Please SE we need the Linkshell "war and drama" back in the game

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

I feel like the stuff the OP wants to bring back (and this thread was almost certainly started as a troll btw) are one of the reasons for the decline of the population, not one of the benefits that maintained it.

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I'd argue that the stagnant end-game content was the reason for the decline (though there were a lot of dicks in end-game as has been pointed out; but similarly dicks exist now too - they aren't exclusive to one type of content).

The most noticeable decline in players that I recognized was about 6 months into Abyssea when people realised what it actually was, and what it was going to do the game. Just my personal anecdotal observation. (FYI: I enjoyed Abyssea, this isn't an Abyssea bashing statement).

SE even said their biggest regret was abyssea, so I take anyone saying that anything aby and on was better for the game with a grain of salt.

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Originally Posted by PlumbGame

SE even said their biggest regret was abyssea, so I take anyone saying that anything aby and on was better for the game with a grain of salt.

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The reason they had regrets about abyssea was it suddenly made people feel a lot more powerful and therefore it was hard to make future content live up to the excitement that abyssea initially offered. We've only just now semi-sort-of caught up to the sort of power abyssea gave with its special buffs. Since that's happened though, other content in the game is now more able to appeal to people than it might have been otherwise. The updated BCNM fights for instance have you wield that new power while also throwing in a bit of nostalgia with the fights not being substantially altered from the originals (Which I liked better than the artificial power caps of level restriction effects).

It's really not fair to include everything after abyssea as part of the problem. Abyssea (while fun at the time) was (in the long run) a problem, but that doesn't make everything after it problematic. thus, change your sentence to "..abyssea was good for the game..." (which I didn't say) instead of "...Abyssea and later on was good for the game..." and then I would agree with the statement. The power granted in abyssea made future content harder to enjoy. Had abyssea not existed, we probably would have enjoyed the other content that came after much more.

But the real point here is that any pop decline has little to anything to do with HNM drama and everything to with the add-on scenario approach they took instead of just releasing a proper expansion with content that was all made to fit together- which they eventually did but not before they screwed other things up.

not to change the subject but ive got video proof of a person poping tier 3 back to back to back without losing there ki >.>

75 cap is now and forever will be dead and gone.
If you don't like it maybe you should go find a privet server to play on. rumor has it there are several out there that, and most of them are made for ppl who want to experience the old game.
Though with populations of ~100 people good luck with that. Plus SE hunts them and shuts them down anyway.

Everyone is can have their own opinion, but the game "back then" was a nightmare.
so much so that it was dying. People did not have the time to commit to the game like they did anymore. People were going towards more casual gaming because their real lives were getting busier.
Then the FFXIV debacle happened and in order to save this game SE gave us what everyone though would be the last installment; Abyssea.
Then what happened? the game though not gaining popularity stopped losing as many players. This band-aid provided enough of a stop that SE decided to launch a new expansion.
The "old ways" are how you kill a game. There is most likely less than 200 people who would want to play on a server that was capped at 75 and maybe had up to abyssea, with a few of the finer tuning job adjustments of post abyssea. I wish you the best of luck getting a server. But I hope to god that SE doesn't go back to the old ways with new content. They random number generator for augments and NM drops is already enough to drive people insane. I could only imagine how many people would quit if we went back to the tyranny of Tanaka days.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

But the real point here is that any pop decline has little to anything to do with HNM drama and everything to with the add-on scenario approach they took instead of just releasing a proper expansion with content that was all made to fit together- which they eventually did but not before they screwed other things up.

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That's the first thing you've ever posted that I've wholeheartedly agreed with, and I couldn't have said it better myself.

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Originally Posted by Rubicant82

Everyone is can have their own opinion, but the game "back then" was a nightmare.
so much so that it was dying.

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This game has declined more in the past 2 years (in the way of people online and actually being active) than it has the 9 years prior. There's so many things you could attribute it to. The release of XIV? The release of other new MMOs? People growing up? The truth is, everyone has their reason for moving on, all of those reasons are different - and given that SE doesn't even poll people who quit for their reasons (like every other pay-MMO I've ever played does), I doubt we'll ever truely know.

But to describe the game back then as "dying" is laughable, IMO.

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Originally Posted by Rubicant82

75 cap is now and forever will be dead and gone.
If you don't like it maybe you should go find a privet server to play on. rumor has it there are several out there that, and most of them are made for ppl who want to experience the old game.
Though with populations of ~100 people good luck with that. Plus SE hunts them and shuts them down anyway.

Everyone is can have their own opinion, but the game "back then" was a nightmare.
so much so that it was dying. People did not have the time to commit to the game like they did anymore. People were going towards more casual gaming because their real lives were getting busier.
Then the FFXIV debacle happened and in order to save this game SE gave us what everyone though would be the last installment; Abyssea.
Then what happened? the game though not gaining popularity stopped losing as many players. This band-aid provided enough of a stop that SE decided to launch a new expansion.
The "old ways" are how you kill a game. There is most likely less than 200 people who would want to play on a server that was capped at 75 and maybe had up to abyssea, with a few of the finer tuning job adjustments of post abyssea. I wish you the best of luck getting a server. But I hope to god that SE doesn't go back to the old ways with new content. They random number generator for augments and NM drops is already enough to drive people insane. I could only imagine how many people would quit if we went back to the tyranny of Tanaka days.

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Hears rumors, yet apparently knows population sizes.

Don't be so ignorant in assuming that A. Everyone knows about X private servers (which you aren't even aloud to bring up here), and B. They bring the same experience. I'm going to assume by your comments that you know EXACTLY what you are talking about, not just hearing rumors, you would also know of the millions of issues that exist on these so called private servers.

Let's also assume that they did create said servers. You imply you have to play on it. At the rate these server pops are declining, there will soon be less than 200 players. I'd rather take the 200 players on those kind of servers than the 100 that will probably be around on each server in a year at this rate.

I don't really think enough people fill out those exit surveys in any MMO for them to provide valuable data. I expect a majority of the actual responses would be useless comments like "this game sux" and "you are horrible" rather than meaningful feedback.

I could be wrong but that's based on my personal experiences with humanity.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

I don't really think enough people fill out those exit surveys in any MMO for them to provide valuable data. I expect a majority of the actual responses would be useless comments like "this game sux" and "you are horrible" rather than meaningful feedback.

I could be wrong but that's based on my personal experiences with humanity.

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That's true, I usually don't fill those out, they would definitely be useful though.

If I was running an MMO, and my MMO held out at 3K active users per server (concurrent) for a good 9 years; then suddenly dropped to 600~ concurrent, I'd want to know why definitively; even if only 5 in 100 exiting players leave worthy comments.

The problem with SE is they presume to know what everyone wants/likes. They don't. This is much must surely be evident to everyone on these forums given how player feedback was disregarded for the longest time.

XIV V1 proves how much SE knows about what players want/like. They didn't take alpha feedback about that game seriously either. It got as far as release in its dire state.