No more almost impossible to obtain crap please

[Unleashhell]

I'd say emp weapons should have pretty difficult (but not impossible) trials. They're great weapons and far easier to get than Relic and Mythic. Relic and Mythic trials though should be pretty minor and reasonable. People with those weapons put in their time. They should not have those items that required an extraordinary time and gil investment downgraded by impossible quests.

I agree with this. but now here comes the trolls saying Relics are easier. The can of worms you just opened lol...

[Vivik]

I think that time could have been spent developing things for all players instead of a select few.

[detlef]

I agree with this. but now here comes the trolls saying Relics are easier. The can of worms you just opened lol...

Having just done the level 95 upgrade for Empy, yes. Yes relics are easier. At the very least you have to agree that the disparity in requirements between level 95 versions is not that great.

[Unleashhell]

See, told you lol...

[Camiie]

I think that time could have been spent developing things for all players instead of a select few.

Especially since, as they've told us, their manpower and resources for FFXI are very limited these days.

[saevel]

Second, The dev team is small and we just have to deal with that fact that the game is 10 years old. Why should they have a massive dev team for a product that is this old when they can put resources into new products with current technology? Aside from FF14, they do have other projects whether its an MMO or any console / PC game.

That is ~NOT~ how MMO's work. Their not a single player console game that you just release and make updates / patch's for. Their a service and need to be treated as such. The company is providing you an entertainment service in exchange for your monthly service fee. They take that money and use it to cover operational expenses and maintenance. They then should budget a portion of that money for future product development and whatever is left is considered profit. This is not what SE's been doing, their taking the lions share of your service fee and using it on development for FFXIV, a service your not paying for that has its own service fee. Their doing this when their primary service (FFXI) is in serious trouble of losing revenue due to lack of development. ~Every~ MMO that has done this has failed, just look up EA's "Earth and Beyond". EnB was a good game, had a good crafting system and a remarkable XP / leveling system. It's failure was that the developers didn't develop it, they just kinda made it and planned on getting all this EQ style money without having to put in the effort. Thus eventually players got bored and moved on.

[Unleashhell]

That is ~NOT~ how MMO's work. Their not a single player console game that you just release and make updates / patch's for. Their a service and need to be treated as such. The company is providing you an entertainment service in exchange for your monthly service fee. They take that money and use it to cover operational expenses and maintenance. They then should budget a portion of that money for future product development and whatever is left is considered profit. This is not what SE's been doing, their taking the lions share of your service fee and using it on development for FFXIV, a service your not paying for that has its own service fee. Their doing this when their primary service (FFXI) is in serious trouble of losing revenue due to lack of development. ~Every~ MMO that has done this has failed, just look up EA's "Earth and Beyond". EnB was a good game, had a good crafting system and a remarkable XP / leveling system. It's failure was that the developers didn't develop it, they just kinda made it and planned on getting all this EQ style money without having to put in the effort. Thus eventually players got bored and moved on.

Do you work at SE? Do you know first hand what they do with their money? I highly doubt it. It is their money to do whatever they want with it. Is makes no sense for a business to keep 100% original resources onto a 10+ year old product. If that was the case there would be no upgrades to anything hardware or software based. We would still be using Windows 95 with your statements. You should be happy SE even supports FF11 anymore. Just because your paying a monthly fee doesn't mean they should throw an alliance of resources at a 10 year old product. Do you think the support team for windows XP is as large as it was when it first came out? No it isn't because people moved on to newer OS.

Business are there to make money, and how do you make money? You create new and improved products. Not all products are a success, in this case FF14. But does that mean they should just give up and say ok we are done lets put all resources back to a 10 year old product? Think of it like having a car, automakers make new cars every year with improvements to existing models or completely redesign them. They don't just make the same car for 10+ years with no improvements or redesigns what so ever. You need innovation to push forward not sit on old products.

[saevel]

Do you work at SE? Do you know first hand what they do with their money? I highly doubt it. It is their money to do whatever they want with it. Is makes no sense for a business to keep 100% original resources onto a 10+ year old product. If that was the case there would be no upgrades to anything hardware or software based. We would still be using Windows 95 with your statements. You should be happy SE even supports FF11 anymore. Just because your paying a monthly fee doesn't mean they should throw an alliance of resources at a 10 year old product. Do you think the support team for windows XP is as large as it was when it first came out? No it isn't because people moved on to newer OS.

Business are there to make money, and how do you make money? You create new and improved products. Not all products are a success, in this case FF14. But does that mean they should just give up and say ok we are done lets put all resources back to a 10 year old product? Think of it like having a car, automakers make new cars every year with improvements to existing models or completely redesign them. They don't just make the same car for 10+ years with no improvements or redesigns what so ever. You need innovation to push forward not sit on old products.

Are you daft, or just ignorant of business's in general?

It has NOTHING to do with the age of the product. Consumers have a demand, you supply that demand and thus create a revenue stream. You continue to provide that supply for as long as there's enough demand to warrant a profit. Not providing that supply will lead to the demand going elsewhere and thus less profits for you.

They still sell monopoly and risk, those are both much older then 10yrs and they still make money. They sell those games because there is a demand that is profitable to supply. The original Everquest is still going, their still supplying that demand and making and profit off it. It makes no sense not to supply the demand of a 10yr old game.

Now let me school you about product development, cause I actually do some of this for a living.

The highest cost sink isn't in the maintenance of the game, but the initial development to go from concept to design to the actual key pounding of code. MMO's don't make profits in their first year or so due to this fact. It costs tons of money to develop the original game mechanics, design the artwork, assign the various mechanics and so forth. Create all the models and animations, build your server side software, work out the bugs in your backend databases.

Now all of these are sunk costs, their costs you can't immediately pass onto the consumer as it would price your product out of the market and you must accept them as an investment in the future of your product. After the first couple of years you'll end up making the original investment back and then your operating on pure profit from that point on. Any money left over after maintenance and operations expense's can be spent on product development and pocketed as profit.

Starting over again, aka making a new MMO, means you must start back at year one sunk costs all over again. Discontinuing or failing to maintain and develop for a product that is already banking you tons of money is a very very bad business decision. Especially if your doing it to develop a "new" MMO from scratch, which will just cost you more money. This is why Blizzard didn't make "WoW 2" and instead decided to further develop the original WoW. In the long run it costs them less to develop and expand on their original product then it does to sink money into a "new" product and hope people go for their bait. When they made EQ2 they though all the players would jump over, and while some did most did not. This was a very harsh lesson that needed to be learned. Players do not like switching MMO's like they do cars and they do not develop a brand loyalty to MMO's like they do. Each and every MMO is treated like a separate product and has a separate player base. No matter what it's name is or who developed it.

[svengalis]

Without the impossible to obtain crap we get the whiners saying content is to easy.

[detlef]

See, told you lol...

I only responded since you asked. But it's true.