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Does Final Fantasy have the most negative fanbase out there?

Zafir

Member
I mean it's such a ridiculously large fan-base that of course it's going to be impossible to please everyone.

It doesn't help that the past decade hasn't been great to the mainline series.

- They struggled with HD development, and XIII ended up being much smaller in scope. Not everyone appreciated the linearity.
- We got two sequels to XIII, which I'm not sure anyone asked for. I liked XIII, but I certainly didn't want a sequel.
- XIV originally released in a really poor state.
- Versus XIII/XV had been in 'production' for years and years, and when it finally released it didn't exactly set the world on fire (or maybe it did, but not for the right reason...)

I think the other thing is. When you're arguing, people often end up seeming a lot more extreme than they actually probably are on the matter. I mean I've criticised FF for various things, most recently XV, but I don't hate the series, I don't even dislike XV that much.

Either way, I just hope by XVI they've learned how to manage a project effectively.

Edit: Someone necrobumped this thread. Oops. My points still stand though.
 

Mesoian

Member
A couple months later and I still stand by this: the recent "news" about how Square is recruiting more people to work on FFVII Remake's development has led to a surge of "lol 2050 release" posts followed by rants about how Nomura is incompetent and Square is incompetent and Final Fantasy is a dead franchise and yadda yadda. There is also the continued ranting about FFXV every single time a new patch or update is released, or planned for release.

I don't mind a little cynicism, as I toss plenty of it towards Square's practices. But the stuff people are posting lacks any sort of discussion or even variety: it's an echo chamber of extreme hyperbole. You can count the repeated arguments with one hand:

-Nebulous release date predictions
-Nomura is a hack
-Tabata is a hack
-Why can't Square be like (insert awesome western dev here)
-Framepacing fix never

NeoGAF is the Fox News of Final Fantasy, is what I'm getting at.

Personally, Square's mishandling of IO Entertainment justifies everything negative said about them.

The last 3 months of Square management have been Konami levels of bad.

Even if FF is on a upswing, it seems to come at the cost of their western efforts. I thought they had learned after that 6 million sales for Tomb Raider being a "disappointment" nonsense, but here we are, FF7r and KH3 seemingly dramatically behind schedule as they shutter offices making legitimately good games.
 
A couple months later and I still stand by this: the recent "news" about how Square is recruiting more people to work on FFVII Remake's development has led to a surge of "lol 2050 release" posts followed by rants about how Nomura is incompetent and Square is incompetent and Final Fantasy is a dead franchise and yadda yadda. There is also the continued ranting about FFXV every single time a new patch or update is released, or planned for release.

I don't mind a little cynicism, as I toss plenty of it towards Square's practices. But the stuff people are posting lacks any sort of discussion or even variety: it's an echo chamber of extreme hyperbole. .

Are you implying that everyone who posts in the FFXV threads is a Final Fantasy fan? Ever heard the term trolls? or maybe haters?

Try visiting every Ubisoft or EA threads, those kinds of posts are basically everywhere.
 
Oh yea definitely the FF hate comments are all so silly. Makes all those making them seem so dumb.

They are one of the few communities I saw on here that constantly changes good news into a negative shitfest.
 

Meliora

Member
If you go into each games fanbase and talk to fans who like the same FF as you, then it's not so bad, and often very fun. But if you talk about Final Fantasy in general, then it tends to get very negative as a lot of people have different opinions of what makes a FF good and so on, and people start making fun of each other for liking a certain FF.

In short, when you start comparing FF games to other FF games it often gets bad, but if the discussion is focused on one FF game, it can be pretty good!
 
I'm actually amazed at how FFXV is well received by most people. But it sounds obvious that the most people like FFXV, the most they actually hate what FF ever was..

I mean you got people telling you a crappy pop remix is the best song ever for a ff.. When the simple idea of having a pop song in a ff shits on everything ff ever was musically wise.

You got thread about a platforming dungeon without fighting being the best dungeon in ff history..

Basically, the more FFXV goes away from what was FF, the more people like it. Like when they say "of course it's great it's an action game, who likes boring turn battle"

FFXV could be subtitled "fuck you final fantasy and jrpg fans, move on!"
I actually thought that FF15 had some of the best dungeons since the earlier entries of the franchise, at least until the post-game where they did a complete 180 and stopped doing dungeon design and just had the player going from room to room.

Besides that, I do want to admit that I approached FF15 more like a Zelda game than I did FF, which probably helped in being interested in it to begin with and still liking it afterward.
 
From my experience Silent Hill has the most toxic fanbase I have been part of. It was awesome at first but once the western SH games released it became a shitshow at least in the forums I used to hang around. It was impossible to discuss the new games when the so called purists burned every attempt down.

Not counting something like DotA community of course.
 

MilkBeard

Member
I agree with a lot of what is said in the OP. And while it's hard to objectively say that Final Fantasy fans are the most negative, they are definitely (as a whole) contenders for the most negative, up there with the fanbases of Zelda, Sonic, Resident Evil, etc.
 
J

JeremyEtcetera

Unconfirmed Member
-Tabata is a hack

Any lead developer and his team that manages to not only save a huge project from development hell, but also bring that same huge project out within about 3 years of obtaining it(on a dated and bloated engine no less), is alright in my book. Does he need better storywriters next time? Yes. Is he a hack? Not a chance.
 
I think it's really more of a genre thing. From my observations, JRPGs tend to attract the most elitist, rude, entitled and narrow-minded wretches of gaming fanbases.
 

CEJames

Member
NeoGAF is the Fox News of Final Fantasy, is what I'm getting at.

lol please. no politics.

I think it's really more of a genre thing. From my observations, JRPGs tend to attract the most elitist, rude, entitled and narrow-minded wretches of gaming fanbases.
Woah....What observations are those? A lot of venom in that statement. Can't fault people from expecting a level of quality that they can see in other things and want it to be applied to their chosen/or favorite franchise. Plenty of other JRPG's besides FF so its totally not fair to put everyone into that basket.
 

MilkBeard

Member
FFXV could be subtitled "fuck you final fantasy and jrpg fans, move on!"

I don't see this as even being the least bit true. Final Fantasy is always trying new things, pushing boundaries. It can't be stuck in the past.

Case in point: Final Fantasy VII was a big push to a more cinematic style, saying goodbye to the ways of the past and focusing on showing narrative in a new way.
Moving forward in the future, Final Fantasy X focused on graphics and storytelling to an extreme, because we were limited to near-corridor levels.
Final Fantasy XI first introduced us to a Final Fantasy MMO that is far removed from what Final Fantasy originally was.
Final Fantasy XII brought our first hybrid action/turned based battle system and a big world, setting itself in a world that was already created in a past FF (something that hasn't really been done before).
Final Fantasy XV ushered in a new action-rpg battle system and big world in high detail (I had to edit this part, because FF XII was first to do it for a single player Final Fantasy). It focused on a bigger world in exchange for less narration (the opposite end of FF X and XIII).

In my above list, these games brought new things to the series, signaling huge changes. And if we further explore FF XV, there are many easter eggs, things brought back that Final Fantasy USED to have (vehicles, riding chocobos, etc.) that it is hard to say that FF XV is completely disconnected from the series.

I feel like people are looking at the action battle system and semi-open world only and ignoring many other facts. Hell, FF XV even brought back the classic Final Fantasy Prelude, which was missing entirely from the XIII series of games.

EDIT: Ah, didn't see the bump. Well it's not THAT old I guess. I wonder why I didn't see this thread the first time.
 

inner-G

Banned
I only really hate Final Fantasy games post X-2

People like me have liked the series for decades and bought a lot of their stuff. I personally am frustrated that we don't get any 'real' high-budget, turn based, non-handheld FF games, besides spinoffs.

(By turn-based, I mean selecting Fight, Magic, Item, Summon, etc. strategically for each command. Not paradigm shifting or stacking monsters on me. FFX and X-2 had the last good combat systems from them imo)
 

GLAMr

Member
Hard to say, mate, they haven't made a real FF game in 15 years ;P

I'm one of the bitter, dejected former fans. I adored FFI-IX and enjoyed X. The series has changed since then, and I don't like the changes. FFVII is a top five game for me, but I have no interest whatsoever in the remake. I'm not saying the series is objectively bad, even though there are some glaring issues that deserve criticism (e.g the all white male party in FFXV), I'm just saying whatever FF is now is just not for me.
 
A couple months later and I still stand by this: the recent "news" about how Square is recruiting more people to work on FFVII Remake's development has led to a surge of "lol 2050 release" posts followed by rants about how Nomura is incompetent and Square is incompetent and Final Fantasy is a dead franchise and yadda yadda. There is also the continued ranting about FFXV every single time a new patch or update is released, or planned for release.

I don't mind a little cynicism, as I toss plenty of it towards Square's practices. But the stuff people are posting lacks any sort of discussion or even variety: it's an echo chamber of extreme hyperbole. You can count the repeated arguments with one hand:

-Nebulous release date predictions
-Nomura is a hack
-Tabata is a hack
-Why can't Square be like (insert awesome western dev here)
-Framepacing fix never

NeoGAF is the Fox News of Final Fantasy, is what I'm getting at.

I don't really get why you keep bringing up people bitching about how slow they are to get things out, like it isn't true.

Kingdom Hearts 3 was announced four years ago, and we still haven't really seen shit of it, with a release seemingly being nowhere in site.

FF7R was announced two years ago, and the last thing we saw was a single piece of artwork at the 30th anniversary event. While one of the reasons given for splitting it into different games was so they could get it out in a timely manner, they seem to be progressing rather slowly. Again, a release date seems nowhere in site.

Yep, big games take time. But, somehow other studios manage to get big games out in less than five years from the announcement.

Witcher 3 was revealed in 2013, came out in 2015.

Fallout 4 was revealed in 2015, came out in 2015.

Mass Effect Andromeda revealed in 2015, came out in 2017.

The Old Republic was revealed in 2008, and came out in 2011.

Breath of the Wild was revealed in 2013, and came out in 2017. Tons of people bitched about how long it was taking, but it still came out quicker than Kingdom Hearts 3. We'll see about FF7R.

Persona 5 was the same. 2013 reveal, 2017 release. Again, still a faster turn around than Kingdom Hearts 3.

Square just needs to stop announcing things so early. You'd think after Versus they would have really learned.
 

redcrayon

Member
Loads of series that has been around for ~30 years are going to have tried a lot of different things, and so have fans and detractors of almost every entry. Mario, Metroid, Final Fantasy, Metal Gear, Mega Man, Resident Evil, Castlevania, Zelda, all of them have tried different things in 2D and 3D and seen different trends and design ideas come and go, and so have various fans thinking their favourite treatment is the true path. Their brand names are just an umbrella for a lot of different ideas at this point, about the only consensus you'll see is a few entries that are always near the top when the series is ranked, like LTTP, Super Metroid, FF VI/VII or Mario 3/Galaxy/G2.

You get some series like Dragon Quest or Street Fighter or Mario Kart that stick fairly close to the original template and so don't seem to be so hotly contested, but even then you get entries that some claim are missteps before opinions soften with time.

Relatively recent new IP doesn't seem to generate quite as much argument, maybe because sequels tend to stick more closely to a formula and make incremental changes rather than the drastic experimental changes to core design that they used to sometimes have. Even then franchises have a habit of adopting the current trends, so if a poster has a bee in their bonnet about pointlessly empty open worlds with maps full of icons or magic high schools, they are sure going to let people know if their favourite series jumps on the bandwagon.
 

Riposte

Member
Final Fantasy fans were the worst during the era of 13 sequels, threads were utter shit and people were getting away with drive-by posting while announcing they were drive-by posting, but are just merely annoying as of now.

When it comes to worrisome fanbases, I'd say Metroid fans remain the most obsessively bitter in the most futile sense and Megaman fans come across as mentally deranged with a slight detachment from reality (fun fact: Megaman is not real, Capcom didn't murder or even wrong anyone by deciding to retire the series for awhile and they are certainly not "jealous" or "bothered" by Megaman's appearance in Smash).

EDIT: The real downfall of fanbases in general is that people think they are owed videogames they like (or even just new videogames in any form) from series they may have once followed. Rather than moving on with their life, they squat in discussions of things that do not interest them and make sure the whole world knows they are unhappy. Bitter ex-lover syndrome.
 
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