Alliance based content

[Demonjustin]

Call of Duty isn't MMO, and CoD sells better than majority of games in same genre, thus it's a success. FFXI also sells better than 90% of MMO in the industry, thus it's also a success. In MMO industry, besides revenue, one of the most common way to determine whether a title is successful, is by looking at it's lifespan. It's fact, and that's how the majority of dev/players judge a title in this industry. No one would care about how one individual player think about this game, but they care about the numbers. A game's lifespan and sub number directly affects revenue, in FFXI's case, it did better than most of the titles in the industry, so how is it not a success?

And fine, that's assume you're correct that FFXI is cheap with upkeep(I still don't know exactly which title you're comparing with, cuz you only use vague concept, but oh well):

I don't go specifically by financial success for a reason. I don't go by my own personal idea of fun either. I think of a successful MMO as being one that is kept alive but also has a large active player base and consistent content being added to it. The reason for this is due to the fact it not only actually gives greater financial success, but it also keeps the game alive a long period of time, if I made a MMO tomorrow and 1000 people played it over the course of the next decade but only 1000 people ever actually played with no new players I wouldn't call my game a success.

So far as upkeep, I am comparing FFXI to basically any MMO alive today. I doubt any MMOs alive today made within the last 5 years which have content still being created for it have a cheaper upkeep in all honesty.

The amount of people has no direct connection on a games success, because a game cost money to develop, and it cost money to update.

Financial.

But you did say "Just because the game is still running does not mean it's a success." without further explanation, in an industry that most titles can't live for more than 3~5 years with 500k sub. THAT is pretty much changing the definition of standard. You can't blame me for pointing the flaw in your logic out.

Perhaps it is a flaw on my part that I can't properly describe things well. Perhaps success isn't the word I seek to use. I am not a money person, I don't ever look at money as a source of one's success or one's achievements, nor do I look to money as the end goal for things. Perhaps it's for this reason that when I speak of success as I am now that money doesn't even factor into it for me in any way, I couldn't care less if FFXI made more money than was spent on it because in the end that's not what ever mattered to me. When I say this game isn't successful, I mean that it's entertainment value is lower than that of other games and that it has had failures in many fields that are easily done by any game that I think are required for a game to be successful at being a great MMO. A large playerbase is one key thing I associate with MMOs, the lack of attempting to get people into this game alone has been enough to say this game has failed terribly in at least one way to me, but the overall game itself outside of finance to me seems to be a failure rather than a success.

I never once meant to imply that the game isn't financially successful, I doubt they spend hardly anything by compare to the money they make every month from players, mules, second accounts, and so on just to make the updates we get.

Your above post clearly admitted that your definition of success was based on your own personal preference, exactly how I change everything you said? "If I don't like it, it sucks!" is judging something based on personal preference just like "I look to entertainment success". Except at this point of time we all know "sucks" is often an opinion, while "success" often comes with a measurable standard when being used.

To say that it is based off of an ideal of 'If I don't like it then it sucks' would mean only games I like can fit into the category, but this isn't the case, it's why the fact I haven't played games is meaningful, I'm not judging all games I like as successful and all those I don't as not, some games I like aren't successful, some I don't like are, as I said though, perhaps my wording is off, I don't know, success is the only word that seems to fit what I'm looking for yet it seems you're saying it applies in this case only to finance and nothing more really.

I never deny the fact that FF has strong IP value. Just because FF rely on IP value to sell, doesn't mean FF isn't successful. FFXI was a successful MMO compare with majority of titles, maybe it's successful because it's a FF MMO, but it's still a successful MMO. Being a FF game or not does not change the fact that in this industry, FFXI is considered more successful than 90% of titles on the market.

Specifically what you said is that it doesn't matter. My point was is that it makes all the difference in the world on how the game's received and thus, matters more than anything. Were FFXIII put on the market as something besides FF it would have been a so-so RPG a few people would have played, given bad reviews, and moved on from. Instead of that happening the game was kept alive by sequels, it got a ton of attention, it had financial success where it would have otherwise flopped, and overall the title carried it, and possibly even did some damage to the game's integrity due to the fact that it was judged much more harshly against other titles rather than being just another RPG itself. The reason this matters for FFXI is the fact that FFXI can very easily be seen as the same kind of situation, I again don't know how FFXI was on release but if it's half as bad as people have made it sound to be then I have little doubt that people played this game and made it what it is today over the years not because it was great, but because it was Final Fantasy. The idea of playing Final Fantasy with friends could easily be too alluring to pass up and in the end have been the reason for it's success. So to say that just because it's Final Fantasy and may have succeeded for that reason doesn't matter seems very inaccurate, because it seems to me that could imply a bad game got the spotlight only because of it's name while other games were they made the same or we're this game titled differently would have failed. But again this diverts away from the idea of it being less about finances and more about the game itself, as I'm talking about a game that can't stand on it's own right and you're likely talking about the fact that it made money be it FF or not and thus is a success regardless.

Next time before you pissed off on the internet because you can't convince someone on the internet, maybe you should start presenting your opinion in a more logical way.

I did. Perhaps you should stop acting as though what I say is something else. Such as taking everything I say and balling it into the idea of 'If I don't like it then it's not a success' which is what you did. I gave criteria that I judge games as a success by, many games fall into that category including games I do and don't like, at that somehow still gets balled into the same idea. You basically ignore what I say and just go off into la la land about how I'm wrong when you seem not to even understand what I'm saying due to the inability to properly comprehend that you're coloring my statements with the wrong light by assuming I am simply arguing for nothing more than what I like and saying everything I don't like is by definition bad.

My anger doesn't come from an inability to debate or argue with you over these things properly nor being unable to change your opinion it's about the fact you seem to consistently take my arguments the wrong way and dismiss them under the context they mean something completely different than originally intended.

[Afania]

I don't go specifically by financial success for a reason. I don't go by my own personal idea of fun either. I think of a successful MMO as being one that is kept alive but also has a large active player base and consistent content being added to it. The reason for this is due to the fact it not only actually gives greater financial success, but it also keeps the game alive a long period of time, if I made a MMO tomorrow and 1000 people played it over the course of the next decade but only 1000 people ever actually played with no new players I wouldn't call my game a success.

That's not the definition of success, that's more like an ideal that no game has ever accomplish before....even the most successful MMO like WoW lost a lot of sub at one point of time.

In a happy rainbow land, of course every dev would want their game to have 1000 players first year, 2000 players 2nd year, 5000 players 3rd year and 100000 players after 10 years. But this is reality, the reality of this industry is after 3~5 years your game is very likely to shut down.

By your logic I can pretty much call anything, any company or any individual in this world unsuccessful, because they can't accomplish the ideal.

So far as upkeep, I am comparing FFXI to basically any MMO alive today. I doubt any MMOs alive today made within the last 5 years which have content still being created for it have a cheaper upkeep in all honesty.

Then you don't really understand the industry, or maybe you only ever look at AAA big budget titles and think that's normal. There are hundreds and hundreds of low budget titles from Asia that pretty much just launch, milk every penny from the player with cash shop, every update= reskinned mobs and zones, and they stop updating the game after 1 year or something. Which lead to even faster player decline so they have a legit excuse to shut it down. Then they launched another title in 1 year, repeat the entire process, with every game design and stats copy and paste from previous titles, only with different art assets and game title.

Some game with better quality may made it to the west if they have a publisher, but the content isn't any better. But that doesn't matter, because most of the players playing this kind of MMO, tend to play for 2 weeks and quit, come back after 6 months and play for 1 week and quit. Having quality and speedy update and keep players around for entertainment value isn't their goal. Make money by creating a title as fast as possible, hoping 1%~5% of those 2 weeks player spend some cash in their cash shop is their goal.

THAT is the fact of 90% of games in this industry. They don't make a living by making quality product, but by the quantity of the product.

You may not care because you're a player only wanting to play quality AAA titles, and only ever care about AAA titles.You can probably name many quality AAA titles from past 5 years. Warhammer online(btw, this game also had slow update and eventually lost enough sub to shut down), Rift, SWTOR, GW2, FF14 ARR, Tera, and soon TESO. But they're not majority, they're just 1% of the titles in this industry. FFXI's update, especially update speed after 2013 Nov, is much better than 90% of the MMORPG existed.

I'm not saying you must compare FFXI with low budget cash shop MMO titles. Obviously that's bringing FF IP down. But you shouldn't really claim "I think every new MMO title from past 5 year did this better", without understanding the industry as a whole.

Perhaps it is a flaw on my part that I can't properly describe things well. Perhaps success isn't the word I seek to use. I am not a money person, I don't ever look at money as a source of one's success or one's achievements, nor do I look to money as the end goal for things. Perhaps it's for this reason that when I speak of success as I am now that money doesn't even factor into it for me in any way, I couldn't care less if FFXI made more money than was spent on it because in the end that's not what ever mattered to me. When I say this game isn't successful, I mean that it's entertainment value is lower than that of other games and that it has had failures in many fields that are easily done by any game that I think are required for a game to be successful at being a great MMO. A large playerbase is one key thing I associate with MMOs, the lack of attempting to get people into this game alone has been enough to say this game has failed terribly in at least one way to me, but the overall game itself outside of finance to me seems to be a failure rather than a success.

Of course you wouldn't care, because obviously you aren't the one paying for the development cost. Maybe one day when you fund your own company(and using kickstarter doesn't count) you'd know. No offense, I'm going to make a guess(if I guess wrong, I'm sorry) that you probably never start your own business, or you did but your own business isn't very successful. Because most of your opinion seems like opinion from a customer, but not opinion from a developer. It has zero sense with marketing and business.

A large playerbase doesn't come just because you try, "attempt to get people into this game" also don't come just because you try either. Everything you do in a company, it needs resource. If you want to put ad to attract more players...money. You want to hire a community manager and interact with the community? Money. You want to attract the player by creating some sort of super awesome change to the game? MONEY. You want to relaunch the game so every player look at your game? MONNNNNEEEEEY.

Eventually, you may find your investment may attract some players, but ended up not THAT effective. You may spend $1000 on marketing this month to get new players, but you only get 10 more players=$120 more profit this month. In the end, you just lost $880!

Your line of thinking, is completely rainbow land /customer line of thinking. "I want the best game to play with!" "I want A feature, B feature, C feature in the game I'm playing, if a game is like that, it'd be perfect!" But that'd never work, because eventually it'd backfire.

Remember SWTOR? Honestly, I think playing SWTOR from lv1 was an enjoyable experience. I love SW, I love the writing quality of SWTOR, and SWTOR voice acting is AWESOME. The entire writing quality, with the quality of acting and VA, made SWTOR a pretty fun experience that quite a lot of players made a lot of alt just to experience the story. Even though it's not really a virtual world I'm looking for in a MMO, it doesn't really matter that much if I only play for the story.

However, a large part of the crazy 150M~200M dev cost of SWTOR also came from hiring voice actors, and when the sub dropped to 500k after 1 year, SWTOR couldn't generate enough profit to cover the cost, and implemented a very bad F2P model to generate more profit.

THAT F2P model completely killed the game experience for me, it made me quit.

The point is, SWTOR could be a better game without VA, maybe. Plenty of game has no kick ass VA and it was enjoyable, why'd SWTOR need to spend that much money in it? VA made the story a more enjoyable experience, but is it make or break in a MMO?

All the money dev spent on marketing, it will go back to the customer. There are no free lunches, after all. All the money dev spend on ad, community activity, relaunching a game, getting press review for update, managing relationships with, it will go back to the customer with one extra mount you must buy from the cash shop, or lower quality update.

The real question isn't "why SE doesn't toss money to get more players", but "do we need to sacrifice the quality of the service to get more players?"

IF I'm the game dev, I wouldn't aim on "getting large player base". That's pretty much_key_to_failure. It's key to failure because dev would start making silly decisions if their goal is to get as many players as possible, ended up getting none. There's only one goal I'd aim for: Make a game my target audience would enjoy. If my target audience has 10 people, I'd make this game super fun for THEM and screw everyone else. Nobody get time/resource to please everyone. That is how you make a successful product.

You may not completely agree with my POV now, but if you happen to know a successful entrepreneur with business sense, and ask THEIR opinion about how to be successful with target audience, maybe they'll agree with me.

Specifically what you said is that it doesn't matter. My point was is that it makes all the difference in the world on how the game's received and thus, matters more than anything. Were FFXIII put on the market as something besides FF it would have been a so-so RPG a few people would have played, given bad reviews, and moved on from.

Nope, exactly the opposite. FFXIII is a very well made, polished and enjoyable game, the production value is very high. The majority of hate came from linearity and the presentation style, which isn't a flaw but just the game design direction.

The review score it got was what it deserves, it won't get lower with a different name. It got plenty of hate BECAUSE it's FF. Players expect FF to be something similar to what they know and used to play, something closer to Lost Odyssey, at least not that linear. FFXIII is very different from what they expected, therefore it got hate.

Without the name FF, FFXIII can truly shine with it's strength: Battle system, art, cut-scenes and animation. Because it's honestly not a bad game if you don't already believe FF should follow certain style.

On the other hand, without the name FF, FFXIII probably won't have enough resource to have all that production value to shine in above mentioned aspect. Half of the enjoyment in FFXIII came from cool animation and art, which cost money and most SE titles aren't getting that much resource unless it's FF, therefore FFXIII will be a so-so RPG if it's not FF, due to the lack of resource. Being a FF title is both a curse and a bless for FFXIII.

If FFXIII has another name such as Crystal Legend, but has same resource in quality, art and animation, I'm pretty sure it's not going to get as much hate. Players gonna play it, tell their friends "Hey I just played Crystal Legend, the battle system is pretty fun!" "Cool I'll try it out" "Never heard of it, gonna pass". It won't sell millions and millions of copies, but most players won't hate this game for being linear and having cliche JRPG story.


A super huge wall of text, sorry. But I can't help it when I see opinions about the industry that clearly didn't do much research about them. If you don't agree with my opinion about business, prove me wrong by showing me real life examples, don't just tell me what your ideal is.