Shocked at the player loss?

So after logging in for free and seeing the sad numbers of players that still bother with this game why are Square trying so hard to get us all to play it again? Free to play months, login campaigns, spamming our email accounts to come back.

The core of what kept us in this game has pretty much been gutted, what remains is a shadow of it's former self and in many ways feels like they are copying the horrible FF14 model. When I logged back in I wasn't wowed by all the new changes I was despressed at what you have done to this once wonderful game. I certinaly won't pay you money for this travesty. I used to pay for multiple accounts, now I pay you nothing and pay a competing publishers game, if you hadn't messed up so badly I and most of the people I knew would still be here.

The new people in charge seem to be putting out content that is suited for newer titles and the kinds of players that want that content are really not going to accept it from a gereatric title such as this. The massive player loss should be a sign that players do not want this from a title such as this...you really put an item level system in this game?...

Now maybe Square are simply trying to get XIV players bored of the lack of content to play both games and pay 2 subs, but again....if you're an XIV player more impressed by graphics than gameplay you really aren't going to want to play a game like XI which is showing it's age so badly. At least not for more than a few months when the novelty wears.

The strong points of what made FFXI great are the party systems, the community and the open world etc. Stop trying to make an old man (FFXI) dress up in ghetto gear and a baseball cap (FFXIV) and understand what makes this game great, stop trying to copy new things into an old game badly and half assing content updates. If you don't do this all the f2p months in the world won't save it. This game cannot compete with modern titles on thier own ground, stick with the niche that made it great or watch it die completely.

I believe the game would have lost subscribers no matter what course SE took. But making old gear outdated so drastically was a bad move, yes. Should have let people keep upgrading those old armor and weapons, not just create totally new set of item-level-armor which replaces the old.

Now this latest introduction, records of eminence... everyone can solo the new gear upgrades, at their own slow pace. Reminds me alot of FFXIV myth tomes system, but without a weekly cap. I do like that you sort of need to work on old content too. You need to get the artifact armor, you can do limbus to get the upgraded ones faster, or upgrade the original low level piece with more work.

-- edit: correction, you must do CoP up to sea it turns out. I tried talking to the upgrade NPC, wont work on one of my chars, who still hasn't got sea access. Interesting, given the fact that the NPC gives option to upgrade the low level artifact with 10 chapters. Why would it require sea access?

But... in the end... what is keeping me from resubscribing at the end of this free period, is the fact that there is no discounted price on SoA expansion anywhere. I'd have to pay full price for the expansion on my three accounts, plus subscribe each for a month to continue. By my calculations, close to 100 euros. Wont happen, sorry SE.

While I despise many of the old systems and like many of the new ones, I do agree that the initial gear jump with Adoulin was far too drastic and jarring. I've said it before, but there really was no need to change the status quo of sidegrades and minor upgrades. There was much that needed changing and modernizing, but that wasn't it. Yes people wanted new content and new rewards, but small percentage boosts in gear power would have done the trick just as well to lure folks to the new content while still keeping them interested in the old. That would have been a win-win for players and the devs.

As far as the item level system itself, it's kind of a mess IMO. First of all the content was released out of order, and the item levels seem to be backwards in some cases. Why do I get higher item level gear from a mind numbing snoozefest like Yorcia Skirmish than from spending plasm from the more challenging Delve? The 119 boss items make sense. The 110 and 113 gear does not. Of course, the item levels don't necessarily indicate which gear is actually superior. On the surface it has the appearance of a hard number system, but when players do the math they often find lower item level gear to be superior because of the haphazard way stats are distributed and the random nature of augments on mid-tier gear versus max level gear that can't be augmented at all. The whole system comes off as rather half-assed and poorly thought out if we're supposed to use the level numbers to decide what's best. If we're NOT supposed to do that then the numbers really serve little purpose. Except for the fact that the item level number changes our level relative to our opponents, which just makes things more confusing.

Why constantly update old gear, that's being stuck in the past. I'm glad they added stronger gear than was strongest at lvl75 cap. It's silly to have lvl75 gear be the best in the game with a cap of 99 and a second "cap" at 119.

Ok so OP how about you tell SE what you wanted then? How were we to progress stuck at lv99 without adjusting lvl cap? Did you want to continue to do the same dated events over and over for minimal increases? Let them know, I'm curious too. They had to do something different or the game would have stagnated.

Imho, the only people whining about a constant flow of diverse and powerful gear are people that are bad at the game and feel like they're behind because they aren't good enough. Good players are happy that we're getting something new and exciting with every update.

I feel like we're in a situation where we're too gear-dependent. The advantage of player levels and merits is you have something that's always there. Your HP merits are still there regardless of what job you are. You merit your STR one point, that's there for everything. I just feel like mobs have gotten so much stronger, so much more evasive. And yet here we are with essentially the same HP and MP with some boosts to VIT, AGI, etc.

It might sound lame, but somehow back in the day you felt like YOU were getting stronger. Whereas today, you're just using using stronger gear.

If you are a good player you have good/intelligent gear choices, nothing in this game is hard to get at all. It wasn't hard before the update either. We all relied on gear back then too... just like we do now.

They aren't all obsolete, what do you mean? I still use skirmish, bayld and delve gear. Some items were yes, but there are a majority that aren't and are still good for certain builds.

The RoE and bayld gear is this expansions pearle gear not meant to be the end all be all or even more then stepping stone gear from the start. Skirmish gear is better then RoE gear And not all of delve/skirmish/anything else is outdated there is much that is sidegrades just like people have been asking for. Look at reforge +1 for the amount of work you put into it is really not all that great and much of reforge is Marco pieces or sit gear. I have asst. jubbah and it is a macro, idle piece and I have vishep legs for drg that is a solo piece since the way wyvern hp% sometimes doesn't get added till after HB goes off. No one event now can gear you out like it was with delve and if I seen anyone full timing Reforge or RF+1 I would laugh at them same if they were fulling any other set.

Server population on Quetz up on average by roughly 44% on both NA and JP prime times, and right now during NA prime time, we have 1057, in weeks before this update, we were usually sitting at 400 at this time.

It will be interesting to see the numbers after FFXIV 2.1 is released, and again after the welcome back trial is over. Regardless, I played longer today than I have since August, and while it's definitely not the same FFXI, I very much welcome the faster pace.

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Originally Posted by Stompa

It depends on the jobs and if you are soloing. Party situations yes you can use the lower lvl pieces, but in solo you want as much Def and Vit etc. as you can stack. Speaking as Pup/whm & War/dnc longtime solo player, I will confirm that the Outrider pieces come out ontop for my War because of the high Vit+Chr making my CW3 give bigger cures, plus the pdt set bonus, plus the high Def. It is way better than the Karieyh+1 set I got for my War which only came out like 3 weeks ago -ish. If you are in a party with Whms such considerations don't matter to you. Similarly on Pup/whm my MP pool and refresh are important to me for kiting. So I upgrade for those things. But the new gear will be obsolete soon, was my point. More mp gear etc. which you wouldnt swap out anyway lol because you'd lose the extra mp etc.
Re; the reforged effort/reward relationship, yes it is totally out. I now got two sets of reforged I bought all 10 slots with eminence records. They are as you say very situational I agree on that.
My main point is that I used the same gear sets for years in the past, switching in some new gear here and there. So I had permanent sets that I liked using and got used to. Now whole entire sets are replaced on a monthly basis. And nobody is going to wear Manibozo, my mule has that set fulled lixered and its shit compared to the gear that came out immediately after it. Skirmish gear is still relevant but you will be tossing it also soon enough for sure.
Everyone wants new cool gear, and I'm glad SE are adding new stuff, my problem is the iLvl system and the frequency of scorched-earth updates.
:o

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And SE has stated that the game is going back to sidegrades look at the +1 reforge little more stats but not ground breaking for the effort that goes into it. If they wanted to continue with what they had been doing those sets would be the end all be all but they are not. I use just about the same sets for TP for solo on drg and blu as I do in party only change since this last update is I finally got a group to spam the legs skcnm and got reforge for my drg so I now have the wyvern HP with out giving up capped haste and only losing 2% DA. If the mob can't one shot you from full HP or yellow HP no reason to full time -pdt gear and with trust killing trash mobs is so much of a cake walk. Bayld gear again wasn't meant to last everyone knew this SE added it for those that couldn't get help for past content to gear up for delve and skirmish and was trash next to content that already existed that was easy to do and set up for.

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Originally Posted by Stompa

Its good to see you coming back and enjoying the game again, we need a lot more of that.

:)

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I had so much fun last week. I helped people with the new BCs, and while I wasn't particularly interested in upgrading my own AF, by virtue of this new reward system where all participants get 2 papers regardless of loot pool, I had enough to upgrade my PLD feet to level 109 :D

Eminence is one of the greatest new additions to the game. You rack up points regardless of the content you participate in, and can expend them on a variety of useful items.

Also the initial objectives are great, I hope we see frequent updates to these. I found myself in a level sync party in Mamook... something I can't say I would have ever guessed I'd be doing, and having fun doing it lololol.

New teleport system makes spontaneously deciding to do random content a decision you don't have to think twice about. I'm sure making it somewhat time consuming to travel was intentional years and years ago to prevent area congestion, and place some restrictions on game progression, but with how many areas we have now and how much content there is to do, it removes a lot of the "chore" just to get to the content you want to participate in.

Great job dev team!

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Originally Posted by Apie

Why constantly update old gear, that's being stuck in the past. I'm glad they added stronger gear than was strongest at lvl75 cap. It's silly to have lvl75 gear be the best in the game with a cap of 99 and a second "cap" at 119.

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But the problem was that a lot of that old gear use to take years to get. What drove a lot people nuts , was first the 75 gear that took for ever to get became worthless when abby came out, but it was cool since it brought a lot of life back to the game and some that 75 gear was still good. Then after grinding abby gear and VW and NNI and Limbus. For a few years.

With one expansion adoulin made every single piece of old gear all,but worthless. So all that time became worthless. What a lot people would have like seen happen was, New seeker gears, and have the more harder old gear and old weapons at least be somewhat worth while still. With a update system for them old hard to get pieces close to equal the seekers gear.

Even now you can take a few months just to get some of that old gear and it worthless. While with seekers you can get elite gear. That destroys all that old gear and hard work in only a few hrs.

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Originally Posted by Vivivivi

I had so much fun last week. I helped people with the new BCs, and while I wasn't particularly interested in upgrading my own AF, by virtue of this new reward system where all participants get 2 papers regardless of loot pool, I had enough to upgrade my PLD feet to level 109 :D

Eminence is one of the greatest new additions to the game. You rack up points regardless of the content you participate in, and can expend them on a variety of useful items.

Also the initial objectives are great, I hope we see frequent updates to these. I found myself in a level sync party in Mamook... something I can't say I would have ever guessed I'd be doing, and having fun doing it lololol.

New teleport system makes spontaneously deciding to do random content a decision you don't have to think twice about. I'm sure making it somewhat time consuming to travel was intentional years and years ago to prevent area congestion, and place some restrictions on game progression, but with how many areas we have now and how much content there is to do, it removes a lot of the "chore" just to get to the content you want to participate in.

Great job dev team!

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Speak for yourself. The babies who complain adman hauberk should be more powerful than a 99 piece of gear was a joke.

I am glad se tossed most the old gear and the babies left. Rem is ok.

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Originally Posted by sc4500

But the problem was that a lot of that old gear use to take years to get. What drove a lot people nuts , was first the 75 gear that took for ever to get became worthless when abby came out, but it was cool since it brought a lot of life back to the game and some that 75 gear was still good. Then after grinding abby gear and VW and NNI and Limbus. For a few years.

With one expansion adoulin made every single piece of old gear all,but worthless. So all that time became worthless. What a lot people would have like seen happen was, New seeker gears, and have the more harder old gear and old weapons at least be somewhat worth while still. With a update system for them old hard to get pieces close to equal the seekers gear.

Even now you can take a few months just to get some of that old gear and it worthless. While with seekers you can get elite gear. That destroys all that old gear and hard work in only a few hrs.

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People are working far harder now and since aby dropped for their gear instead of sitting in line for gear. The only thing that made the old gear hard to get was lock outs and 18+ people going after the same carrot. You can still be carried though content but fewer people are putting up and even mercing those people still put the effort in to farm gil. The people that really got mad over old gear and events falling out of favor were the ones in control over LSs since they no longer had the little authority they once did and the people that blindly followed and sucked up to them. Though it is nice you seem to think that is why people are leaving and not that it is a 10 year old game are bored of the world, the jobs the outdated everything. This is proven beyond a doubt when FF14 has how many people and most of those are ex 11 players form before aby and after, those that walked away before even hitting 75 cap back in the day to those that got sick of just grinding merit parties. !4 has just about the same reward systems of faster less grindy rewards yet people are flocking to it.



People really hate to admit that they are just tired of something that they once loved and find all kinds of excuses when in reality no matter what SE done the same people would have left anyway just over something else and SE knows this.

I love the last patch, it has made the game more fun but would like to see other gear get upgrade paths. Stuff like tocis harness etc looks really cool and it seems pretty wasteful that it is only really good for town gear now.

Or add vanity slots like EQ2 so that we can wear gear with good stats but choose what we look like. I really liked voidwatch though (ok so maybe I am weird) and I would love to see people doing it again.

If more voidwatch was added - say to adoulin areas - with upgrade items for older VW sets it would give people an incentive to do older battles and increase the supply of heavy metal (which might as well be called unobtainium at this point) so that people can finish their empyrean weapons.

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Originally Posted by Ravenmore

People are working far harder now and since aby dropped for their gear instead of sitting in line for gear. The only thing that made the old gear hard to get was lock outs and 18+ people going after the same carrot. You can still be carried though content but fewer people are putting up and even mercing those people still put the effort in to farm gil. The people that really got mad over old gear and events falling out of favor were the ones in control over LSs since they no longer had the little authority they once did and the people that blindly followed and sucked up to them. Though it is nice you seem to think that is why people are leaving and not that it is a 10 year old game are bored of the world, the jobs the outdated everything. This is proven beyond a doubt when FF14 has how many people and most of those are ex 11 players form before aby and after, those that walked away before even hitting 75 cap back in the day to those that got sick of just grinding merit parties. !4 has just about the same reward systems of faster less grindy rewards yet people are flocking to it.



People really hate to admit that they are just tired of something that they once loved and find all kinds of excuses when in reality no matter what SE done the same people would have left anyway just over something else and SE knows this.

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You are true on most of your points. The only thing it was not just linkshell leaders that left. It had to do with the fact you work so hard for stuff and it becomes worthless so fast now. With out a system that could have been in place to improve the more harder gears you would earn. A lot people just did not want to work there butt off again once they seen seekers content early on. Only to down the road it worthless again with out a update system in place and to late i believe now. It just became time for people to move on to the other mmos or ffxiv.