Any countermeasures planned for declining player population?

[Kluaf]

well geeking for new info i decided to look at the JP forum and wow most every post has 1000s of reads and likes as compared to our forum totals are very low. we hardly ever break 20 likes on a post i didnt see to many under 40 likes and also there wasnt a lot of well your idea is ok but it should be this way. i seen a lot more togetherness than on the na forums. im sure theres 1upers and toppers there as well but i didnt see a lot of it myself.... jus sayin dont forget to hit the like button wen u see something u like. no 1 has time to read every single post but im sure the admins have way to check the most liked posts and threads so kep that in mind wen your complaining about about not getting your voice heard....

[Winrie]

Sorry to break it to you, but before Abyssea, we had Limbus, Dynamis, Salvage, HNM, ZNM, VNM, Sea, Sky and Einherjar all to do, that all held a relevance to actually do. Im sorry but tending to the casual gamer did more damage than it did good, it gave veterans a year of fresh air to move on from the game, and it gave newer people a chance at decent gear without having to grind out. As for the comment to whomever the hell said it, HC players back before abyssea were not capped on most endgame content, Hence camps still had 60ish or more people at them, salvage still was some of the best stuff in the game, hence worth doing on a regular basis, HNMs still held great gear, and odin was a viable option for king gear among some other rare pieces.

Im not even going to mention the essence of teamplay and SKILL that was needed before abyssea, now its mindless f'n zombies flailing at everything til they cap, and its easy to cap, when you cap you quit. Considering people were doing all the above endgame contents for how many years obtaining gear? and now most the playerbase is bored and were one year after abyssea year long reign? im wrong right? Abyssea killed your game. Anyone even notice how abyssea and new nyzul is harder now? if SE believed an extreme casual environment would save ffxi then those pieces of new content would be easy mode as well. Argue it if you wish, it doesnt matter at the end of the day for anyone.

[Insaniac]

Wrong.

This chain of events killed ffxi.

1) FF14 is announced
2) Level cap increase
3a) FF14 fails
3b) FF11 crew and budget is gutted to try to save FF14
3c) With that budget the skeleton dev team is unable to build content to fill the void of events left by the level cap increase
3d) Abyssea remains as the only enjoyable content but it's not enough to sustain an entire game
3e) New content consists of uninspired fight mechanics copy/paste zones and mobs and little to no storyline.
4a) Tanaka turns his torturous gaze back to FF11
4b) Horrendous grinds low drop rates and side grade gear are reintroduced
4c) Player feedback is once again cast into the wind

Basically, you can blame abyssea all you want but it's just not correct. FF11 is failing now because FF14 failed and the original vision for the game after the level cap increase got thrown out the window leaving the game stagnant especially when they tried to close pandora's box and go back to pre-abyssea reward to effort ratios. So I guess what I'm saying is the reason people are leaving now is the same reason people were leaving before abyssea.. Tanaka.

I try to not respond to you "abyssea ruined ffxi" maniacs but your post was so silly I decided I would but I won't reply again unless you make some valid point.

Oh also.. ffxi was never hard. Skill never had anything to do with the gear you had. Before abyssea for the most part it was always a fight against the random number generator and/or a NASA bot.

[Anapingofness]

I pretty much agree with the OP. However, I'd like to avoid another server merge if possible. The thing is, even if there is another server merge it will not help this game any. What this game needs is an influx of new players and for that the game needs to be A LOT more newbie friendly.

They need to increase movement speed across the board, permanently. Even with all of the OP's done, my personal chicken grown, VW and Aby warps the actual movement speed is downright disgusting. They also need to have you do the chocobo quest in the three nations and reduce it from x4 hrs to like x30min-x15min max.

They need to fix and revive the mountain of old and dead content they have or remove it in favor of something new and exciting. They need to be adding new content period.

Another thing SE really has to do is listen to its player base- actually hear us out and consider what we have to say instead of this pissing around that they do. A very roundabout "no" is not a reason for not hearing us out. Quite frankly, SE is one damned lucky game company to have so many loyal fans. This is especially true considering how badly we are treated.

Dear SE, why must we have events that continuously fail and suck? Why can't you get with the program? Why can't you show even a moderate amount of professionalism and pride in what you do?

Now, I've heard people say that they're letting the game die in favor of FFXIV. To be perfectly honest, at this rate a part of me is inclined to believe that. However, don't think that these issues won't follow those players who migrate to FFXIV. In fact, we still see some of the same issues in FFXIV that we see in FFXI. The only difference is that at least some of those issues are being solved. Which brings me to my last point, problems that go unsolved will balloon into issues that are difficult to solve. I understand that SE would have to do a lot of work to fix the problems in FFXI but they made their bed, now its time to lay in it. Quite frankly I have very little sympathy for SE. People need to remember that FFXI isn't some freebie game. They're being paid to do work on this game, and they're being paid a lot of money for extremely lackluster services.

Edit: Insaniac's post = win. Silly Abyssea nay sayers. How little you know... /sigh

[Neisan_Quetz]

See all Found 2.6k players on Quetz during JP Prime, which is roughly what I remember it being like in 07/08. Probably about ~400 less but it's been a long time.

For JP Prime anyway, NA numbers have definitely taken some sort of dive.

[Glamdring]

just my 2 cents, put me down with those opposed to any server mergers. I'm finally able to get in turns at pop drop NMs in Aby so that I and my firends can actually get in meaningful runs at Aby +2 gear and higher trials on the Empy weapon paths, I'd rather not go back to having to log on at 3:30 am to have a possibility of doing those. Yes, I could go straight to VW, but considering it's about as much fun as self-circumcission with a putty knife and no anesthesia I'd really rather not. If the Legion rewards ever actually scale to the difficulty of the content that could be a viable alternative, but I haven't seen any hints of that happening so I'm not going to hold my breath.

[Spiritreaver]

Sorry to break it to you, but before Abyssea, we had Limbus, Dynamis, Salvage, HNM, ZNM, VNM, Sea, Sky and Einherjar all to do, that all held a relevance to actually do. Im sorry but tending to the casual gamer did more damage than it did good, it gave veterans a year of fresh air to move on from the game, and it gave newer people a chance at decent gear without having to grind out. As for the comment to whomever the hell said it, HC players back before abyssea were not capped on most endgame content, Hence camps still had 60ish or more people at them, salvage still was some of the best stuff in the game, hence worth doing on a regular basis, HNMs still held great gear, and odin was a viable option for king gear among some other rare pieces.

Im not even going to mention the essence of teamplay and SKILL that was needed before abyssea, now its mindless f'n zombies flailing at everything til they cap, and its easy to cap, when you cap you quit. Considering people were doing all the above endgame contents for how many years obtaining gear? and now most the playerbase is bored and were one year after abyssea year long reign? im wrong right? Abyssea killed your game. Anyone even notice how abyssea and new nyzul is harder now? if SE believed an extreme casual environment would save ffxi then those pieces of new content would be easy mode as well. Argue it if you wish, it doesnt matter at the end of the day for anyone.

@ first rambling paragraph-

To say it as simply as i can, grindfest for gear ad nausea in lieu of actual game design is not a good thing. I've done all the events you rattled off and a few you didn't, all came before Abyssea and none of them were hard once you do them a few times. Having to wade into the grungy cesspool that was Endgame pre-Abyssea and stay there for YEARS on end to get a shot at gear that might boost your play a few %age points was not cool. Saying it was is being disingenuous. Your figure, 60+ ppl at a camp trying for 5 year+ old gear, is also not cool.

And wth do you mean by players not being capped on endgame? If you mean not having every single item, then i know of very few players that have a fraction of that. If you mean having done everything there is to do, can't say i know anyone that's done that either.

@ rambling paragraph the second-

How much teamplay and skill were needed to have tanks engage, DDs zerg, and mages support rinse-alot? Not trying to be Abyssea white knight extraordinaire here, but you can't say that those roles magically vanished when Visions went live. Not only did they remain, they had Abyssea's nifty quirks melded to them. And really that synthesis of old and new took skill and teamplay to a fun place that hadn't been around for most oldtimers since WAY back in the day.

Cutting my rambling short, you know what is atm and will ultimately kill FFXI? The current mindset held by the dev team and their insistence on trying to put the genie back into the bottle. Abyssea worked and worked well. Now instead of behaving like a real business and building from what was considered a win by the vast majority of players and most non-players possessing the common sense the universe granted a cat, the dev team is trying to time-shift FFXI back into a period where it was bleeding subscribers do to ingame stagnation.

Personally, i loathed Salvage and Dynamis both. What i didn't do however was try and pin all of FFXI's ills on those parts of the game i found distasteful. I've said before, if you don't like Abyssea-that's fine. Just own your opinion and roll with it without tearing down one of the few critical successes that the game has enjoyed in a while.

Your final line was spot on though. End of the day it doesn't matter much either way.

[Zerich]

Sorry to break it to you, but before Abyssea, we had Limbus, Dynamis, Salvage, HNM, ZNM, VNM, Sea, Sky and Einherjar all to do, that all held a relevance to actually do. Im sorry but tending to the casual gamer did more damage than it did good, it gave veterans a year of fresh air to move on from the game, and it gave newer people a chance at decent gear without having to grind out. As for the comment to whomever the hell said it, HC players back before abyssea were not capped on most endgame content, Hence camps still had 60ish or more people at them, salvage still was some of the best stuff in the game, hence worth doing on a regular basis, HNMs still held great gear, and odin was a viable option for king gear among some other rare pieces.

Im not even going to mention the essence of teamplay and SKILL that was needed before abyssea, now its mindless f'n zombies flailing at everything til they cap, and its easy to cap, when you cap you quit. Considering people were doing all the above endgame contents for how many years obtaining gear? and now most the playerbase is bored and were one year after abyssea year long reign? im wrong right? Abyssea killed your game. Anyone even notice how abyssea and new nyzul is harder now? if SE believed an extreme casual environment would save ffxi then those pieces of new content would be easy mode as well. Argue it if you wish, it doesnt matter at the end of the day for anyone.

translation: baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaw

[Glamdring]

OK, just a comment on the general line of complaints/praise for the old alliance based battle systems like Dynamis, etc. THIS WAS ALWAYS A MATTER OF PLAYER PREFERENCE IN PLAYSTYLE! You never had to do Dynamis or HNMLS or Salvage or whatever, the choice was your based on how you liked to play. That's why there was always so much side-grade gear-to give meaningful rewards in the playstyle that any individual player preferred. If there was any hole it was in viable end-game purchaseable gear from crafters, which robbed people who didn't mind grinding for a ton of gil to purchase gear in order to avoid the hard fights an outlet for their playstyle.

No system is going to please everyone, period. My personal preference was the alliance and larger battles, but I'm completely aware that not everyone shared that preference. Conversely, lots of people like the !! proc systems, I loathe them, again my personal preference. I'm not alone in my preference, and not too many other players are alone in their preferences.

I personally feel that SE needs to develop multiple playsystems catering to the varying playstyles players prefer, but all resulting in comparable quality rewards-if not the same rewards. As an example, why can heavy metal plates only be gotten as drops in VW? Is there some dogmatic law that says your grind in whatever system has to preclude you from rewards from any other system? Especially considering that a trial path may force you from 1 system into another? Look at a full empy path-regular NMs to Voidwalkers to Aby to voidwatch, 4 playstyles that only have killing something as part of your grind as a common element? How does that satisfy player preferences?

SE derives their income from players grinding the time sync, what does it matter how they grind as long as they spend the time and thus the user fees? BTW, making multiple paths would also go a long way to curtailing alot of the griping on here from people who want to bash this or that content, and other players for not wanting to do this or that content. I for one am all for anything that might reintroduce a degree of civility to the game, and to these forums as well.

[Helel]

See all Found 2.6k players on Quetz during JP Prime, which is roughly what I remember it being like in 07/08. Probably about ~400 less but it's been a long time.

For JP Prime anyway, NA numbers have definitely taken some sort of dive.

Pretty much this... Once again, I don't know where people are getting their numbers from. I've seen over 3k during prime time on Bismarck. The population is great at the moment, and we do NOT need another server merge. The rest of OP's concerns are valid but also a rehashing of things that have already been said countless times.