Why I started playing FF14

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Originally Posted by Aegis

FFXIV has been the company's saving grace financially, that was before the cash shop.

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"Has been". those are key words. We are also talking about a company who has posted a loss in subscription based income for the past 3 quarters. They wont come out and say it, for business reasons, but I have a feeling that declining playerbase issues are starting to impact the bottom line, and cash shop is how they intend to save it.

We do have to face that FFXIV isn't a new game anymore, and despite updates, we are losing players faster than we are getting new ones. it happens to all games, and hopefully ffxiv can survive where so many do not.

The leveling system need to change.... A new player comes in is a night mare to level..... After hitting 50 getting enough gear to go coil is near impossible without spending Gil because olds dungeon is not even worth farming and getting soldiery is of bounds for the newly 50 player for awhile till they hit the high tier dungeon let alone barely hitting the Ilevel mark and go in the high end 4 man dungeon and get drag along.....

The design of the game is really bad for newly player if they want to increase Ilevel for the dungeon sure why not but make sure the newly player can get the previous Ilevel armor in a fashion way instead of "paying gil" or "get drag alone"

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Originally Posted by tocsin

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Not that I disagree with what you're saying because its true, they're declining like all MMOs do after the initial new rush. But, Isn't adding a cash shop to a declining P2P game a lot like... applying salt to a bleeding wound? I mean sure, you dump enough salt on it maybe it'll stop bleeding but I imagine it did more harm than good in the end.

I know.. metaphors and such, I can see why they're trying to milk money out of us to keep their numbers looking good, But I don't know if it will have a positive impact in the long run. I mean, do you think people who look to play XIV might subscribe and then be turned off to the game once they realize theres a second pay wall they'll probably have to consider in the future if they want any of the good vanity/dye/mounts? I bet theres at least some.

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Originally Posted by BlaiseArath

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This is exactly true, and I can offer a theory to this:

They are trying to milk a bit more money out of the playerbase to either fund heavensward, or a new game to get more numbers.

In the current market, other than WoW (which I don't consider current since its playerbase was established almost a decade ago) almost all MMO's make 75% of their money in the first 4 or 5 months, then taper off. the only way for businesses to take advantage of this is to either release a new expansion (to get the "New player" increase again) or to make a new game.

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Originally Posted by tocsin

"Has been". those are key words. We are also talking about a company who has posted a loss in subscription based income for the past 3 quarters. They wont come out and say it, for business reasons, but I have a feeling that declining playerbase issues are starting to impact the bottom line, and cash shop is how they intend to save it.

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I'm not going to enter into the whole cash-shop debate, but I'm curious to know where you have gotten this information - every indication I've seen has been the game is still increasing in player numbers not declining (I'm seeing new players on Balmung all the time, and until the 2.4 patch they had a "x million players!" banner on the Lodestone that increased steadily - it was last at 3.5 million).

I'm not discounting the possibility, but some actual proof is what is needed, not assumptions based purely on emotional (and arrogant) responses made by whining players who post "I'm leaving the game!" threads purely for the attention.

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Originally Posted by tocsin

We do have to face that FFXIV isn't a new game anymore, and despite updates, we are losing players faster than we are getting new ones. it happens to all games, and hopefully ffxiv can survive where so many do not.

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That is true, but that's a fact of all MMOs, not just FFXIV - you said so yourself. After the initial rush, the 'me too' players/players with short attention spans will inevitably leave and go onto the 'next big thing'. But FFXIV has for over a year and half still not only maintained it's subscription rates, it's increased steadily. Servers like Balmung are still getting lock outs due to being full most times of the day. But I disagree the game "is losing players faster than we are getting new ones."

We've been hearing that same old tired statement since the very beginning, and will continue to hear it even when all indications are to the contrary. We were told endllessly that <insert overhyped MMO here> was going to slaughter FFXIV. But where are those games now? Apart from Destiny I've heard virtually nothing about these so called "FFXIV killers' other than a few ramblings from disgruntled players saying how boring and dull they are.

Of course, FFXIV isn't perfect. No game is. There are definitely things that can be improved or built on. But to say the game is losing players over minor QoL things or such trivial matters as optional paid items, is just hearsay. Don't listen to Chicken Little! The game is fine sub wise.

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

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http://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/ir/

I got my info from the investor relations reports, and balance sheets. They aren't the most reliable, by far, nor are they for only ffxiv, however looking at the past few quarters has showed a decline in profits related to subscription rights (earnings, page 9, 3/4 down the page). I'm not saying thart the game is only losing players over minor QoL things. there are a lot of reasons why the game loses players. a lack of continued interest things to do, a lack of community interactions outside of instances, and a lack of casual friendly endgame products, for example. It happens to a lot of newer MMO's, and im not faulting FF for that, but it happens.

And you don't want to gauge server fullness by balmung. or Gilgamesh, or tonberry. outside of the legacy servers, many servers are well below 20k players. probably below 5k active players. for instance, I can walk into mor dhona in primetime and see less than 30 players in the town. this is an issue.

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Originally Posted by tocsin

And you don't want to gauge server fullness by balmung. or Gilgamesh, or tonberry. outside of the legacy servers, many servers are well below 20k players. probably below 5k active players. for instance, I can walk into mor dhona in primetime and see less than 30 players in the town. this is an issue.

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While true the legacy servers are packed, Gilgamesh is not a legacy server. Also it looks like you play on Jenova which launched six months later with the release of the ps4 and is one of the least populated servers. It's the server I created my first character on as I got the game on ps4 and saw it rather empty so I went ahead and created another character on faerie which is considered a medium pop and is a non legacy server, it was like night and day compared to jenova. No matter where I am at I always see other people and during primetime mor dhona is packed, it might be the players that you are losing might just be hopping to other servers like I did, but that's just my opinion based on my own experience and observation. so while you don't want to gauge server fullness on the legacy servers you also don't want to gauge server emptyness by Jenova, Zodiark, or Shinryu

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Originally Posted by tocsin

http://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/ir/

I got my info from the investor relations reports, and balance sheets. They aren't the most reliable, by far, nor are they for only ffxiv, however looking at the past few quarters has showed a decline in profits related to subscription rights (earnings, page 9, 3/4 down the page). I'm not saying thart the game is only losing players over minor QoL things. there are a lot of reasons why the game loses players. a lack of continued interest things to do, a lack of community interactions outside of instances, and a lack of casual friendly endgame products, for example. It happens to a lot of newer MMO's, and im not faulting FF for that, but it happens..

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Ah, thanks for that. Although I think they're using the term 'subscription games' in a general sense and are not referring to FFXIV (or FFXI too for that matter) specifically - after all, they have a whole heap of substandard mobile games which have cash shops running at the moment, to say nothing of the recent re-releases of the PC versions of FFVII and VIII which have paid functions as well (those so-called 'character boosters). It was already well known the mobile games were causing SE a headache financially as they were being (rightly) hammered in the press, so I'm liable to believe this is what they're referring to in the financial report.

But... it does make one wonder why until patch 2.4 they had an increasing player count on the Lodestone then removed it suddenly with just a 'BUY NOW' label in big letters...

*Shakes head* No.. must not... give into paranoia...

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

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Very true. just also adding to the paranoia is the number itself:

the revenue lists 372 million yen generated by subscriptions total for ffxi and ffxiv, which is 3.1 million dollars at current exchange rate / average 12 dollars per sub = 260k subs.

if an MMO is down to that many subs, I can definitely see it needing a cash shop to bolster its numbers, especially when trying to fund a multi-million dollar expansion.

These numbers are just for giggles, though. I wish they would just come out and make their numbers real.

I started here running away from DCUO because it became a massive pay to win. I saw how it started and i saw how that ended. Sadly i think this game is following the same direction.