Don't forget the casual players

[Pixela]

Endgame players are like that big fat chick in the nest, shouting the loudest for food. You then spend hundreds of hours on this new content and they burn through it in months and start shouting again for more. This is not new, this happens on every mmorpg from everquest to wow.

I'm well aware how important endgame players are, for many reasons including aspirationally to everyone else and for the economy but they are still the minority and some more thought needs to be given to casual players too.

I'm not asking for whole new types of content aimed at casual players and starving serious endgame players, I'm asking to put casual content that already exists in the rotation for minor updates instead of being considered complete and never updated again.

Why not add some new pets to the mog garden rearing system with new cheers, you don't need new baby models just scale normal models down (we will understand you can't make new models for babies at this point..). This is not hard to do and this would be a great addition. Why not add a 2nd bay area so players can raise 4 other pets instead of the current max of 4? You could even add a hidden area to put pets into rest (storage for fully raised pets, that so you can own more than the current 4 max)

Update the kinds of harvests from gardening, make it worth while (add clusters for a start instead of just single crystals, add other things that make it worth doing again).

Update chocobo racing, add buffs to any mount for doing the content (speed buffs or regen to all mounts)

Add more rare ex crafts to crafting to make it worth skilling up for more casual players that may never take them above 70.

Why not add a few new monsters to monstrosity?

These do not take a lot of work to update but would add a lot to the game for more casual players to enjoy, pet rearing alone would be a big deal for a lot of players and offer long-term interest.

One of my biggest gripes with FFXI is a lot of content people like never gets updated again after and is seen as "complete". Why is gardening never updated at all, why is chocobo racing never updated at all, why is there never small tweeks for abyssea, small additions to gardening, new additions to pet rearing...the list goes on.

Start putting minor updates to old content, this is big payoff for small amounts of work.

FFXI has always been that game with a mass of different things to do, if you never update the mass of things though it just turns into "this is the new themepark ride and that's it!"

[svengalis]

Odyssey is pretty casual.

[Alhanelem]

I forgot them already

[Garretts]

I get ya. You want them to do more smaller stuff, not worry about the endgame stuff. Here's the bottom line of this game we enjoy/love so much: It has a skeleton crew doing development/story/graphics/gameplay/engineering maybe 8 people? the 2 we see and a few others, and the realitly is the code their working with is REALLY old. the servers still bottle neck through-put at 56k modem speeds... Imagine if they bumped that up to 1mb! but these things aren't going to happen. Frankly i'm happy we still even get content, in my heart of hearts i hope for an expansion coming with time mage and chemist as new jobs, but let's be honest, that's a pipe dream at this point.

I'm not trying to be a downer, i'm just trying to give some perspective to what you want from the game. cheers.

[Pixela]

It takes less than an hour to add a new pet to pet rearing.

[Garretts]

It takes less than an hour to add a new pet to pet rearing.

That's a fairly bold statement.

[Alhanelem]

It takes less than an hour to add a new pet to pet rearing.
[Citation Needed]

[Pixela]

A large % of the population of people that play this game are casuals, they aren't doing Odessey, DynaD etc outside of maybe skeleton key bashing.

The biggest fail of how FFXI is updated is you do not update or add casual content. FFXI has a wealth of legacy casual content but you NEVER update any of it, so you are gaining a lot of players but they just quit because they run out of things to do and cannot progress to be proper endgame players.

Update Gardening, mog gardens, pet rearing, housing, chocobo raising, monstrosity, adventuring fellow, crafting, ballista (add new titles or something), fishing etc (heck update one of them!)

It really annoys me that the developers have a mindset where they create successful side content 10+ years ago and NEVER update it, and don't add new. It's so much easier to update successful things with new additions than design and create all new raids that you know only a minority are doing.

The casual stuff makes FFXI feel more like a living breathing world. If you keep ignoring casual players, you're going to lose the gains you make.

I'm happy endgame players get new raids that most of us will never do, just throw us a bone too now and then?

I play 3 mmorpgs and I rarely log into the others because I just cba to grind raids for gear and that's almost all there is to do at this point, I like FFXI because there is so much other stuff to do besides that. Which is quickly not becoming the case because it's all legacy content that is many years old.

[Haldarn]

How can you even have the time to run out of casual things to do? ?

I thought I was King Casual and I've all-but completed Mog Garden (those titles!), all missions, nearly all quests, nearly crafting (Escutcheon on hold), raised four chocobos (not nearly the end of that content, but enough for me for now) and raced/dug, nearly completed Fellow, am 1,000 or so kills off Excalibur.

I'm working my way through other job levelling for their storylines and Title hunting. And of course toward Job Mastery.

I haven't even had a chance to touch Monstrosity, can't do Ballista (want to) because I don't have the time to organise it, looking forward to continuing Fishing when a moment presents itself, doing Campaign to unlock and clear Fiat Lux, and that's not touching on anything that requires a group, even at a casual level.

I love the updates with The Voracious Resurgence missions. I would love if they put in a mission/quest each update that just builds world/character lore. Surely that would take very little resources in comparison with battle content.

But all in all I'm fine with the updates as they come. I just wish we'd get some clue as to the nature of the '20th anniversary'. Is it a new UI? HD textures? Console client? The hints from TVR certainly imply Rhazowa too.

[Pixela]

How can you even have the time to run out of casual things to do? ?



FFXI is 19 years old, most of the casual content is older than 5 years.

New missions are great, however they are high burn rate content (you can finish them in days). Content like monster rearing, or monstrosityetc is slow burn rate, and simple additions to it go a long way.

New casual content has not been added (or updated) for a long time.

[Immortal]

What if they updated Monstrosity :(

[Alhanelem]

What if they updated Monstrosity :(
Th is is like the best thing they could possibly do for any casual player. I really wish they had continued to develop this.

[Beastorizer]

I don't think they are fond of monstrosity, because their reason made no sense on why it isn't updated.

They said it was due to resources, but it is assets already in the game lol......There has always been a communication error with them and us. They see things completely different than we do.

When we say an update to the system, we mean some small things that can make it relevant. They are thinking we a Monstrosity expansion with new areas, new jobs (Specially for monsters), and the ability for monsters to wear visible player race armors.....

I would like Mons implemented into the mainstream aspects of the game, such as battlefields.

[Kawar]

Odyssey is pretty casual.I was going to say honestly you cant get more casual then odyssey you kill a lot and SE even gives you between 250k-1.2mil or more if you can do a lot of killing in just money. what other aspect gives you that?

[Kawar]

I don't think they are fond of monstrosity, because their reason made no sense on why it isn't updated.

They said it was due to resources, but it is assets already in the game lol......There has always been a communication error with them and us. They see things completely different than we do.

When we say an update to the system, we mean some small things that can make it relevant. They are thinking we a Monstrosity expansion with new areas, new jobs (Specially for monsters), and the ability for monsters to wear visible player race armors.....

I would like Mons implemented into the mainstream aspects of the game, such as battlefields. Thing is i need to side with SE on this small updates to a 20 year old game is not worth it. Big updates the way they are doing it is whats worth it in the long run it gives everyone not just people like me endgame to do. It gives us more stuff to really work for and do.

I know i am 50/50 hardcore and casual. But even i like working really hard to get some things done it makes me feel like i am doing stuff like CoP again with Cap it was great that it was super hard honestly.