What new players. Last great surge of new players was ToAU.
Are you trying to deny that SE hasn't been in hot water the past few years? Even the CEO has agreed on that front that things need to change. FFXIII-2 has launched to some praise which is a nice change of pace after the recent bashing SE has been witness to.
The game is "dying" as subs are going down yet what's happening in FFXI is SE pushing customers away because of largely silly/incompetent decisions. Things like nerfs, convoluted solutions to player issues and a return to the hardcore timesink/skinner box style gameplay. We know this is an MMO and needs people to stick around but getting people to keep playing doesn't have to involve crushing challenges.
Let's put it this way: Without these forums someone at SE actually thought that hundreds of ADL/PW/T6 VWNM was reasonable for a 99 trial. That encompasses everything wrong with the dev team thinking. You mean to tell me in years of feedback SE didn't get the message that this is too much, too early '00s style MMO development?
Everyone can agree this game is aging but the issue isn't that the game is aging but moreso that the decisions made by the devs give the company a bad name and negatively affect the brand going out years ahead of time. If you choose to ignore the state of SE over the past few years then you merely leave yourself ignorant to the truth lay bare in front of you.
Last edited by Sparthos; 02-06-2012 at 09:07 AM.
Sparthosx - Lakshmi - 90 BLU BRD SAM COR RNG DNC PUP BST WAR WHM
Sig by Kingfury
Pretty sure at one point only some servers merged, maybe 2 back about 3-5 years ago, and since then no need to merge at all. Only until 2010 did I realize how dead it was actually becoming. I think more people quit around WoTG going nowhere and no new content from within than during any period in game. People came back for level cap increase with people being very interested in what new JA's and new items were. I even thought at one point there would be a 10th zone for someone who completed all 9 areas that would be a new end game zone with the difficulty we originally faced at 75 for the first 2-3 years. Instead you got an expansion that was for obtaining AF, Emp Weaps, and Exp'ing. I have interest in voidwatch but the system in which everyone passed me by and now are only shouting/wanting to do t6 Jeuno and need temp items from mobs no one does anymore sort of makes it discouraging to even get involved in it.
New content in previous expansions = missions that took time to complete, new areas to explore, new NM's to fight, new monsters with abilities you've never seen before. Nothing NEW is promised, it is a rehash of something already done which is fine, but it will never hold the same attention rates as something more involved, composed, and completely not done before, as least on this MMO. People steal ideas all the time. I've heard nothing but good things from Legion which is great.
I won't be spending my money on 14 unless they can prove to me you can listen to the customer base 20% of the time which i do not see now. Any business who gets 5 calls to go bid out service for a customer, you're lucky to get 1/5 of those people to call you back and give you the job. At this point i loved the "contractor" i hired in 2004, i was satisfied with most of his answers of why certain changes were made to the initial plans of my home, now it's 2011 and he shows up once a week to work a couple hours to make an appearance cause he's too busy with his other projects which he'll be making more money off of. Nothing wrong with that to be honest, just don't drag me along showing up once a week. Sub the work out to someone else or tell me to go somewhere else.
I'm just frustrated cause I can't find a game like this and i think i'm stuck on the more nostalgic side of this remembering all the good times i've had and now i'm stuck in jeuno after doing dyna once a day, doing salvage, assaults once every 4 days, and have a hard time filling the gaps.
Think even with all the disagreement that has been raised in here, we can all agreed to one thing:
Nerf'ing should not be the way to go. Especially SE has said previously that they would be looking at boosting jobs and not nerfing them as a going forward basis.
Set aside all the other differenting of opinion as to the success or failure of Abyssea and whether Tanakasan was to be blamed and all that, I think we should at least try to see if everyone does indeed agreed that nerfing should not be the right solution.
I've found plenty of MMO's that are better then this both in graphics and the depth. The only reason i still play is the nostalgia and my love for all the final fantasies and the its world.
All Chocobos and Moogles aside i can only take so much. The way the Dev's cant make up their minds on what is fun for people and what makes a job work all around in the world they created leaves me with the choice to move on to the next one(Not 14), I really think that people are only taking this because it's "Final Fantasy" if it was any other MMO it would have failed already because shit is broken some jobs overpowered some too weak and everything is either too easy or too hard to do there's only 4-5 jobs worth leveling and gearing up out of 20! every mob looks the same the areas are the same or inaccessible if your soloing which is crazy stupid to do on any area in a MMO but most of all is the fact that this game had a bunch of things that could have been improved back in the 75 era and some were hit and some total miss after the caps were raised, and now they trying to take everything back to those times of lousy drop rates massive alliances for anything of importance and SAM god's....
I know there's more then a few new MMO's that actually have improved on those things FFXI is lagging to fix so as soon as Guild Wars 2 comes out ill be saying goodbye because a 99 Relic Weapon with "Afterglowlol" has nothing on the sick ass weapons that devs from other games are coming up with these days.
That's exactly the same as what I said. People were simply excited about something new, not about something good. There was no new content released for years, WotG had no endgame whatsoever (unless you count Sandworm and Dark Ixion, which you shouldn't) and it was released over a duration of years, so no one even realy knew where it was going (it still wasn't finished by the time Abyssea was released), so of course they were gonna latch onto Abyssea. That doesn't mean people were happy about it. Shortly after Scars were released already people were annoyed with many aspects of it and it showed, because as soon as the forums went live the floodgates opened and complaint after complaint was placed.
I think you people are simply reading too much into SE's actions. Thinking they wanna return FFXI on some course it was supposedly on or that they wanna get people to XIV or whatever, I don't think any of that was a motivation for their actions, I think it's a lot simpler: they wanna react to user requests, yet they don't know how. Look at what people complained about during the Abyssea era:
- Mobs are too easy
- Atma are nice but overpowered
- New gear is overpowered
- Fractured big groups, everything is duod/triod
- Limits job choices to WAR, NIN, BLM, WHM, THF, MNK
- Too easy to finish, gear too quick to obtain
- No skill required
I know some of you will probably disagree with these things being bad, but I'm not here to argue those, they are simply complaints that were made en masse when the forums went live. If you look at it, all of those things were addressed with Voidwatch. Mobs are hard again (or harder at least), Atmacite aren't nearly as powerful (though I assume they underestimated Save TP, which is another reason why they wanna nerf it now) and neither is the gear, big groups are almost required (at least until they make certain lights cap out, as they said they would), broad spectrum of jobs is basically forced into inclusion, gear drop rates are horribly low and you need to know what you're doing or you're simply gonna wipe on any of the harder tiers. Some of these changes are good, others are pretty ridiculous. It's the exact same thing as with the recent nerfs, it's like SE realized the problem, but in trying to fix it came up with a solution that's just off base, and expectedly, people are complaining about it again. And it's a good thing, the shitstorm that ensued about some of VW's issues will definitely prevent them from trying something like that again. All we can do is hope they won't screw up another way when Legion and the unnamed event go live.
So, anything that isn't a new expansion would fit that criteria? Because in addition to rehashing (a kinder word would be revamping) old events, they also announced expansions to current events and two completely new events for this year.
Don't get me wrong, being a story buff myself (I even liked WotG for that matter) I'll be the last person to complain about a full expansion, I'd even accept if they took a year off of current development just to get it released. But they just got the game to 99 and Abyssea was horribly short lived, so they need to find some current events to keep us on the hook for a while so they can go and make something else, hopefully something big and beautiful (and hopefully not just reskinned old zones like in WotG or Abyssea). Not that I actually believe that's gonna happen anytime soon (not before they realize this game can't continue for long on a skeleton crew and hire some new people to it), chances are what they're making will be just more events like this. Which, personally, I'd also be ok with, as long as they make them entertaining and it keeps me hooked on the game for a while longer.
All affirmations are true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in some sense, true and false in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, and true and false and meaningless in some sense.
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
FFXI: Leviathan > Arcon
FFXIV: Selbina > Arcon Villiers
There are so many zones that are not used whatsoever. So many battle systems that are not used whatsoever. All the problems could have been tweaked and evolved but nothing ever happened. People did campaign by the boatload because exp parties were hard to find on jobs. They never fixed those jobs, and were content with bst, smn, blm, pup infested campaign battles. Then you release abyssea, FoV, GoV, why should i even touch a campaign battle anymore.
The point is they never fix it, they just find something else to distract you. They'll toss a nerf and release news of them fixing tonko and monomi ichi's timers. The lies have grown thin. No more nerfs yet they do it anyways. Biggest statement is not to go to 14. Telling people to quit 11 is like beating a dead horse. Telling people it's actually worse over there and their "fixes" aren't exactly groundbreaking and it's still broken.
|
© SQUARE ENIX FINAL FANTASY, SQUARE ENIX, and the SQUARE ENIX logo are registered trademarks of Square Enix Holdings Co., Ltd. Vana'diel , Tetra Master, PLAYONLINE, the PLAYONLINE logo, Rise of the Zilart, Chains of Promathia, Treasures of Aht Urhgan, and Wings of the Goddess are registered trademarks of Square Enix Co., Ltd. The rating icon is a registered trademark of the Entertainment Software Association. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Online play requires internet connection. |