Reasons Why FFXI is Declining

[Daemon]

Opinion Not enough new players are joining FFXI these days, It feels like the game is losing customers and not doing anything to bring in new people.

Reason Lack of exposure? Promotions? Game reviews of the progress FFXI makes? Lack of Game Guides?

Conclusion Even though this game is over a decade old, this is an MMORPG and not a game that players tuck away in a shoebox left under the bed. Because not many new players are joining, this is how I see FFXI Declining.

Solution If the future of FFXI is to continue for years to come, New current game guides would help. Holding another event such as the Tokyo Game Show giving or selling special items that include a special code to obtain an item like "Moogle Cap" would be nice if such events happened in the US and other counties and not just restricted to Japan. Half of the player base are in fact living in various parts of the world other than Asia.

[zataz]

i think they should add more nms. not mutiday ones but like 21-24 for like 10% of new gear(the best gear on par with seekers stuff) then 45% spawn nms and 45% lotto this would give people something to do inbetween link events and give the smaller groups a chance to get something nice out of it! the idea is cant get into a group u can go camp a nm or 2 and still get a item about the same.

[Hawklaser]

Ignoring that the OP assumes that the number of FFXI subscriptions is decreasing, here is what I think they're doing wrong:

1) They're creating a two-tier system where the "hardcore" players are miles and miles and miles beyond the "casual" players due to Delve boss weapons.
Example: Last night I did Provenance Watcher on Monk. I did twice as much damage as the second closest DDs (a 99 Ryunohige DRG and 99 Ragnarok DRK about tied). It is not uncommon for me to out-DD people when I come a DD job, but normally I'm doing 33% more damage than them. This time it was 100% more damage, and to top it off... I have no H2H merits or Shijin Spiral. I haven't even unlocked Ascetic's Fury. I did so well simply because I won a pair of Oaxiturs earlier in the day from Tojil (the only person in my linkshell to comment them because everyone else already has).
Reason it is problematic: These weapons give players incredible DPS. You have made the game substantially easier for the small subsection of the playerbase that is perfectly capable of playing FFXI on hard mode. Apart from the danger that they will get bored and quit if more difficult content is not added (which seems like a legitimate problem, given the proposed update path), they may get bored even more quickly doing old content because it's not challenging at all anymore. My linkshell has Tojil and the Dakuwaka on farm status, and we'll probably take down the bee on Tuesday night. There aren't going to be any more Delve Fracture bosses until after August, unless I'm mistaken. What are we supposed to do? Grow Moko Grass? Pick up soon-to-be outdated Salvage equipment that we obviously don't need by doing brainless 30-minute runs? We already have literally millions of Plasm. This is a real problem, and it was entirely caused by too much player advancement in too little time.

2) They have removed "gear value" stability.
Example: Back at 75, gear retained its value for long periods of time. If you got an Armada Hauberk in 2005, it was still the best TP body in 2009. Abyssea overturned this paradigm and basically outdated everything. Once we reached the 99 cap, several more upgrades came out (Thaumas and some new abjurations), but the gear hierarchy was basically stable again. Player confidence in gear investments was slowly growing again. Since Adoulin, no one wants to invest in equipment anymore.
Reason it is problematic: This decreases the drive of both casual and hardcore players to obtain minor improvements, but SE has not awoken to this reality and continues to release upgrades that are minor but require a lot of effort. For instance, the last 5 Plasm armor upgrades take something like 4,000 points (2x Airlixir +2s = 8mil or 200k Plasm). They're also pretty likely to still be outdated by equipment released in this patch or the next patch. So why blow the gil for such minor improvements?

Agree so much with this. Especially with how difficult it can be to close the gap if you are behind as well.

[Frost]

My only comment is on the speed at which content is released.

We got the new expansion, and it had a few things to do; skirmish, reives, etc, coupled with some new NMs/HNMs they gave us some new gear options. Then they added whole slew of crafted items and new crafting materials that you had to get 'the old fashioned way' that were relevant and interesting. All these things added were and upgrade, but still within scope of the original content. You had options. Gear was creeping up to the pinnacle gear, not surpassing it, but it started to blur the lines between top gear and the next best thing.

I was cool with that.

Then in less than a month... Delve made ALL content irrelevant...

And I would be ok with this. If it was spread out over a couple months, to the point where we're at currently was anchored somewhere in November with a "Christmas Surprise" right around the corner.

But in less than a month of the new expansion, all the content we worked on, or were working on, or in the queue to work on, was all irrelevant. INCLUDING all the stuff that was just released: no reason to do Reives, Skirmish, Mine, Craft, Naakuls, etc.

Abyssea was released on a relatively condensed schedule as well, but there were a few differences:

When you got geared up in Abyssea, you still could use some situational pieces from the past events. The added boon was that you no longer needed an alliance of 18 people to get them. The content was all reduced to something doable by an intimate group of close friends, and you know it could get done in about fifteen minutes to an hour. This dynamic is good. It made the less accessible content that had been done exclusively by the leading linkshells accessible to the 'common man' and a couple of their buddies, once those leading linkshells were done being on the bleeding edge and reaping the benefits from it.

Currently the new content requires large groups of folks (with the exception of crafting and gathering). However, if you don't give an incentive to do them, worse, you took the incentives to do them away. it's hard enough to entice one person to do stuff, it's infinitely harder to entice a group when there's no rewards (Though I could easily see why the devs would think that, thanks to Voidwatch). It should be noted that a simple 'repeat old content, but harder' strategy doesn't work, give or take, SE's done a decent to good job mixing it up (Yes there's exceptions).

So my request is simple:

Think of the long game.


New content: Leading linkshells jump on it, beat it, recover 'losses' by reaping the rewards from it, dare I say profit from it. (Just make it doable, no 24 hour fights etc...)

Then: Lower restrictions on that content. Give intermediate players a chance to gear up, maybe prove their chops to a leading linkshell, or make their own linkshell in time for the next wave. Leading linkshells are doing 'cleanup' at this time, filling in the gaps, getting those last few pieces, helping friends of friends.

(Small intimate groups of friends do 'catch up'. One or two heavily geared individuals helping 'the less fortunate'. Collectibles like Dynamis coins, Alexandrites, etc. work as incentives. (SE got that part right.))

THEN: New content: The leading tier players are geared and up to date on content, some intermediate players are geared and up to date on content, and a smaller contingency of casual players are geared and up to date on content. People are folded in to the top tier based on their merit, newer linkshells form from the chaff, and the cycle continues.

(With every subsequent wave of content it should only really phase out about 10%-15% of the 'old gear', and reduce another 10%-15% of the 'old gear' to being "situational". While providing a 5%-7% increase in potency to a 'top geared' player.)

This doesn't mean you can't drop a bomb once and a while. Go ahead and pepper the game with things like the new Delve weapons, Ridill, Kraken Club, Defending Ring, Relic Weapons, etc... But do so sparingly, like Ridill/Klub/Dring, or make them earned, like Relics. Make those items the bar that all other gear reaches and eventually SURPASSES. A player should grow 5%-7% per update, not double their potency like with the Delve weapons, but if they do, make that really rare.

On that note, when something is THAT HARD to get (Ex: Mythics). make them really worth it; the player is sacrificing new content to repeat content, generally helping others in the process. Those people deserve to have a real 'game changer' item. They've repeated old content for 'x' cycles of new content, they should be able to store that growth when it comes to fruition. Four cycles of 5% growth? Make sure the item adds a good 15%+ above what they would normally do.

[SpankWustler]

Opinion: People are buying tacos instead of paying for FFXI subscriptions.

Reason:12.95$ is enough money to buy roughly ten to thirteen more tacos a month. Tacos taste good because they are greasy and fattening and thus appeal to same demographic of greasy, fat people as the typical MMORPG.

Conclusion: TACOS.

Solution: Burn down every single Taco Bell. As a bonus, the flames fueled by molten nacho cheese and burning Taco Bell employees who have absorbed the signature "Taco Bell meat stench" into their hair and flesh will make the world smell delicious.

[Vizzer]

Opinion: People are buying tacos instead of paying for FFXI subscriptions.

Reason:12.95$ is enough money to buy roughly ten to thirteen more tacos a month. Tacos taste good because they are greasy and fattening and thus appeal to same demographic of greasy, fat people as the typical MMORPG.

Conclusion: TACOS.

Solution: Burn down every single Taco Bell. As a bonus, the flames fueled by molten nacho cheese and burning Taco Bell employees who have absorbed the signature "Taco Bell meat stench" into their hair and flesh will make the world smell delicious.

Even without Taco Bell, there is still Jack in the Box.
Taco Bell has Pespi though and Jack in the Box has Coke.
For me tacos: Jack in the Box > Taco Bell, but Pepsi > Coke, so I am torn.

[Daemon]

Opinion Updates like the one we just got today gave us a sense of false hope thinking urgent details we were concerned about would receive first priority attention ends in disappointment after finding out minor tweaks, and focus was given to things that did not solve the bigger problems the community has been sharing with the DEV team.

Reason That's all you Dev Team. We've shared our concerns, posted and left you information on how we are experiencing your creation. How the new direction is not working out for all of us.

Conclusion It seems our concerns are not being addressed properly. Instead of attending to what needs to be fixed such as inventory issues, we are left in an even worse state than before the new update. Adding more gear and not giving us ways to carry them. Adding new adjustments rather than fix things such as REM complaints that the good portion of the community has been concerned about leaving us no road map or no official word to gives us any hope is the reason I see FFXI declining.

Solution Dev team needs to pay attention to the bigger problems people are having and focus on working this out first before adding new monsters, items, weapons, armor, area etc. we don't need new content to keep us entertained. We need the content we already have fixed. Jobs, inventory, balance, Character adjustments such as Merit points, Zones such as NNI, Salvage, Assault made solo friendly. While its nice to see adjustments be made to Reives, elemental adjustments, these things are not as important as the other things that were listed above.

[Daemon]

Ignoring that the OP assumes that the number of FFXI subscriptions is decreasing, here is what I think they're doing wrong:

1) They're creating a two-tier system where the "hardcore" players are miles and miles and miles beyond the "casual" players due to Delve boss weapons.
Example: Last night I did Provenance Watcher on Monk. I did twice as much damage as the second closest DDs (a 99 Ryunohige DRG and 99 Ragnarok DRK about tied). It is not uncommon for me to out-DD people when I come a DD job, but normally I'm doing 33% more damage than them. This time it was 100% more damage, and to top it off... I have no H2H merits or Shijin Spiral. I haven't even unlocked Ascetic's Fury. I did so well simply because I won a pair of Oaxiturs earlier in the day from Tojil (the only person in my linkshell to comment them because everyone else already has).
Reason it is problematic: These weapons give players incredible DPS. You have made the game substantially easier for the small subsection of the playerbase that is perfectly capable of playing FFXI on hard mode. Apart from the danger that they will get bored and quit if more difficult content is not added (which seems like a legitimate problem, given the proposed update path), they may get bored even more quickly doing old content because it's not challenging at all anymore. My linkshell has Tojil and the Dakuwaka on farm status, and we'll probably take down the bee on Tuesday night. There aren't going to be any more Delve Fracture bosses until after August, unless I'm mistaken. What are we supposed to do? Grow Moko Grass? Pick up soon-to-be outdated Salvage equipment that we obviously don't need by doing brainless 30-minute runs? We already have literally millions of Plasm. This is a real problem, and it was entirely caused by too much player advancement in too little time.

2) They have removed "gear value" stability.
Example: Back at 75, gear retained its value for long periods of time. If you got an Armada Hauberk in 2005, it was still the best TP body in 2009. Abyssea overturned this paradigm and basically outdated everything. Once we reached the 99 cap, several more upgrades came out (Thaumas and some new abjurations), but the gear hierarchy was basically stable again. Player confidence in gear investments was slowly growing again. Since Adoulin, no one wants to invest in equipment anymore.
Reason it is problematic: This decreases the drive of both casual and hardcore players to obtain minor improvements, but SE has not awoken to this reality and continues to release upgrades that are minor but require a lot of effort. For instance, the last 5 Plasm armor upgrades take something like 4,000 points (2x Airlixir +2s = 8mil or 200k Plasm). They're also pretty likely to still be outdated by equipment released in this patch or the next patch. So why blow the gil for such minor improvements?

You have shown the greater purpose of why I made this Topic. Regardless, your reason still falls under my topic of why FFXI is declining and it's great to see others share their point of view so we all can see how each of us feels about the game in its current state. Thank you for this because you allowed several of us to see that there are more people thinking on the same page.

[pretre]

because the game used to be about having fun with friends, these days its about getting best gear you can not the adventure. I too am guilty of this but I doubt you will find a player from meripo days and earlier that wouldn't say its a diff game these days. I think its because the challenge has gone from the game and everything these days is endgame as in very 1 directional, GEAR GEAR GEAR, I remember I used to turn on and just chat to people sometimes, it was more like a chat forum with games. this just my opinion an I don't think this issue is fixable

[Daemon]

because the game used to be about having fun with friends, these days its about getting best gear you can not the adventure. I too am guilty of this but I doubt you will find a player from meripo days and earlier that wouldn't say its a diff game these days. I think its because the challenge has gone from the game and everything these days is endgame as in very 1 directional, GEAR GEAR GEAR, I remember I used to turn on and just chat to people sometimes, it was more like a chat forum with games. this just my opinion an I don't think this issue is fixable

I agree with you 100%