Final Fantasy XV - General News Thread

yes more salt, more salt

The last laugh just keeps on giving.

Uncharted 4 was also my favourite RPG this year.

haha can't believe i didn't noticed that

Wait what? This sounds very promising indeed.


“We will evolve our released game Final Fantasy XV more and more, and together with it, we will also evolve,” Tabata told Famitsu in an interview (translated by DualShockers). “We will further evolve the foundation and know-how of Final Fantasy XV in preparation for new initiatives.

“Final Fantasy XV is undergoing development for the updates, and we’re also working on an unannounced awesome expansion, so please look forward to it.”


http://gamingbolt.com/final-fantasy-15-unannounced-expansion-will-change-the-games-foundation

Edit: it seems that this info surfaced a few days ago but I just heard about it now.

It's cool that they're still so full on with enhancing the game.

"Never liked waiting game"
"Never been any good at it either"

Feels like im back in time months or two before FFXV release. I just hope this new expansion is not just another multiplayer or online crap.

Going by the translation, it said they're working on improving the foundation for the base game, so I don't think it's multiplayer or online related.

If I remember correctly, the multiplayer stuff will come way after all the DLC and everything single player related is completed.

What could it be? Map explanation? Gameplay enhancements?

Man this is cool. Game is already released and I've already finished the story (still trying to platinum it) but this has got me excited all over again.

This game a year from release could be a totally different thing from now. I still have faith they'll get it right. Should be something fun to look forward to.

Please revamp magic/elemancy to something useful with more variety in attacks. Always being an AoE spell/bomb is so bland and not always useful. Sometimes you want to be able to pinpoint spells or enchant your weapons. Like in Kingdom Hearts.

In my estimation they got a lot of it right from the get-go, which is remarkable in and of itself. But I'm also looking forward to these expansions. There are glaring holes in the game that should be patched up, structurally and narrative-wise. In addition, I just want more of the game - more areas, hunts, quests, story, etc. on top of what we have.

No, I'm with you. I absolutely loved the game. But I've always been under the impression (or suspicion) that the game would be very different as time goes on anyway. And for the better, I hope. No matter how much I enjoyed it, it can always get even better.

You're not fooling anyone going by your behavior within this forum.

Being complete doesn't automatically absolve games of deserving an award when other potential flaws are considered.

FFXIII could scream "complete" all it wants, when in the end result you're left with a flashy turd with less than a handful of susbstance, thus rendering its completeness pretty moot anyway.

XIII wasent complete either, everything in lore was put into the datalogs. XV problems lies with it being incomplete like the story failing and content not being there, cause it was rushed, and game that was fully finished and good was more deserving is what I said. Also because its not good to support a practice of releasing Incomplete games and rushing games to market, companies shouldnt be rewarded for that.

I find funny how recently the words "incomplete" and "rushed" became synonyms for "flawed".

Only reason i honestly bought up XIII was due to existing arguments when some people compared it to XV in content.

I'll go an extra mile and add that even Wind Waker's latter half being stripped of dungeon content (ending up with the infamous triforce quest), due to the game being rushed for GC release, didn't make it's praise unwarrented (even earning a GOTY award from Gamespot even). I don't even know why you felt the need to reiterate XV's rushed shortcomings when no one argued otherwise.

Its not even just Wind Waker actually, even Super Smash Bros Melee and Sonic the Hegehog 2 were rushed (the latter game cutting out 5 planned zones and a time travel feature InB4SonicCD), yet are looked up upon quite fondly in their respective franchise thanks to their strengths.

Not everyone define's a game for only its flaws. Otherwise you're just reaching here.

Oh when will people understand that physicals disks are not a magical portal...

50GB is the industry standard, having said that, the actual practical limit is around 46.57GB depending on the manufacturing process. FFXV hit this limit hard before the crown update, with the initial data on the physical disk.

There is a big difference in cutting content for business reasons and cutting content for technical reasons. If FFXV was only 30GB with the content it has now, then yes, they stripped the game off and sold it incomplete. But that is not the case. They only removed content because it simply would not have fit into a single disc. In this sense, it is correct for Tabata to say that the development team did their utmost best to complete the game.

A lot of the demands that people are claiming are really unreasonable, such as saying everything in the DLC's should have been in the game in the first place. But as I said, it just cannot work that way. At least they are trying to compensate what is lacking with updates.

The game is as full as it can get speaking technically.

One may argue that they can use multiple discs like they did back in the PS1 era. Games like FFVII were cheaper to develop back then compared to now. To create a big AAA game is not as easier as it was then. Technology improves to create better games, but at the same time, the cost to make games is also increasing.
If it was an option to use more discs for a single game, developers would have done it. But they haven't, because it's not. I can go on as to explain why this method is no longer a solution in the current gen, but that will become a wall of text. But you can challenge me if you like.

You don't even need to stray that far to find an unfinished masterpiece -- FFVII started the tradition of releasing "International" versions in Japan because the developers didn't get a chance to finish everything they wanted to finish (like, say, the fight with Diamond Weapon) before being forced to release the game.

(Apropos of nothing, the IGN review of FFVII from 1997 I found when trying to find evidence of a hard cutoff starts with a couple of lines that could just easily have referred to FFXV -- "When videogames are delayed for any significant amount of time, they are usually, for some reason, far below expectations. Games like Battlecruiser 3000AD, Ultima VIII, and Stonekeep were all pushed back repeatedly, only to be either incomplete (Battlecruiser) or simply bad (Ultima, Stonekeep). But occasionally, a game comes along that bucks that trend." xD)

Well... I'm not sure the difference in costs between FFVII and FFXV are enough to explain the inability for developers to use multiple discs. It'd be one thing if you were comparing FFXV to a game like Tomb Raider that cost under $1mil to make, but FFVII was a $40mil game in 1997 (~$61mil when adjusted for inflation), and I'd be surprised if FFXV was much over $80mil today. FFVII had a huge development team, too -- 200 on the core team plus maybe 150 more from outsourcing studios. Assets definitely take a lot longer to make nowadays -- FFVII took a year of full development rather than three for FFXV's current incarnation -- but more goes into the cost of development than that.

I suspect a bigger factor is the relative cost of Blu-rays compared to CDs, as is the need for current-gen games to reside entirely on the hard drive in order to be played. It's unclear whether PS4/XBO can combine multiple discs worth of data into a single file without using the patch functionality, at which point it's probably just cheaper to deliver the "patch" digitally. It's not like there haven't been games that have multiple Blu-ray discs worth of data, though -- just look at Quantum Break, which has a game executable that's 45GB and a 75GB optional download of its movie files if you want to have them available offline.

Do it, please. Very curious.

Very well.
2 discs
First of all, we need to look at how games are printed. Starting with the obvious, a production line is required to print games. To do that each production line is required to be calibrated in order to complete a print. Meaning they cannot switch data in and out like a USB. Each data needs it's own offsets. So at any given time, a production line can only print a single game. Production lines are also expensive as well, so it's not a case where there are dozens of them. I do not know whether SE has their own lines, or if they outsource printing. However, either way is is still limited. If they have their own lines, then it would most likely be just a few. Production lines run on schedules, meaning each line has a purpose to print something specific. You cannot simply add another print in without delaying this schedule, that is why delays with games have a much bigger ripple effect than people may think. It delays everything.
If they outsource printing, then there may be more production lines, but most likely they are printing many other things too, not just games. It's slightly more expensive as well.

To print more than one disc for a single game would mean almost double the increase in costs. It would require multiple production lines offset with unique data. Using another line would also mean it cannot print another different game. And as I said, production runs on schedule. Pushing two lines for one game would mean pushing another out. This creates a big imbalance in cost to performance. By using a line that can be used for something else, you are essentially losing productivity. Which as a business, is a bad thing.

Another thing is how much you can actually utilize the second disc to make it actually worth it. If the second disc only takes 10GB that becomes a waste. And to fill it up more, say 30GB, you would need to develop more content, which means taking a lot more time in development. If you manage to fill up two discs, you are developing two games by industry standards, for the price of one game.

Also, unlike the PS1 era where it required the actual disc to be in the console to work. The core data files were duplicated onto every disc, likes character models etc. This wasn't as much of a problem back then as when you switched through the disks, as this allowed you to access almost everything on disc one on disc four. However, now, that's a different story. Data files have gotten much larger, so you would have to use a large portion of the disc to even just duplicate all the required codes and data. But this isn't a problem as we install our games into the console. However, another problem surfaces. If in example, a game is 90GB split into 2 discs, that will eat up a lot of HDD space. And most people don't upgrade their storage and if the industry use multi-disc games as an actual standard, we'll be running out of space real fast. This will be an issue for those wishing to use SSD's, which are much more limited in storage compared to HDD's. This will affect downloads as there are already plenty of people who complain about seeing days to download 7GB's. Imagine trying to download 90GB.
You can kinda solve the install issue by keeping the game on disc and not installing it. But this would increase loading times and this creates another issue.
You cannot simply split a 90GB game into 45/45 into two discs. If you want to access the areas you accessed in the first disc in the second disc, you would need to duplicate all of the data assets. So if data assets are 40GB of a 90GB game, that needs to be duplicated into 2 discs and the remaining data needs to split accordingly.

Doing the math (theoretical)
90GB Game 40GB asset data + 50GB content data/other
Disc One 40GB + 25GB = 65GB
Disc Two 40GB + 25GB = 65GB

As you have noticed, both exceeds the data limit. So you require a third disc, in which you need to duplicate the data again. In which might require a fourth. It's not exactly simple math.

TL;DR Point being, the industry is simply not set up properly to take this route.

Not 100% sure but I get the feeling this was intentional on the devs part.

As in they chose to present the info in this format willingly.

FF13 didn't strike me as a game having cut content because instead of being rushed, it dragged things out waaay longer than they needed to be.

Cut content gives off the feeling of being rushed through scenarios, a feeling FF13 did not give off.