Is SE's Marketing / PR department -severely- hurting the games chances of success?

That's not to say that if each of us lured back 2 of our friends we wouldn't double the population, but I just think Square Enix has set its sights higher than that.

Now I'm curious, will this strategy succeed? Will the PS3 launch reviews even be good?

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Originally Posted by Shai

The more I think about Jynx's argument, though (or my interpretation of it) - the more I'm inclined to agree.

You say that not pleasing us is hurting the games reputation. From our perspective I would say that is true. We grow more frustrated and disgruntled every day. I believe the developers don't want us to leave, but even if we do their master plan is to re-capture the world's attention at a later date. Who's to say (from their point of view) it won't recapture ours as well if we quit now?

You follow what I mean so far?

As for the rest of the world (those not playing XIV), the majority has written this game off already. They don't want to hear about it (for the most part) when we say it's gotten better. They laugh at us when we say we enjoy playing it. They simply accept the game as a failure (based on their first experience, or reviews, or sales/returns, on something) and are happy to look to the horizon for new games or return to tried & true game experiences.

This is better for Square Enix because XIV is literally biding its time. It's not changing overnight or exploding into exciting new adventures every day. It's a long, arduous process of transforming from what it was in September to what it might be when they are ready to relaunch it on PS3. At this moment there may still be many who have been pushed too far (as you suggest we may be) or stick to their guns that the game isn't worth playing, but...

New reviews will come out that (presumably) sing the praises on what Square Enix has managed in "only a year" or "only 16 months!" (a lifetime to us players, but not long to people who aren't thinking, or caring, or wondering about what happened to XIV). Instead they would be interested in seeing how a company turded (edit: lol Freudian slip, "turned") such a launch flop into a praise-worthy game. It will recapture their attention (and presumably our attention) in an instant.

What we say, think, feel right now doesn't really amount to much. We may bring back 1, 2, 10 friends, or we may naysay and turn off 1-10 friends. They're looking to suck in THOUSANDS of people, and those of us still playing the game may even be on board (by then) saying "It was a rough 16 months, but damn this game is fun now."

So yeah, I think Jynx has hit it out of the park upon further reflection of the marketing strategy.

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This has never worked for anything in real life. At least not to my knowledge.
Once you have negative publicity that publicity sticks for YEARS.
In otherwords, even if this game gets all 10s, most people (A high majority) remembering a bad review will assume the game is bad.
And this is based on scientific studies, not on some magic theory.

That`s why when companies like Toyota lose consumer trust they spend millions trying to regain it. And even with millions spent, Toyota is preforming horribly compared to its competitors.

Relaunching a failed game is not an easy task. Especially when it only appeals to niche markets. Even if this game is fixed it will need word of mouth to actually revive it. If SE actually thinks they will will be able to re-market a year old game that is considered by almost everyone that would play it to be a joke, they are in for a big surprise and a big failure.

Remember this isn`t a single player game. Almost everyone who plays MMOs knows about it and about the horrible reviews, and many who bought it ended up quitting quickly. It got a TON of bad press about the surplus system even before the release. And anyone who has visited any board has seen constant hate threads

Most new players to MMOs (even WoW) join to play with friends and not to play alone. If SE thinks they will magically convince 1000s of new players to join a game which has 5.0 and worse reviews on many sites (and they won't ever disappear) they are kidding themselves.

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Originally Posted by Shai

I only read 12's so far, but you do realize that's a discussion about the "success" of 12?

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It's a look back with analysis. What are you trying to imply here?

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Originally Posted by Azurymber

Most new players to MMOs (even WoW) join to play with friends and not to play alone. If SE thinks they will magically convince 1000s of new players to join a game which has 5.0 and worse reviews on many sites (and they won't ever disappear) they are kidding themselves.

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Negative PR is a double edged sword, you can turn it to work in your favor to mitigate the damage it will inflict upon yourself. I also feel you are overestimating the star-power the few remaining players in this game have. There are thousands of players sitting on the fence waiting for the game to get good, when it does get good they will come back despite how they treated the current players, the on the fence guys could care less if you cry about "Crappy patchers, bad communication, long periods of nothing" Because when they come back the game will be functioning.

There will always be a large enough player base who will spread the word eagerily when the game shapes up, mainly due to them wanting to scream and shout how they endured the grueling process of getting the game back on it's feet. Those few who are still unpleased will be drown out in a chorus of fanatical supporters, new and old players finally hitting that "Play" button after 8 months away from the game.

I've allready explained how easy it will be to turn those 5.0 scores into a positive thing for the game at large. PS3 launch WILL be treated like an expansion pack to more or less force the press to give the game another round in the media outlets. If the game is good it will be lauded as rising from "What many reviewers called impossible to come back from" ashes. Of course this all pans on the game actually being good when they relaunch.

But I doubt anyone is going to say this game will ever suceed without becoming fun first. Your analogy of people never coming to XIV because they don't want to play alone is flawed. Thousands picked up XIV in the first place with maybe a few friends at best willing to pick it up despite the reviews "hardly any reviews were held back at all and most released far before the game hit store shelves". I can guarantee tens of thousands of people will pick it up again if they treat the PS3 launch as a expansion with a shiny new coat.

Negative PR can and has been overcome millions of times before by companies. Companies like Schniders can KILL people with tainted meat and they litteraly ran over the bad PR with a "Ooops our bad" and a few months of people being sketchy of the meat.

Once the reason the hate emerged is gone, the hate will subside quickly as well. People are not as begrudging as you make them out to be.

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Originally Posted by Jynx

Negative PR is a double edged sword, you can turn it to work in your favor to mitigate the damage it will inflict upon yourself. I also feel you are overestimating the star-power the few remaining players in this game have. There are thousands of players sitting on the fence waiting for the game to get good, when it does get good they will come back despite how they treated the current players, the on the fence guys could care less if you cry about "Crappy patchers, bad communication, long periods of nothing" Because when they come back the game will be functioning.

There will always be a large enough player base who will spread the word eagerily when the game shapes up, mainly due to them wanting to scream and shout how they endured the grueling process of getting the game back on it's feet. Those few who are still unpleased will be drown out in a chorus of fanatical supporters, new and old players finally hitting that "Play" button after 8 months away from the game.

I've allready explained how easy it will be to turn those 5.0 scores into a positive thing for the game at large. PS3 launch WILL be treated like an expansion pack to more or less force the press to give the game another round in the media outlets. If the game is good it will be lauded as rising from "What many reviewers called impossible to come back from" ashes. Of course this all pans on the game actually being good when they relaunch.

But I doubt anyone is going to say this game will ever suceed without becoming fun first. Your analogy of people never coming to XIV because they don't want to play alone is flawed. Thousands picked up XIV in the first place with maybe a few friends at best willing to pick it up despite the reviews "hardly any reviews were held back at all and most released far before the game hit store shelves". I can guarantee tens of thousands of people will pick it up again if they treat the PS3 launch as a expansion with a shiny new coat.

Negative PR can and has been overcome millions of times before by companies. Companies like Schniders can KILL people with tainted meat and they litteraly ran over the bad PR with a "Ooops our bad" and a few months of people being sketchy of the meat.

Once the reason the hate emerged is gone, the hate will subside quickly as well. People are not as begrudging as you make them out to be.

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Didn't games like LOTR + AoC make huge comebacks (went from a horrible game to a fun game)? and they haven't really seen success
And just to point out LotrO and AoC Had great reviews on release. they just lacked content or had issues at the start. But nothing close to FFXIV's problems.

And then you have SwG which remodeled the game to attract new players, pissed off all its current players, and essentially failed because of it.

What MMO has gone from being considered a failure to rebounding and becoming a huge success?

None, but it doesn't mean it can't happen. No MMO has done things to the extent XIV has even SWG was not this intensive. It's all a matter of if the game is worth playing after it's "Fixed"

SWG wasn't they screwed it up hardcore.

FFXIV is also in a unique situation from the standpoint of Age of Conan and Lord of the Rings are. It has a second release, on a new platform. The media can't ignore one of the few Console MMO's when it returns, hell in those terms SE created the most sucsesfull multi-platform MMO and XIV is it's next game.

You are overly pessimistic, you obviously don't have much hope for the game at all. If your not willing to buy into the fact XIV can dig itself out of it's grave I'm not sure why you are here at all. Beating the proverbial dead horse that you don't think can make a comeback. If they can't engage new players even if they did everything to keep us hardcore fans here it would doom them to shut the game down. A few thousand souls waiting to the bitter end don't make a profitable MMO.

XIV is a special case for faulty start MMO's, if you don't want to accept that then be my guest and leave. Becasuse if the press doesn't give SE another round then it's all for naught anyways.

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Originally Posted by Jynx

None, but it doesn't mean it can't happen. No MMO has done things to the extent XIV has even SWG was not this intensive. It's all a matter of if the game is worth playing after it's "Fixed"

SWG wasn't they screwed it up hardcore.

FFXIV is also in a unique situation from the standpoint of Age of Conan and Lord of the Rings are. It has a second release, on a new platform. The media can't ignore one of the few Console MMO's when it returns, hell in those terms SE created the most sucsesfull multi-platform MMO and XIV is it's next game.

You are overly pessimistic, you obviously don't have much hope for the game at all. If your not willing to buy into the fact XIV can dig itself out of it's grave I'm not sure why you are here at all. Beating the proverbial dead horse that you don't think can make a comeback. If they can't engage new players even if they did everything to keep us hardcore fans here it would doom them to shut the game down. A few thousand souls waiting to the bitter end don't make a profitable MMO.

XIV is a special case for faulty start MMO's, if you don't want to accept that then be my guest and leave. Becasuse if the press doesn't give SE another round then it's all for naught anyways.

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I disagree. you are overly optimistic and I'm a realist.
If no other game has done it, and if all past marketing history would suggest it isn't do-able then the chances of it happening are very low. Thats not pessimism, thats realism.
And what do you mean by "No MMO has done things to the extent XIV has"
XIV hasn't done anything yet but fix a few of the many things that should have been fixed at the start. they -MIGHT- revolutionize things with this summer's patches, but again if you go on history, what have they actually come through with? The market ward fix is probably the biggest "improvement" so far, and thats even incomplete (ex. you cant see a diff between normal+1 +2 +3 and everyone is centered in ul'dah)

All im saying is for the game to be successful improving it is not enough. Improving its image and how people perceive it is. And for an MMO, word of mouth is the best way to do that.

SE could do small things that make huge differences and would please MANY people, but instead they are very good at causing speculation, not communicating, and pissing people off (like with this new patch). After the whole surplus negative-media boom that happen I would have thought they learned their lesson. My point is they are still making the same mistakes with communication that has been hurting this game from the start, and if they don't fix that, this game won't succeed.

A lot of people read player reviews before buying MMOs because they realize that official sites dont play enough of the MMO to get a real feel for it. So when FFXIV comes out on PS3, the PS3 users will go on sites like gamefaqs and check out how OTHERS reviewed the product. So a marketing campaign wont do much.

Word of mouth is the key to MMOs. Almost no one decides to play MMOs alone. The majority join up with friends. Even FFXIV's original playerbase was mostly friends from XI starting together.
When you buy an MMO you aren't just paying for a game, you're expecting to pay for like a years worth of gameplay which is like buying 4 games. And you also expect to invest time. So people do a lot of reasearch and don't impulse buy. And even if there are some good new reviews, the horrible word of mouth and old reviews and the poor reputation can sabotage the improvements.

Its kind of like Toyota having tons of recalls on cars and saying "well we aren't going to really care about looking into these cars or dealing with this issue, we will just build our new cars better and advertise to new people". Obviously did not work very well and they quickly changed their stance.

I guess you stick with your stance and I will stick with mine. We are obviously at an impass as you think the current player base is going to somehow convince everyone to come back.

SE can't sneeze without these people complaining so I doubt that will ever happen. You give the average consumer too much credit that they "Do research" on a game before they buy it. They will glance at the newest review and go from there, informed consumers are rare and dying breed. Sure you and I may look up stuff and do proper research yet somehow we both ended up with this game in out laps despite the lack of positive reviews and or poor alpha and beta testing enviroment.

What makes you think other people wont do the same? People didn't pick up WoW at first with "Word of mouth" People didn't pick up XI first with "Word of mouth" No new MMO was picked up by "Word of mouth" there was no "Word" to go with besides the proffesional reviews. If XIV shapes up to be a fun game supporters will outshine negative people 10 to 1 wether they pandered to you or not.

Actually vanilla wow, was mostly advertised by worth of mouth.

WoW was first picked up by WC3 fans and then word of mouth
FFXI was first picked up by FF fans and then word of mouth. It also had -really- good reviews
FFXIV was picked up by FFXI and FF Fans and failed, then gained a reputation for being a failure in the MMO community.

If your right though and SE needs to attract new players who havent heard of the failure and don't do research they should seriously just make skanky outfits and put lots of cute things in the game and then have commercials with cute or hot girls. Thats how F2P MMOs do it and it works.

Edit: also i liked the game at release. I think it was a much better game than it is now. When they changed the SP system and everything became coblyns and leves the game seemed to die. Before that you could fight a whole variety of stuff and there were all-day-long parties going on

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Originally Posted by Ostia

Actually vanilla wow, was mostly advertised by worth of mouth.

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Yeah after people actually played it. People will pick up XIV regardless of the negative press surrounding it and if it's actually a good game by then "shocker" they will spread the word. I've said it time and again if the game actually lives up to it's rebirth it has nothing to fear from it's poor initial reception.

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Originally Posted by Azurymber

WoW was first picked up by WC3 fans and then word of mouth
FFXI was first picked up by FF fans and then word of mouth. It also had -really- good reviews
FFXIV was picked up by FFXI and FF Fans and failed, then gained a reputation for being a failure in the MMO community.

If your right though and SE needs to attract new players who havent heard of the failure and don't do research they should seriously just make skanky outfits and put lots of cute things in the game and then have commercials with cute or hot girls. Thats how F2P MMOs do it and it works.

Edit: also i liked the game at release. I think it was a much better game than it is now. When they changed the SP system and everything became coblyns and leves the game seemed to die. Before that you could fight a whole variety of stuff and there were all-day-long parties going on

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while this true to an extent about post sp change you also must consider the amount of active people the game had then also. if you can find 2 or 3 people willing to do something now you could easily get 15 people to do it then. if you have less players in game you will have less people willing to do the same thing.

basically the law of averages. if 1 of 1000 people are willing to do something and you have 500k people in game you have 500 people doing that over the total servers. if you have 30k people playing only 30 people over the entire server base is willing to do that.

granted the sp change did hurt it was not the only deciding factor. it's also not as easy to get leve parties together unless you have a static crew you have been doing them with for a while due to the lack of players in the servers.

lol.. dont get me wrong guys. But watching American people talking about correct english grammar is kind of funny.

http://englishplus.com/grammar/00000193.htm

Just messing with you guys. ;)

Back to Topic...

Why you guys dont just chill and enjoy the Game? Look forward the Update which will come "during" Summer. Let SE do their work and support them, not bitch at them for beeing slow. Speeding up work dont really mean that it will be good. I prefer correct working which may take a little longer, but afterwards i can be thankfull for some good Stuff. Of course SE shouldnt have rushed the Game to be released, but that happnd and now its on the new Team to get things right and i totally support them.

I have to disagree with a good deal of your post.

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Originally Posted by Azurymber

-When the game first came out, they sabotaged its reputation with the poor communication about the surplus system alienating huge numbers of potential players.

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The surplus system would not have saved this game's reputation. It wouldn't have mattered.

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-Many 'ideas' have been mentioned and then completely disappeared (ex. hamlet battles, active ecosystems)

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This is nothing new and happens in mmos. With the changes in the dev team, it would be prudent to expect it to happen. It also doesn't mean those ideas won't come up later.

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-Many updates have been translated incorrectly or have said different things...

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I can't speak for the other languages, but nothing vital has ever been mistranslated in this one. Even the infamous "until summer" was not a mistranslation, but rather a literal translation. What the translators do most of the time is add little English idioms, which again is not mistranslation, it's (oh the irony) PR.

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-Many updates seem to have been "filler" and created a lot of optimism that ended in disappointment.

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I haven't seen an update that didn't do exactly what it promised.

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-Many updates have come months ahead of the actual implementation, which creates the impression that SE is just writing out BS on lodestone to appease people without actually coming up with substance...

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When FFXIV failed, players asked for SE to keep them posted. Certain people even demand it. SE is, again ironically, only doing what the players asked. People who can never be happy with the updates, or are poor in reading comprehension, spread the BS.

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-Patches are released with almost no desired updates. When you release a patch (like 1.17b) all you are doing is fueling negative thoughts about the game. I would say this forum proves that point -very- well.

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Patches are released as they are ready. People grumble in the forums with or without help anyway. Even if it was a "desired" patch, there would probably be someone complaining about something in it.

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-No communication about PS3 is a serious issue. While its understandable that they won't know until the game is "better", the longer it is put off the more outdated FFXIV becomes. Right now FFXIV has horrible ratings on most sites and is considered to be a failure or a joke to many ff fans and on many MMO websites. Nothing has been done to counter this.

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Nothing is done to counter it because there is nothing to counter it with. FFXIV is hardly outdated yet either, but even if it were, no matter how you beat the horse, it can only move so fast. The battel system must e finished before any other major changes can take place. Once that is done, I believe we will see the other changes come relatively quickly.

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-The downloading system for patches still doesn't work properly or well, even if you open up ports.

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I have never had an issue. I'm not saying others haven't, but I haven't seen evidence that it is any more widespread than any other mmo. Of course it needs fixed for those having problems, but not before the game itself.

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-In game systems (like sidequests) have been rushed through and make the game seem cheap to new players...

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What new players? There might be a few, but the quests were rushed more for current players than new players. Quite a few of us enjoyed them too. In time, I have no doubt they will be adding cutscenes to them, as the screen already blacks out for no reason when you talk to the NPC. At which time, I imagine new players will enjoy them as well.

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-there are a bunch of half-completed and incorrect databases. A good PR department would make sure there is at least one -good- database. Even free MMOs have good databases.

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It's a bit tough to make good databases when half of what's there may or may not be changing. I see no reason to waste that time.

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-Grid and Limsa cities are dead making the game look empty to new players. Who wants to play an MMO when they only see like 3-4 people at all times in their starting city? Even free to play MMOs that -suck- have more than that. SE should be finding ways to spread the population out, but instead all their efforts seem to make players go to ul'dah

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Um, for all intents and purposes, the game is dead. Also, although it can't be confirmed, it appears the grand companies will help spread the population.

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There are many more of these. But the simple point is that SE has failed in almost all aspects other than their original website, to make this game appealing or impressive to new and current players.

With this track record, do you really think they will be able to pull off a re-launch? Especially when the game is old AND has some of the worst MMO reviews out there?

There are a lot of small simple ways to make this game seem better, build a better community, and make players and potential players more optimistic. However, the current team seems to be ignoring all these opportunities. Fixing the game will only fix it for those currently playing. To truly save the game SE will need to step up and make people want to play.

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The bottom line is, SE can't entice new players until the game is fixed. When they get do, I have absolutely no doubt the game reviewers will re-review the game again. Obviously it is crucial that the game get a good review then. And yes, I think people will come back. The better question is, do you really think the average player would want to come back to the game now? There is no point in creating any marketing hype or PR right now. Even as much as I love this game, I understand this.

SE has to make a game people want to play, not make people want to play. The only thing that would happen if SE hyped this game prematurely (again) is fail this game for good. However, when the big changes are made, and if the game is good, word will spread quickly, and people will play. Final Fantasy can do this because of it's reputation. No other mmo would get such a second chance.

tl;dr I believe much of what you suggest would kill the game completely, not help it.

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Originally Posted by Chezen

I have to disagree with a good deal of your post.



The surplus system would not have saved this game's reputation. It wouldn't have mattered.



This is nothing new and happens in mmos. With the changes in the dev team, it would be prudent to expect it to happen. It also doesn't mean those ideas won't come up later.



I can't speak for the other languages, but nothing vital has ever been mistranslated in this one. Even the infamous "until summer" was not a mistranslation, but rather a literal translation. What the translators do most of the time is add little English idioms, which again is not mistranslation, it's (oh the irony) PR.



I haven't seen an update that didn't do exactly what it promised.



When FFXIV failed, players asked for SE to keep them posted. Certain people even demand it. SE is, again ironically, only doing what the players asked. People who can never be happy with the updates, or are poor in reading comprehension, spread the BS.



Patches are released as they are ready. People grumble in the forums with or without help anyway. Even if it was a "desired" patch, there would probably be someone complaining about something in it.




Nothing is done to counter it because there is nothing to counter it with. FFXIV is hardly outdated yet either, but even if it were, no matter how you beat the horse, it can only move so fast. The battel system must e finished before any other major changes can take place. Once that is done, I believe we will see the other changes come relatively quickly.



I have never had an issue. I'm not saying others haven't, but I haven't seen evidence that it is any more widespread than any other mmo. Of course it needs fixed for those having problems, but not before the game itself.



What new players? There might be a few, but the quests were rushed more for current players than new players. Quite a few of us enjoyed them too. In time, I have no doubt they will be adding cutscenes to them, as the screen already blacks out for no reason when you talk to the NPC. At which time, I imagine new players will enjoy them as well.



It's a bit tough to make good databases when half of what's there may or may not be changing. I see no reason to waste that time.



Um, for all intents and purposes, the game is dead. Also, although it can't be confirmed, it appears the grand companies will help spread the population.



The bottom line is, SE can't entice new players until the game is fixed. When they get do, I have absolutely no doubt the game reviewers will re-review the game again. Obviously it is crucial that the game get a good review then. And yes, I think people will come back. The better question is, do you really think the average player would want to come back to the game now? There is no point in creating any marketing hype or PR right now. Even as much as I love this game, I understand this.

SE has to make a game people want to play, not make people want to play. The only thing that would happen if SE hyped this game prematurely (again) is fail this game for good. However, when the big changes are made, and if the game is good, word will spread quickly, and people will play. Final Fantasy can do this because of it's reputation. No other mmo would get such a second chance.

tl;dr I believe much of what you suggest would kill the game completely, not help it.

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First, while you seem to counter a lot of points i made, a number of people have posted they agree with almost everything. Further almost every point i made has also had various threads made about it. Thus other people do not seem to share you're incredible optimism (although i honestly think your trolling)
I don't really know how you can deny that the surplus issue created a lot of hate for the game ...
The impending doom thing way back in january? was mistranslated and everyone was speculating about it since it said things in diff languages
If this update did exactly what it promised and if people just normally grumble than this game will definately fail since there wasn't just 1 small grumbling thread but a ton of hate and joke threads about it. Thats the whole point, SE should be pleasing players, not annoying them
If the game is "dead" then no ones going to sign up for a dead game in the future.

And this thread is not about getting new players to join now
it is about KEEPING FFXIVS REPUTATION SOMEWHAT HALF DECENT so that in the future when they want to get new players they can.

Fixing a game, and alienating the entire customer base in the process except for a few optimistic people like you will ruin the game. Again i'll use a real life example. Its like Toyota ignoring all safety issues, not fixing any of their cars properly, and using the argument "well we will just fix the problems in the new cars and then advertise to new people". When you apply that logic to -any- real life product it sounds ridiculous. But a few of you seem to keep applying it to this game.
So i'll ask the obvious question: Name one product that has failed, pissed off or alienated all its current customers, and then fixed things and rebounded a year later lets say.
If you can't name one, what makes you think SE is so special?

Schniders killed people with tainted meat, a few weeks leater it's like it never happened. Tons of companies screw up and get away with little less than "Oops my bad" even if it resulted in the deaths of people.

SE burning a few "trust me the current playerbase is few" players pales in comparison if you feel the need to toss realworld analogues at a digital product. If you want to go into the digital realm...How many people still use Sony or even Microsoft after the snafu of multiple terrible software and hardware issues.

Xbox360 still continues to sell millions of units despite then flat out denying the RROD for 3 years and then just saying "well ok you got us, but we are in the process of extending the waranty so all those class action lawsuits don't murder us" Or Sony when people found Spyware in there basic music software "Rootkits anyone?"

Face it PR blunders are never as bad as you make them out to be, hell wasn't it Honda who had a bunch of cares that needed to be recalled for faulty breaks that could have pottentialy killed people? Guess they dissapeared into the oblivion, hell Honda did little to apease the people who bought the damn cars other than replacing it with a working one.