. And the fsxt they actually made 1.0-1.23s story the actual lore and background to ARR is such a cool thing imo

[Duskaria]

If you want to know what gathering in 1.0 was like, head over to the Gold Saucer and play the "Finer Miner" minigame. It is a EXACT recreation of 1.0 gathering

[shadeblackwolf]

I would like to see a ff14 before the fall flashback adventure, where new players can experience the events of 1.0 from the safety of the modern engine. This is not a WoW classic situation where the old game was playable, so it would have to be remade for this to happen, but it would allow new players to experience a story in danger of being lost to time and youtube vids

[finestcustard]

I like that DRG jump animation though. So long and heavy looking. I wish current jump was closer to that instead of the goofy insta jump we have

[Thomario]

My dad is an OG player and is still playing to this day

He is even in the end credits

[OmegaEnvych]

What fascinates me the most is the amount of dedication to the game current team has.
And the quality of management.
These people are insane.
Remaking old and bad game into something new and beautiful, and not just redoing that but also trying to save as much of old game as possible... That's some great project management I see.

[Talinthis]

I played the beta in sept 2010, it was atrocious. It was similar like FF XI but much worse since it was missing a lot of functions that made XI bearable. The neatest thing is that there were no map segments for the area's. Thanalan was all 1 zone, shroud was all 1 zone, la noscea was all 1 zone. But it pretty much looked like a maze on the minimap and was quite overwhelming lol.

Also next to nobody can shut down an MMO and rebuild it. This may never happen again. I thought the game was done for and i never kept up with it after it shut down believing it couldn't possibly be improved that much. That would be true 99% of the time because nobody can afford to rework an MMO from the ground up. I never gave it any attention until my friend played it and i thought he was crazy until i checked. I didn't start until a couple months after heavensward and have been playing ever since

[lostinsleep]

For me what was really bad a launch was no auction house at all, just browsing endless player inventories (they later added wards full of players retainers to examine) and the skill system where you needed to grind guild points just to learn your jobs skills. The game was massively improved by the end of 1.0 and there were so many cool systems in place that are no longer there (personal limit breaks)

[sparkzmentalz]

This is what Starfield needs. A complete overhaul.

[AnnChovies]

This was just what I was looking for! Thanks for such a great explanation :) great vid!

[TerryVideoZone]

They probably didn't actually need to rework the gameplay as much as they did. A lot of the game's issues were fixed by the time the 1.x patches started rolling out and a lot of players were actually pretty upset when they tried the ARR beta to find that the gameplay had been changed to tab target hotbar combat, even though discussion from the devs and screenshots before that point had indicated that the latest iteration of 1.x's combat was being carried over. The change of game engine was definitely still necessary though; most PCs could barely run the game, if at all; there was no way they were getting that version of the game on the PS3 LMAO.

[javelinmaster]

The best part is that they could've just dropped the game altogether but they didn't!
instead they Blew it up in the most beautifull way and then Rebirthed the whole game and Called it ARR which is just the most fitting title because the whole game was reborn!

This all remind me of no man's sky. That game got trashed at the start but the devs kept on going and improving the game!
That's what I call DEDICATION.

[galaksina]

And there is the saturday video you mentioned haha.

I began playing it when 4.2 was just launching, so I've always been fascinated with how the original game was - actually didn't know about the plant being that intensive xD

Have you considered eventually doing a comparison of the unique lines and bits of dialog, that players who transfered from 1.0 gets in ARR? I am unsure of how much there is, but i know particular characters will recognized you. Just a suggestion ofc <3

[Izzyu]

1.0 market system had you go into a hallway instance, and check a pc’s retainer one at a time, and view their list to buy items. A hallway full of retainers lol

[cattysplat]

Everything I've seen about 1.0, is that was almost entirely a spiritual sequel to FFXI online, an MMO made for 2002, before WoW changed MMOs forever. There were few people who played those hardcore MMOs and even fewer who enjoyed them long term, so the audience was always going to be limited. Even ARR to Stormblood was still designed around the Classic WoW design of diceroll randomness in combat, rather than the Retail WoW design of streamlined stats and removal of missing attacks that Shadowbringers brought to FFXIV. I'd imagine WoW passed Japan developers by since it's mostly a very western game and Japan doesn't have the largest PC gaming audience. But WoW's inspiration on FFXIV is very clear today.

[darth_yoda]

NoClipgaming have a whole video about this as well worth a watch to it even have Interviews with the Devs.