Smaller subscription fees for smaller dev team

also....the cost of a server doesn't rise.....you bought/financed all that hardware 10 years ago. Now....if you've recently replaced that hardware, that could be another story. But even then, that's still a one-shot investment that you work into your budget and it remains static and doesn't go up from that point on.

What has happened here is they have taken significant steps to REDUCE the expense of their operations in relation to FFXI, but have NOT reduced the cost to the consumer and pocketed the profits to pay for the extra effort to fix FFXIV. So, in essence....we are paying for services that (for a large number of subscribers not also playing FFXIV) are not being rendered.

The reason they're keeping the development team small is because FFXI is still bringing them in a nice big profit, and adding more developers to the team would decrease the profit margin since there are not many new players joining.

Everything that I just said is nothing but pure speculation, and I have no real evidence that this is the case, but it's really the only thing I can imagine.

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Originally Posted by FrankReynolds

LOL @ mommy and daddy comment. I seriously doubt there are very many people still playing this game under the age of 20.

Anyways....Yes. I manage an IT department which includes several racks of servers, several more offsite servers, 10+ websites, multiple cloud applications, 50+ desktops, backup equipment, network equipment, cooling equipment and all the other BS that comes with it. I make the budget, and I know exactly what the costs are.

Guess what my customers would say if I told them that I was keeping prices the same, but lowering the quality of service.

They wouldn't say anything. They would just leave.

I pay $20 month for HBO and I never complain. Know why? Because HBO keeps putting up new entertaining crap for me to watch. They never go "Oh hey, sorry but we are showing nothing but black and white reruns of curb your enthusiasm this month because we sent all our people to work on the Oprah channel." If they did, I would just stop paying. I wouldn't take the time to tell them what they did wrong, and allow them time to fix it (again and again). SE should feel lucky that their customers care enough about the product to go on forums and tell them what they need to fix. Most companies have to pay people to research this shit for them.

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Meanwhile you pay the electric bill every month, is your electric getting any better? is it getting any cheaper? Doubt it.

There is already tons if stuff to do in the game. I cant see how people are that bored. I agree to some extent with your last paragraph.

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Originally Posted by Unleashhell

Meanwhile you pay the electric bill every month, is your electric getting any better? is it getting any cheaper? Doubt it.

There is already tons if stuff to do in the game. I cant see how people are that bored. I agree to some extent with your last paragraph.

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There really isn't that much to do in the game, far less then any other MMO of the same age that is still going. Crafting is boring content that was great when you had to sit around and wait all day to do other content that no longer tha case now its just a waste of gil. Leveling even all 20 jobs will get you nothing new to do still the same old crap you been doing with a differant prefix. Kill the same NM for differant gear, yeah still the same predictable NM that you kill a hundred time before.

Missions are only there if you didn't stay on top of them as they were released or haven't done then at all, Few story lines are worth redoing CoP kinda sucks when you get to push though it in one good go start to finish with no time to forget the corny over used mess. Doing the same content for just differant rewards is not new still is the same content you all ready proved you could beat now its just grinding for the sake of grinding cause you have nothing else to do.

JFC would you whiners just quit already? don't want to pay 12.95 a month for a sub par sub standard service ? QUIT.
you pay 20 for a one time ticket to a movie to be entertained, and 12.95 for as many hours a month you want.

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Originally Posted by zagam

JFC would you whiners just quit already? don't want to pay 12.95 a month for a sub par sub standard service ? QUIT.
you pay 20 for a one time ticket to a movie to be entertained, and 12.95 for as many hours a month you want.

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Whining about whining FTW.

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Originally Posted by Ravenmore

There really isn't that much to do in the game, far less then any other MMO of the same age that is still going. Crafting is boring content that was great when you had to sit around and wait all day to do other content that no longer tha case now its just a waste of gil. Leveling even all 20 jobs will get you nothing new to do still the same old crap you been doing with a differant prefix. Kill the same NM for differant gear, yeah still the same predictable NM that you kill a hundred time before.

Missions are only there if you didn't stay on top of them as they were released or haven't done then at all, Few story lines are worth redoing CoP kinda sucks when you get to push though it in one good go start to finish with no time to forget the corny over used mess. Doing the same content for just differant rewards is not new still is the same content you all ready proved you could beat now its just grinding for the sake of grinding cause you have nothing else to do.

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This. The latest incoming content update (Legion being a cut and paste of Einherjar, only with bosses in your boss chamber and Nyzul being...Nyzul) is basically so half assed development wise it's almost impossible not to see the amount of corners they're cutting at the moment.

I often wonder why they raised the level cap to 99 when most of the content we're going to get at 99 is basically revamped versions of the crap we've been doing for years at level 75 anyway. Limbus/Salvage/Dynamis/Einherjar with higher level mobs? Whoop de friggin' do.

I would kill for new storylines, unique battle systems or even a new expansion, but due to XIV's rebirth I don't think that's ever going to happen. Our money is going toward that and not the game we currently play, that's for sure, and won't do unless XIV miraculously succeeds.

that's my biggest gripe with the whole situation....14 getting all the love from our subscription fees

I did a /sea all the other day and we had almost 2700 people on our server mid-day. I've seen it break 3k at times. Can easily conservatively estimate that at upwards of 27k a month in subscriptions from our server alone for ACTIVE players(good chunk of mules could be in the mix, so hard to say for sure, but it could be considerably higher). Then there's the sideline revenues from inactive players that still pay subscriptions, software sales, and other things tied the franchise itself.

That's a lot of money to basically just keep the lights on....at least that's more the impression of how they're treating FFXI these days.

Since everyone is chiming in with their analogies, consider this: car insurance routinely goes up year for year due to quantifiable increases in risk assesment and operational costs, yet....routinely when our insurance company comes up with high profits at the end of the fiscal year, they mail us all a rebate check as a kickback. Granted, sometimes it's only 50-60 bucks... but still....it's the thought that counts.

I would rather them fix alot of the game mechanics then worry about new content. You got Voidwatch out now, Relic+2 for those THF hands and other crap you might consider using for a macro piece and now we got Legion otw. Then Limbus and Salvage revamps along with those updates in equipment. But still there are alot of fixes that need to be done for the game to work properly. More content that comes out I feel will just carry over the bugs and game mechanics that do not work correctly now and just make all that new content not as enjoyable.

fix game mechanics? the game has been the way it is for the last eleventy billion years and everyone has played it with all the things wrong with it. Would it be nice for them to fix it? yes, but with their small staff, and their inability to do what the windower group has done u might as well throw it out the window.

and VW is LOL its a friggin boss fight, thats hardly content and you need specific jobs to even do them. as far as relic +2 as i said in a post before the majority of the updates tend to be gear, more gear we dont have room for and mainly just macro pieces for lacking macros. i dont need more macro pieces, im already running around with 76/80 inventory because of macro pieces.

give us Sub, Sub jobs, new jobs, new missions, something that takes more than a game day (or week) to accomplish without mindless grinding, something that adds new flavor to the game, something that isnt the same ol same ol. It's the same ol same ol thats killing the game, people get tired of doing the same song and dance that they have been doing.