So, how about some additions to the Dev team?

[Sp1cyryan]

There is your answer.

Suck it up...FFXI is a product, and SE is a supplier. We are the customers.

SE is not a group of independently wealthy teenagers needing direction on how to make us happy. They are in business and owe it to the investors to do their best to make the company as profitable as they can. While we may not AGREE with their strategy, our investment is $12.95 / month, while their investment is their job, their career and tens of millions of dollars of investors money.

We know how to enjoy ourselves and don't care about the future of the company.

They don't have that luxury.

You should honestly be ashamed at how ignorant your post is. Your condescending remarks are completely misguided and serve only for you to be "that guy". By that guy I mean the stereotypical "they are in charge they are doing what they want and we should deal with it" guy that weasels its way into anything whilst defying all conceivable decent logic.

Please, you honestly can not say if the cost is worth the benefit as chances are you are far from qualified to make even an intelligent remark on the matter.

Honestly as long as this thread stays around and is not deleted while the OP picks up likes and more posts come in on top of each other then an answer may eventually come. That is all I and others really care about. Lay it out to us in a direct and detailed manner SE.

[Glamdring]

Why do you care?

I care because this is a discussion about having things to do. There's a ton of stuff, but no incentive because it's straight to end-game in a week or less. And that's unfortunate, because alot of those earlier fights were alot of fun, alot of challenge and in some cases worth doing for rewards IF they scaled. You make strong friendships when you go through hell together, new players are going to miss out on alot of that. The current end-game gear fights aren't about putting forth your all and getting your well deserved reward for all that work; the fights are too easy now, so end-game is now about spam it over and over for low returns, then wait until it's your turn for the drop. And that's just sad... There's 8 years of game content that new people will never see, or never feel that sense of accomplishment if they DO choose to do it, because other than getting maps, maybe a synthetic atma and access to new areas all the risk and reward are gone.

[Greatguardian]

Oh? But why does it matter if the gear is useful or not?

You say you don't need gear. Whether or not gear is useless should have no bearing on you because you are so skilled. If the events are fun, I'm sure you will do them regardless of their rewards.

If gear's usefulness matters to other people, perhaps you should open a dojo and instruct these young grasshoppers in your ways so that they may be as skilled as you and not need useful gear themselves - leaving them free to explore all of this game's unused, unrewarding content.

[DrStrangelove]

You should honestly be ashamed at how ignorant your post is. Your condescending remarks are completely misguided and serve only for you to be "that guy". By that guy I mean the stereotypical "they are in charge they are doing what they want and we should deal with it" guy that weasels its way into anything whilst defying all conceivable decent logic.

Please, you honestly can not say if the cost is worth the benefit as chances are you are far from qualified to make even an intelligent remark on the matter.

Honestly as long as this thread stays around and is not deleted while the OP picks up likes and more posts come in on top of each other then an answer may eventually come. That is all I and others really care about. Lay it out to us in a direct and detailed manner SE.

There's nothing condescending about my post. I answered the OP's question.

Your post on the other hand was rude and insulting. Unfortunately, saying I am ignorant of how businesses operate is not even close to correct. Try again.

The OP asked a business question....I gave him a business answer.

The better questions are:

1) why are you responding when you have no idea how to calculate costs and benefits for SE and do not realize that as a result you are in no position to evaluate their decisions otherwise?
2) why are you responding when you don't know what the duties of the board and the company directors are?
3) why are you responding when you confuse being told how things are done with being told you are too stupid to understand how they are done?

[Sp1cyryan]

Bump for good measure. Figured it was about time to do it.

[bungiefanNA]

One of the payment options for Crysta is UltimatePay, which has prepaid cards available. SE doesn't need to do prepaid cards because of that. They didn't before the new billing system either, with VISA and MasterCard having prepaid cards.

[Feynman]

I've seen different statements from SE at times (I'm not looking them up right now because I'm at work and shouldn't be on here at all really...) that the PS2 HDD was filled up at one point though that was mainly due to the method used for updates. PS2 users had to do a clean install of the game and SE changed the way that updates are done on the PS2. But I'm not really in the know on how much free space is on the HDD now and if it could handle new content or not. Others on here have said the SE says PS2 isn't holding new content back and I have no reason to not believe them.

I've also seen a statement that no new content will use Abyssea or the proc-ing system, largely because they consider Abyssea a "mistake" that doesn't fit in with any of the other game content. So I don't think we'll see anything else on that side of things.

As much as I think SE uses "balance" as an excuse as much as a real reason I do think they should try and keep things balanced. A lot of people that I know that play or have played other MMOs complain about things not being balanced anymore and shortly thereafter quit the game. But yeah, SE has an interesting sense of balance at times I agree.

[bungiefanNA]

The PS2 HDD wasn't filled up, the 8 GB partition on the 40 GB drive was filled up. They have since expanded the partition size for the game, and changed how the PS2 processes updates. When Heroes of Abyssea came out, the actual data files for the PS2 version were just over 4 GB, but the system wasn't deleting all the old temporary files from patches. Now the partition has 10 GB of space allocated to it, and they haven't added much in the way of new files.

[FrankReynolds]

One of the payment options for Crysta is UltimatePay, which has prepaid cards available. SE doesn't need to do prepaid cards because of that. They didn't before the new billing system either, with VISA and MasterCard having prepaid cards.

This could be said of every gift certificate for every business on the planet, and yet they continue to sell.

[Zumi]

Maybe they are happy with the subscriber numbers as they are now. I logged on FFXI on a Saturday night I saw 3500 playing. I was like wow a lot of people still play FFXI and don't mind doing endless abyssea which is still packed.

In comparison FFXIV has around 250 during peak time.

If people are still playing with the game having little new content and lackluster updates like event items being added to porter mogs then it give SE little incentive to hire more people or put more people on FFXI. For whatever reason FFXI seems to have a really loyal customer base which is shown with 3000+ people on server during peak times.