Why pay a subscription?

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Originally Posted by Sidious

Yes they were.

Rolling in with an army of 40 people feels more epic than prancing in with 8. Period. I played completely casually in vanilla and I didn't have a problem finding a raiding guild. Even though the best guilds were doing Naxx40, we were having an absolute blast doing MC, BWL and AQ40.

Proof is not on your side. New WoW only loses subs. Why? Because Blizzard adopted an ideology similar to yours and applied it in almost all areas of the game.

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The small "raid" size in this game is making a ton of these annoying little 8 man guilds that charge people for titan runs.

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Originally Posted by Sidious

Yes they will. And the proof is in the pudding: People *did* stick around. Something that can't be said for your ultra-casualized iterations of the game.

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You're under the assumption it's the difficulty that caused WoW's subs to drop. lol....

Did you ever think maybe people got sick of playing the same game for 7-10 years?

If you were correct this game would already have 40 man raids and they would not hand out relic gear.

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Originally Posted by Vaer

Except you need to do it to do the other enjoyable things up the ladder, which is the entire reason why people do it even if they don't want to. Game design stonewalls you at some point with gear checks.

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You're right, formally, logically, but if it wasn't an enjoyment to some degree, then why do it? Nothing better awaits you in an MMO, it's just grind after grind. The only reason to go through a painful process would be to "clear all the content", in a typical "achiever's" mindset, but admittedly it only concerns a few % of the general population. If one doesn't enjoy playing the game itself, whatever it is they do in it, I see no reason to keep on doing it.

In my personal case, from level 1 onwards when I tried ARR in beta, I just liked combat. It felt good, amusing. I'm not saying all the quests were great, nor that every dungeon is as fun as the next, and obviously your mileage may vary, but all things considered, I'm having more fun fighting in FF XIV than I do in WoW, or GW2, or TOR, or TERA, and countless others for that matter. So, running a day's full of Castrums wasn't a problem for me, it was just... amusing. When I was with friends, or with a very nice and/or coordinated group (I don't mind newbies at all, on the contrary I like to explain and see others get better as they learn, however I strongly dislike self-righteous selfish people, and some of those ruined my pleasure in some DF runs).

If I didn't enjoy it, I wouldn't have done it (actually stopped using the DF at some point, for this exact reason). No matter what was after.

FF 11 online was known for being super hard and it had a very low subscription base.

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Originally Posted by Rikudou-Sennin

You're under the assumption it's the difficulty that caused WoW's subs to drop. lol....

Did you ever think maybe people got sick of playing the same game for 7-10 years?

If you were correct this game would already have 40 man raids and they would not hand out relic gear.

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So you think it's just sheer coincidence that as soon as they started casualizing parts of the game that didn't need to be casualized, subs began to stagnate and decline?

It's an MMO. They're dumping millions of dollars into reinventing it constantly. The game is completely different than it was before. It can hardly even be considered the same game anymore. So, no, I don't think it's because people "got tired of it". Especially because people are willing to play a game that is, for better or worse, mechanically very similar to it (ARR).

Are casuals allergic to logic or something?

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FF 11 online was known for being super hard and it had a very low subscription base.

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By the numbers, it's one of the most successful P2P MMO's of all time. It never had WoW's sheer numbers but it had a very dedicated, stable subscriber base that continues to this day, ~a decade later.

Why? Because XI built on its content until there was a mind-numbingly huge amount of content to participate in. Complexities and depth in the game keep people around.

Casual games are good for some short term fun, and then you burn through it and unsub. Period.

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Originally Posted by Sidious

Are casuals allergic to logic or something?

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If you were right FF11 would be rocking right now.. That game was crazy hard. I had friends that played that game and told me it made vanilla WoW look like a walk in the park. They had a very low player base because of it. They know what they are doing. This game is easier for a reason. They have a hard FF MMO. Last I checked FF11 was still running if you want hard mode.

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Originally Posted by Rikudou-Sennin

FF 11 online was known for being super hard and it had a very low subscription base.

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EVE Online may be one of the hardest sandbox MMORPG out there, and granted due to that it has low subs numbers, but it never stopped gaining more players ever since it was released. Still rising as we speak.

Yeah honestly i dont care about the difficulty of content changing i really just want SE to do something about the bots teleporting around and RTM spammers.

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Originally Posted by Alcyon_Densetsu

EVE Online may be one of the hardest sandbox MMORPG out there, and granted due to that it has low subs numbers, but it never stopped gaining more players ever since it was released. Still rising as we speak.

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I wouldn't say they have low subs. Everything is low compared to WoW numbers.

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Originally Posted by Alcyon_Densetsu

EVE Online may be one of the hardest sandbox MMORPG out there, and granted due to that it has low subs numbers, but it never stopped gaining more players ever since it was released. Still rising as we speak.

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You guys do know SE is having financial difficulties right? FF11's hard mode didn't pan out for their wallets. They can't afford to make the same mistake twice. I mean they literally can't afford it.. -_-

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Originally Posted by Rikudou-Sennin

You guys do know SE is having financial difficulties right? FF11's hard mode didn't pan out for their wallets. They can't afford to make the same mistake twice. I mean they literally can't afford it.. -_-

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What are you talking about? Do you mean FF14 1.0's? Or FF11, which has been their most successful title?

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Originally Posted by Alcyon_Densetsu

EVE Online may be one of the hardest sandbox MMORPG out there, and granted due to that it has low subs numbers, but it never stopped gaining more players ever since it was released. Still rising as we speak.

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Eve has no competitors in it's genre. No real competition anyway that's why.

As to Sidious pay to play doesn't make a game more successful than free to play. Look at LOTRO, they had a completely stable player base but moved to free to play. Why did they do it? Because they had a dying game known as dungeons and dragons online. They made it free to play in a last ditch effort to save it. They ended up making more money than they ever did when it was pay to play. So they thought, "What would happen if we do the same with our successful LOTRO? Would it make even more?" According to the devs the answer was yes. People play FFXI a decade later but there's many "Failed" mmorpgs that are also trucking years later. People still play Everquest to this day (note I'm not saying it failed.)

Wtf? Sub if its fun enough to be worth your money, unsub if you dont. Stop implying the runaway RMT and bots of the game will be around all year, theyre not. They missed some common tools and will likely add them ASAP... do you really expect them to add/change the game at the snap of a finger? Hasnt even been a month!

Funny how you ask why anyone would sub then say a smart person would sub when a new patch releases. Durr, thats not new... players have been doing that for years. I myself will be doing it at the end of the month.

Good god this thread is really reaching for the top of the garbage pile isnt it? Love your last point btw, its the "best single player game in disguise" because despite it forcing you to find and interact with other players for content, and other group features like FATEs, you can still CHOOSE to be antisocial. Great logic there.

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Originally Posted by C-croft

What are you talking about? Do you mean FF14 1.0's? Or FF11, which has been their most successful title?

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No I'm talking about FF11 online. That game was hard. If that was their most successful title they wouldn't be broke. BTW, I still think FF7 holds the title for most sucessful. A game they still refuse to remake.

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Originally Posted by Reslin

Eve has no competitors in it's genre. No real competition anyway that's why.

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No real competitor as we speak, but there have been some in the sandbox genre, and some quite big (such as SWG for instance). No competition is a factor, indeed, but certainly the quality of the game itself should not be dismissed, nor the stance with which CCCP approach its player base. By all means they've done it right.

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Originally Posted by Alcyon_Densetsu

No real competitor as we speak, but there have been some in the sandbox genre, and some quite big (such as SWG for instance). No competition is a factor, indeed, but certainly the quality of the game itself should not be dismissed, nor the stance with which CCCP approach its player base. By all means they've done it right.

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SWG was a sandbox game turned themepark which alienated it's own subscriber base. The problem with most sandbox games is that they take an attitude of "Wow! People really like my sandbox game let's include other mmorpg elements and.. well, we lost our devoted following." CCP has done right by keeping the game what it is and not deviating from their vision. EvE is a great game but the problem is this isn't a sandbox game and the market is saturated with similar titles all competing for the limelight. Nowadays you have two choices. Make the game hardcore to please the hard core gamers creating a small circle of devoted followers or appease the casuals. Most businesses opt for the latter because there simply is more casuals. You just try to make challenging content that also keeps as much of the hard core crowd as you can but asking for the company to appeal to the hardcore and only the hardcore is asking it to commit financial suicide.

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Originally Posted by Rikudou-Sennin

No I'm talking about FF11 online. That game was hard. If that was their most successful title they wouldn't be broke. BTW, I still think FF7 holds the title for most sucessful. A game they still refuse to remake.

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I am pretty sure SE stated that FF11 was their most successful.

http://uk.ign.com/articles/2012/06/2...of-all-time-is

Generally, new content provides faster access to better gear (making old content not viable)... and they would provide say af2 for philos at a later point when content uses ilvl90 or so as the new base ilvl for normal content.

Basically, there's never any reason to ever play/pay monthly other than playing in the moment where it's harder.

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Originally Posted by C-croft

I am pretty sure SE stated that FF11 was their most successful.

http://uk.ign.com/articles/2012/06/2...of-all-time-is

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There's a good chance that this game may completely outdo FF11 for them. Peak users for FF11 was 500,000. This game has 1,000,000 unique users and rising (according to their recent statement.) This is double what FF11 ever has. Sure you can say "The game just came out." but when FF11 came out it only had around 200,000-300,000. They would need to lose more than 50% of their current players in order to drop below FF11's peak performance. It's a bit early to claim FF14 is going a poor direction. It seems they learned from FF11 and improved upon it.

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Originally Posted by Reslin

There's a good chance that this game may completely outdo FF11 for them. Peak users for FF11 was 500,000. This game has 1,000,000 unique users and rising (according to their recent statement.) This is double what FF11 ever has. Sure you can say "The game just came out." but when FF11 came out it only had around 200,000-300,000. They would need to lose more than 50% of their current players in order to drop below FF11's peak performance. It's a bit early to claim FF14 is going a poor direction. It seems they learned from FF11 and improved upon it.

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Just to make sure you didn't take my post as doubting FFXIV ARR.

I am disputing the quotee's claim of FF11 tanking SE. If anything FFXIV 1.0 is part of the reason SE is tanking. Along with the smash hit(to the junk) Spirits within movie.

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Originally Posted by Rikudou-Sennin

Probably due to subscription's bring in revenue maybe, but they sold more copies of FF7 than any other FF game. They stopped selling FF7 or the number would be even higher. They refuse to remake it. They sold 9.8 million copies of FF7 before discontinuing it.

http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Final_Fantasy

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Post limit reached for the day.

I still fail to see what makes you think FF11 has caused the downfall of SE when it has brought in the most revenue to the company. Just because you push 9.8 million units, it does not mean it is the most successful. $10 a month times 100,000 is equal to a million a month. Considering it has been active for 10+ years, that's $120,000,000 minimum. That is an extreme lowball as I don't remember the sub price, and it only takes into account that only 100,000 a month for the past 'ten' years. Also, if you were to add up the 9.8 mil with the pricing for FF7, it went greatest hits in 1999 and was dropped to $20-$24. All these numbers are so basic, it's barely usable, but it should help you get the general idea.

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Originally Posted by C-croft

I am pretty sure SE stated that FF11 was their most successful.

http://uk.ign.com/articles/2012/06/2...of-all-time-is

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Probably due to subscription's bring in revenue maybe, but they sold more copies of FF7 than any other FF game. They stopped selling FF7 or the number would be even higher. They refuse to remake it. They sold 9.8 million copies of FF7 before discontinuing it.

http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Final_Fantasy

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Originally Posted by Reslin

SWG [...] /1000 chars

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I totally agree. :)

My initial remark was just to debunk the idea that a game's success is opposed to difficulty, that harder would essentially imply unsuccessful. Certainly WoW subs numbers do show that as well, even if in this case the game getting older is another reason for its decline. I just thought it appropriate to cite the EVE example in the largest landscape of MMORPG. But it was just a side note, really.

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Originally Posted by C-croft

Just to make sure you didn't take my post as doubting FFXIV ARR.

I am disputing the quotee's claim of FF11 tanking SE. If anything FFXIV 1.0 is part of the reason SE is tanking. Along with the smash hit(to the junk) Spirits within movie.

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Ah, alright. I agree. F11 is not tanking SE. 1.0 put them back by MILLIONS. It hurt them bad. Spirits within probably cost them quite a bit as well. Also they released certain games that also didn't pan out to their expectations either (for the cost to make them.) I doubt Square Enix will go under. My main point is that FF11 got easier over time and then they decided to make it even easier for 14. There's a reason for that and people claiming "This will kill the game." I don't think so.

P.S. To the person who claimed FF11's numbers were abysmally low.. 200,000-500,000 is not low. It's a pet peeve I have with many mmo players. To most 500,000 and below = Failure. Most companies aim to have a stable game at 250,000. FF11 was made with a budget and a goal to have 150,000 concurrent players. They got over 3 times that number. This game was made in mind to have a similar success to ff14. That means (I'm not speaking for the developers) there goal is probably to have 300,000-500,000 concurrent users. So far it would appear it's panning out. Too early to tell but right now the game is far exceeding their expectations.

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Originally Posted by Reslin

Ah, alright. I agree. F11 is not tanking SE. 1.0 put them back by MILLIONS. It hurt them bad. Spirits within probably cost them quite a bit as well. Also they released certain games that also didn't pan out to their expectations either (for the cost to make them.) I doubt Square Enix will go under. My main point is that FF11 got easier over time and then they decided to make it even easier for 14. There's a reason for that and people claiming "This will kill the game." I don't think so.

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Yeah I never claimed FF11 tanked SE. The subs for FF11 didn't touch that of WoW's because many people felt FF11 was for hardcore people only. Even if FF11 had 200,000 subs that's not alot.. I know what costs are involved in running a large scale computing environment as I do it for a living as a Sr Systems Engineer. It could easily break a company if they aren't pulling in enough money to cover the costs with a data center that size.

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Originally Posted by Rikudou-Sennin

Yeah I never claimed FF11 tanked SE. The subs for FF11 didn't touch that of WoW's because many people felt FF11 was for hardcore people only. Even if FF11 had 200,000 subs that's not alot.. I know what costs are involved in running a large scale computing environment as I do it for a living as a Sr Systems Engineer. It could easily break a company if they aren't pulling in enough money to cover the costs with a data center that size.

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Remember that back then everquest was considered a juggernaut at 500,000. 200,000 is not as bad as it looks. Especially since Square Enix is a self publisher which also helps. If 200,000 was too low then until wow Everquest was the only mmo to actually make money. I doubt this.

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Originally Posted by Sidious

Are casuals allergic to logic or something?

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Are you allergic to facts? First of all WoW went super casual during WotLK, when it reached its highest point in subs. It was the pinnacle of free epics and mindless faceroll ez-mode end game content. Cataclysm was when subs started dropping and at first the games difficulty was designed to be hard (well, harder than WotLK). Players whined like never before (kind of like theyre doing now) on how stupid some players were in LFG tool so they nerfed everything back to ez-mode. Look it up.

Furthermore, WoW has gone through many changes. Not only are you embarrasingly wrong with your facts, but its highly ignorant to think millions of players left because of one single change in difficulty.

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Originally Posted by Rikudou-Sennin

Yeah I never claimed FF11 tanked SE. The subs for FF11 didn't touch that of WoW's because many people felt FF11 was for hardcore people only. Even if FF11 had 200,000 subs that's not alot.. I know what costs are involved in running a large scale computing environment as I do it for a living as a Sr Systems Engineer. It could easily break a company if they aren't pulling in enough money to cover the costs with a data center that size.

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FF XI had in the ~500k subs. (mmodata.net)

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Originally Posted by Alcyon_Densetsu

FF XI had in the ~500k subs. (mmodata.net)

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So they were pulling in only $6.4 mil a month on subs at $12.99/mo. I just stood up a new data center and it's very small, the base cost without going into the building/rent and cooling/power was half a million just for software and hardware. That's not covering on going costs or bandwidth either. An operation like WoW would need several OC lines (optical carrier) and those cost big. That's not even covering the salaries of the IT people involved. I make good money...

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

No, 40 man raids were not epic, they were a clusterpuff, for lack of a safe term to use on this forum. needing 40 people for several hours was overkill. You can make epic, challenging content without needing that many. It's nothing to do with being too hard, and everything to do with being simply unnecessary. Even 24 people is a lot, which is how big raids will be in this game, but it's a number I'm okay with.

Epicness does not directly correlate with number of players.

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great, so you agree that fates are clusterpuff as well! So stop defending them.

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Originally Posted by LloydShade

MMOs have always been about experiencing a journey in a virtual world full of other players. Trying to play solo only is just misplaced money.

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Yet you can level 1-50 in this game never grouping up, To beat the story mode you only need to group up a handful of times just to beat a primal of a dungeon.
I don't need to be schooled on what a MMO is or isn't. How much interaction does the average player have with other players in this game? The quick primal or dungeon run to progress the game or passing by other players as you run to the next fate?

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Originally Posted by ErBear

great, so you agree that fates are clusterpuff as well! So stop defending them.

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I don't like the fates as they are because of that reason. I had a chance to run into a few fates that apparently no one was around and they were a lot of fun with a small group. They would be cool if certain areas were less populated.

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Originally Posted by Rikudou-Sennin

So they were pulling in only $6.4 mil a month on subs at $12.99/mo.

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Note that the base cost is manageable in that they already have an income based on other games. Their datacenter is nowhere near the size of WoW's. It doesn't have to be because their player base is much smaller. (500,000 as opposed to over 10,000,000.) Note that many mmo companies outright state there goal is to have 150,000-250,000 people. How are all these mmo's staying afloat? Why is there goal so low for something that, according to you, would be impossible to maintain? Most mmo's don't even breach the 250,000 mark let alone the 300,000 mark. Most mmo's lower than 500k subs ARE FREE TO PLAY even. Everquest before WoW was considered the biggest mmo in the world at 500,000. DAOC, Ultima Online, etc also had subs but much less players than EQ. How did they survive?

im totally thinking on not paying the month fee, the game feels horrible too much lagg, and yes gil seller bots really make it more uglier game... i mean i have played everquest wow and many free to play mmo, but danm,.... the lagg its terrible on ff14, many problems whit servers, etc etc etc

It be neat to see when you DF some of the harder content the ability to say, DF under easy/med/hard modes Where say, easy for those really struggling isn't terribly easy, maybe add a extra 2 seconds to titans moves or something, but cause say a negative effect where easy mode has a drop rate of a weapon like 30%, med 60% hard 99% or maybe where hard = 2 weapons? I dunno just thoughts to keep things challenging to those who want it, and a bit less difficult but more grindy for those who need something a bit easier. This would also cut out some of the people selling wins, or the want to buy a win(maybe not once again just thoughts)

because gamers want to play the game. not paying to collect in-game items.

For a very... very small percentage of MMO players, they actually play for the unique characteristic of the genre itself. The genre does not dominantly involve the gear, nor the content, none of that is unique about it. What is unique, however, is the social interactions. Making friends with people and spending time with each other playing a game. MMORPGs have always... ALWAYS been this way. They are the ones that an MMORPG is targeted for, by default. It's the genre, not the game itself, that dictates the type of mentality one needs to enjoy it as intended. The game itself is just the medium, a means to an end. Your say on the matter is meaningless and a waste of space if you don't understand it or fit the profile.

Why pay a subscription? Because I want to enjoy the game and explore all the content I can, make friends and have fun.

Sorry if you don't feel the same.

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Originally Posted by Welsper59

Making friends with people and spending time with each other playing a game. MMORPGs have always... ALWAYS been this way. They are the ones that an MMORPG is targeted for, by default. .

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How do you make these friends? You don't need to group up with anyone for anything outside of the duty finder. This isn't like EverQuest where you would form your group and journey to a camp to spend the day pulling mobs,farmings and making friends.
The only chat you see any more is RMT spam.

This games great for PS3 users such as yourself tho......