FFXI Crossover Event With Granblue Fantasy

So, this just dropped today on a livestream, and it's happening for FFXI's 20th Anniversary:
Tell me your thoughts.

Always mad I missed out on the pictlogica event, dunno what was going on at the time but I didn't get many of the pictures

http://www.playonline.com/pcd/topics/ff11us/detail/13348/detail.html

Kind of amusing that all the stories and chat I saw about this was more annoyed it wasn't with ff14 than anything else.

Those are probably missables forever now

Crossovers in FFXI always seem like pretty bland affairs to me.

Inb4 it's just an event in the gacha, and they're too cheap to develop anything for XI

Would also be really amusing if this was always the big 20th Anni surprise

I have a pile of extras across mules, but you gotta come to Shiva to get them.

The fact that FFXI is getting official recognition outside of the core community is a big win already. Honestly, it's already exceeded my minimum hopes for the 20th Anniversary.

can practically guarantee that 99.99% of the Granblue playerbase gives 0 *** about FFXI so it isn't going to be much of a net gain on this end. if any did have a passing interest, all theyd have to see is that ballista is a complete meme with no one playing it and theyd peace out. Granblue is a very competitive game

It's still more than the complete marketing silence we've had for 7 years.

They've actually done these sorts of things with gacha games before, not too long ago. Why they keep choosing to collab with gachas is anyone's guess, probably just cheaper. Gives the gacha dev easy access to a ton of new skinner box subjects and gives XI uh...

A new club or tshirt?

Going through the bigger gacha forums that I frequent, everyone's reaction ranges from "why" to "isn't that a dead, old game?" (japanese sentiment as well, if you don't know Granblue is officially a Japanese only game, and playing it globally requires some weirdo workarounds for download. It does have an english translation when you manage to download it but all purchases are in Yen etc.). There was one guy saying he is glad "games on life support get the recognition they deserve".

I'm guessing this decision had no real marketing research behind it whatsoever, and was just a convenient lining up of anniversaries and, for granblue, they get to try to profit off of the final fantasy name without paying a big premium for a more relevant number after those two words. Helps that a lot of the GBF devs worked on XI too.

Does everything have to have some negative barbarian coming in and swinging his axe around?

Imagine being so fragile that you delineate what I wrote down to "negative barbarian". Go touch some grass Flion.

FFXI evangelists have become some of the saddest mother *** on the planet. All I did was lay out the facts; practically no one playing Granblue gives a *** about our game and this collab will result in nothing other than Granblue profiting off of the Final Fantasy brand. If you expect anything else you're delusional. Enjoy getting exploited and saying it's a good thing, I guess.

Yeah my bad, I'm so used to negativity here I saw a few things and assumed you were going off on one.

Apology accepted we good

Also I'm not Flion, did a search to see you were referring to.

Is it him!?

Is this real?

I have watched the anime. I enjoyed it. It was extremely FFXI-esque.

Definitely didn't pick up the JP only gatcha or the fighting game. Missed opportunity is how I always saw it.

Is it bad? I have it wishlisted on Steam waiting for a sale. I've heard mostly positive stuff.

WAT. ADULTS??? HERE???

If you like Arksys anime fighters, you will most likely enjoy it since it is made by Arksys Games. If you don't enjoy anime fighters, probably not your cup of tea.

Seconding this. I think the fighting game is really great if you're into ArcSys's 1P story mode stuff (think BlazBlue story modes, but a bit more of a classic high fantasy theme), but if that doesn't appeal to you... maybe not. IDK about competitive balance or anything, but it's a lot of fun from a single player perspective with a good meaty story mode. I like the aesthetics and character designs too. I haven't ever played the Granblue mobile/gacha game, nor do I have any familiarity with the anime - but it's absolutely not necessary to appreciate the fighter.

As for Granblue/FFXI overlap, IDK if I'd say Granblue is trying to profit off the FF name. If anything, I'd imagine the Granblue mobile game is currently a bigger deal in Japan than FFXI, so perhaps it serves a purpose of bringing some eyeballs back to FFXI (more likely from former FFXI players who still keep up with Granblue). Amd there's probably some overlap in people who are into both of these not so brand new games.

Granblue also has a new console/PC action RPG releasing this year (Granblue Fantasy Relink), which I'm sure they want to market by getting the name out there. Makes sense for the crossover, if you ask me.

Idk if it's still true, but the gacha was massive in JP. A PC action RPG sounds very much like something I would be into so good on them and thanks for letting me know.

I agree that it's all about getting eyeballs on each other's respective properties. FFXI is actually doing an ok job of growing their population again. You're on Phoenix with me, there are like 500+ people online during my regular time when it was less than 400 not that long ago. And way more on weekends. You hit enough people with rose colored glasses and you might actually get more permanent FFXI players.

I know I was playing Last Cloudia and was enjoying the game/art style but said to myself, "I could grind this much in FFXI and get more out of it." And sure enough I came back and enjoy playing an ancient MMO over a phone game. And gachas are all about making people pull that slot machine on events to make that money, so they'll do just fine as well.

Going to hold off on trying it until the actual crossover event actually starts so my single player number moves the needle 0.0001 during the event instead of before. I see some music is by Nobuo Uematsu so that is nice. Also, it has lots of pretty waifus, but I've got Triangle Strategy waifus to get through first.

Just as a heads up, on the Granblue side of the crossover you can expect an event specific character(s), weapon, and summon all of which will either be quest rewards or buyable with event points. There are guides out there for making an account, once you have an account set up you can change the language of the text to English. I advise getting a head start as it may be a bit hard for a brand new account to get enough event currency to buy everything and these crossover events are rarely rerun.

Is it worth it though? Is the game itself decent?

If you want to be beholden to your guild's Guild War schedule to stay up to date sure

the rest of it is typical gacha game RPG. build your elemental teams, pull for meta units, grind events

Ah, OK. I'll probably pass, then. I really don't like PvP at the best of times, and I'm tired of all of these games where I feel obligated to log in for ~30 minutes a day just to do chores to maximize my reward intake.

Granblue Fantasy is one of my favorite non-FF properties. The animation was awesome. Relink looks unbelievably fun and the environments remind me of what a modern day XI might look like. I'm excited to see a crossover that I actually care about.

Mobile Gacha aside, because that's only part of the IP. More of these events is always better than less, so no need to ***all over them.

PVP is done by collecting points from defeating bosses and whichever guild scores higher at the end of the day wins the round. It unfortunately can be quite an unholy grind for tryhard guilds. I really enjoy the combat and the story though, started for the Street Fighter crossover event back in 2016. The anniversary free pulls should be starting later this month, that might be a good time to look into it. Edit: Free draw Roulette starts March 10

https://twitter.com/granbluefantasy/status/1518515184981053440?cxt=HHwWgMCorf3g7JIqAAAA

"[Granblue Fantasy] We will announce the event title for the collaboration event scheduled to be held from 5/9/2022 (Monday).
The event name is "FINAL FANTASY XI Fantasy Utaibito"!
The heavy blue and red shining logo is also unveiled for the first time.
Stay tuned for the event! #Granblue Fantasy # FF11"

From what I've been reading a lot of ex ff11 developers work on this game, some of the voice actors on the game are also popular ff11 fangirls/boys.

Granblu is a very popular game in Japan apparantely.