It’s understandable that most people don’t finish the story campaign in games that trade more heavily on their multiplayer, like Call of Duty or Battlefield. But you’d expect singleplayer-only games to be different, right?
As it turns out, that’s not necessarily the case. In an interview with Hajime Tabata at Gamescom, the developer revealed that the company’s internal analysis showed only around 30% of people had finished Final Fantasy 15 a month after the JRPG’s release. That’s a decently high figure compared to shooters with single and multiplayer modes, but not necessarily so for a single-player only game, especially something as anticipated as a new numbered Final Fantasy.
“There’s a certain metric we use to judge success,” Tabata said through a translator. “After one month from the game’s release, how many players had completed the game, seen the ending, was actually very low. Only 30% one month after.”
“After that, as we continued to go back to the game – we promised this before release, we’re not going to release it and be done with it – and I feel we very much have achieved that. Because recently we checked that metric again, and [the completion rate] is now up to 60%. That really fills us with a lot of confidence, and it’s justified our approach, so it’s something I’m very happy with.”
Another way to read the metric is that around 40% of people who bought FF15 still haven’t finished the game. That’s a fairly cruel take though, as many players buy games and never finish them.
The info does, however, provide some more perspective on Square’s decision to fix Chapter 13 after release. Despite a good reception for the game, the chapter was singled out for being excessively linear, rote and padded to the hilt. A patch then added an alternative, where players could play as Gladio and Ignis rather than running around as a powerless version of Noctis.
[referenced url=”https://www.kotaku.com.au/2017/03/final-fantasy-15-now-has-an-alternative-chapter-13/” thumb=”https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/t_ku-large/mta0j9nbadodbumzgsrh.png” title=”Final Fantasy 15 Now Has An Alternative Chapter 13″ excerpt=”If you are one of the many people who hated Final Fantasy 15’s thirteenth chapter, you will be pleased to hear that you can now skip it entirely.”]
But the trimmed-down Chapter 13 may not be the only factor behind the improved finish rate. FFXV launched at the very end of November last year, meaning anyone who chose to finish the game over the post-New Year holidays wouldn’t have been included in that initial 30%.
The author travelled to Gamescom as a guest of NVIDIA.
Comments
30 responses to “A Month After Release, Only 30% Of Final Fantasy 15 Players Finished The Game”
Personally, I rarely finish games. I play games to be entertained, and the moment they stop being entertaining, I move on to something else.
It might be a section that’s more difficult, and needing 4 or 5 attempts that does it, or a race that feels like the AI is cheating, but in the end, I stop being entertained, and move on.
I’m the opposite, I always finish my games. In fact, I don’t start a new game until I’ve finished the one I’m currently playing. I’ve used that rule for 20+ years and finished every single game I’ve started (except for one game, which I stopped playing cause it was bad).
Strange how people are different, hey 🙂 For me, the measure is how many hours I put into it before moving on. I’m never in a rush to finish a game, I enjoy spending time looking into the nooks and crannies for stuff, and hence get distracted easily.
Like Witcher 3. I trekked all over that game as I got distracted by one thing then another, and in the end still haven’t finished it. But I’ve put hundreds of hours into it, and been thoroughly entertained the whole way.
And for me, that’s as satisfying as finishing it would be to someone else. I know I got value out of it even though I barely touched the expansions.
Was more pointing out that finishing the game isn’t always the measure of satisfaction. Its an easy one, but every gamer is different. Is it better to spend 20 hours racing to the finish, or spending 100 hours looking around, and in the end never getting to the actual ending?
Oh don’t get me wrong, I don’t rush my games. I put 100+ hours into The Witcher 3, and I’ve been playing Breath of the Wild for several weeks and I’m still not close to finishing it, who knows how many hours I’ve sunk into it already. I put 120+ hours into both Xenoblade Chronicles and Xenoblade Chronicles X
I don’t rush through my games just to start on the next one asap. I take my time and play through them to experience as much as I can before I move on. That means I do sometimes have a pile of games I haven’t even started yet, but I do get to them eventually, and eventually finish them, just like all of the others.
Personally I always finish my PS4 games. But if it requires more than 60-100 hours to get the platinum depending on the genre, then I’ll just cheat my way through and save myself the grinding.
I know where you are coming from, total game whore here that jumps on something shiny and new then loses interest and onto the next, (except destiny strangely) only have a single platinum and its from no mans sky
I pre-ordered the fancy collectors edition because I really wanted the Royal Rainment garment for Noctis (Oh joy it’s only 99 cents now even tho I paid $30 extra..).
Have yet to play the game, waiting for them to finish releasing the content from the season pass before I play since they are integrating it into the story and I don’t want to commit to multiple playthroughs. Now they have announced the PC version and that it will include all the DLC i’ll probably end up buying it for PC and playing that since the PS4 Pro still has frame pacing issues even now.
I’m a huge fan of big games, with 100 hour plus play throughs, but with so many games coming out all the time it can be easy to get distra….
…ted. Then I find myself promising that “I’ll get back to that next week.”
My own version of the pile of shame.
I thought the trimmed down version was only available if you beat the game using the normal route once. That would mean that it was the promise of a better chapter 13 that made people hold off finishing until it was supposed to be fixed.
I have a few dozen hours played but never made it past chapter 3. I took a break when my PS4 started having problems and haven’t gotten around to getting back into it and finishing it.
I’d just marathoned through the FF13 trilogy before I started playing it as well so that sort of burnt me out on FF a bit.
Not when they’re as bad as FFXV.
Is it really that bad? It’s averaging over 81% on gamerankings. I’ve never played it so it’s a legit question.
I would use the word dull rather than bad.
The four bros are fantastic and their banter is great. Everything else is so mindbogglingly terrible you’ve gotta wonder if Square is just trolling people at this point. It is hands down the worst game I’ve played in the last 10 years.
– Abysmal “story” if you could even call it a story (major major plot beats are loading screen text or random snippets of conversation from the bros)
– Dull open world with nothing of interest to do in it
– Side quests are fetch quests straight out of an MMO
– Combat is simply holding one button while Noctis auto attacks
I could go on but you get the point. It’s like they finished 20% of the final game and shipped it. In fact that’s exactly what they did.
Gamerankings must’ve made a typo, it should be 18%. Final Fantasy is done.
Those dumplings look tasty
I hadn’t completed the game one month after release despite buying on launch day. By a month in I had put over 40 hours in hadn’t decided to finish the story yet. I think I finished it about 6-7 weeks in. I imagine that probably made up a lot of that increase rather than them adding anything in particular. It’s a long game and takes time to complete.
Bought it at launch, haven’t finished it yet because there’s so many games and so little time.
Do go back to it periodically and I absolutely intend to finish it eventually.
Maybe if the game wasn’t so dull more people would have finished it.
I bought the game, was severely disappointed.. never finished the game…
I’ve been soo disappointed in the FF series for quite a number of years now, don’t know why I thought FF15 was going to change all that.
And by FF standards it’s really short! The main story only takes about 20-25 hours. I just clocked up 80+ hours before seeing the ending in FF12 this month, and I played most of that game in fast-forward!
It just… stopped being intriguing. At all. The world is beautiful, but all very similar, and not remotely as engaging as the FF of old.
I’m not surprised at all. Take one of the best games I’ve completed recently I’ve completed recently Wolfenstein New order.
Completion of that is around 40% and that is only 15 hours or so to get done.
When you are looking at comparatively 50 hours it is unsurprising that the numbers are lower.
Is this that surprising? I thought it was well established that most gamers these days were adults and we have less time for games. Maybe in uni I could knock out a game like FFXV in a week, but these days a game of that size under a month is super aggressive.
I think it’s also a FOMO thing – gamers telling themselves they need every new game the moment it comes out.
Instead of playing fewer games and actually exploring those games properly
I only played it for about 2 hours lol.
Came here for nasty comments… Not nearly nasty enough, come on people!
I used to only play pc games until recently, had over 60 games on steam yet only finished about a dozen of them. Now I play ps4 games and have actually been finishing every one of them. I think it’s because I’m more picky with console games and only buy something now if I feel it’s good value.
The problem with FF15 as i see it is that the story is probably the weakest in maybe all the main title FF games starting from 6 onwards (never played the earlier ones).
Then there’s the problem with the combat while being fun to watch due to the graphics can get repetitive, dull and annoying when the camera goes bonkers.
I didn’t mind the driving so much since i just treated it as a new experience in a FF game and the graphics tend to make up for it but it is ultimately not very engaging.
It is also the easiest FF game i played.
That said i still enjoyed it for what it is. (Where are my summons?)
Finished the game and instantly uninstalled it. The story wasn’t too bad, but combat was a mess.
Can’t say I’m really all that surprised that so many people didn’t finish it… The second half of the game just feels so rushed and becomes a war of attrition with enemies dishing out damage so fast you just have to heal constantly and grind through the areas, I quite enjoyed the combat (despite some serious flaws) earlier in the game too.
This game seems to polarise with people seeming to love or hate it. It was just bang average to me overall – fantastic graphics let down by abysmal quests/gameplay, decent combat ruined by repetitive and forced battles (which become ridiculous late-on) etc, just sums to 5-6/10 territory for me.
I always tend to finish games so I stuck with it, but the god-awful side quests and chapter 13 nearly did me in to the point I stopped. They did the same thing that DA: Inquisition did by tying so much XP to the boring optional extra stuff that you feel compelled to do it but it just makes playing the thing far more of a chore than it should.
By the time I got near chapter 13, they announced that they’d be adding and changing parts of the last part of the game. That kinda put me off bothering finishing it til the patch came out, but by then I’d lost interest.
I’d like to see stats on how many people playing even finished the first chapter. I’ve got a pile of games on PC that I’ve turned on and haven’t come back to due to life getting too busy and moving on to the next game. (Yes I know, I should stop starting new games when the old one is waiting 🙂 )